Buzz
Ismene Brown
The Arts Council of England has escaped the government axe - unlike the UK Film Council. Reports over the past week or two paint a grim picture of diminishing arts budgets in Scotland, Wales and England while the Conservative-Lib Dem Government takes its machete to what it considers the fat in public spending.The ACE is already implementing a £23 million cut in its 2010-11 budgets originally set at £468 million - £4million ordered last year in Darling's budget, another £19million now. Detailed budgets for supported arts organisations will become clearer over the autumn.In a written statement Read more ...
josh.spero
To coincide with the release of a not-very-memorable film with a not-very-memorable twist - RPatz's Remember Me (no, we don't) - is a top-ten of twists. We want to hear yours. The list in full (click on the name to buy it on Amazon):
Sixth Sense
Psycho
The Usual Suspects
The Empire Strikes Back
Saw
Fight Club
The Wicker Man
The Others
Seven
Planet of the Apes
There are some obvious omissions, so let's play Let's Twist Again: put your favourite twists in the comments below. I'll start: nothing blows me away like the daughter-sister-daughter-sister moment in Chinatown.
Buy Remember Me on Read more ...
David Nice
Somehow I hadn't expected the death three days ago of the great British tenor, though unquestionably a world-class artist, to be commemorated among the international set of the Verbier Festival. Yet last night, before he raised his baton to conduct the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, conductor Marc Minkowski had a few words to say about Anthony Rolfe Johnson. His mezzo-soprano, the glorious Anne Sofie von Otter, especially wanted to dedicate her performance to a dearly loved friend and colleague.Of course - I'd completely forgotten that over 20 years ago, tenor and mezzo collaborated in Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The vuvuzela's long and literally monotonous journey from Soweto to the very epicentre of high European culture is complete. During the World Cup they blew it with incessant vigour on the terraces of South Africa's stadiums. Now they're blowing it in the Berlin Phil.The orchestra has probably the most distinguished horn section in the world including, in Sarah Willis and Fergus McWilliam, two British players. You can follow the section on Facebook here. And you can watch them playing the vuvuzela right here.
Peter Culshaw
William Hill have announced their odds for the Mercury Prize, whose short list was announced yesterday. What's worth a bet? Seems unlikely Dizzee Rascal will win it again, and some of the less well known artists like Kit Downes are token presences. Paul Weller is in with a shout (even if theartsdesk wasn't impressed with his new album, although we quite liked his live show) likewise The xx (mixed reviews here, and here), and Mumford and Sons (click for live review and CD review) but our money is on Corinne Bailey Rae (read interview here and review here).Dizzee Read more ...
theartsdesk
Robert Sandall, the music writer and broadcaster, and one of the first members of The Arts Desk, died this morning from prostate cancer. He was 58. His wit, easy style and energetic intelligence were seen in a number of book and concert reviews he did for this site, despite the encroachment of cancer. His range of interest and enthusiasms were shown in the subjects he covered, from his acute interview with Katherine Jenkins to his study of the Steve Jobs effect on the music industry. He was a presenter of Radio 3's eclectic Mixing It and Late Junction, a former Sunday Times rock critic and a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
No need to take your clothes off. You’ve heard of those mass photography events in which Spencer Tunick persuades whole crowds to go buck naked for his lens. Adam Magyar's requirements are not quite so specific. He is asking members of the public to take part in a different sort of mass-participation shoot. Magyar's signature is to create images using the same technology found at the finish line in athletics sprints. His style is to take thousands of photos in quick succession from a single point. Each only one pixel wide, they are lined up side by side in their thousands to form a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Last weekend we posted a round-up of the vast array of site-specific work happening in the theatre over the summer. Most of them are shows which are so boldly experimental that they haven't much realistic hope of a commercial future. Plays for an audience of one are not the producer's friend. But it turns out that it's not just the mighty Punchdrunk who can shift tickets by the skipload.This week Punchdrunk's production of The Duchess of Malfi opened in an abandoned office block opposite London's City Airport the day after The Railway Children chuffed into the disused Eurostar terminal at Read more ...
sue.steward
The fourth Brighton Photography Festival (BPB) has been launched amid dramatic economic hardships, but my money is on it being a roaring success. It will put Brighton on the map as somewhere other than a gay clubbers’ delight and a hen-party hub. The reason for my confidence? The guest curator, Martin Parr. He's a Zelig-like character who spends his life dropping into every photo festival around the world and is the best-known UK photographer on the international stage today, his reputation made through his controversial high-colour documentary photographs and the touring exhibition Read more ...
theartsdesk
As Jonathan Ross is an incorrigible tweeter, theartsdesk has decided to review his last stand on the BBC on Twitter. Adam Sweeting and Jasper Rees will watch Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and tweet a joint review live as the programme goes out. The show begins at 10.35pm on BBC One on 16 July.In order to catch their live review live, you'll need to sign up to Twitter, if you haven't already. Follow SweetingAdam on Twitter here and JasperRees here. (NB don't confuse SweetingAdam with another Adam Sweeting on Twitter. theartsdesk Adam's avatar is a picture of his red sports car being towed Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Opera House ticketline is taking a while to catch up - last Friday's Moscow castings are now confirmed in London - but various inconsistencies are cropping up. The full confirmed casting list is below.While it is a fact of life that dancer injury causes unavoidable cast changes, and Zakharova had suffered a hip injury earlier in the year as well, the scale of this last-minute remake of the tour is likely to cause fury among London ticket-buyers, who were booking up until this week for specific casts that the Bolshoi management at least knew last Friday were not appearing. Few of the Read more ...
fisun.guner
The unveiling of the Serpentine Pavilion (now in its 10th year) has become as much of a summer fixture as Henley. And yet it is not without controversy. Why, for instance, does the Serpentine Gallery in London insist on commissioning global stars such as Frank Gehry and now Jean Nouvel when it could be giving up-and-coming architects much needed exposure? Its original remit was to show architects who had not yet built on British soil, but though this has held true for eight of the 10 commissions, it certainly wasn't true of Gehry (who had built a cancer unit in Dundee), nor now of Nouvel: his Read more ...