There’s a new way of reading contemporary novels in the internet age. “Any contemporary novel today has a kind of Google novel aura around it, where somebody’s going to google everything in the text … there’s this nebulous extended text. Everything is hyperlinked now. What the author is outlining here is the theory of a new and innovatively creative reading practice.”
Tag: 08.31.07
Are Disney Musicals A Dying Breed?
Early word on the musical stage adaptation of Disney’s “Little Mermaid” is apparently not so great. “Given Variety’s brutal review (which was written not by a local stringer but by the paper’s chief theater critic) and the show’s tepid industry word-of-mouth, theater people are starting to wonder: What’s gone wrong in the Magic Kingdom – and, if ‘Mermaid’ flops, how much longer will Disney keep throwing its cartoons at Broadway stages?”
PBS Offering Stations Profanity-Free Burns
In a sign of how fearful TV execs have become in the face of an FCC crackdown on foul language, PBS has announced that it will distribute two versions of Ken Burns’s upcoming documentary on World War II. Stations will have the option of airing either the original version of the film, or an edited version in which four words of profanity (in a 14-1/2 hour documentary) have been “bleeped.”
Hollywood’s Hot Summer
The movie industry had a great summer of ’07, despite critical complaints about the quality of many blockbusters. “By parsing out high-profile movies every week, including through most of August – a throwaway month in past years – the overall box office soared to a record $4 billion… Another record was broken when four movies hauled in more than $300 million apiece. A fifth is close to crossing that threshold by the end of Labor Day weekend.”
Little Mermaid Drowning In Denver
Disney’s latest effort to recreate the theatrical success of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast is getting downright dismal reviews in its out-of-town tryout. The Little Mermaid, playing in Denver prior to a November leap to Broadway, was slammed by Variety’s chief critic, and some observers are wondering how much longer Disney will be willing to spend millions of dollars “throwing its cartoons at Broadway stages” if Mermaid goes to a watery grave in New York.
That Oughta Hold ‘Em
Fragile prints of classic Hollywood films have a new, secure home in a Cold War-era bunker in Virginia. The massive collection (6 million items strong) of audio-visual materials owned by the Library of Congress will be stored in “a radiation-hardened building once used by the Federal Reserve to store cash and emergency supplies in the event of a nuclear attack.”
Venice Goes Hollywood
“The Venice Film Festival gets serious this year with competition films about the Iraq war and its impact on U.S. society, police brutality in Egypt, big corporation corruption and the Mafia in Italy… Director Marco Mueller has assembled a Hollywood-heavy line up for this year’s festival, which opened on Wednesday.”
Obsessive Fans Go Mainstream
TV-based conventions used to be limited to Star Trek and other sci-fi programs that obsessed fans built their lives around. But these days, the culture of TV/movie obsession has broadened considerably. Does LebowskiFest sound like your thing? What about a Napoleon Dynamite convention?
Hollywood’s Anti-Piracy Fight Gets Smaller
“Forever on the prowl for the next big thing in movie piracy, the motion picture industry is zeroing in on small and increasingly-powerful mobile-phone cameras that might be trained on theater screens… Hollywood is also watching for digital cameras capable of taking video. Last week a Virginia teenager pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unlawfully filming a motion picture after being nabbed capturing 20 seconds of Transformers with a Canon Powershot camera. She’d recorded the brief action scene to show her little brother later.”
Interview With The Premature-Burning Man
“Paul Addis, the San Francisco playwright arrested Tuesday for allegedly torching Burning Man’s giant effigy five days early, won’t admit to setting the icon on fire. But he effusively praises the action — whoever did it — calling it a badly needed “reality check” for the desert art festival. Addis, 35, says Burning Man has turned into an ‘Alterna-Disney,’ while the early burn acted as a protest aimed at the event’s increasing commercialization.”