The buzz about the new Metropolitan Opera is high. But, writes Martin Bernheimer, the company’s opening night suffered a bit. “The result looks undeniably clever and endlessly artsy. Unfortunately, Minghella blurs many a narrative turn and seems embarrassed by the composer’s unabashed emotionalism.”
Tag: 09.26.06
U.S. Reconfigures Its Cultural Diplomacy
“The State Department has enlisted four national cultural organizations to broaden exchanges between American artists and foreign audiences and share the country’s arts management expertise. … This umbrella effort,” known as the Global Cultural Initiative, “is taking a number of programs that federal cultural agencies and national organizations have underway that are more on-the-ground than marquee. The primary partners in the new program are the Kennedy Center, American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.”
Amazon’s Unbox Agreement: The New Face Of Evil?
“Want to buy and download a video? Fine. But Amazon’s Unbox program is going to run in the background on your computer and send information back to the company about your ‘operating system, software, amount of available disk space and Internet connectivity’ as well as what you’re doing with those videos, all in order to continue to ‘manage rights’ associated with them, says the agreement. … But if you somehow you violate their rules? Amazon has the right to reach into your hard drive from afar, delete all the videos you’ve paid for and not give you a refund.”
Director Takes On Critics In Boxing Ring (And Wins)
“Tired of the criticism of his films, controversial German film director Uwe Boll took on four of his critics in a Vancouver boxing ring, and ended each bout with a knockout. The director of the vampire flick ‘BloodRayne,’ based on a video game and starring Kristanna Loken and Ben Kingsley, issued a fight challenge to his critics several months ago. Fifteen responded. ‘I like now the critics,’ Boll said….”
Fearing Security Risk, Deutsche Oper Cancels Production
“Berlin’s Deutsche Oper canceled four planned November performances of Mozart’s ‘Idomeneo’ out of concern that the production’s reference to world religions, including Islam, raises an ‘incalculable security risk.’ “
Baritone Thomas Stewart, 78
“Thomas Stewart, an American baritone who was renowned for his portrayals of Wotan, Amfortas and other central Wagnerian roles and who was heard frequently at Bayreuth and the Metropolitan Opera, died on Sunday in Rockville, Md.”
The Nobels That Almost Weren’t
“When Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and more powerful explosives, died in 1896, he bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to create five annual prizes honoring ingenuity. The chemistry, medicine and physics prizes have come to be widely regarded as the most esteemed in their fields. The two others, literature and peace, are more controversial. Yet in a little known story, the Nobel Prizes, the first of which will be announced on Monday, almost never came to be, largely because of the unsophisticated way Nobel drew up his will.”
Leonardo, Lateral Thinker
“The 6,000 or so extant pages of text and drawings attributed to Leonardo da Vinci are thought to represent only about one-fifth of his output. Yet, remarkably, in a new show at the Victoria and Albert Museum here, just 62 yellowing sheets suffice to illuminate the endlessly curious and inventive mind of this quintessential Renaissance man. … [T]he display, which runs through Jan. 7, sets out to explore how Leonardo used paper to brainstorm about the mysteries and mechanics of life. And it reveals him to be an early master of lateral thinking.”
Rebuilding London’s Young Vic
“The Young Vic was once a crumbling wreck facing closure. Now, after a two-year rebuild, it has been reborn – bigger and better.”
Want Your Movie To Do Well? It’s All About The Buzz
It’s “one of the harshest realities of movie marketing today: It’s almost impossible to recover from bad buzz. Studios wield their marketing campaigns as they always have, priming audiences to expect the best. But with the media following every twist of a movie’s progress, viewers head to theaters loaded with behind-the-scenes information.”