“The quirky low-budget comedy film ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and the 1989 Laura Esquivel novel ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ are this year’s choices to be adapted as stage musicals at the annual Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at White Oak in Yulee, Fla., the institute is expected to announce on Tuesday.”
Tag: 09.21.09
National Book Awards Invite Input From The Masses
“Beginning Monday, readers can now vote on the best work of fiction to win the National Book Award in the past 59 years. The winner will be announced on Nov. 18 at the National Book Awards ceremony to be held at a black-tie event at Cipriani Wall Street.”
Survey: UK Businesses’ Arts Spending Cuts To Last A While
“Businesses in the U.K. are cutting spending on the arts, and aren’t planning to increase it until 2011, according to a survey…. Among arts groups, 68.2 percent reported decreased levels of business investment, and more than half of those said they suffered a drop exceeding 50 percent.”
Michael Kaiser: The Trouble With Cultural Diplomacy
“As the Obama administration tries to rebuild America’s image abroad, do we need to send dance companies and theater companies abroad? My response, not popular with my peers running arts organizations across the United States, is no. … But that does not mean that cultural diplomacy should be discarded.”
Broadway Trade Org Finds Cost Savings In St. Martin’s Pay
“Charlotte St. Martin earned $340,105 in salary and benefits in her second year as executive director of the Broadway League,” and while that amount reflects a 5 percent raise for her, it’s “down a third from what her predecessor, Jed Bernstein, made in his final year.”
And The Emmy For Anxiety Goes To…
“Sunday’s show proves that the once-powerful network television business has finally reached a point where it can’t put aside fretting about its systemic problems, even on a supposedly celebratory night dedicated to bestowing laurels and gratitude.”
The Ken Burns Effect: Backlash
“While Burns is one of the best known and most watched documentarian of recent times, he has also acquired his share of detractors. Though he’s generally respected by critics and scholars, a backlash has been building, dismissing him as middlebrow, charging that he’s repeating himself, that he’s too earnest, too dark or naively patriotic.”
The Toronto Film Festival Of Closed Wallets
“Along with the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto stands out as a must-visit destination for movie distributors looking to buy new, highbrow works. Yet as successful as the festival has been in premiering any number of art-house breakouts in recent years, the shopper silence at the just-concluded Canadian gathering was deafening.”
Document-Sharing Website Hit With Lawsuit
“Social publishing website Scribd has been hit with a lawsuit which claims that it profits by encouraging internet users to illegally share copyrighted books online.”
The Summer Of Celebrity Death
“Together, those who died in the summer of 2009 came from seemingly every phase of life. Among them were titans of the news business, moviemaking, television, politics, music and literature.”