Tag: 05.14.04

Animation – TV’s Next Big Ratings Breakthrough?

This is the time of year TV execs decide what’s going to make their schedules next season. “This year, however, a dark horse has charged onto the TV scene: animation, a genre that to date has provided some of the edgiest and most sophisticated shows on TV. NBC, Fox, the SciFi Channel, and Comedy Central – to name a few – plan to add animated fare to their menu next season. Just as “The Simpsons” essentially saved Fox Network 15 years ago, animated cartoons could become the small screen’s pinch hitters, even if they’ve been benched for a while.”

Scottish Opera’s Impossible Position

The entire board of Scottish Opera should resign to protest the impossible position the government has put them in. “Five years on from the devolution settlement and all those lofty words about the arts being put at the centre of Scottish life, the company’s programme has been cut to just one new production. It is facing hefty redundancies. Confidence is low. Morale among the 240 staff is at rock bottom. Given all the rhetoric expended by the arts and political establishment in Scotland, what is unfolding here is shocking, and the position in which the directors have been put is wholly invidious. They are effectively being asked by the Executive to collaborate in an attack on the artistic base which they as directors are duty bound to defend.”

St. Louis Symphony Won’t Go To Voters For Support

The ailing St. Louis Symphony won’t ask voters to join the city’s zoo-museum district that distributes $50 million for St. Louis cultural institutions. “Some observers believe the St. Louis Symphony serves too wealthy an audience to need tax support. ‘That is always going to hurt the Symphony. Most voters are not Symphony-goers, and they think it’s elitist. Voters look at what they really need, and funding the Symphony would be one of the last things voters would support.”

A Quota For Canadian Films?

Should Canada enact a quota that would force movie theatres to show a certain percentage of Canadian movies? The idea, writes Dan Brown, is “based on a false assumption: that the average ticket buyer actively seeks out Canadian movies. The young performer might like to believe this is true, but this is not how the majority of movie lovers behave in the real world. Before the average person goes to the theatre on a Friday night, they don’t say to their friends, ‘Is there anything Canadian playing? I’m in the mood for something domestically made.’ Instead, they say, ‘Is there anything good playing?’ The public has moved beyond making its choices based on a film’s nationality, if that ever truly mattered.”

What’s So Special About Special fX?

Why is there so little imagination in movie “special effects”? “Part of the problem, I think, is that technicians get excited about techniques that stretch possibilities, for strictly technical, not to say geeky, reasons. We could never do that before, so it must be cool. Trouble is, what looks cool to the person who stretched the technique doesn’t necessarily look cool to someone who doesn’t realize that the technique has been stretched. Whenever a director comes along with a really striking new look, a striking new way to imagine the future, we see the same look replicated over the next couple of years, until someone comes up with another look.”

The Cannes Of Fantasy

“Twelve days of moviegoing on the French Riviera in springtime can be only so miserable. But this year you will hear no whining from this quarter. At least not yet. The 57th Cannes festival has, in its first few days, showed signs of fulfilling the fantasy of what it could and should be (though it will never, to some old-timers, be what it once was). It has been full of drama, spectacle and (literal) fireworks. There have also been some good movies. And to think that it almost didn’t happen at all.”