“In the 56 overnight markets, the Oscars show averaged a 22.4 rating, just below last year’s figure of 22.5. Each rating point represents the percentage of households tuned in.”
Archives for February 2017
Arts Council England Readjusts Major YouTube Strategy Off Unrealistic Expectations
“Low subscriber rates, minimal commercial opportunities and barriers to entry for arts organisations have forced Arts Council England (ACE)’s £1.8m Youtube network for the arts to readjust as it enters its final year of funding.”
Report: Defining Canadian Culture And Wondering How To Promote It
For decades Canada has promoted Canadian culture with “Canadian content rules” meant to foster creation of Canadian art working in the shadow of the great American industrial entertainment complex. But what constitutes promoting Canadian culture in the era of content everywhere? This IPSOS study went across the country to find out. The issues aren’t surprising.
Why Paste Magazine Decided To Return To Print
The magazine had abandoned print in 2010 but stayed online. But print now seems a viable strategy again. “This isn’t a return to Paste Magazine. We’re not reliant on getting 200,000 people to be part of our rate base so we can go sell ads to Ford, BMW and Jack Daniels. Though we do have some advertising in the quarterly, it’s a small portion of our model. We’re reliant on our subscribers to foot the bill for what we do.”
The Digital World Has Changed The Very Idea Of What Dictionaries Are
“The online OED now allows the reader to click on citations from Shakespeare and Milton to get the extended passage they’re drawn from, and readers can easily go online to do the same with citations from other writers. Online dictionaries like Wordnik already use algorithms to construct citation lists on the fly; at the limit, you could think of an online dictionary as simply a lexicographical web interface… The advent of online historical corpora has also altered the lexicographer’s method. Word sleuthery has become a game that anyone with access to a search engine can play.”
The Idea Of “Willpower” Is A Dangerous And Outdated Thing
“Ignoring the idea of willpower will sound absurd to most patients and therapists, but, as a practicing addiction psychiatrist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, I’ve become increasingly skeptical about the very concept of willpower, and concerned by the self-help obsession that surrounds it. Countless books and blogs offer ways to “boost self-control,” or even to “meditate your way to more willpower,” but what’s not widely recognized is that new research has shown some of the ideas underlying these messages to be inaccurate.”
Thirty Years After He Died, Andy Warhol Still Has The Measure Of American Culture
“How much responsibility does Warhol bear for our culture’s shift from substance to flash, human interest to spectacle? How much responsibility does a mirror bear for whatever beauty or ugliness it beholds? Warhol loved both the heights and depths of American culture, and reflected it back at us through his work, which remains resonant to this day.”
That Whole Bringing Tourists Into The Oscars Telecast Thing? Here’s What Went Wrong…
“Our relationship with the icons of culture has changed, refracted through our politics. At the Oscars, the people who made those movies look out of touch in their Harry Winston jewelry and blue velvet dinner jackets. When they declaim a wall on the Mexican border, or quote the Koran, it sounds naïve, even insulting, to a good-sized number of people. Somehow not even movies about the emotional pain of working class Massachusetts townies or tough modern Texan cowboys shooting it out against the backdrop of economic disaster could get over that hump.”
Small Record Store Chain Steps Up To Buy 70 HMV Canada Music Stores
HMV said it was closing the stores across Canada because it was losing tons of money. But upstart music retailer Sunrise Records is making a major bet it can expand quickly to make the stores profitable. “A lot of the younger consumers still love having something tangible,” argues the company’s enterprising young CEO
Why Technology Is Making Us Feel Less Secure
“The more technology multiplies, the more it amplifies instability. Things already don’t quite do what they claim. The fixes just make things worse. And so, ordinary devices aren’t likely to feel more workable and functional as technology marches forward. If anything, they are likely to become even less so. Technology is becoming a force that surrounds humans—but not necessarily in the service of human ends. Technology’s role has begun to shift, from serving human users to pushing them out of the way so that the technologized world can service its own ends.”
In Defense Of Cultural Criticism Even During The Trump Presidency
“It’s hard to defend doing anything except being in the streets” right now, but the space where the arts lie “is not an apolitical place, it is just not owned by government. In this aesthetic space, the arts explore a less confined politics than the one that controls the state. The state is not the beginning, end, or the reason for this space.”
Inspiration For A Young Violinist
Francesca Dego, in a Q&A, asked about her musical guilty pleasures: “My guilty pleasures are usually not musical! Does not practising count? I’ve gone on holiday a couple of times without my violin and although I try to convince myself that bringing it would have been useless, because sunbathing and practising don’t coexist well, guilt usually strikes after a couple of days.”
Moonlight Writer/Director Barry Jenkins And Original Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney Accepted The Best Adapted Screenplay Award Together
“‘I told my students, ‘Be in love with the process, not the result,’ ‘ Jenkins said — but admitted he did like the result.”
In The UK, Waterstones Opens ‘Unbranded’ Small Bookstores To Some Backlash
Did the large chain do it to avoid the backlash against national chains on high streets? Of course not, says the managing director. It’s because the small shops are independent. (Except for being owned by Waterstones.)
A Shoving Match, Possibly Involving A Neo-Nazi, Broke Out At The Minneapolis Institute Of Art This Weekend
Three people, at least one of whom who appeared to have a white nationalist symbol on his jacket, argued with a group that had been protesting the president’s executive orders on immigrants – and the fight went all the way to the third floor of the museum, where, amid the 18th century European art, guards had to subdue the fighters.
Just In Case You Missed A Few Of The Award Winners In The Theatre, Here’s Your Catch-Up List
The New York Times debuts a new movie recommendation service (will this be an app someday soon?) with legal, aboveboard ways to catch up on the Oscar winners from the comfort of the couch.
The Sculptor Camille Claudel May Finally Be Getting The Recognition She Longed For
After an apprenticeship, and a relationship, with Rodin, Claudel’s art was overshadowed by his. She was committed to a mental institution by her family – but film lovers know this from not one but two films about her. Now, she’s getting her own museum, and the work speaks for itself.
There Was A Time When ‘Casablanca’ Was An Object Of Art-House Worship, But That Time Is (Finally?) Ending
The movie, which used to be a cultural touchstone so potent that it made audiences understand that characters like Harry and Sally were perfect for each other, has fallen off in recent years. Is it because Americans don’t feel the shadow of WWII anymore?
As William Hogarth Fans Know, A Gin Craze Nearly Destroyed 18th Century London
And it’s all because Britain was at war with France – which made French brandy hard to come by.
Sergei Polunin Says He Was Tricked, And That Ballet Dancers Need Agents
The take of the ‘bad boy of ballet,’ who left the Royal Ballet in a surprise move in 2012: “The company sort of owns you. I thought about my future. In 10 years’ time, I would be in the same position as when I started – the best dancer in the world, but still sharing a flat. You’re an adult, but you live like a kid.”
A New Horror Film Helps Redefine The Genre, Gets 100 Percent On Rotten Tomatoes, And Wins The Box Office
Time to reevaluate horror? None of the Best Picture nominees got anything like 100 percent from the critics. But “Get Out,” starring comedian Jordan Peele, “is the latest in a string of bloody horror films that attempt to contribute to America’s cultural conversation in a meaningful way.”
So Here’s The Moment-By-Moment Of How The Oscars Flub Went Down
USA Today had stationed reporters in various parts of the theatre, and here’s their take: “As the La La Land filmmakers take the stage to accept best picture, the accountant from PriceWaterhouseCoopers jumped up and said, ‘He (Beatty) took the wrong envelope!’ and goes running onstage. Craziness breaks out. No one knows how Beatty got the best actress envelope instead of the best picture envelope. ‘Oh, my God. Moonlight won, Moonlight won,’ a stagehand says, her hands on her head.”
Eileen Myles Is A Badass Of Poetry (And A Whole Lot More)
And now she has a new poetry record album. Yes, record album: “Happily at Naropa University there’s something called the Harry Smith house — it’s a little house on the Naropa campus — which Ambrose Bye uses to record everyone all summer. I had gone into that little house the summer before and recorded a shitload of poems, new and old, and did it in a really messy fashion. I was reading and throwing the pages down, and Ambrose was doing the sound stuff, and Anne Waldman, who I’ve known forever, was there.”
The Agency In Charge Of The U.S.’s Internet Is Just About As Divided As The Country
The story is long and winding, involving massive public comment and a stonewalling GOP, but “you can’t blame petty politics alone for the mess the FCC finds itself in. Debates over net neutrality and cable boxes stem from an ideological shift in Washington. In earlier days, it was ‘good regulation versus bad regulation,’ says Chris Lewis, vice president of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. Now it’s ‘more regulation versus less regulation.'”
Is There New Evidence In The Story Of Beethoven’s ‘Immortal Beloved’?
Maybe. Of course, “many rival camps on the identity of Beethoven’s ‘immortal beloved’ have developed over the years,” but it could be a married, religious aristocrat who held the key to Beethoven’s heart – and his later, more intense work.
When Will Dev Patel Get His Chance To Be A Leading Man?
Here’s the deal: “It’s not a given that he’ll remain on the industry’s radar for very long. That’s because to be a leading man in Hollywood requires more than just box office success, an award-winning list of credits, or even the esteem of your peers. You also (still) need to embody the American film industry’s narrow ideals of romantic masculinity.”
So The Oscars Happened, With Mostly Predicted Results – Until The Wild Ending
Here’s the complete list.
The Oscars End With An Envelope Mix-Up At The Worst Possible Time
WHAT. JUST. HAPPENED. (What just happened was that La La Land was announced as Best Picture, but … that was fake news, an envelope mix-up. The real Best Picture winner: Moonlight. See the video of it all here.)
The Emerging Oscar Powerhouse That Does Nothing Specific, But Also Everything
FilmNation is behind “Arrival” and a Judd Apatow movie that sold for $12 million at Sundance. “The two movies thrust FilmNation into the limelight and pose a tantalizing question: can a company unaffiliated with any conglomerate become a powerhouse in the challenging climate of the 21st-century entertainment industry?”
The Archival Battle Of The 175-Year Old Symphonies
The New York Philharmonic faces off against the Vienna Phil, both turning 175 years old this spring, in a joint exhibition of their archives in Manhattan. Can the NY institution measure up to this? “‘Damn and blast it! Confound it! Wake up!’ the conductor and composer Otto Nicolai wrote in his impassioned draft of the Vienna Philharmonic’s foundation charter.”