Tag: 06.27.03

Blockbusters – A Real Conversation-Stopper

“While more people are going to the movies than ever before, they’re talking about them less than ever before. It was not always so. Once upon a time, even popular movies were the subject of vigorous conversation. A generation ago, proto-blockbusters like The Exorcist, The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall and Dirty Harry were as hotly debated as they were repeatedly seen. Discussions of movies — their meaning, quality, morality — were the stuff of entire talk shows. Today, the only thing that passes more inconsequentially than the movie is the media gab it generates.”

Should Steinbeck Fear The Oprah Treatment?

So Oprah thought retreating to the classics would rid her book club of controversy? “John Steinbeck’s selection by Oprah is likely to confirm the suspicions of those critics who look down their noses at him as a simplistic writer not worthy of inclusion in the American pantheon. For starters, if East of Eden is a classic, it’s a disputed one. A handful of Steinbeck partisans defend it as one of Steinbeck’s great books, to be placed alongside works like Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Others argue that it’s flawed but still worthwhile, even a masterpiece. But an equally large—if not larger—group thinks that hardly anything good can be said about it.”

Singapore: Guggenheim-Dreaming

Singapore has seen an explosion in arts activity in the past decade. “The number of performing arts activities here has ballooned from about 1,900 in 1993 to more than 5,000 last year, and attendance for ticketed performing arts activities has risen by more than 200,000 to more than a million in the same period.” So plans are being made to build more – and hopes are building to attract an international musem…

Women MOTV (Missing On TV)

Where are the women TV directors? A new study reports that “for the third consecutive year, white males directed more than 80% of episodes of the top 40 series. During the 2002-03 season, 13 of those shows did not hire any minority directors, 10 did not hire women directors and three series — CBS’ ‘CSI: Miami’ and ‘Yes Dear’ and Fox’s ’24’ — hired neither women nor minority directors, the study contends.”

West End’s First New Theatre In 70 Years

Cameron Mackintosh is building a new theatre. “The 500-seat Sondheim will be the first new theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in more than 70 years. Not that you will be able to guess. The truly clever, if controversial design led by the husband-and-wife architect team of Nick Thompson and Clare Ferraby, of RHWL Architects’ Arts Team, will join the existing Gielgud and Queen’s theatres at their Edwardian hips.”

Money And The Literary House

A wealthy California woman “paid £1.25 million for a crumbling English country house and spent a further £10 million converting it into a library and study centre, equipped with all her beautiful, arcane books. Chawton House, Hampshire, once owned by Jane Austen’s brother and set in 275 acres, is about to open to the public after 11 years of toil, sweat and village politics.”

Surprise – Chapmans Win A Prize

“The Chapman brothers, the most studiedly shocking of the rapidly ageing generation of young British artists, yesterday won the £25,000 Charles Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work in the Royal Academy summer exhibition. The brothers were more genuinely shocked yesterday than any viewer of their works: despite their fame, and infamy, they have never before won a major art prize.”