Tag: 05.07.00

IN SEARCH OF A GOOD TUNE

The Tony Awards are announced on Monday, and as usual there is difficulty finding enough good material for some of the categories. This year it’s musicals. “You know the season is in trouble when the executive committee of the Tony Awards announced that ‘Riverdance’ is eligible to be considered a new Broadway musical. Combined with ‘Contact’ and ‘Swing!’ it’s possible to have three shows nominated for best new musical that have no script, no original songs and, in the case of the favorite, ‘Contact,’ no orchestra. (The show, once billed as a ‘dance play,’ uses a prerecorded score of old pop hits and classical music.)” – Hartford Courant

DEFINING MOMENTS

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small regional ballet company or the mighty American Ballet Theater (ABT). “Swan Lake” is the classic that sets the standard. ABT debuts its new swan, plowing every resource the company can muster and a $1.4 million budget.  – New York Times

LOSS OF INDEPENDENCE

Independent producers are under pressure to let TV networks own more of their productions. But what will that mean for what is produced? “It’s not about the money. We all get paid well. It’s about the fact that a show you own is your viewpoint, your vision. All that is dissipated when you’re a hired hand. You can have the most brilliant people in the world running networks, but it’s almost a scientific impossibility for bureaucracies to be inventive and edgy. They cannot. It’s their nature.” – New York Times 05/07/00 

SIX DEGREES OF SPIELBERG

Stephen Spielberg has decided on his next project. That one act reverberates around the movie world. “It’s a kind of Six Degrees of Spielberg effect: He makes a single move, which sets off a flurry of activity at four studios across town, which sets off more flurries throughout the industry – ripples from a single stone cast in the movie pond by, as producer Mark Johnson calls him, ‘an 800-pound gorilla.’ – Chicago Sun-Times 05/07/00

CITY OF MURALS

Philadelphia is mural-crazy, covering every blank wall it can with murals – some commissioned and painted by professional artists, but many others the cheerful product of community pride. “Last year at this time the mural count was about 1,800. Now it is 1,900, which prompts the question, how many will be enough? Has mural-painting become a bureaucratic cottage industry? Has it become so important to the city’s tourist promotion that no one will ever recognize a practical limit?” – Philadelphia Inquirer

THE FASCINATING TATE

“The intense interest in this latest Tate is not just to do with the fact that it has cost £134 million, is constructed within Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s monumental Bankside power station by the iconoclastic Swiss modernists Herzog and de Meuron; and is about to open with a grueling round of celebrity parties. Nor is it just about the negotiation with a wealthy American collector, Kent Logan, over the possible gift of a chunk of his £100m Saatchi-esque stash of contemporary art. No: it is the fact that the collection on display has been, so to speak, jumbled up.” – The Sunday Times (UK)

A JURY OF YOUR PEERS

Is novelist Martin Amis, whose much-hyped autobiography will be released later this month, still the pinnacle of English literary fiction? Nine younger British novelists’ assess his work and influence, calling him everything from “the archetypal geeky white boy” to “uncompromisingly brilliant.” – The Independent (UK)

FIGHTING THROUGH THE CLUTTER

The early promise of e-publishing on the web was that anybody could get their work out there and find an audience. “In fact, the online publishing industry may be creating more obstacles than opportunities for aspiring writers. Within the next 18 months, the Web will add approximately 500,000 more titles. How can any author hope to break through those numbers?” – Wired