Tuesday, January 10
Paper Tiger (Reinventing The News) "Newspapers used to have a monopoly on information, and it is taking them a long time to get used to the idea that they have lost it. A century ago, in every American city, various Heralds, Timeses, Tribunes and Gazettes may have competed with each other, but as a mass medium, the newspaper enjoyed total primacy. Everything about newspapering is negotiable these days: who writes, who reads, who pays, what should be covered and how. Even as they shovel the daily quota of prose, editors are pondering existential questions. What gives a newspaper its soul?" Newsday 01/09/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 8:52 am
Why We Yawn "Yawning is an ancient, primitive act. Humans do it even before they're born, opening wide in the womb. Some snakes unhinge their jaws to do it. One species of penguins yawns as part of mating. Only now are researchers beginning to understand why we yawn, when we yawn and why we yawn back." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 6:48 pm
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Museums Are Good For Your Health? Visiting a museum is a good way to relieve stress, says a new study. "Analysis of 28 City high flyers who spent their lunch break viewing art found their stress levels fell by 45% after 40 minutes at the Guildhall art gallery in London." The Guardian (UK) 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 7:37 pm
Peru Vs. Yale "Yale historian Hiram Bingham rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911, and, backed by the National Geographic Society, returned with large expeditions in 1912 and 1915, each time carting out - with supposed special permission from Peruvian President Augusto B. Leguía - crates filled with archeological finds. But now, Peru is threatening to sue the Ivy League school, claiming the permission was either given illegally or misunderstood." Christian Science Monitor 12/29/05
Posted: 01/09/2006 3:56 pm
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New Florida Orchestra Irks Fans Of Old Orchestra Last fall South Florida's Renaissance Chamber Orchestra abruptly closed, leaving patrons and subscribers angry. Now a new group has formed with many of the same musicians. "Normally a new musical organization arising from the ashes of a failed one would be a positive development greeted with enthusiasm. In this case, former Renaissance musicians and audience members are reacting to the new venture with emotions ranging from disbelief and consternation to intense anger." South Florida Sun-Sentinel 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 7:49 am
An Avian Duet A group of musicians in Pittsburgh try to provoke birds into singing with them. "Some of the birds were more than just stimulated by the improvisatory serenade. A few chose to interact with the performers, who used extended techniques on their instrument to mimic bird song." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 8:59 pm
Sellars To Direct Mozart's "Muslim" Opera Director Peter Sellars is planning a "radical modern production" of Mozart's unfinished work Zaide. "Mozart was writing about Europeans in the Muslim world directly in his lifetime. The piece is not a historical vignette. Even then, Europe was obsessed with the 'menace' of the Muslim world. It's about how Europeans engage Muslims in a way that is positive, and the concept of mercy coming from both sides." The Guardian (UK) 01/10/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 7:33 pm
Profitable Music With Low Sales Online music distribution is changing the economics of the music recording business. "In most music stores, CD's of, say, Chinese or Kenyan pop music would be consigned to the world-music bin as a good will gesture. But the economics of online stores is changing the financial calculations of the music business, making it profitable to sell a relatively small number of copies of a song, as long as a compact disc is not manufactured and distributed." The New York Times 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 6:24 pm
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Italian Filmmakers Protest Berlusconi There is "a growing movement in Italy's left-leaning artistic community that has galvanized against the center-right Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ahead of a general election due in spring. The uprising in the arts includes a string of movies explicitly targeting Berlusconi, whose tight grip on the country's media through his Mediaset empire provides plenty of ammunition to opponents with concerns about free speech." Yahoo! (AP) 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 8:59 am
Dallas To Do Arts Ed Study Dallas has beat out 20 other cities for a $1 million grant to study which children in the city's public schools have access to arts education and find ways to get it to those that don't. MSNBC (Dallas Business Journal) 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 8:49 am
An African Tribe Markets Culture The African country of Mali is very poor, and the Tuareg area of Essouk is among the poorest regions. The Tuareg have a festival, "which has evolved from an annual 'Takoubelt', or Tuareg gathering, that they're marketing to attract tourists. "With almost no natural resources, its culture and especially its music are among the few things it can export." BBC 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 7:56 am
Cal State Fullerton Gets A PAC California State University at Fullerton has opened a new $48 million performing arts center. "Instead of the originally proposed single hall that would serve multiple purposes, Fullerton ended up with three theaters of different sizes specifically designed for dramatic, instrumental and choral performances. Overall, the new venues are much better suited to the college's needs." Orange County Register 01/08/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 6:53 pm
A New generation Of British Arts Leaders "In the summer of 2004, 27 curators, theatre managers and other administrators were named as the inaugural fellows of the new £1m Clore Leadership Programme, designed to tackle a perceived deficit in training for leaders in the arts. It was hoped they would provide an answer to repeated problems of poor management in major national institutions and offer an alternative to the trail of Americans, Australians and Europeans who have arrived to head everything from the South Bank Centre to Tate Modern. And, it seems, they have." The Independent (UK) 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 6:02 pm
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Mary Cassatt Was A Feminist So says Germaine Greer: "Her importance is embodied in those precious works that capture the excitement and tension of respectable women on the verge of the 20th century, the moment before the bonnet and the stays were finally torn off and thrown away for ever." The Guardian (UK) 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 8:39 pm
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Preserving The Play "We forget that the live performing arts, and particularly theatre, are more than almost anything else at the mercy of the whims of producers. It's difficult enough, of course, to persuade anyone to mount a new play. But once that play has finished its initial run, and at best the production revived once in a subsequent season by the same theatre, even a very good play is likely to disappear into oblivion. It's almost a unique problem." The Guardian (UK) 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 7:26 pm
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The Well-Funded Poets Three years ago, Ruth Lilly left $175 million to Poetry Magazine, making it the richest literary magazine in the world. So what's happened since to the cause of poetry? Boston Globe 01/08/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 9:52 am
Canadian Film Magazine Quits "Take One Magazine, the national film magazine since 1992, has announced that it has suspended publication. Despite the magazine's being run as a not-for-profit organization, founding publisher and editor Wyndham Wise says Take One had run into cash-flow problems that were becoming too difficult to contend with." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 8:46 pm
Reports Question Truth Of Best-Selling Memoir Questions have been raised about the truth of James Frey's best-selling memoir, "A Million Little Pieces." "The book, originally published in 2003 by the Nan A. Talese imprint of Doubleday, soared to the top of the best-seller lists in the fall after it was chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her television book club. Ms. Winfrey's enthusiastic endorsement helped the book to sell more than two million copies last year, making it the second-highest-selling book of 2005, behind only "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." The New York Times 01/10/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 6:58 pm
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IMAX Puts Up Big Numbers "In a year when box office receipts were down 5 per cent at mainstream theatres, Imax Corp. saw ticket sales climb 35 per cent in 2005. Much of that increase was driven by the conversion of several Hollywood films to its giant screens." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 10:22 am
Rating The Movie Experience "Box office may be down, but sales of iPods, Xboxes, cellphones, MP3 players, TiVos and plasma screen TVs are going up. Make that ... skyrocketing. People are spending more time every year with entertainment — nearly every new consumer electronics gadget exists to provide it. But with today's entertainment coming in all sorts of shapes and sizes, two-hour movies are simply no longer the first-choice package." Los Angeles Times 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 10:19 am
Defining The Producers For Oscar The Producers' Guild is limiting the number of producers eligible for Oscar credit. "Making the grade is important because it's the only way the phrase 'Oscar-winning producer' will end up in your obituary should your film win. For the guild, it means playing bad cop, which seems appropriate given that's what producers are often forced to do when making a film. But the organization has a bigger agenda in trying to rein in the proliferation of unearned producer credits on movies, which studios give away like freebies just to stroke egos." Los Angeles Times 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 7:09 pm
Blockbuster's Downfall Bloackbuster is America's No. 1 video rental chain. But the company is struggling and on the way out. As far the studios are concerned, other than collecting the money that Blockbuster owes them for past movies, the video chain has little relevance to their future. Viacom perspicuously divorced itself from Blockbuster by spinning it off to its shareholders, and, as one Viacom executive told me, "Blockbuster will certainly not survive and it will not be missed." It is another zombie in Hollywood. Slate 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 5:53 pm
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IMAX Puts Up Big Numbers "In a year when box office receipts were down 5 per cent at mainstream theatres, Imax Corp. saw ticket sales climb 35 per cent in 2005. Much of that increase was driven by the conversion of several Hollywood films to its giant screens." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 10:22 am
Rating The Movie Experience "Box office may be down, but sales of iPods, Xboxes, cellphones, MP3 players, TiVos and plasma screen TVs are going up. Make that ... skyrocketing. People are spending more time every year with entertainment — nearly every new consumer electronics gadget exists to provide it. But with today's entertainment coming in all sorts of shapes and sizes, two-hour movies are simply no longer the first-choice package." Los Angeles Times 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 10:19 am
Defining The Producers For Oscar The Producers' Guild is limiting the number of producers eligible for Oscar credit. "Making the grade is important because it's the only way the phrase 'Oscar-winning producer' will end up in your obituary should your film win. For the guild, it means playing bad cop, which seems appropriate given that's what producers are often forced to do when making a film. But the organization has a bigger agenda in trying to rein in the proliferation of unearned producer credits on movies, which studios give away like freebies just to stroke egos." Los Angeles Times 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 7:09 pm
Blockbuster's Downfall Bloackbuster is America's No. 1 video rental chain. But the company is struggling and on the way out. As far the studios are concerned, other than collecting the money that Blockbuster owes them for past movies, the video chain has little relevance to their future. Viacom perspicuously divorced itself from Blockbuster by spinning it off to its shareholders, and, as one Viacom executive told me, "Blockbuster will certainly not survive and it will not be missed." It is another zombie in Hollywood. Slate 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 5:53 pm
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Washington Ballet Rejects Kaiser Mediation Offer Leadership of the Washington Ballet have rejected an offer by Kennedy Center head Michael Kaiser to mediate the company's labor negotiations. The company is currently shut down. "The fact is there is still a lot of bargaining that needs to take place," said Jason Palmquist, the ballet's executive director. "We don't feel that this time is the right time to seek mediation." Washington Post 01/10/06
Posted: 01/10/2006 7:38 am
Dance Through The Ages What does it mean to dance at the various stages of life? The Guardian (UK) 01/10/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 7:19 pm
Joffrey's New Chicago Highrise Home "The Joffrey Tower, at the corner of State and Randolph streets — directly across from the flagship Marshall Field's (soon to be Macy's) department store — will have retail tenants on the first two floors and condominiums on floors 5 through 32. The third and fourth floors will be the new permanent home of the Joffrey Ballet, which acquired naming rights when it purchased 45,000 square feet of space. The floors will include the Joffrey administrative offices plus seven state-of-the-art rehearsal studios and a black-box theatre." Backstage 01/09/06
Posted: 01/09/2006 5:20 pm
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