Pib & Pog, these two bulgy-eyed lumps of dough, first appeared way back in 1994 in a film short directed by Peter Peake — one of the claymation folks at Aardman Animation who brought us the delightful dog-and-gizmo act, Wallace and Gromit. In fact, the short appears on their 2004 British DVD, Aardman Classics.
Pib & Pog are indeed classic comic creations in that they’re rubbery buddies on a kiddie TV show that turns into quietly aggressive mayhem. Each one takes revenge on the other in an escalating battle involving beatings, sulphuric acid and cannon fire, while a polite British matron coos on the voiceover, saying things like “Yes, Pib does have jolly poor manners.”
Late last year, though, Atom Films with Aardman made Pib & Pog a “broadband series” — meaning six short episodes are now available online. The best of the not-suitable-for-easily-frightened-little-uns bunch is still this one, though, the first and longest. It’s like Itchy & Scratchy Attack Sesame Street.
With the Arts District, and especially with the Performing Arts Center, Dallas has bought into using culture as an urban revitalization tool, as well as a prop for increased national prominence. We have bet on it to the tune of — what? — three-quarters of a billion dollars? A billion? (The announcement this week that the PAC has raised its final price tag/fundraising goal to $338 million seems to put us in that range, when one considers the DMA, the Meyerson, the Arts Magnet, etc.).
As a city, we started on this path well before the Guggenheim Bilbao ignited an international fervor for using culture to repair downtown and launch a city as a “prestige” arts center. But if every city of any size or ambition has a culture complex, how distinguished or life-changing can they be? Each town has its own infrastructure, cultural ecology, long-standing social tensions and audience make-up: We can’t just plug one of these in and hope it’ll work wonders.
So there are incredibly complex (and resistant) economic, cultural and urban design forces involved — as Richard Pilbrow, a leading theater consultant and an early advisor with the PAC, has said, raising $100 million for a new center is easy. It’s running one successfully that’s hard. One shrewd thing the PAC has done is include in its fundraising an endowment to cover operating expenses. Another is the hugely ambitious plan that Bill Lively, president of the Dallas Center, has for a nightlife-changing series of programs to keep the halls filled.
In the New Statesman, British theater critic Domenic Cavendish has started a regular column examining this entire phenomena of culture and urban regeneration (UK version). He’ll be “talking to people involved in regeneration schemes across the UK and reporting back about what they’ve said, and what I’ve seen. The questions asked will be broadly the same: what is it about ‘culture’ that’s driving urban change? Are there concrete examples of benefits? And if so, are those benefits lasting?”
And love - or lack of it - is in the air with productions of Crimes of the Heart at Garland Civic Theatre and The Lovers at Addison Theatre Center. Here’s Gini.
The single reader who has followed my book/daddy blog and even the senior citizens who recall my book columns for The Dallas Morning News, will remember that I have argued for the viability of a book show. Commercial broadcast TV and cable TV do not seem eager to recognize the simple genius of my proposal (or at least my non-presence at the Four Seasons in New York for power lunches with them), so I figure a do-it-yourself webcam show, sort of a bookish Jon Stewart-Meets-YouTube, might work.
Right. I’ll get around to it as soon as I’m done getting my daughter into college. And graduated. With a job.
The program sounds, though, as if it’ll just be The Charlie Rose Show with more people around the table droning about books and the famous authors they know. That’ll be, um, exciting. And a historic break from all other book programming. Mercifully for him, this means Mr. Menaker is safe from the wrath of my copyright lawyers. The essence of my pitch remains: cut some of the fake news stuff at the beginning of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert but keep the amusing interviews. Have fun with it. Ditch the ponderous Rose stuff. Hey, Dick Cavett did it. And Stewart and Colbert have been offering more author interviews than almost any other televised outlets in America.
One iteration of my plan can be found here — scroll to the end of the interview.
A Los Angeles Times story about the crunch that arts educators are facing with No Child Left Behind forcing all of the attention (and money) on raising math and reading scores cites Dallas as one of the few major school districts that is spending money to expand arts education.
The Times story reports that “A Center on Education Policy poll released this year showed that more than 40% of the districts surveyed have cut time in elementary schools for non-tested subjects, including art and music.”
Many school districts, DISD included, have tried to make up the widening curriculum/budget gap by jerry-rigging after-school programs or jobbing-in visiting artists to classrooms. It’s a patchwork approach that doesn’t work, argues Mike Blakeslee, deputy executive director of the National Assn. for Music Education: “Outside groups and after-school programs can’t replace daily efforts by certified teachers. Music is a discipline like any other. It needs ongoing, planned, sequential delivery. If the kids are only getting nominal exposure to music education, that’s frankly not enough.”
What the LATimes story touts is the Dallas Arts Learning Initiative, a multi-million dollar project announced more than a year ago. It involves DISD, the city of Dallas and the Dallas Public Library, as well as Big Thought, the non-profit arts agency formerly known as Young Audiences that sends artists into the classrooms. An $8 million grant from the Wallace Foundation (with more money leveraged through DISD) has more ambitious goals than simply touring artists. It includes hiring 140 new arts teachers over the next three years, insuring that each DISD student gets at least a weekly 45 minutes of art instruction and 45 minutes of music teaching. It also envisions developing 30 “hubs” in the neighborhoods to coordinate the different programs with parents — summer programs, after-school classes, library offerings.
David Mamet’s Edmond is one of his weaker, less-interesting dramas. It’s a very linear and unsurprising Rake’s Progress, a story of masculine self-destruction. The playwright’s best works, in contrast, are often non-linear and surprising dramas of masculine self-destruction.
But the consciously sordid, 80-minute-long Edmond has been given a superlative production by Second Thought Theatre, under the direction of Rene Moreno: somber, chilling, noir-ish. In fact, this may be Mr. Moreno’s smartest production — as crisp as the play is bleak. [Read more →]
Needing your film festival fix this week? Head up to Addison and check out the Texas Black Film Festival…to be held Thursday through Saturday at the Addison Studio Movie Grill. Executive Director David Small has tapped into his industry connections and created an interesting line-up of short films, documentaries and features. For complete details, visit their website TexasBlackFilmFestival.com.
Intriguing highlights look to be a documentary on the life of James Byrd (Thursday afternoon) and Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons (Friday afternoon); the Friday night feature Sister’s Keeper and some kid’s screenings Saturday afternoon. But there’s a three day line-up full of films and panels worth exploring. The fest will close Saturday night with an Awards Ceremony honoring films, actors, and Texas filmmakers C.C. Stinson and King Hollis.
You’ll have a second chance to see the winning films from TBFF when they screen at AFI DALLAS in late March.
The proceeds from a live art auction in December will be donated to St. Anthony’s Community Center in Dallas tomorrow, Wednesday, January 30. The local art collective and fundraisers, Art Conspiracy, raised $14,000 in Deep Ellum with live music and works from more than 120 artists. The money will help fund art and music programs at St. Anthony’s, which provides a variety of after-school and weekend activities for more than 800 children in South Dallas.
“While many art programs are being cut from school budgets, St. Anthony’s Community Center provides year-round, art-rich programs for children and youth,” says Comfort Brown, the director of St. Anthony’s Community Center.
Since 2005, Art Conspiracy has raised more than $34,000 for charities including St. Anthony’s, La Reunion, and The Children’s Health Fund.
Because we’re all font-savvy word processors these days (Copperplate! Bodoni! Zapf!), it has become a standard feature during an election year, but still fun: A newspaper runs a typographic review of the candidates’ official logos and bumper stickers. Here’s the Boston Globe’s. I disagree about the rising sun in Barrack Obama’s logo; Sam Berlow and Cyrus Highsmith (both with the Font Bureau in Boston) think it makes the whole package look like a “hot new Internet company.” Nothing against the candidate or the general design; I think it’s definitely one of the best of the bunch. But that sun reminds me of some herbal tea or organic hair product. Or even a pharmaceutical company trying to look new-agey and beneficent.
