Crowdsourced Animation Through Facebook With dozens of animators pitching in through a specially built Facebook application, the slick clip from the crowdsourcing specialists at Mass Animation is a rare "art by committee" success story. Wired 11/20/09

How Downloading Is Changing Music "Digital downloading and distribution, illegally or otherwise, has had a greater effect on the recording industry than anything in its history. As the legal variety grows rapidly, driven most significantly by iTunes, so those old-school players are having to adopt radical new business plans to compete in the brave new world of music." The Australian 11/20/09

Art Basel Miami Faces Chanes Some "60 exhibitors from last year's Art Basel Miami Beach are not returning, including Berlin's Arndt & Partner, London galleries Waddington and Maureen Paley, and New York's Per Skarstedt. Fair organiser have added 65 new exhibitors, including some who had previously been turned away. The 2009 edition now boasts 266 dealers from 33 countries. Another big change is the fair's physical appearance..." The Art Newspaper 11/19/09

Has Paris Nightlife Gone To Sleep? "According to an online petition entitled "When the Night Quietly Dies," which was organized by a group from the techno and electronic music scene, the City of Lights is in danger of becoming the "European Capital of Sleep." Among the complaints listed in the petition are the closure of leading bars, strict rules on noise and smoking regulations." Der Spiegel 11/20/09

Hollywood's Ten Most Overpaid Actors Forbes has made a list based on studios' return on investment. Forbes 11/19/09

YouTube To Provide Automatic Subtitles The titles will make it possible for deaf users to read videos. "The machine-generated captions will initially be generated in English. At first they will only be found on 13 channels." BBC 11/20/09

Anti-Trust Concerns Delay Ambassador-Live Nation Merger "Ambassador Theatre Group's £90 million purchase of Live Nation's UK theatres is being investigated by the [government's] Office of Fair Trading, in a move that will prevent the two businesses being fully integrated until early 2010." The Stage (UK) 11/19/09

Tchaikovsky's Operatic Counterpart To Nutcracker Director Francesca Zambello recounts the story (in both senses) of Cherevichki (a/k/a "The Tsarina's Slippers"), Tchaikovsky's only comic opera, which is based on a madcap Christmas Eve story by Nikolai Gogol. (Zambello is directing a new staging of the work at Covent Garden.) The Guardian (UK) 11/19/09

How Will Religion Evolve? Maybe Into 'The Church Of Green' John Tierney: "Does religion have a future? Who looks more like an evolutionary dead end: the religious American or the agnostic European? Or will both give way to some sort of compromise? … One possibility that occurs to me is a version of environmentalism, but with better music and with rituals that are more elegant than sorting garbage." New York Times 11/19/09

Best Documentary Oscar Semifinalists Announced; Guess Who's Missing? "Most of the top-grossing and critically praised documentaries of the year [are not on the list], including Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, Chris Rock's Good Hair, the struggling rock band chronicle Anvil! The Story of Anvil and R.J. Cutler's inside peek at Vogue magazine, The September Issue. (The Michael Jackson doc This Is It was released too late to be eligible.) Los Angeles Times 11/20/09

How Michael Moore's Oscar Snub Makes People Happy Patrick Goldstein: "Let's be honest. Is there really anyone who is up in arms over Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story being left off the Academy's 15-title short list for the best feature documentary? In fact, I would argue that when it comes to a snub of a much-ballyhooed film, the Academy has never managed to make more people happier." Los Angeles Times 11/19/09

NY Times Recognizes Seattle As 'A Proud And Meaningful Theater Town' Brian Colburn, managing director of the Intiman Theatre, tells the paper: "There's probably as much theater here as in the city of Los Angeles, but the population is one-sixth the size. You can walk from theater to theater here, meet friends or colleagues at a cafe." New York Times 11/20/09

Better-Looking Athletes More Likely To Win "Elite athletes distinguish themselves through hard work, grit and, most importantly, raw talent. However new research, along with a study conducted by New Scientist, points to another trait of the most accomplished jocks: a handsome face." It seems that "the same genetic variations could influence both traits." New Scientist 11/19/09

Oprah To End Her Talk Show In 2011 "Oprah Winfrey plans to … retire the Chicago-based syndicated talk show that made her rich, famous and, if not a kingmaker, a maker of a media empire, several bestselling authors and perhaps even a U.S. President." When her syndication contract ends in 2011, she will devote her energies to her new cable TV network. Chicago Tribune 11/19/09

America's 'Booker Of Bookers' (Or, How Flannery O'Connor Is Like Salman Rushdie) "In an online poll conducted by the National Book Foundation, [Flannery O'Connor's] collection 'The Complete Stories' was named the best work to have won the National Book Award for fiction in the contest's 60-year history." The competition was formidable: collected stories of John Cheever, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty as well as Ellison's Invisible Man and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. New York Times 11/19/09

Shakespeare's Star-Crossed Lovers In An Old-Age Home Director Tom Morris's Juliet and Her Romeo, planned for next spring at the Bristol Old Vic, "uses Shakespeare's text, but casts the lovers in their 80s, with their anxious children, not their parents, seeking to prevent an imprudent and costly match." What's On Stage (UK) 11/13/09

The Mystery Of Ancient Roman Painting "Very little remains, and what remains is puzzling. … [Most of the survivors] were mural paintings, preserved (ironically) by the lava of Vesuvius, while the paintings in other cities, such as Rome itself, were destroyed or faded away. Was the art of these two provincial towns inferior to the art of the capital? If we saw real Roman painting, would that make the work that's survived look very average? Or is this as good as it got?" The Independent (UK) 11/20/09

The Composer Who Just Can't Write For Normal Ensembles That would be Bang on a Can's Julia Wolfe, whose latest album has works for four drum sets, six pianists, eight double basses, and nine bagpipers. She's written an accordion concerto and a piece for musicians in pedicabs. "The last time I did something practical … was [in graduate school] at Yale - I wrote a woodwind quintet." Philadelphia Inquirer 11/15/09

Edward Elgar Was A Terrible Trombone Player A newly rediscovered letter reveals the awful truth. "His skills were so poor that when the composer from Worcester started playing a specially inscribed trombone for a dear friend, she ran out of the room in a fit of hysterical laughter, leaving the composer swearing in frustration." The Independent (UK) 11/20/09

And What Is Art For, Anyway? The Independent offers a debate on the question, with entries from, among others, theatre director Simon McBurney, novelist Lionel Shriver, Serpentine Gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones, and nine thoughtful readers. (Says Shriver, "This assignment is a formula for sounding like a prat.") The Independent (UK) 11/19/09

Jeanne-Claude, Christo's Collaborator & Wife, Dies At 74 "Artist Jeanne-Claude, who created the 2005 Central Park installation 'The Gates' and other large scale 'wrapping' projects around the globe with her husband Christo," has died "at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm." Associated Press 11/19/09

Oxford To Get A Storytelling Museum "The Story Museum has existed online for the past four years, holding events across Oxfordshire and running storytelling pilots in schools, but [a £2.5 million] donation enables it to start constructing a permanent home in Oxford." The Guardian (UK) 11/19/09

Philip Roth's The Humbling Shortlisted For Bad-Sex Prize "Roth can comfort himself with the fact that a roll call of literary fiction's great and good, from Booker winner John Banville to acclaimed Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Goncourt winner Jonathan Littell and Whitbread winner Paul Theroux," are also in competition this year for the Literary Review's bad sex in fiction award. The Guardian (UK) 11/18/09

In Armenia, Spectacular New Arts Center Uplifts The Nation "The center, a mad work of architectural megalomania and historical recovery, is one of the strangest but most memorable museum buildings to open in ages. Imagine an Art Deco version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stretching nearly the height of the Empire State Building, its decorations coded with Armenian symbolism. Did I mention the artificial waterfalls?" The New York Times 11/19/09

One Medium Popcorn, Please, And A Larger Pair Of Pants "A medium-sized popcorn and medium soda at the nation's largest movie chain pack the nutritional equivalent of three Quarter Pounders topped with 12 pats of butter, according to a report released today by the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest." Los Angeles Times 11/19/09

What Community Orchestras Taught Joseph Schwantner "They are more limited in terms of their experience, and to engage a new work is a major challenge," the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer says. "I've learned that you have to be patient; you have to give them an opportunity to digest this music and make it their own. But ... I've seen them rise to the challenge." Detroit Free Press 11/19/09

Southern California Libraries Hard Hit By Govt. Cuts "Kim Bui-Burton, president of the California Library Assn., described conditions as 'extraordinarily difficult.' Never lavishly funded, libraries started to falter with last year's credit and mortgage disasters. Now, she said, they are being battered by deep state and local cuts." Los Angeles Times 11/19/09

Dancer Plans To Induce Epileptic Seizure In Performance "Rita Marcalo has stopped taking her medication ahead of the event at The Bradford Playhouse, which the audience will be invited to film. Arts Council England, which is funding the performance, said it aimed to raise awareness about the condition." An epilepsy charity has "urged Ms Marcalo to reconsider the event." BBC 11/19/09

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg As Music Director More than midway through her three-year contract as music director of the conductorless New Century Chamber Orchestra, "Salerno-Sonnenberg hinted strongly that she's inclined to stay a fourth year.... For now, New Century concerts have taken on the fascinating cast of a soloist meshing her distinctive traits with an integrated orchestral texture." San Francisco Chronicle 11/19/09

For A Cowboy Ex-President, Stern Designs A Quiet Library "Architectural plans released today for the $250-million, 225,000-square-foot George W. Bush Presidential Center, to be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, carry no hint of the swagger, bravado or taste for confrontation that Bush was known for as president." Rather, Robert A.M. Stern's design is handsome and contextual. Los Angeles Times 11/18/09

If Day-Lewis Has Two Left Feet, Nine Viewers Won't Know Daniel Day-Lewis told Oprah "that he managed to avoid dancing in a movie directed by Rob Marshall, who happens to be an accomplished Broadway choreographer. That's kind of like signing up for swimming lessons and then not getting in the water." Los Angeles Times 11/18/09

Live Online, Seeking Better Data On Arts' Economic Impact On Friday, "an assortment of academics, federal bureaucrats, and staffers from private think tanks and research organizations will assemble in Washington, and in cyberspace at www.nea.gov." The forum is an attempt "to broaden and improve the statistical evidence" that what artists do "is not just fluff and filigree, but part of the dollars-and-cents fiber of the country." Los Angeles Times 11/19/09