ArtsBeat

'Emerging Leaders in the Arts' kicks off

Anyone under 40 who works or is interested in working in the arts sector is invited to the launch of Buffalo's chapter of "Emerging Leaders in the Arts" at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The event, organized by Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County's Lauren Albrecht, aims to create a local community of current and aspiring arts professionals.

The event, which takes place at Sample Restaurant in Allentown, will be facilitated by Kimberly Billoni, the chief executive of SPLiCE, a product licensing company.

The text of a release about the event follows after the jump.

--Colin Dabkowski

A new Louis Sullivan doc

I've been doing a little reasearch for a forthcoming piece about downtown Buffalo's architectural treasures and came across this beautifully shot preview for a documentary about Louis Sullivan, one of the most important architects in American history. Sullivan, as many know, designed Buffalo's Guaranty Building (or Prudential Building), widely considered a seminal piece of American architecture and an important prototype for the skyscrapers we know today.

The documentary, called "Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture," according to the YouTube description, is slated for late 2010. Check out the preview:

--Colin Dabkowski

'The First Snow'

I'm usually one to greet the first big snow of the season with a "bah, humbug" and daydreams of a tropical beach. But even I admit there's some beauty in it. Video artist Reid Carrescia captured the first flurries of the season drifting past his Philadelphia window:

--Colin Dabkowski

Erie County funding for the arts

This has been available for a couple of weeks now, but I want to post up the page of Erie County's proposed 2010 budget that outlines funding recommendations for arts and cultural groups. In all, the county has allocated $5,066,500 to 43 arts and culturals.

Check out the recommendations in a PDF below, or download it here.

Accentuate the positive

Anyone who's seen more than a handful of productions at Buffalo-area theaters will tell you that when it comes to accents, a select few actors can pull them off, and plenty of them can't.

It's not uncommon for a cast -- otherwise eminently capable and moving in their portrayals of German sergeants or cockney housewives -- to adopt accents that approach camp in their complete lack of resemblance to the source dialect. To my ear, and I suspect to many others, a lack of consistency in the accent department can have the effect of throwing even a fine production off-kilter. More often than not, productions that dispense with accents entirely (except in the rare case when actors have enough time and training to properly prepare) come off far better, and without that stifling sense dislocation we all experience when we hear Kevin Costner's half-hearted rendition of, say, Sir Robin of Loxley.

So it was with plenty of interest that I read a profile by Alec Wilkinson in this week's New Yorker of Tim Monich, dialect coach to the stars. It provides a fascinating glimpse into just how difficult adopting a foreign accent can be, just how much practice and discipline it requires, and how seriously Monich takes it. Here's an excerpt:

Raw audio: State legislators on the arts

Last Tuesday, a group that included New York State Sen. Antoine Thompson, D-Buffalo, and assemblymen Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo and Steve Englebright, D-Setauket, met at Kleinhans Music Hall to talk about arts funding in a newly Democratic (and totally chaotic) state legislature. Read Tom Buckham's story on the meeting here. I'll have some more on what came out of the meeting in Thursday's paper, but for now, you can listen to the raw audio of the panel right here:

You can also download the MP3 file here.

--Colin Dabkowski

The Best Picture Oscars -- Now Twice the Size

When is the last time the Motion Picture Academy actually had a certifiable 24-carat good idea?

It's been so long that frankly I don't even remember when it was.

Well, bless them, they had one Wednesday — or at least that's when they announced it to the world. That's when they told us they decided to double the number of Best Picture Oscar nominees from 5 to 10. Under such a system, for instance, there's no way on God's green and glorious earth that "The Dark Knight" and "WALL-E" would have been left out of the Best Picture contest last year.

I'll have more to say on this in my column in Tuesday's Buffalo News.

In the meantime, what's your take on the newest wrinkle in Oscar-dom?

--Jeff Simon