Tag: 08.17.05

A Major Blow To Newspaper Arts Sections

“Every major movie studio is rethinking its reliably humongous display ad buys in those papers because those newsosaur readers are, to quote one mogul, “older and elitist” compared to younger, low-brow filmgoers — so it makes no sense to waste the dough. Wait, it gets worse: I’ve learned that at least two Hollywood movie studios have decided to drastically cut their newspaper display ads as soon as possible. This news couldn’t occur at a worse time for the LAT and NYT, which both receive the lion’s share of those very showy $100,000-plus full-page after full-page movie display ads.”

Ruin’ Smuin

Robert Gottlieb attends a Michael Smuin Dance performance and feels his evening has been stolen from him. “Just as depressing as these two works is the company itself—joylessness incarnate. The boys are stiff. The girls are dull. No one can really tap. The dancers’ energy doesn’t spring from the music; it’s tacked on, to make its showbizzy points. Everything is indicated, sold—it’s not just the music that’s canned, it’s the dancing, too. Why do audiences eat it up? Pure nostalgia? Some questions are better left unanswered.”

“Hollywood” Movies Increasingly Being Made Elsewhere

“California finds itself competing with almost every state in the union. Thanks to an array of tax incentives offered from Rhode Island to New Mexico, screenwriters are recasting their plots to accommodate new locales, producers are learning new math to stretch budgets and Hollywood has settled into a multiple-time-zone way of life. Hollywood remains the place where most movies are conceived and financed. And the economic and emotional effect of so-called runaway production has been blunted by a fresh wave of television shows made in town — TV production has surged 64% since 2000, as local movie filming fell 8%. But there’s no masking the fact that moviemaking has turned into part of the national economy.”

The Cliburn’s Competition Within The Competition

For years the Van Cliburn Piano Competition commissioned a work for the competition. This year “five composers’ works were sent to all the competitors who had to select one for performance in the semifinal round—should they be lucky and skilled enough to get that far. The composer performed by the most semifinalists would be the winner. Sebastian Currier took home the top prize of $5,000, while each of the other composers who had a work played in the semifinals received $2,500.”

NYC Arts Figure In ’05 Elections

Will the arts be an factor in New York City elections this year? “Surely, few public officials lack an understanding of culture’s central place in New York City. It is more likely that these officials sense that the arts do not need a high level of government attention in the face of what they see as more pressing concerns. Arts advocates view it differently, some worrying that the city’s cultural prominence is already eroding. They believe City Hall needs a comprehensive arts policy, a concrete strategy to maintain the city’s position as cultural capital and to take it further.”

Land Of The Undead

“Do you want to know what depresses the American spirit? Do you want to know why it feels as if the center cannot hold and the tyranny of mediocrity has been loosed upon our world? Do you want to know what instills thoughts of suicide and creates a desperate, low-level rage the source of which we cannot quite identify but that we know is right under our noses and that we now inhale Prozac and Xanax and Paxil by the truckload to attempt to mollify? I have your answer. Here it is. Look. It is the appalling spread of big- box strip malls, tract homes like a cancer, meta-developments paving over the American landscape, all creating a bizarre sense of copious loss, empty excess, heartless glut, forcing us to ask, once again, the Great All-American Question: How can we have so damned much but still feel as if we have almost nothing at all?”

FCC Obscenity Complaints Down Dramatically

Complaints to the FCC about obscenity on TV and radio in the US were down dramatically in the last quarter of 2004. “FCC officials attributed the marked drop — which saw complaints plummet from 317,833 to 157,650 from one quarter to the next — to the end of e-mail and write-in campaigns aimed at certain television and radio stations. The report did not identify which organizations were behind the campaigns or which broadcasters were targeted.”