In Brief: Valentines Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Starting this week, visitors to the Centre Pompidou in Paris will be able to see what filmmaker Michel Gondry (La science des rêves) has done with the 1,200 square meters of the museum's south gallery. As part of the installation, called L'Usine de films amateurs (The Amateur Film Factory), visitors in groups of 5 to 15 people will be given the materials and equipment to create their own short films. With decorator Stéphane Rosenbaum, Gondry created a dozen backdrops, complete with various accessories, for the shooting. Although the exhibit will be free, reservations are strongly encouraged. [Le Monde]


• Dutch starchitect Rem Koolhaas has redesigned the interior of an old Parisian bar into a trendy glass and Carrara marble box for a tapas restaurant called Le Dauphin (total area: 80 square meters), on Avenue Parmentier. [Libération]


• Classical music is dying -- no, not that classical music, Indian classical music. According to an Indian government minister, "Classical music pulls every string in one's heart and plays a significant role in emotional healing. On the other hand, westernised Indian music rocks the heart and gives a mere transient relaxation." [Times of India]


• It's the problem that no one in the arts really wants to address: is there too much cultural supply for decreasing demand? As the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Rocco Landesman -- himself a Broadway theater owner and producer -- put it pretty bluntly, "There are too many theaters." [Washington Post]


• This week in Amazing Things Free on the Internet, the live video of the New London Consort's performance of Purcell's The Fairy Queen, with Philip Pickett conducting, set for online broadcast this Tuesday (and a limited number of days thereafter). [La Cité de la Musique Live]


• But wait, there's more to be heard online: Stile Antico's Song of Songs program, in live broadcast from London's Cadogan Hall last August. (Click on the little headphones icon to listen.) [France Musique]


• I can't stop: also, the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges in a concert of Bach concertos, from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris last month. [France Musique]


• Really, this is becoming an obsession: also, the music of Esa-Pekka Salonen featured at this year's Présences Festival (more from the festival, including Ligeti's Requiem, here), live from the Théâtre du Châtelet on Friday. [France Musique]


• Missed the radio broadcast of Nixon in China from the Met? It's still online for a week. [France Musique]


• After a dangerous fall from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra podium, Riccardo Muti had a pacemaker installed to correct an irregular heart rhythm. Thankfully, the Italian maestro is recovering well. [The View from Here]


• "Library Of Congress Adds 3 Titles To List Of Films That Should Be Destroyed Forever": this would totally be worth the taxpayer money we would spend on it. [The Onion]


• The Polish-Russian director Ladislas Starevich, transplanted to France and also one of Terry Gilliam's favorite animated film directors, created a genre of animated film using marionnettes (in some cases, actual animals and insects with wires attached). His adaptation of the marvelous fables of La Fontaine, Les Fables de Ladislas Starewitch d'après La Fontaine, was re-released in France last week. You can see some clips in the video embedded below, which really make me want to see the whole thing. [Le Point]