Marlon Brando might have been a great actor, but Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest remember his important role in defending Indian fishing rights. “The Indians who once stood in protest with Brando during Washington’s ‘Fish Wars’ of the 1960s, remembered him not as acclaimed movie star, but as a sensitive defender of civil rights. Marlon Brando was the first person of non-color to step forward to help us. Marlon Brando was ahead of his time.”
Tag: 07.03.04
Russian Film Riding High
The fall of Communism was a near-death sentence for the Russian film industry, as the federal funding that had always been a cornerstone of the USSR dried up in the capitalist world of post-Soviet reality. “By 1997, a miserable 12 home-grown films were released per year in Russia. By last year, however, that had shot up to 75, state sponsorship has risen by 14 per cent in 2004 to $70 million, and an average of 30 per cent of any film’s budget is now provided by the government. Add to this the fact that most urban Russians under 35 cite filmgoing as their favourite pastime, and the predicted rise this year in the number of screens in Russia from 550 to 700, and it seems that Stollywood has arrived.”
UK Schools Reinvesting In The Arts
A new “music manifesto” being promoted by the British government in conjunction with a collection of industry groups proposes a major expansion of cultural education in the UK, including a program which would provide free or cut-price musical instruments to schoolchildren. The plan is being seen as “an admission that while the focus on numeracy and literacy in primary schools has been necessary to raise standards, it is too narrow.”
Heating Up Summer in New York
For orchestras like the Boston Symphony, which have revered summer homes like Tanglewood, the long hot months are a celebration of easy revenue and casual concertgoing. But for the New York Philharmonic, which has no regular summer destination, what’s needed to get its home audience into the hall during the second season is constant innovation and, um, snappy slogans? “Welcome to Summertime Classics, the fun new festival of smile-inducing classics performed live for you by your New York Philharmonic, in a lively, colourful and refreshingly casual setting. It’s classics for your favourite sneakers, not your glass slippers.”
Will Cleveland Lose Its FM Overdose?
The Cleveland-based experimental dance troupe known as Sub-Atomic Frequency Modulation Overdose (SAFMOD) is facing a very uncertain future, as company veterans scramble to keep its tradition alive. “Founding artistic director Young Park and managing director Ezra Houser shocked their colleagues last spring by revealing their plans to leave Cleveland at the end of the summer and resettle in Toronto.” The couple gave SAFMOD time to find replacements for them, but its been slow going, and time is running out.
New Boss, Same Old Line
When Jack Valenti steps down as president of the Motion Picture Association of America later this summer, he will hand the reins to former Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, a darkhorse candidate chosen for his Washington influence rather than his connection to Hollywood. But don’t expect the MPAA’s party line to change: according to Glickman, his top three priorities will be “piracy, piracy, piracy.”
U.S. Album Sales Jump
“Album sales in the United States for the first half of 2004 are 7 percent ahead of last year’s midway point, putting the recording industry on track to end a three-year slump, according to the Nielsen SoundScan retail tracking service. Sales in the first six months of this year totaled 305.7 million units, compared with 285.9 million from January through June 2003.”
Claim The Slur, Or Bury It?
A new documentary purports to examine one of the most delicate debates in American race relations: who, if anyone, should be able to say the word “nigger,” and what do the various taboos surrounding the word tell us about our society? “To some degree the filmmakers are using the debate over language as an emblem for a host of uncomfortable racial issues that are pushed to the side, in Hollywood as in other parts of American society.”
Is The Saatchi Empire Crumbling?
Charles Saatchi has never exactly been a favorite with critics. The insanely rich collector has been panned for his lack of discriminating taste, excoriated for inflating prices all over the art world, and even criticized for the architecture of his new London gallery. But the myth of Saatchi, who was once viewed as a mysterious but powerful force in art, may have finally come crashing down in the aftermath of the fire which destroyed more than 100 works in his prized collection. The public reaction to the catastrophe was brutal, the loss “celebrated as a hilarious and deserved comeuppance for Saatchi and his bloated, overpraised, overpaid protegés.”
Marlon Brando, 80
“Marlon Brando, the rebellious prodigy who electrified a generation and forever transformed the art of screen acting but whose obstinacy and eccentricity prevented him from fully realizing the promise of his early genius, died on Thursday at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 80.”