Star Wars has scored record box office in its opening weekend. “Revenge of the Sith rang in a whopping $50 million on its opening Thursday, a single-day record boosted by eagerly anticipated midnight showings, and its total receipts since then beat the four-day $134.3 million opening of 2003’s “The Matrix Reloaded.” The George Lucas film has also grossed $144.7 million overseas for a total of $303 million worldwide.”
Tag: 05.22.05
Apprentice, The Musical?
Doesn’t Donald Trump seem a classic operatic figure? Now there are plans to turn Trump’s “The Apprentice” into a Broadway musical. “The producers, whose other credits include Chicago and Sweet Charity, are assembling a team to shepherd the new show through the development stage. It will open in the spring of 2006 in New York.”
BBC Workers On Strike
Workers at the BBC are on a 24-hour strike. “The strike is already causing disruption to overnight TV, radio and online news services. BBC employees are protesting at plans to cut 3,780 jobs and privatise parts of the corporation, which were announced in recent months. Unions say the cuts are the most damaging in BBC history. The corporation says they are needed so the BBC can invest more in programmes.”
A Battle For The Soul Of The Barnes
Over a difficult three years, the future of the Barnes Collection was debated and hammered out until finally an agreement to move the museum to Philadelphia was worked out. So how did the deal come together? Patricia Horn charts the scene behind the scenes…
The Death Of The Critic
Arts critics used to wield tremendous power as American tastemakers, their words forming the crux of the cultural sphere and their opinions read as seriously as those of political commentators. These days, cultural tastes are controlled mainly by savvy marketers, and critics have become ever more marginalized, frequently reduced to bleating from the sidelines and begging for a return to serious cultural discourse. “While many lament the situation, some think the decentralization of authority means the arts — and the conversation around them — will flourish without these stern, doctrinaire figures.”
Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Tut?
King Tut is back, and back with him is a familiar argument about just how much museums should rely on flavor-of-the-month blockbuster exhibitions. “The profit-and-loss potential of blockbuster exhibitions is grounds for increasing debate in a museum world straining to reconcile traditional scholarly ideals with new fiscal realities and populist imperatives.”
The Tortured Artist As Marketing Device
Controversial British artist Tracey Emin has made a career out of being alternately outrageous and outraged, creating works that demand attention but decrying the bad press she gets. It might be a recipe for modern pop culture success, but it doesn’t seem to make for a very stable head space. “[Emin] is, it hardly needs saying, a survivor, and her often harrowing struggle with the world, and with herself, is the narrative that threads through all her work. It’s all there – the teenage rapes, the abortions, the cruel and tender boyfriends, the depressions and suicide attempts, the memory of them stitched into her angry, appliquŽd quilts, dragged up though her scratchy, sad drawings, writ large in her scrawled, dysfunctional sentences that look like they have been scratched into the paper as if her life depended upon it.”
Lucian Freud At 82
Freud is one of our most famous living artists and very exacting about which of his work is released. “Lucian has put his foot through at least half of his paintings. There comes a point, and it may be months into a painting, when he has to make a crucial decision between options on the canvas. He will hazard the success of a nearly finished painting, possibly worth millions, on one decision that can’t be undone. If he realises that he’s made the wrong choice, he’ll slash it, destroy it.”
Whatever Happened To Heroes and Wisecracks?
Comic books have come a long way from the days when Superman first crash-landed on Earth. But today’s generation of comic artists seem almost unnaturally obsessed with brutal imagery and dark themes. Gone are the innocence and humor of the original comic book heroes, replaced by ultra-violence and misery, and the new culture of “violence without consequence” has reached new levels in recent films inspired by comic book art. “Increasingly pop culture defines heroism in terms of violence and domination. Where does that leave us? Is the audience so sophisticated that good and evil no longer hold meaning?”
The Incredible Shrinking Tony
It’s Tony season! Wooooo-hoo! The exciting leadup to that magical night when all of America tunes in to see what Broadway shows will be honored with… well, okay, America writ large actually doesn’t seem to care much. But still! It’s the night when a modest little statue can lead to salvation for a quality show that needs an influx of revenu… oh, that doesn’t work anymore either? Hmmmm. So, um, why do we have these awards again?