“In the biggest commitment of its sort by a Hollywood studio, News Corp.’s Fox Filmed Entertainment is expected to unveil plans today to capture the gargantuan Christian audience that made ‘The Passion of the Christ’ a global phenomenon. The home entertainment division of Rupert Murdoch’s movie studio plans to produce as many as a dozen films a year under a banner called FoxFaith. At least six of those films will be released in theaters under an agreement with two of the nation’s largest chains, AMC Theatres and Carmike Cinemas.”
Tag: 09.19.06
Zulu Poet Mazisi Kunene, 76
Mazisi Kunene, “the first poet laureate of democratic South Africa,” who spent almost two decades in exile in Los Angeles, has died. His poetry — “rich in African history, steeped in the nation’s oral tradition — had a purpose beyond its artistic value. Poetry for Kunene was a weapon in the war to liberate the nation from the brutal system of apartheid.”
A Touch Of Cannibalism For The Holidays
“Fans of perhaps the world’s best-known cannibal won’t have to wait much longer: seven years after the publication of ‘Hannibal,’ Thomas Harris has finally delivered a new novel featuring Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer most famously memorialized on film by Anthony Hopkins. In a last-minute addition to its holiday-season list, Delacorte Press, an imprint of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, is expected to announce today that it will publish ‘Hannibal Rising’ on Dec. 5.”
GreenStone: Women’s Radio As Comfort Food
Its feminist raison d’etre notwithstanding, Gloria Steinem’s new radio venture is awash in fluff. “GreenStone, as Ms. Steinem explained in a CNN interview last week, is predicated on the notion that women have abandoned radio, and the talk format specifically, because it is ‘too hostile and argumentative and crazy’ and because women are ‘not nearly as hostile and argumentative.’ … GreenStone too easily obliges the idea that debate is just a synonym for bad manners, and in doing so suggests that the only corrective to invidious discussion is no discussion at all — or, rather, lots of little discussions about hosiery and slumber parties.”
And The 2006 MacArthurs Go To …
Playwright Sarah Ruhl, jazz violinist Regina Carter, composer John Zorn and nonfiction writer Adrian Nicole LeBlanc are among this year’s crop of 25 MacArthur Fellows. Each fellowship comes with $500,000, no strings attached.
Where’s The Real Architecture At This Year’s Venice Biennale?
“At least half the 10th International Architecture Biennale, held in various locations in La Serenissima this autumn, comes as a disappointment. The main exhibition – held in the old naval dockyard, the Arsenale – raises questions of world importance; but the solutions by architects, displayed in the national pavilions in the nearby Public Gardens, are, for the most part, weak, flippant and severely lacking in imagination. There is little here that might have excited Calvino’s Marco Polo.”
Think You Know Classical Music?
Here’s a way to prove it (or not): The Guardian has another of its famously tough quizzes. (We won’t reveal our own score.)
Tate Has A Big Year At The Gate
Tate Britain has had its biggest year at the box office since Tate Modern opened. “A record 1.7 million people visited the original Tate gallery at Millbank, partly thanks to a promotion of its free collection. BP, which has sponsored regular re-hangs of Tate Britain’s displays, has now renewed its support until 2012.”