Tag: 09.03.09

In Need Of Upgrade, Sydney Opera House Hunts For Cash

The iconic Sydney Opera House is seeking an estimated A$600 million (£300 million) “for what it says are much-needed renovations. The backstage equipment is in a state of dilapidation, and the orchestra pit is so small and acoustically compromised that players have to work in rotas to safeguard their hearing. The stage is so narrow that stage hands have to wait in the wings to catch the ballet dancers as they hurtle off stage.” (With video tour.)

Paul Robeson, The Peekskill Riots And Public Fears In 2009

The infamous Peekskill Riots, perpetrated by mobs at Paul Robeson concerts in 1949, were “long ago, so long that community and religious groups in town caused nary a stir when they put together plans for a concert to be held Friday, 60 years later. … [W]hat those long-ago events mean today, what resonance the fears and angers of 1949 have for the fears and angers of 2009, well that’s a subject as rich and complicated as the man who set the events in motion.”

Saving Film At LACMA Was Great. Now To Keep It Healthy.

“The idea that Hollywood’s hometown couldn’t sustain a smallish, 40-year-old film series just blocks from Charlie Chaplin’s old studio was shocking and depressing.” So it’s “a victory for a homegrown local protest movement as well as for the cultural life of the city” that “the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has backed off a plan to shut down its weekend film screening program. … Now comes the hard part.”

In Qaddafi Anniversary Celebration, Echoes Of ENO’s Opera

English National Opera’s Gaddafi: A Living Myth, three years ago, was “one of the most risible nights I’ve ever spent in the theatre.” Life imitates art “in the photographs this week of Gaddafi’s celebrations of 40 years since the revolution. The shots of actors recreating a mass hanging, enveloped by a strange green light, or dancers shaking it in front of a model Sphinx with red-laser eyes could have come straight out of ENO’s ill-fated stage designs. There are dramatic parallels, too.”

B.C. Gov’t Restores $40M in Arts Funding

This week, British Columbia “community and arts groups that had been promised three-year funding in writing … were told their grants were cancelled.” In the face of a furious public backlash, the provincial government did a one-day about-face; a minister said that “$40 million [Can] in grants would be restored this year, and there could be additional money to be handed out.”

YouTube In Talks To Offer Pay-Per-View Movies

“Google Inc.’s YouTube is in talks with several major studios — including Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate — about streaming movies when the DVDs become available in rental stores and kiosks, according to sources familiar with the situation. The move represents a bold gambit for the entertainment giants, which have been cautious in embracing the Internet out of fear it would disrupt relationships with major retailers and undercut lucrative DVD sales.”

Pakistan’s Contemporary Art Scene Gets Its First U.S. Survey

“I think it’s difficult for people outside Pakistan to understand what this kind of recognition on an international stage means within the country,” says the director of the Asia Society Museum. And “even amid the country’s poverty and recent turmoil … work is being made that deals head on with difficult issues like religion, political oppression and the status of Muslim women.”