The Detroit Free Press has killed a review it had commissioned of a book by Mitch Albom, the newspaper’s star sports columnist, because the review came in negative. The paper’s executive editor “confirmed that she decided not to run the review by freelance writer Carlo Wolff simply because the reviewer didn’t much like the book. She said Albom was not involved in the decision. The book is titled ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven.’ ‘I was not really comfortable with disparaging one of my employees that way. Yes, it’s because the review was negative’.”
Tag: 09.27.03
Wanted: An Arts Mayor For Toronto
Toronto is electing a new mayor, and the five major candidates for the office gathered to talk about the arts. “The first Great Toronto Arts Debate was refreshingly free of all that embarrassing ‘world-class city’ rhetoric that has marked civic politics since the eighties.” And there was acknowledgment that the arts were important for the city’s future. But what does that mean, exactly?
Classical Crossover: The Fabricated Genre
This week, New Zealand teenager Hayley Westenra became the latest classical singer to muscle her way onto the pop charts with an album of so-called “crossover” tunes. But what is crossover, really? We’re talking about a genre of music that exists mainly to please the musically retarded, a market-driven style that depends on trend research and technological innovation to churn out pap that appeals to the lowest common denominator of music consumers. “Crossover once took place on a peaceful side-road. Now it swirls round a vast Spaghetti Junction. There are no traffic lights, and a shocking number of fatal pile-ups…”
The Silent Drama of the Catalan
In Barcelona, where Catalan language and culture dominate, the theatrical community is at an interesting crossroads. “Despite the fact that the Catalan language is central to identity here, most of the major Catalan theatre companies either banish the spoken word entirely or relegate it to a very distant and neglected second place.” Such wordless theater began under the brutal reign of Franco, who banned the Catalan language. And while the ban led to the development of a uniquely image-based theater tradition, no one can quite explain why that tradition has continued to dominate Barcelona’s drama scene, even as the rest of the world has moved on.
God, The Devil, and Hollywood
The religious controversy swirling around Mel Gibson’s Christian opus, The Passion, is remniescent of the furor that enveloped another famous film, writes Geoff Pevere. “Thirty years ago, William Friedkin’s adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 bestseller not only touched off a fire-storm over the film’s depiction of a 12-year-old girl’s horrific possession by an ancient demon, it contained possibly the most graphic juxtaposition of sacred and profane ever seen by a mass audience — the image of a crucifix being violently shoved into the possessed girl’s vagina.” The Exorcist may have had far different aims than Gibson’s devotional flick, but the pious outrage that greeted its release was awfully similar.
Bayreuth’s Legacy: Building Big In A Good Cause
Opera fans are known for their devotion, and it’s a good thing they are. What other art form regularly requires entire buildings to be erected, solely to stage the work of a single composer? Such is frequently the situation confounding anyone who wishes to put on a truly impressive production of Wagner’s infamous Ring cycle. In fact, the composer himself had to convince his benefactor, King Ludwig, to build the famous opera house in Bayreuth before he could stage the first Ring. As Toronto prepares a similar undertaking, William Littler paid a visit to Bayreuth to see how the monument to operatic self-indulgence has held up. Pretty well, as it turns out.
Forgey: Build It, And They Will Come
“Arena Stage, the 53-year-old godmother of Washington’s lively theater scene, is getting ready to change its architectural personality from introvert to extrovert in one huge, but perhaps not-so-easy, step… Making it happen poses a formidable challenge. The price tag is estimated to be a cool $100 million, exactly 100 times the original cost of Arena’s 42-year-old building at Maine Avenue and Sixth Street SW.” Still, says Benjamin Forgey, the Arena renovation is a crucial project in the District’s ongoing renewal efforts, and architect Bing Thom’s design is deserving of completion.
George Plimpton, 76
“George Plimpton, the New York aristocrat and literary journalist whose career was a happy lifelong competition between scholarly pursuits and madcap attempts — chronicled in self-deprecating prose — to try his hand at glamorous jobs for which he was invariably unsuited, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 76.”
The Well-Rounded Intellectual
George Plimpton was an icon, but that’s not what makes his life so impressive, says Linton Weeks. What made Plimpton special was the way in which he could effortlessly bridge gaping cultural and societal divides, and in the process, become a respected figure to so many disparate elements of American society. He could hold his own in any intellectual discussion, and yet he had a rollicking sense of humor which is so often lacking in intellectuals. He could relate to the blue-collar nature of the NFL lineman, even as he prepared to lead a panel discussion on the New York literary scene. In short, Plimpton was a man for all seasons, in an era when such figures are increasingly rare.
Battling Piracy, At The Expense Of Oscar?
“The race for this year’s Academy Awards has been thrown off stride by a move by the major Hollywood studios to curb movie piracy. The studios hope to halt the distribution of thousands of DVD and VHS copies of Oscar-contending films to those whose votes decide the winners. Such a move may hurt the Oscar chances of smaller, independent studios, which have come to rely on the videos as a means of getting their films seen by Academy Award voters.”