Much ado about the swan that didn't die
posted 1-15-2009 - 6:30 am

I hate artistic revisionism. At least in ballet. And I blame the post-Walt-Disney Disney Company for it.

What started this rant, you ask? I attended a performance last Sunday of the Russian National Ballet Theater, and they performed Swan Lake. Theirs is a relatively new company, having been founded during the late 1980s, and, by the caliber of dancing that I saw, clearly second tier: fine, but certainly no threat to either the Bolshoi or the Kirov. I wouldn't put them on the same level as the New York City Ballet or the American Ballet Theater, either, but those two are also world class, so no surprise there. But I love Swan Lake and Tchaikovsky's score, so I really didn't mind.

Despite some lack of precision now and then among the corps de ballet, I was enjoying the production, for the most part. Particularly the performance of the prima ballerina portraying Odette/Odile, whose performance was clearly on a higher level than the rest of the company but whose name I don't know because the program listed four names for that role (this is a traveling company, and this role is obviously rotated, as are several others). In fact, I eagerly anticipated watching that particular Odette do the dying swan scene.

Ranting for academics
posted 1-10-2009 - 2:56 am

 
I have friends whose kids are visiting high schools and colleges now, in anticipation of attending those same come autumn, and I've noticed something: they're increasingly feeling a very specific kind of rage, one fed by the harsh realities of ever higher tuition rates and a snotty streak of anti-intellectualism in this country that glorifies sport at the expense of academics.

It is a very normal and rational reaction to an absurd status quo, one that has to change, though you know the sports fans will go down fighting. Well, on second thought, perhaps that gets more complicated if the sports fans in question are also parents whose happily geeky kids turn out to be more interested in field theory than field goals. I hope so.

The backdrop for this, of course, is the worst economic recession since the Great Depression and the worst unemployment statistics in the last 16 years, courtesy of the December 2008 numbers released earlier today. These campus-visiting parents are bloody well pissed off, and justifiably so: not just about tuition costs in this economy, but about the indefensible favoritism shown to boys' athletic programs while math, science and engineering students (not to mention girls' athletics) go begging for scholarships and loans. Just who do the sports nuts think is going to pull us out of this economic disaster — football players?? Of course not!

Shedding light on dark matters
posted 1-9-2009 - 7:33 am

 
I started my day yesterday by reading through my usual selection of news sources, then skipped over to check my e-mail, where I was presented with yet more headlines, and ran across a science story in Time magazine that piqued my interest. I ended up pissed off at the reporter, the Nobel prize committee, and academia in general. And thus, a rant developed, but not without cause.

Let me back up a bit here and give you the name of the article first:

The Milky Way: Bigger, Faster, Better Understood
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1870049,00.html

The first thing that struck me was the rather middling handling the reporter gave the story; nothing grossly wrong, just not much in the way of putting this item in perspective so that I know why it's important for me to know any of this. Besides, I've read far better science reporting than this mediocre little bit. The second thing that struck me was that Mark Reid, the Harvard astronomer she interviewed, is really just tweaking the kind of work Vera Rubin has been doing for more than 40 years — and without half as much fanfare and very little public credit.

Who's Vera Rubin, you ask? Ahhhhhhhhhh, here we come to it.

Guillotining the press
posted 12-4-2008 - 10:50 pm

 
[Editor's note: this item was written just days before the Tribune Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (reorganization, not liquidation; but given Mr. Zell's ineptitude, it could yet convert to the latter; one hopes for the sake of the employees and readers that it doesn't). Moreover, Conde Nast's Portfolio magazine, cited below, is now itself in a financial bind and may only survive as an online-only publication.]

So today we read about yet another round of firings — what else can you call them? Not layoffs, because those laid off are presumably rehired in time — at the Chicago Tribune. I ran across this bit of news while simultaneously looking at something else on Huffington Post and perusing my e-mail. The mail included the daily post from Gorkana.com, which lets journalists know where their colleagues have taken new positions. We use it to keep tabs on each other; but lately, it's become less a source of information than an exercise in envy and permanently diminished expectations for what David Brooks recently called "The Formerly Middle Class."

Films we love/hate:  Waiting for Hollywood to catch up to the 21st century
posted 8-12-2008 - 7:18 am

 
Last Friday, USA Today reporter Susan Wloszczyna went looking for influential women in the film business to get their take on what the future holds for women in Hollywood. Too bad some of them still have no idea about what real women want to see at the movies. Perhaps they've spent too much time with male colleagues who make juvenile films for other overgrown teenagers to realize that a female equivalent of The Pineapple Express isn't what we're looking for. And like Freud, maybe they should just ask us instead of making silly assumptions and even sillier films.

Movie producer Nancy Juvonen has made 10 films to date with partner Drew Barrymore. Juvonen is right when she says women are picky about which films they see and "want a guarantee for their time," i.e., to walk out satisfied and smiling afterwards. Women don't automatically rush out to see every new 'chick' flick – they want to know a film is worth the effort to see it at the theater. It doesn't necessarily hurt for a film to be more realistic, either. But Juvonen is dead wrong when she asserts that "Knocked Up and The Break-Up are more appealing than 'One day my prince will come.'" Bad choices there: they make a fairy tale, even a grim one, sound good.