Who can believe anything you see in movies anymore? Special effects rendered by computer fill in any and all things needed for a scene. But it gets increasingly difficult to believe what you see, or – ominously – suspend belief. – Hartford Courant 06/18/00
Tag: 06.18.00
MOVIE KILLER
The movie “Jaws” came out 25 years ago. “A myth has grown up around it as disturbing and predatory as that of the shark – the myth of Jaws’s lethal effect on modern film. Jaws is no longer just the movie that killed bathing. It has become the movie that killed movies.” – The Telegraph (UK) 06/18/00
THE CHANGING FACE OF THEATRE
“In 1974, the first gathering of commercial producers and leaders from the nonprofit regional theater was, by many accounts, a prickly session that featured name-calling, walk-outs and the feeling that there was nothing remotely in common between those two disparate sides of the American theater.” Now, telling the difference between the two is often problematic. – Hartford Courant
EMBARRASSMENT IN PRIME TIME
This year’s Tony Awards broadcast was a shambles. “The yearly bash celebrating Broadway’s best has surpassed fiasco. Fiasco is merely incompetence, but this year’s telecast was flat-out embarrassing. It’s time for those who think theater still has some dignity to stand up and be counted.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
THE LITTLE SHOW THAT COULD
“The Fantasticks” celebrates its 40th year in continuous production off Broadway. It’s given 16,500 performances in its 151-seat theater. The show has also played in more than 12,000 U.S. productions, and internationally in 900 productions in 69 nations, including Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan. The show’s original 44 investors have received a 19,465 percent return on their modest $16,500 total investment.” – Chicago Sun-Times
GETTY DIRECTOR RESIGNS
John Walsh announced he will step down this fall after heading the J. Paul Getty Museum for 17 years, during which he broadened the Getty’s collections and oversaw the museum’s transition to its lavish new Brentwood home two years ago. Getty chief curator Deborah Gribbon will step into Walsh’s position in September. – New Jersey Online (AP)
NINA BALLERINA
Nina Ananiashvili is taking the US by storm on the Bolshoi’s current tour. After years of fighting for her artistic freedom, she’s now trying to juggle her “insane” perfectionism with a busy international career. – Los Angeles Times
EXPERTS FROM AFAR
Canada has turned out some first-rate writers, writers whose talent has been recognized internationally. But “Canadian society is incapable of making a book a ‘classic’; we cannot ‘elect,’ as it were, books of significance. As a society we are still excited by Anne of Green Gables.” So we let the Americans do it for us. – National Post (Canada)
THE CLASSICAL MUSIC COUNTERCULTURE
With major labels abandoning the classical music genre and alternative purchasing outlets such as the internet on the rise, a new counterculture of buyers of classical music recordings is growing. – Philadelphia Inquirer
MUSICAL REINFORCEMENTS
Los Angeles is known more for its entertainment than its arts. But Mark Swed writes that the recent appointments of dynamic conductors Kent Nagano and Grant Gershon to local music organizations (added to Esa-Pekka Salonen at the LA Phil) give some hope that LA might become a destination classical music city. – Los Angeles Times