“True, all the big tentpoles have been released already, a lot of sequels sank, most of the pics faded faster than expected, and these numbers aren’t adjusted for ticket prices or inflation. Nor can summer 2007 touch record-setting summer 2002 for most tickets sold. But there were so many blockbusters crowded in weekend after weekend that summer 2007 looks good to set a new Hollywood record by Monday, September 3rd.”
Tag: 08.12.07
The Lit Award Circus
“By its thoroughly political, haphazard and self-congratulatory nature, the awards industry has tried to turn writers and artists into performing seals, groomed and prepped for the cameras.”
San Diego’s Dance Alliance Crumbles
A year ago, San Diego’s Dance Alliance was flying high. Now the 26-year-old organization is in ruins. “The Dance Alliance’s downfall seems to be paved with the good intentions of people who shared a love for dance; friends who trusted one another.”
Study: European Kids Don’t Care About Illegal Downing
Most kids say they download illegally because “everyone” is doing it. “Other excuses included: the download is for personal and private purposes; the Web sites presumably remunerate the artists; claims of harm inflicted on artists lack credibility; and DVDs and CDs are simply too expensive.”
Abu Dhabi Louvre To Be Overseen By New French Org
The French Museums Agencywill work with the developer on design, acquisitions, loans and temporary exhibitions at the museum. “Under a deal signed in March, the Louvre will receive 400 million euros ($548 million) over 30 years for the project and will, along with other French museums, loan artworks from its collections and lend expertise on acquisitions and management.”
A Huge Audience For Dance
“When the Mark Morris Dance Group takes the stage before live cameras Thursday in the internationally acclaimed “Mozart Dances,” 5 million viewers – as many as watch “America’s Next Top Model” each week – will tune in to see the dance. How does “Live From Lincoln Center” pull it off?”
In S.F., A Startling Design Understands The City
“The competition to build a new transit center and skyscraper on Mission Street isn’t a beauty contest. It’s a gamble in city-making that could redefine San Francisco in the sky and on the ground. How fitting, then, that the tower best suited to replace the Transamerica Pyramid as the Bay Area’s tallest building is every bit as startling as that 35-year-old icon once was – and, at first glance to many eyes, every bit as harsh. The design comes from the firm of England’s Lord Richard Rogers, and it hums with surprising life.”
Amy Bloom Trades Fiction For The Small Screen
Novelist and short-story writer Amy Bloom has gone Hollywood, creating and scripting a Lifetime series about therapists in a New Haven group practice. “She turned to what she knew, which included more than 20 years as a therapist (she has a master’s degree in social work) in a group psychotherapy practice in Middletown, Conn. … Ms. Bloom, 54, said goodbye in May to her writing students at Yale, found a small apartment in West Hollywood….”
On A Clearview Day, You Can See The U.S. Interstate
On America’s Interstates, replacing signs lettered in traditional Highway Gothic with those written in Clearview type “is a slow, almost imperceptible process. But eventually the entire country could be looking at Clearview.” The font’s designers “set out to fix a problem with a highway font, and their solution — more than a decade in the making — may end up changing a lot more than just the view from the dashboard. … Fonts are image, and image is modern America.”
At Alsop’s Santa Cruz Fest, The Contemporary Rules
At the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, where Marin Alsop is in her 16th year as music director, “(p)art of the happiness for the participants clearly comes from being in an environment so different from the regular classical world. Here, contemporary music is the norm, and audiences pour out to hear it. ‘In a regular season, orchestras have to be so careful to dole it out and sandwich it between works by the masters,’ [concertmaster Yumi] Hwang-Williams says. ‘Cabrillo is an oasis, a haven. And that’s why we keep coming back for more.'”