Charles Michener is impressed with his first encounter with Disney Hall. “If the flamboyant façade doesn’t attain quite the iconic power of the Sydney Opera House as a city-defining monument (there’s no dramatic vantage point from which to view it whole), its interior radically redefines the experience of concertgoing. People in the concert business tell me that it takes about three years for an orchestra and a new hall to settle down acoustically. What I heard at Disney Hall suggests a marriage that is off to a roaring start.”
Tag: 10.29.03
Miller To Close, Urinetown Left Dangling
The Henry Miller Theatre on West 43rd Street in New York will be closing this winter, to make way for a new skyscraper. But Miller is more than just another Broadway showhouse: it is currently the home of the unexpected smash hit Urinetown, which will be evicted by mid-February. No other Broadway theaters are currently available for the show to move into, and a move to off-Broadway would cause all sorts of union troubles, and would also be a strange move for a show enjoying the success of Urinetown. The Miller’s owners are planning to rebuild, possibly within the new skyscraper, but that project won’t be completed until at least 2008.
Why Songs Get Stuck In Our Heads (Damnit!)
Those annoying songs that somehow get stuck in our heads and can’t be chased out? There’s a physical reason, apparently. “A cognitive itch is a kind of metaphor that explains how these songs get stuck in our head. Certain songs have properties that are analogous to histamines that make our brain itch. The only way to scratch a cognitive itch is to repeat the offending melody in our minds.”
Valenti: We Will Fight Them On The Beaches! (And Then Compromise)
Jack Valenti explains why the Motion Picture Academy proposed not sending copies of movies to Academy Award voters this year. And why he finally compromised on the issue. “The digital world with its zeroes and ones and perfect copies of originals has changed the movie landscape forever, which is why the movie world’s priorities have been permanently altered. The industry wants to use the Internet to dispatch films to consumers. But as we do, we must also challenge piracy and defeat it with every weapon we can summon–and we will succeed, I am convinced–or one day we will sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the decline and fall of America’s greatest artistic triumph and an awesome engine of job and economic growth.”
Forget Controversy – This Year’s Turner Is Great Stuff
Too bad for the Chapman controversy, writes Richard Dorment. “This has become a Turner Prize tradition, one I am sorry to see. Because, otherwise, the exhibition of the shortlisted artists is curiously coherent. In their different ways, they all share a pessimistic view of nature, history, sex and society, expressed in work that is often beautiful, always compelling.”