A Hollywood reputation has become one of the quickest ways to land a place on the British stage. “Over the past five years, London, especially during the tourist-rich summer months, has become the home to a new kind of production which could very easily be perceived as a hipper, higher-priced form of dinner theatre. Here’s the formula for this commercial cocktail: Add a dash of reasonably high-profile celebrity in a smallish cast play for a limited run. Shake well to generate maximum publicity. Pray the critics don’t chill it too thoroughly. Serve to an eager public.”
Tag: 09.05.05
Is Warcraft Too Popular For Its Own Good?
One online game has become so popular that some worry it is sucking players from everything else. “With its finely polished, subtly humorous rendition of fantasy gaming – complete with mages, orcs, dragons and demons – World of Warcraft has become such a runaway success that it is now prompting a debate about whether it is helping the overall industry by bringing millions of new players into subscription-based online gaming or hurting the sector by diverting so many dollars and players from other titles.”
How New York Lost Its Dance Throne
“A truth must be faced before it’s too late: New York is no longer the capital of the contemporary-dance world. The point is not to declare a new capital – there isn’t one – but to recognize that there has been a shift in the power base since the formation of the European Union, where the creative landscapes in Amsterdam and Bucharest are just as vital as those brewing in Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Vienna. If nothing else, the European Union has cultivated a network of artists with no perceptible center of bureaucratic power.”
The Weather Channel’s Superbowl
No surprise – the Weather Chennel scored its highest viewership in its 23-year history. (Its numbers are always best the day before landfall.) “WC was seen in more than 1.9 million homes – 533 percent above its normal audience – and spiked to 3.1 million at 9:30 p.m. It was the day’s top-rated cable network.”
Hollywood’s Worst Summer Since ’97
“This past summer was the worst since 1997 for movie attendance, rattling the complacency of studios. For the 18 weeks from early May through today, domestic movie grosses are expected to total $3.6 billion (all figures U.S.), down 9 per cent from summer revenues of $3.96 billion last year, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. Attendance figures are even bleaker. Factoring in higher admission prices, the number of movie tickets sold should come in around 562.5 million, down 12 per cent from summer 2004. What went wrong?”
What New Orleans Means
“For a city of only half a million people, New Orleans looms as large in our cultural imagination as L.A. or Chicago. Playwrights, novelists, poets, film directors, painters, chefs, dive-bar raconteurs and especially musicians all have drunk deeply of the city’s heady brew of flamboyance and decadence, joie de vivre and fatalism, the sexy and the sinister.”
Orchestra World Offers Help To Louisiana Musicians
Offers of help are pouring in to members of the Louisiana Philharmonic. “Other orchestras, mostly regional ensembles where the pool of available musicians is small, are lending a hand, too. Many have offered temporary jobs or the prospect of auditions to the Philharmonic’s 66 players, who have scattered around the country. All but one of the musicians had safely left the city or were already elsewhere for summer engagements, members of the orchestra said yesterday.”
Do You Sudoku? (Everyone Else Is)
The publishing craze sudoku is sweeping America. “Three weeks ago, no sudoku books were on USA Today’s top 150 list. Now, there are six. In sudoku, the game is laid out in adjoining grids. Players must figure out which numbers to put in nine rows of nine boxes so that the numbers one through nine appear just once in each column, row and three-by-three square. The phenomenon originated in 1979, when one of the grids, titled ‘number place,’ was published in an American puzzle magazine.”
New Orleans Opera Cancels
New Orleans Opera has canceled its fall productions. “The warehouse where the company stores its sets is likely under water. The condition of the Mahalia Jackson Theatre of the Performing Arts, where it performs, is unknown.” There may be more far-reaching effects: “New Orleans Opera is one of the foremost rents of scenery and costumes in the country. They’re having to warn people all over the country that they may not be able to meet the contract.”
Will Reseller Fee Kill UK Art Biz?
“In January, the U.K. will follow France and Germany in making sellers of art pay living artists a royalty, ranging from 120 euros ($149) to 12,500 euros. Art merchants must live with that, though they continue to lobby against such measures. They argue that they will be less competitive with the U.S. market, where the rule does not apply, and will be hurt by scheduled extensions to the resale rights, known in France as “droit de suite,” in 2010 to 2012.”