“What does the average Hollywood career look like? In the Rotten Tomatoes database, more than 19,000 actors and 2,000 directors had their first film released in 1985 or later. The average actor’s critical reception gets slightly worse over the course of his first few movies, then plateaus. The average score for an actor’s first film is about 55 percent. By his fourth movie, that score slides to about 50 percent, where it hovers for the rest of his career.”
Tag: 06.05.11
Cutting-Edge Opera Staging At A 2000-Year-Old Fortress
In a new production of Aida mounted at the foot of the Masada fortress, “the Israelis have upped the ante by replacing traditional scenery with cutting-edge 4-D video technology and expansive lighting. The staging had many of the 8,000 opening-night attendees audibly gasping at what they saw.” (Eat your heart out, Robert Lepage.)
‘To Thine Own Self Be True’? What If Your Self Is Self-Contradicting?
Take, for example, a devout Evangelical Christian man who is battling homosexual desires, which he feels powerfully but are, he sincerely believes, sinful. How can be he his “authentic self”? Does that self reside in his erotic desires or his deepest spiritual beliefs?
Autry Museum Faces A Definitional (And Now Legal) Question
Is the Autry legally obligated to run the Southwest Museum as well as its main site in Griffith Park?
Big Film Directors Turn To TV
“Hollywood isn’t doing anything like this material anymore. With cable, there’s this wonderful domain that’s emerged for film directors like me who enjoy the kind of material that Hollywood finds too boring for words.”
PBS’s Dangerous Creep Toward Commercialism
“The difference between a commercial and an underwriting message is slight. Once upon a time, PBS staked its reputation on classy, uninterrupted programming. Now, it seems, it’s about competing with cable.”
Groupon Can Sell Tickets. But…
“You are only making 25 percent of the full-ticket price. Our highest priced ticket is $50 and for a $25 ticket, Groupon would take $12.50. Our tickets only cover 50 percent of actually putting a play up on stage. If we gave all our tickets out at $12.50 we would have to close our doors.”
Locating The Birth Of Consumerism
By going through three centuries’ worth of German household inventories, a team of researchers “has been able to track the beginning of consumerism. When did women start buying butter and beer at the market, instead of churning or brewing at home? When does the first nutmeg grater or coffee cup appear, indicating the arrival of exotic goods? Or for that matter, when do villagers start wearing an imported cotton fabric like calico?”
Keeping Cirque Du Soleil Vital As It Becomes A Global Juggernaut
“As Cirque has transformed from an arty alternative to traditional big-top circus into what it is today, some suggest it has become emotionally cold and risk-averse. … The problem is that audiences have come to expect a certain scale from Cirque, and when they don’t get it” – as with Banana Shpeel, the company’s only real flop – “they may be disappointed.” It’s a danger Cirque founder and head Guy Laliberté is well aware of.
Turkey’s Kurds Slowly Rebuild Their Cultural Identity
Since the birth of the Turkish nation-state in the 1920s, the the country’s Kurdish population (about 20% of the total) saw its distinctive music, literature, folklore, visual arts and even language suppressed by a government bent on keeping the nation unified. Gradually, Kurdish books, music, theater and proper language classes (long forbidden) are returning to the region.