Tag: 06.11.03

Pinter: “The US Is Really Beyond Reason Now”

Playwright Harold Pinter condemned the United States at a gathering In London Tuesday night. “In conversation on stage with Michael Billington, the Guardian’s theatre critic, Pinter said the US government was the most dangerous power that had ever existed. The American detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where al-Qaida and Taliban suspects were being held, was a concentration camp. The US population had to accept responsibility for allowing an unelected president to take power and the British were exhausted from protesting and being ignored by Tony Blair, a ‘deluded idiot’ Pinter hoped would resign.”

Clinton Book Sets Non-Fiction Sales Record

Hillary Clinton’s book has sold a record number of copies for a non-fiction book in its first day. ” Barnes and Noble, one of the US’s biggest book retailers, said the record was set after it sent out more than 40,000 copies to its stores and online customers in the first 24 hours. First-day sales for the memoirs, called Living History, were said to be more in keeping with best-selling fiction than a political memoir.”

500 Turners Discovered

Curators at the Tate have discovered hundreds of missing Turner paintings after a search for a new catalog. “About 500 pieces were discovered when curators set about the task of documenting all of Turner’s works for a dedicated website. They were traced to private owners during a 14-month detective trail overseen by curators at the Tate Gallery. Some pictures had been stored away in cupboards or attics.”

Looking For Leadership In Pittsburgh

The search for a new managing director of the Pittsburgh Symphony is attracting the kind of attention usually reserved for the hiring of a music director. That’s what happens when an orchestra’s major challenges seem to be managerial rather than artistic. “Looming large over the search is the PSO’s $800,000 cash shortfall this year and the effort to stave off a $2.5 million structural deficit next year, not to mention the hiring of a replacement for outgoing music director Mariss Jansons.”

The Meaning Of Beauty

For a long while beauty was a quality that lost favor in art. But slowly, beauty has begun to reassert itself, and a new book makes a case for its importance. “One submerged argument is that what we say about beauty can affect what we see of it, perhaps even its capacity to manifest itself. “

Magnetic Attraction

A new Canadian theatre festival called Magnetic North hopes to be a showcase for the best new Canadian plays from across the country. The festival will switch cities each year. “Magnetic North never stays put. The concept is that every other year we will be in a different Canadian city and then return to Ottawa. So 2004 will find us in Edmonton, and 2005 back in the capital again.”

Why Spanish-Language Movies Have A Tough Time In The US

“Although Latinos make up the fastest growing segment of the U.S. moviegoing population, recent attempts at luring them to Latin-themed movies have met with mixed results. ‘We are just getting to know the market and how it works. We are trying to develop the market in those communities where the movies will have the most success…. There is a lot of risk. But there are a lot of people who see the opportunity and want to try’.”

Missing Turner Surfaces

A long-lost Turner watercolor has turned up after more than a century. “It was owned by the eminent art critic and Turner fanatic John Ruskin, who displayed it with other gems from his private collection in public shows in 1878 and in 1900, the year he died. The painting was then sold to an unknown private collector and disappeared for more than a century.”