Despite the runaway success of Western classical music there, the Chinese Communist authorities have recently become nervous about works with Christian themes, regardless of their place in the canon. A Messiah by the visiting Academy of Ancient Music was made invitation-only; the Mozart and Verdi Requiems have been restricted; even part of Carmina Burana(!) was censored.
Tag: 09.30.08
Why Discerning Readers Need Local Critics
“Tom Bernard, the veteran co-head of Sony Pictures Classics, has a theory about critics. He believes when critics in key communities are fired by their penny-pinching newspapers, it’s the movies that suffer – especially art movies. He feels he can statistically demonstrate that filmgoers learn to trust certain local critics and that, when they leave, box office sags.”
Hollywood on Lake Huron
“Once considered a relative backwater as a film destination, Michigan has lured more than 60 features and made-for-TV movies this year, up from just three last year, according to the Michigan Film Office.”
The Tears of (Illegal Alien) Clowns
“At last, a play for the Moldovan balloon wrangler in all of us.” The new Off-Broadway play Aliens with Extraordinary Skills depicts a pair of Eastern European clowns who “come to America… attached to a circus that would provide them with gainful employment if only it existed anywhere but on their visa applications.”
There Are Worse Things That Could Happen to a Writer –
– than seeing her book remaindered. “And although the author will receive minimal – if any – royalties on these sales, it’s not all bad. A good presence in the bargain bookshops will mean exposure to the sorts of readers who might not frequent Waterstone’s… [and] it’s got to be better than getting pulped.”
A Reason to Buy a Blu-Ray
“Francis Coppola’s masterpieces, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (really, who cares about Part III?), haven’t looked so good since they first came out three decades ago. Simply put, the new four-disc set amounts to one of the most spectacular achievements in the brief history of home theater.”
Top This, Peter Gelb
A Swiss television network has staged Verdi’s La Traviata from a train station. “With scenes transmitted live from the main hall, the coffeehouse, the botanist shop and the train platforms of Zurich’s neo-Renaissance Hauptbahnhof, the country’s largest rail hub, the performance provided a grittier version of the opera’s themes of love, betrayal and redemption.”
A Flea Marketeer’s Dream Come True
“A Dutch version of the popular television program Antiques Roadshow has uncovered what is believed to be a previously unknown work by 17th-century Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Younger.”
Giving New Meaning to the Word ‘Scripture’
“Christian book publisher Zondervan says their next edition of the Bible will be handwritten – by more than 31,000 Americans.”
Head of Nobel Literature Committee Thinks US Can’t Compete
“Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States…The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.” (The head of the U.S. National Book Foundation replies, “Put him in touch with me, and I’ll send him a reading list.”)