“The woman behind a new BBC film adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps is braced for complaints this Christmas from fans of previous screen portrayals of the classic adventure. Gone from her version is Mr Memory, the music hall performer cruelly shot as he reveals the secret at the core of the story; gone is the gripping scene on the Forth Bridge; gone is the villain’s tell-tale missing finger joint (or rather, it is back); and gone, too, is the hero’s death-defying struggle on the clockface of Big Ben.”
Tag: 11.30.08
Why Billy Elliot Matters For Dance
The arrival of “Billy Elliot” on Broadway, coinciding with the reminder that the next White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was trained as a ballet dancer, has become part of the latest wave of “real men can do ballet” talk.
Philadelphia’s New “Arts Czar” Faces Challenges
“I was told clearly from the beginning that if you expect a big staff and a functioning office, this is not the job for you,”
Frank Gehry – Not Looking Much Like Himself These Days
As “two new buildings open — one a library at Princeton University, the other an expansion of a major art museum in Toronto — it’s clear that the biggest threat to Gehry’s legacy may be the Gehry brand itself.”
Right Now – Bad News Sells
“The message from Hollywood increasingly seems to be — to glibify it to a tag line — bleak is chic. Hopeless is hot.”
Wait, Isn’t That Backwards? Ivo Van Hove’s Line In Screen-To-Stage Adaptations
The director of Amsterdam’s top theater company – known in New York for his daring stagings of A Streetcar Named Desire, Hedda Gabler and The Misanthrope – is making a specialty of producing great screenplays as live theater. Sure, we’ve seen it for years on Broadway with musicals (The Producers, Hairspray, The Lion King, Xanadu and so on and on and on), but van Hove stages such art-film classics as the Cassavetes scripts Faces and Opening Night, Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, and Bergman’s Cries and Whispers.
The Real Problem Between The Arts And Audiences, Revealed
“But the underlying problem is one common to all the arts: fear. The arts are rank with it. Fear of being thought ignorant or being revealed as a fraud. Fear of not knowing how to pronounce chiaroscuro, trompe l’oeil or gesamtkunstwerk. Fear because the books we think we should have read bully us mercilessly and the music we think we ought to recognise tortures us on a rack of nagging self-doubt. Galleries and concert hall lobbies are filled with those darting eyes and premature nodding that masks the gentle, creeping terror of those seeking to signify recognition where none in fact exists.”
Donatello’s David, Fresh From Its Laser Bath, Returns To Full Display
The 15th-century bronze statue, the most famous depiction of the biblical king after Michelangelo’s, is back on its perch at the Bargello Museum in Florence after an 18-month, €200,000 cleaning using lasers. (“We could only intervene now with the newest laser techniques; even the most delicate mechanical procedure would have hurt it.”)
Soon They’ll Be Doing A Pas De Deux For Mobutu And Idi Amin
“A controversial ballet is to chart the rise and fall of African dictator Robert Mugabe through cutting-edge dance on the British stage. My Friend Robert, by award-winning choreographer Bawren Tavaziva, draws upon his personal experiences and memories of growing up in the then newly independent Zimbabwe.”
Rubik’s Cube Becomes Online Video Meme
Aging Gen-Xers may see the Cube as a blast from the 1980s past, but videos of various people solving the puzzle – from director Michel Gondrey appearing to work the Cube with his toes to YouTube’s “3-Year-Old Solves Rubik’s Cube in 114 Seconds” to a guy that does it while blindfolded – are popping up all over the Web. The short vidcasts are “part of a larger genre of popular online video: the ‘solving spectacle,’ which typically shows a soloist in a modestly appointed room trying to work out a problem – an intricate guitar solo, a speed painting – that is largely in his head.”