Think you know “Silent Night? You don’t know the “real” “Silent Night.” “The modern version comprises only the first two and the last of six original verses.” And there has been a minor musical revision. Now “the Silent Night Association, an Austrian-based appreciation society, has now released a CD containing all the words, sung in 15 languages, in time for Christmas. The music differs subtly in two bars but the change is barely noticeable.”
Tag: 12.22.02
Controversy Over Movie’s Pre-Monster Hitler
“The world knows that Adolf Hitler was the great monster of the 20th century, and the story of his rise and fall can now be efficiently packed into books and documentaries of almost any length. The great imaginative leap made in the new movie ‘Max,’ opening on Friday in New York and Los Angeles, is to give us a picture of Hitler that comes not from the last, well-thumbed third of his life, but from an earlier moment, just after the First World War, when a 30-year-old Hitler was an altogether marginal person whose future was totally up for grabs. Sight unseen, ‘Max’ has been condemned by the Jewish Defense League and others.”
A New Way To Pay For School
So school is too expensive for most students to pay for without help. And student loans are becoming more difficult to get and harder to afford. So MP3.com founder Michael Robertson came up with a new idea to loan students money. Instead of paying set interest rates, students approved by Robertson’s program agree to “pay less than 1 percent of her future income for 15 years after graduation to cover the new loan.”
Criticizing Copyright – Public Weighs In
The US Copyright Office asks for public comment on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And gets it. “Respondents, including several well-known digital rights activists, overwhelmingly favored carving out exceptions to the DMCA for certain uses of music files, text and video technologies. Many argued that buyers of copyrighted works should have the right to make content accessible on more than one device.”
Singing Of A Christmas Way From Home
Across America, actors and crews working in touring shows spend the Holidays away from home. “It is a peculiar lifestyle. And no matter what, it can be kind of a lonely, weird time.”
Arab Groups Protest Exclusion of Palestinian Film From Oscars
“Arab-American and Palestinian groups have denounced the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for allegedly keeping the acclaimed film ‘Divine Intervention’ out of the running for a foreign-language movie Oscar on the ground that Palestine isn’t a state. But the academy denies excluding Divine Intervention, saying the film was never submitted.” The film’s distributor says it wasn’t submitted because the Academy made it clear ahead of time it wouldn’t be considered.
Dave Barry Vs. Ballet
Dave Barry knows that saying he doesn’t like ballet is wrong – way wrong. But he doesn’t care. “My problem – and it’s MY problem, NOT ballet’s problem – is that, because I am culturally unsophisticated, all ballet looks to me like — even though I know there is MUCH more to it – a troupe of mincing mimes. Whatever the ballet plot is about – love, hate, joy, sorrow, the Russian Revolution, measles – the reaction of the dancers is: ‘It’s MINCING time’!”
What Denver Theatre Needs
Denver has theatre – good theatre. But things seem to be going down rather than up. There are 56 theater companies, but only one (League of Regional Theaters) playhouse. “Ten folded or went dormant the past year. And the one it has, the DCTC, is clawing its way out of budget shortages that resulted in $1.6 million in cutbacks the past 18 months. Chicago, by comparison, has 20 professional LORT theaters. Seattle has five; San Diego three. The best theater cities also have thriving, definable theater districts, something that would be impossible to chart here outside the Denver Center.”
Too Depraved To Be Art?
A new genre of movies is so sexually and violently explicit, some critics wonder if they’re too depraved and should just be ignored. No. “These movies shouldn’t be rejected. They are too well-made, too challenging, too unsettling to be ignored. Certainly, they raise questions – particularly about whether or not art must remain ‘decent’ in order to be effective – that can’t be sidestepped. But if this is a disturbing trend, then it is also disturbing in the best sense of that word – disturbing our preconceived notions of what constitutes art, and forcing us to consider and question our own responses to graphic images on the screen.”
The Chicago Way (How To Adapt A Musical)
“From a legit theater perspective, ‘Chicago’ is the first good cinematic adaptation of a Broadway musical since a very good one, ‘Cabaret.’ (Some would argue for ‘Hair,’ which came out in 1979.) ‘Cabaret,’ directed by Bob Fosse, came out in 1972. So: Let’s call it 30 years.”