Tag: 11.07.04

A Low-Budget Indie W/ Symphony-Size Dreams

These days there are plenty of low-budget movies. But how many movies with a $750,000 budget can field a professional symphony orchestra for the score? And the Vancouver Symphony, for that matter? “I guess it is a low-budget film. But for anybody who has come from the subsidized art world, the strictures of being frugal and using your resources well are very familiar. I’m trying not to think about the budget and focus on the creativity.”

Prediction: Nathan Lane Will Win The West End

“In a week when the culture gaps between Britain and America have been much discussed, here’s another: a performer few Britons have heard of is simultaneously the biggest star on Broadway. Only now, finally, Britain is starting to get it. Nathan Lane is a name half-glimpsed on a billboard or in the entertainment listings of newspapers. He is still on the periphery of our vision, almost focused and almost famous, but come Tuesday he will step magnificently centre stage.”

Let Chicago Be Chicago

Regardless of what the Canadian film board might tell you, Toronto does not look like New York. Nor does it look like Chicago, L.A., Seattle, Boston, or any of the other cities that Canadian cities have been standing in for in Hollywood films over the last decade. A new documentary makes the case for on-location shooting, and claims that moviegoers can easily tell the difference between accurate depictions of a city and generic stand-ins.

Who Watches Dance, And Why?

A major study of dance audiences has been completed in Chicago, with researchers attempting to quantify the impact of dance on the average citizen, and to further determine exactly who is likely to attend a dance performance and why. Among the study’s findings: women are a whopping 71% of dance attendees; intellectual stimulation finishes behind aesthetic beauty on the list of reasons that attendees enjoy dance; and very few audience members can tell the difference between modern, classical, and jazz dance without labels to help them.

Culture’s Impact On Politics: Zilch, Apparently

John Kerry had a lot of star power behind him in his losing bid to become President of the United States, with major stars in the world of music, film, and literature lining up to support the Democrat. But though “the 2004 election turned mainly on cultural issues, as distinct from matters of economics or public policy… the vast majority of those who think of themselves as cultural professionals found themselves firmly on the losing side. In an election that many arts people saw as being of cataclysmic importance, that clear disconnect spawned a lot of soul-searching in studios, offices, screening-rooms and theaters over the latter half of the week.”

West End Bars Critics From Opening Night

“West End theatre producers are to make radical attempts to fireproof new shows against the critics as they survey the smouldering wreckage of productions closed following bad reviews.” Specifically, the idea is to change the tradition whereby every critic in the city shows up for opening night, and reviews that one performance. “Producers believe the opening night combination of nervous relatives and anxious financial backers can destabilise performances. The experimental move, which has been cautiously welcomed by several critics as well as by theatre owners, is a response to the growing power of the London critics.”

The Met’s New Man Worries The Fan Base

For all the fearful talk about what Peter Gelb will do when he takes the reins of the Metropolitan Opera in 2006, Gelb seems to have a remarkably upbeat philosophy about high culture: as he puts it, “art can be both commercially successful and artistically successful.” Of course, it’s the “commercial” aspect that worries some observers, and Gelb’s tenure at Sony Classical is an example of what many purists believe is blatant commercialism at the expense of true artistic success.

Joe Volpe: The Exit Interview

Okay, he’s not leaving for another two years. But with his successor already named, Metropolitan Opera chief Joseph Volpe is now officially a lame duck, a position to which he is anything but accustomed. Regarding fears that Peter Gelb is planning to dumb down the company with the crossover material that made him famous at Sony Classical, Volpe takes a skeptical tone: “Peter is very smart. And I believe Peter will do what’s in good taste and proper for the Met. I don’t think he would attempt to popularize a standard work, because, first of all, it won’t work. In the record business you can do certain things that you cannot do in an opera house.”

Bucking The Trend: MoMA’s Fundraising Triumph

As New York’s Museum of Modern Art settles into its spectacular new Manhattan home, it’s worth noting that the process MoMA underwent to reach this point was a triumph of modern non-profit fundraising. In the middle of a recession, in a period during which New York suffered a horrific terrorist attack, and at a time in which many non-profits all but threw in the towel as far as fundraising, MoMA managed to raise $858 million to design and construct its new building.