Tag: 05.23.05

200 Years Of Bournonville

It’s the 200th anniversary of August Bournonville’s birth. Writes Tobi Tobias: “It seems to me that Copenhagen’s ambience is embodied in Bournonville’s ballets: the human scale; the lavishing of attention on details of quotidian life; the idea of “home”—of domesticity—as a haven of warmth, safety, and simple, incorruptible goodness; and a corresponding universe of enchantment that tends to be quaint and whimsical—unthreatening—veering as it does from the imagination’s extremes of passion and violence. To have seen the ballets in their native setting, to have experienced something (if only the traveler’s wonderstruck “something”) of Copenhagen, is to have penetrated a little further into Bournonville’s unique world.”

A New Model For A Blockbuster Weekend?

“Hollywood is hooked on the big opening weekend, but two very wealthy young men would like to break that habit. Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who timed the market nicely when they sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, have created 2929 Entertainment, which will make, distribute and show films digitally – that is, without using actual film. And instead of using a theatrical release to build a market for DVD and cable broadcast, 2929 plans to release movies in any format you want to see them, on the same day.”

Chicago’s Newest Theatre

It’s the Drury Lane Water Tower. “The theater auditorium is a cozy midsized house, its 17 rows of seats arranged to suit a gently curved proscenium stage. Sightlines and legroom are excellent, though it’s not a wide-open-spaces facility; you’re aware of impresario De Santis doing everything he can to maximize the number of seats within a fixed footprint surrounded by other Water Tower Place tenants.”

When Creativity Rules

Daniel Pink believes our social order is about to flip – creative people will have a big advantage over traditional logical thinkers. “In the world envisioned in his recent book, ‘A Whole New Mind,’ the competitive edge will belong not to the linear, logical, analytical ‘left-brain’ lawyers and accountants and computer programmers who have long held sway but to the creative, empathic, ‘right-brain’ artists and caregivers who have traditionally enjoyed less social status, or at least smaller paychecks. It may seem hard to believe, since we are all up to our screen-reddened eyeballs in an Information Age that seems to be all about left-brain dominance, but Pink insists that a ”Conceptual Age” is upon us.

Hollywood – Risk Averse

What’s a big driver in the movie business? Insurance. “To insiders, especially those involved in the behind-the-scenes decisions of who will be the stars and what movies will be made, insurance connotes a sine qua non reality of the entertainment universe. After all, once the media dressing is stripped away, what is the New Hollywood about other than minimizing risk?”

Time’s Top 100: Frankly, We Don’t Give A Damn…

Time magazine publishes a list of its critics’ all-time top favorite 100 movies “ranging from Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” (1931) to Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” (1993) and 2003 computer-animated hit “Finding Nemo.” But critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss snubbed several classics such as 1939’s “Gone with the Wind”.

The Age Of The Self-Producer

“Today the phrase “vanity project” is an accusation redolent of bloated ego, absence of talent, ill-used money or clout and contempt for the ethics of merit. Most of all, the phrase implies scorn for the normal artistic filters: all the editors, directors, producers, investors, curators and institutional functionaries who make things happen and bestow prestige. Lurking behind the term is the assumption that the only reason to produce, distribute and market your own creation is that nobody else will do it for you. But in this world of blogs, pocket video cameras, on-demand publishing and instant Internet distribution, dismissing an artistic undertaking for its vanity quotient has become so 20th century.”