The news on Monday that Window Media had finally closed its doors (literally) and that its chain of papers was officially kaput didn't seem to register much. Maybe that's because its two NYC titles, Genre and New York Blade, had already perished earlier this year. But the fact that the Washington Blade, a paper with a sizable reputation, as well as 21-year-old Southern Voice, one of the last papers focused on gay and lesbian issues in the South, disappeared is reason to worry.
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Dia Art Foundation's director, Philippe Vergne, announced today that Dia would construct a new space in Chelsea and finally have a more visible NYC presence. The new site in West Chelsea will be located at 545 W. 22nd Street. The address is currently the location of the large, versatile Pace Wildenstein space. Galleries such as D'Amelio Terras are across the street. This is the first time in the organization's 35 year history that it has elected to construct a new building.
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As someone who views the majority of television programming through online channels (or free DVD screeners), the idea of charging for Hulu makes me want to slap some sense into a rich, balding media exec. News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey recently stated that he thought that Hulu would start charging for content as early as 2010. Do we see where this is going? OK, we're already watching ads for Cymbalta and suffering through strange viewing jumpiness on our high-speed Internet connection, but you actually think young folks are going to fork over money for this content? Maybe if it is for extra-special viewing ops, like sneak peeks for favorite programs or for the ease of downloading to a portable device. But there's no way we're going to pay to watch a TV show like so many do for overpriced cable. No way. This is the same dumb idea as print media outlets thinking that people will pay for online content that they've already been getting for free. Maybe Chris Anderson hasn't been preaching the power of Free enough.
The appeal of Hulu and other online viewing portals is that we get to watch what we want when we want to on our own terms. No need to have destination TV hours on Thursday or Sunday night, we slot TV entertainment into our own busy schedules. We're already paying for our Internet connections (sometimes to the same people who charge us for cable access), so we want to get the most bang for our buck. And those very providers are threatening to charge us more for using the bandwidth anyway. Something has to give. I do think a pay-as-you-go online model may be possible. For example, I'd gladly pay for episodes watched from pay-cable channels such as HBO or Showtime. I don't want (or need) to pay extra for something I don't watch or use. I prefer the a la carte way of watching. But if Hulu (and those networks that feed into it) think that their nifty little system has any chance of surviving a scheme where they charge for content. They'll be sore when we all indeed slap them around by quickly migrating to some other platform that has figured out how to provide is with what we want the way we want it.
He may be an octogenarian, but Milton Glaser is as gregarious and prolific as ever. Last week, the School of Visual Arts opened the SVA Theatre on West 23rd Street, a state-of-the-art facility for film screenings, artist talks and cultural events that was formerly the rundown Clearview Chelsea West Cinemas. Mainly an extensive rehab job, the new colorful design is the work of Milton Glaser, a longtime SVA faculty member and the school’s acting board chairman. The most distinctive element is this 18-feet-high structure over the theater marquee inspired by Tatlin’s Tower. The kinetic sculpture will rotate at hourly intervals against the newly painted coral-colored wall. This comes after a documentary about Glaser was released earlier this year. Plus, he has a new book of his drawings out. We're mostly excited about the fact that the smelly cinema has been cleaned up and now we don't have to worry about our shoes sticking to the floor during another screening. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, we're just saying...
Often it feels as if the city is actively trying to keep you from enjoying all that it has to offer. That's certainly how it felt Sunday night, as I tried to make my way down to the Governor's Island ferry. After transferring trains four times, I finally found one and arrived in time for the boat, only to be told (along with all the gays looking to make it in time for the Saint at Large's dance event, Freemasons) that I'd have to wait for the next ferry. But I refused to give up, since I wanted to catch the final evening of the New Island Festival. Besides, I'd now trekked down here, I needed to postpone the inevitable schlep home a long as possible.
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Choire Sicha has made a salient observation about the over-abundance of coverage of Nora Ephron and her film Julie & Julia in the NYTimes over at The Awl: "The Times is basically live-blogging from inside Nora Ephron's living room. But none of that quite accounts for what's going on." As Nikke Finke points out, "At last count, 15 mentions of Nora Ephron in The New York Times online and in the paper in just the past 30 days." As Sicha goes on to explain Ephron's allure:
"Nora Ephron is perhaps the most masterful social butterfly of her age group. At least in part, that is because she is delightful, and witty, and actually somewhat powerful, at least as much as any person working in the arts can be. (That is to say: she knows a lot of rich people!) She is available to reporters large and small (she once responded to an email of mine for a story, having no idea who I was, even though she was out of the country), which is an insanely charming attribute. And she represents an important and rare bridge between New York and Los Angeles, between publishing and film, a bridge that has narrowed in recent years... Nora Ephron possesses a strange sort of magic here in New York, in this odd period after the reigns of Pat Buckley and Mrs. Astor and before, I guess, the doyenneships of Tinsley Mortimer and, uh, whoever. Her friends are extremely fancy. And, unlike most of the women in various points in time at the top of what I guess you could call cultural society, she actually makes and does something. In a town where there's actually not that much going on—really! It's pretty bleak here!—it's easy to pay attention to a charming, fun whirlwind."
But we're left wondering when this love affair will finally end. Much as the mediafest that surrounded the 2005 publication of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, we are already sick of all things Ephron and just about all things Julia Child. And the movie has yet to open to the general public. Please, give it a rest, people.
The ongoing transformation of Broadway into a pedestrian-friendly zone has received minor backlash. The lawn chairs that have been in Times Square have now been replaced by fancy metal furniture (wasn't this all supposed to be a short-term experiment? Seems like it's getting more and more permanent...) and some landscaping. One tourist told the Post: "I wanted to see taxi-to-taxi gridlock and grittiness," said Abbey Gonzales, of Austin, Texas. "I didn't expect to see trees in the middle of the street." But we were more surprised by the giant, 18-foot-tall daisies that popped up alongside Madison Square Park this week.
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In the upcoming "German Issue" of Heeb magazine, Eric Kohn (also a NYPress contributor) writes about Quentin Tarantino's upcoming Inglourious Basterds with his piece, "Spoiler Alert!". It's an intriguing analysis of the film, in which Hitler is killed by Brad Pitt & Co (the Basterds of the title). Kohn investigates what this will mean for Nazi films and entertainment, one of the most lucrative franchises in history. Ultimately he determines that:
"Tarantino repackages history when it fits into his own makeshift agenda; in these cases, it provides the ideal bad guys, the kind of people who deserve their horrific demise. Tarantino makes pictures based on what he likes, eschewing naturalism for unapologetic self-indulgence. Basterds, then, is less about the Jews than it is about Quentin Tarantino. Certainly the Nazis will continue to goose-step through our popular culture, but perhaps they will do so a little less in sync with history’s drum beat. In turn, they will lose their status in the pantheon of villainhood and become banal—like werewolves or vampires—playthings for our cheap thrills. Tarantino has effectively destroyed the Nazi film. Like mercifully putting down a sick dog, Tarantino has brought an end to the knee-jerk respect for a tired genre."
The idea that the Nazis will be the next vampire, ready to be sexy and plastered in every medium for teenage consumption is both a chilling, and all too viable, potential reality.
Illustration by Kurt McRobert via Heeb.
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