Tag: 07.02.07

Anything But Canceled

“It’s a sad fact of life and prime-time television, where a show can last a few episodes (like last season’s crime drama ‘Smith’) or 11 seasons (like the comedy ‘Cheers’), that everything must eventually end. But when darkness comes in Hollywood, don’t expect a plainly worded news bulletin about it. For several reasons, mostly involving the entertainment industry’s legendary egos and pride, few networks actually use the C-word – an imprecision that gets interesting.”

Bomb Threat Nixes Oregon Shakespeare Performance

“‘I was just thinking what it must be like to live in Tel Aviv, or anywhere in Israel, and have to face this kind of thing every day,’ Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Libby Appel said Friday, scanning the confused midday crowd on the festival’s plaza. … For the first time in its 72-year history, the nation’s largest regional repertory theater had to cancel a performance because of a bomb threat.”

Beware “Important Building Syndrome”

“There is a tendency among world cities desperate for international status to look no further than the back list of Pritzker laureates when picking the designers of their star buildings. Thus, Abu Dhabi is getting itself not only a Gehry Guggenheim, but a Nouvel Louvre, a Hadid performing-arts centre, a Tadao Ando maritime museum and a recreation of Venice’s Biennale gardens, among much else. It is telescoping the usual centuries of cultural development into a decade. It’s when architects get to the point where you can’t keep track of all their work any more that the alarm bells start to ring.”

What’s Next For UK Culture Policy?

“Across the media industry the verdict on UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell’s tenure is mixed, but broadly positive, and on a personal level she was well liked.” But how will things go for her successor? The public service broadcasting construct that has served Britain so well for 50 years is rapidly breaking down, and it could well be on James Purnell’s watch that the significant decisions about its future have to be taken.

Timbuktu Is Giving Up Ancient Treasures

“After centuries of storage in wooden trunks, caves or boxes hidden beneath the sand, tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, covering topics as diverse as astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women’s rights, are surfacing across the legendary Malian city. Their emergence has caused a stir among academics and researchers, who say they represent some of the earliest examples of written history in sub-Saharan Africa and are a window into a golden age of scholarship in west Africa.”

Beverly Sills, 78

She died of fast-growing lung cancer. “Sills first gained fame with a high-octane career that helped put Americans on the international map of opera stars. Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, she quickly became Bubbles, an endearment coined by the doctor who delivered her, noting that she was born blowing a bubble of spit from her little mouth.”

Art – It’s Difficult To Pin Down

“The question of ‘what is art’ is irrelevant when there’s no public money involved. The difficulty arises when the painter, poet, sculptor, writer and so on seeks public help, arguing that to deprive public support of artists like him is to strangle the expression of culture so critical to a society that cares about how it expresses itself.”