English TV comedies have a brilliant record. “On the big screen, though, we’re an embarrassment. When did you last see a British comedy film that was actually funny, let alone innovative or daring? Even the brightest of our television stars seem to fail when they make movies.”
Tag: 09.06.03
Canadian Arts – Weaning Off Tobacco Money
Visible sponsorships of cultural events by tobacco companies (read: money for advertising) is over. “Whatever the individual solutions, the cultural community is largely resigned to the loss of tobacco money. In the past, some arts administrators did question the ethics of tobacco sponsorships; many others wondered why the federal government allowed itself to benefit from cigarette taxes but wouldn’t let the arts take its share of the blood money. It’s been a difficult debate in which anyone with a doctrinaire position, whether it was in favour of commercial free speech or rabidly anti-smoking, didn’t seem to be addressing the complexity of the issue in an age when governments know smoking is deadly but also recognize they can’t criminalize it.”
Aussie Movies – A Bump In The Road?
Some Australian movies have been struggling at the box office. “The poor box-office performance of several recent Australian releases is causing yet another round of soul-searching within the Australian film industry. This, in itself, is a wearyingly predictable, if necessary, response to what is essentially a cyclical predicament. So too is the retort that characterising the local screen business as an “industry in crisis” is unhelpful and even dangerous.”
Lorca’s Grave Found?
“One of the mysteries of the Spanish civil war may soon be solved by the excavation of the communal grave in which the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca is believed to have been thrown after his execution by one of Franco’s death squads in August 1936. Considered by many the greatest poet and playwright of 20th-century Spain, the author of Blood Wedding and Poet in New York was killed by members of the Escuadra Negra (Black Squadron) for his left-wing sympathies and homosexuality.”
First Prize – A Strad…
The Canada Council has awarded two young musicians instruments from the council’s instrument bank. “For the next three years, Kaori Yamagami will play the 1696 Bonjour Stradivari cello, the most valuable instrument in the Instrument Bank, valued at approximately $6.1-million. Violinist Hou won the use of the 1729 ‘ex-Heath’ Guarneri del Gesù violin, valued at about $4.3-million.”