“We are accustomed to thinking about pop music in terms of its most familiar metadata: songs and albums, scenes and artists. But what about all the other, seemingly incidental music that gets lodged in our heads, from commercial jingles to sitcom soundtracks? Could it be that the largely unknown Kondo, Nintendo’s first dedicated sound designer, was one of the great innovative forces of our time?”
Archives for June 2015
Canadian Government Okays Sale Of Cirque Du Soleil To US, Chinese Investors
“Industry Minister James Moore said Tuesday the application to acquire the famed circus troupe was deemed an overall economic benefit for Canada. The buyers have committed to maintain the Cirque’s strategic decision-making and creative and artistic development at its Montreal headquarters.”
Talent Spotting: Which Would You Trust, The Data Or The Hunch?
“The gift for talent-spotting is mysterious, highly prized and celebrated. We like to believe that certain people—sometimes ourselves—can just sense when a person has something special. But there is another method of spotting talent which doesn’t rely on hunches. In place of intuition, it offers data and analysis. Rather than relying on the gut, it invites us to use our heads. It tends not to make for such romantic stories, but it is effective—which is why, despite our affection, the hunch is everywhere in retreat.”
Readers Versus Critics, Round 497: The New Fifty Shades Of ‘Grey’ Book
“Readers, as their buying patterns have suggested for some years, do not need a critical imprimatur to select their next read.”
China’s Movie Box Office Up 50% In First Half Of 2015
“About $3.3 billion in tickets were sold in the first six months of the year, according to figures from film industry consulting firm Artisan Gateway. That’s a leap of 48.9% over the first half of 2014. Imported films accounted for 52.5% of ticket sales.”
Report: UK Creative Industries Employment Growing At Twice National Average
“Statistics released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport found that jobs within the creative industries increased by 5.5% compared to the national 2.1% rise in employment between 2013 and 2014.”
This Year In New Museum Construction (A Chart)
“It has been a huge year for museum construction, with many institutions—public and private, established and upstart—spending, in total, hundreds of millions of dollars on new buildings, with even more on the way.”
Comedy Central Is (Kind Of) Booming, Except For The Money Part
“Comedy Central’s quandary is almost paradoxically acute: What does a television network do when its bread-and-butter demographic — young, piracy-fluent, glued to phones — stops watching television?”
Menil Collection Director To Step Down
“Under Josef Helfenstein, the Menil doubled its annual attendance, increased its endowment by almost 54 percent, and added more than 1,000 works to the collection, including pieces by Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra and Kara Walker.”
Why “Smart” Kids Often Don’t Turn Into Smart Adults
“When people perform well (academically or otherwise) at early ages and are labeled smart or gifted, they become less likely to challenge themselves. They become less likely to make mistakes, because they stay in their comfortable comfort zone and stop growing. And their fixed mindset persists through adulthood. The simple and innocent praising of a smart kid feeds an insidious problem that some researchers track all the way up to gender inequality in STEM careers.”
Misty Copeland Promoted To Principal At ABT
“Her promotion — after more than 14 years with the company, nearly eight as a soloist — came as Ms. Copeland’s fame spread far beyond traditional dance circles. She made the cover of Time magazine this year, was profiled by “60 Minutes” and presented a Tony Award on this year’s telecast. She has written a memoir and a children’s book, and has more than a half-million followers on Instagram.”
Did Adding More Best-Picture Nominations Devalue The Oscars?
In opting for more pictures, the Academy has risked tarnishing the value of a nomination. “It’s hard to find 10 movies that should be nominated,” says producer and former studio chief Bill Mechanic. “Truth is, it’s hard to find even five right now.”
Crowdfunding To Recreate An Old TV Show As A Live Experience Smashes Its Funding Goals
The live immersive project has now raised more than £600,000 from close to 4,500 people in just 16 days, after reaching its £500,000 target last week. Money from fans just keeps on coming on the Indiegogo page, meaning “two extra games will be added to each zone”.
Damien Hirst, Curator? (Shudder)
“Now Hirst, too, has reached an uncomfortable stage in his career, embedded in the establishment he once goaded. On past performance, he might be expected to try even harder to shock, to prove his relevance. Instead, by founding Newport Street, he is doing something far more likely to shore up his status and secure his legacy. In promoting his own view of contemporary art through the medium of a big, public gallery, he is testing his power to shape tastes and markets, and his ability to exert control.”
The Hunt For The Last Few Missing Faberge Eggs
“Today seven imperial eggs are still missing, along with many of their “surprises”, but an impassioned group of experts and enthusiasts from Russia, the UK, the US, Switzerland and Finland are on their trail. Géza von Habsburg, one of the world’s leading Fabergé experts, has been on the egg hunt for more than 40 years.”
It’s Leap-Second Day. Do You Know Where Your Computer Is?
“About 50 years ago, we started keeping time with atomic clocks—clocks that operate according to the oscillations of a tiny atom.—and in order to keep these clocks in step with the earth, we add an extra second every now and again. The trouble is: the world’s computers, often running on ancient software code, aren’t always configured to accommodate this extra second. And that can cause problems.”
Royal Opera House Audience Boos Rape Scene In “William Tell”
“We thought maybe that would be the end of it, although I had been forewarned by a notice about the production containing nudity, and sure enough, suddenly she was starkers on a very long table. They were all pawing her and then the heckling from the crowd started. There was a lot of booing during that, then it subsided.”
Indie Musicians Hope Apple Music Changes The Streaming Biz (As In Make It Profitable)
“The belief is that the revenue for indie artists on Apple Music—even if it’s minuscule per stream—may mean more bucks overall than what they get from streaming competitors. And with Apple Music’s new social network, Connect, indie artists may finally have the definitive place to interact directly with their fans—like Myspace a decade ago, but with way more weight behind it.”
EL James Hosts A Twitter Chat About “Fifty Shades Of Grey” And Things Quickly Go South
alongside the serious queries came a deluge of questions that made fun of James’s much-criticised prose style, including jibes such as “Do you get paid per adjective?”, “Have you ever held a dictionary?” and “Did you ever consider using a thesaurus, or did that sound too much like hard work?”
Christian Thielemann Gets A New Job In Bayreuth
“The title of music director is essentially a new one at Bayreuth — officials there said it was given briefly in 1931 to Wilhelm Furtwängler — and the decision to bestow it upon Mr. Thielemann showed his growing influence at the festival.”
The Top-Earning Musician In The Past Year
Katy Perry was the third highest-earning celebrity overall, behind boxers Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao who fought a highly anticipated match in May in Las Vegas.
Museum Quandry: In A World Of 3D Printers, What Happens To Originals?
The proliferation of replicas does stand to diminish the value of the real thing. Susan Ades, who is in charge of the exhibit’s 3‑D-printing operation, told me that she believes the technology ought to be carefully deployed and fully disclosed in galleries. “For museums,” she said, “the real thing is what we have going. Authenticity.”
Former NYCity Ballet Principal Albert Evans, 46,
“Mr. Evans joined City Ballet in 1988 and was named a soloist in 1991 and a principal four years later, becoming only the second black dancer in the company’s history to hold that position. The first, Arthur Mitchell, now 81, performed with City Ballet in the 1950s and ’60s and in 1969 helped found Dance Theater of Harlem.”
Two-Year Stalemate Between The Hartford Symphony And Its Musicians
The orchestra says it’s “severely undercapitalized” and struggling with annual deficits of more than $1.3 million, a fully-drawn $2 million line of credit, falling subscriptions and ticket sales that are flat.
John Lassiter: Technology Is Changing The Vocabulary Of Film Storytelling
“What’s great about film is it constantly reinvents itself. It started as a sheer novelty, those images moving on the screen. Then it went and every step of the way a new technology started being added — sound, color. What happens is the film grammar of storytelling evolves and changes as well. The technology goes directly with the evolution of the storytelling.”