“You won’t see LACMA without film,” Michael Govan says. “It’s way too important to art history and to us. But the shape of that program … everyone’s saying, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ I’m telling you, it’s broken.”
Tag: 09.07.09
Why Hollywood Worships The Remake
“[W]hen it comes to making new product these days, Hollywood is perhaps the most enthusiastic outpost anywhere of cultural conservatism. … [T]he movie and TV businesses are obsessed with reliving the past, giving the green light to a deluge of projects adapted from old (and, ahem, not-so-very old) movies and TV shows.”
Philip Pullman Writes Novel About ‘The Scoundrel Christ’
The upcoming book by the author of the trilogy His Dark Materials “will provide a new account of the life of Jesus, challenging the gospels and arguing that the version in the New Testament was shaped by the apostle Paul.”
Another List Of Greatest Classical Recordings To Argue Over
This list by the critics of London’s Telegraph includes 100 titles, many of which (as happens when newspaper critics do these things) are by dead performers. Among the rules offered with the list are “Buy British” and avoid Karajan, Lang Lang and Richard Clayderman.
Battle Over Plans For Expanded Port In Venice
Preservationists argue that a €1.5 billion plan to dredge the lagoon and build a cargo port could cause high water levels that would finish off the historic city for good. Proponents say that the €4.3 billion Moses sea barrier now under construction will provide all the necessary protection.
Charles Saatchi Gets Chatty (About Sex, Death And Art)
“Art only flourished in the Renaissance because it was subsidised by the rich and the Church,” the collector points out. “Perhaps even in those days people were more fascinated by how much art fetched, than the art itself.”
Sex And Sensibility: When Jane Austen Gets Raunchy
“Fresh from a run on the Edinburgh fringe, Jane Austen’s Guide to Pornography arrived at Battersea’s Theatre 503 last week with an all-male cast and not a little innuendo. … There are some predictably nudge-nudge elements – ooh, let’s make Jane Austen say ‘enormous cock’, that’ll be hilarious – but it actually works pretty well….”
Why British Artists Are Going Abroad — And Staying There
“[I]t is worth asking this: why do so many significant British artists now live and work overseas?” Are other countries more hospitable, creatively and practically, to good work?
These Titles Ought To Be Man Booker Finalists
The Man Booker Prize, whose 2009 shortlist is to be announced Tuesday, “was created as an unabashed arbiter of literary excellence. The judges’ only task is to select the finest novel of the year. By that criterion, three books stand out.”
Iranian Filmmakers Get Political At Venice Fest
“While Iranian cinema was preoccupied for much of the 1980s and 1990s with symbolism and allegorically cherubic children, the Iranian pics at Venice this year deal directly with the social upheaval in the country both preceding and following June’s presidential elections.”