Ideas The Solo Cartoonist Created in the traditional way, a cartoon takes teams of artists and years of work. Produced at a digital animation studio like Pixar, it takes banks of advanced computers and $100 million give-or-take for a full-length feature. Andy Murdock is creating his cartoon feature on home computer equipment, doing all the animation himself. "Even five years ago, it would have been hard to imagine an animator, working alone in his studio, making a 3-D feature. But fast computers and software like 3D Studio Max, Maya and SoftImage are making high-quality animation more of a do-it-yourself process." And Murdock is showing his work-in-progress at this year's Sundance Online Film Festival. Take a look. Sundance Online Film Festival [Windows Media Player required] 01/03 Posted: 01/21/2003 11:43 pm Visual Arts Boston ICA Gets New Leadership "Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art has hired a new curator, Nicholas Baume, a 37-year-old Australian who has been the contemporary curator at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum since 1998. Baume, who assumes the job in March, replaces Jessica Morgan, who resigned from the ICA in November to move back to her native England, where she is a curator at London's Tate Modern." Boston Globe 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 5:00 am Berlin's Troubling Deal For A Big Collection At virtually no cost, debt-ridden Berlin got the chance last month to "show one of the most distinguished private collections of its kind in the world — one that, moreover, has never been shown in its entirety to the public. Yet the collection has been unwelcome elsewhere because it belongs to Friedrich Christian Flick, the multimillionaire heir of a leading Nazi arms manufacturer. And for Berlin, a city that has served variously as the epicenter of the avant-garde and Nazi despotism, that fact presents a troubling dilemma." The New York Times 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 1:25 am Music Nagano to Montreal? "The name game at l'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal got a lot hotter on Monday, as Kent Nagano was outed as the top contender for the music director post abandoned last spring by Charles Dutoit. Nagano, a 51-year-old American conductor, is in negotiations with the orchestra after being chosen by its search committee, according to a report in La Presse. The Montreal newspaper cited an unnamed source 'very close to one of the most influential members' of the 13-person committee. Marie-Josée Desrochers, the OSM's director of communications, said that the committee has made its selection, but would not confirm that Nagano is the man. She said the matter is in the hands of the OSM hiring committee." The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 7:33 am How To Win Friends And Influence People, RIAA-Style The Recording Industry Association of America has discovered a whole new way to tick off consumers looking for ways around being gouged by CD distributors and, well, the RIAA. The new plan calls for the prosecution of internet service providers whose users illegally download and share copyrighted music. The strategy is most decidedly not getting good reviews, and one internet security consultant has compared it to prosecuting the highway department because drug smugglers use roads. "But the RIAA scored a big win against an ISP on Tuesday, when a federal judge ruled that Verizon Communications must turn over the name of a Verizon Internet subscriber who allegedly downloaded 600 songs through file-trading network Kazaa in one day." Wired 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 6:23 am The Best-Selling Band You've Never Heard Mannheim Steamroller is a man, a band, and a marketing juggernaut, and no one really seems to understand why. The music is new age pop with just enough intelligence to be slightly more palatable than, say, Yanni or John Tesh. "Mannheim is really just one person, a 53-year-old, bearded, wool-sweatered and slightly rotund former jingle writer named Chip Davis. He lives near Omaha, composing what he calls 'Elizabethan-style rock' by himself, recording with hired hands as he needs them, for his own label, American Gramophone. He pockets about $4 for every album he sells. He owns three mansions and a Saberliner jet. He smiles a lot." Washington Post 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 6:17 am Kronos At 30 The Kronos Quartet, which revolutionized the chamber music experience and breathed life into a faltering new music movement when it formed back in the 1970s, turns 30 this year. Thirty years is a very long life for any quartet, let alone one which makes its living, as does Kronos, playing exclusively modern music. And while there are probably more daring ensembles about today, Kronos remains a revered original, and none of today's successful contemporary music groups would deny that they owe much to the San Francisco-based foursome. San Francisco Chronicle 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 6:07 am Reneging on the Calgary Phil? Several Calgary aldermen are discussing the possibility of yanking back a $250,000 pledge to the cash-strapped Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, which filed for bankruptcy protection and suspended operations last fall. The city's contribution was contingent upon the provincial government of Alberta offering up a like amount, but Alberta offered the orchestra an advance on future grants instead, and that has provided the excuse some aldermen opposed to the bailout wanted to reopen debate. The aldermen insist the provincial contribution is a loan, which does not meet the city's 'matching' requirements. Provincial officials had insisted earlier that the funds were not a loan. Calgary Herald 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 5:06 am Previously: Some Hope For The Calgary Philharmonic The bankrupt Calgary Philharmonic has received pledges from the city and the Province of Alberta contingent on the Canadian government kicking in some money as well. "The orchestra has been under bankruptcy protection since Oct. 15 and did not perform for 45 days last fall. In December, it released a business plan that includes pay cuts for musicians and fewer concerts this year." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/17/03 Europe's Day Of Free Music Struggling to develop an online strategy, European music producers have decided to offer free music downloads - for a day. "The campaign - Digital Download Day Europe - will allow music fans to download five euros' (£3.40) worth of music for free from sites that pay royalties. The promotion takes place on 21 March and will be available in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK and The Netherlands. More than 150,000 tracks will be available to download, with a third able to be copied to CD." BBC 01/21/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 12:38 am Arts Issues "Art Agent" Busted In Florida A man posing as an agent for visual artists has been arrested in Miami, after scamming several American and Canadian artists out of their work, having promised them cash and publicity that never materialized. Michael Harrison, who operated under a false name that hampered his pursuers for some time, told his 'clients' that his brother had been killed in the 9/11 attacks (he hadn't,) and convinced them to send their best work as a donation to a non-existant foundation in his brother's memory. Edmonton Journal 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 5:23 am An Ode To The Brooklyn Academy "In New York, there is nothing to match the Brooklyn Academy of Music, affectionately known by its acronym BAM. Its three tiers hold around 2,000, but the embracing curve of its interior makes it seem intimate. What I love most about BAM is the sense that, like Topsy, it just growed. It doesn't seem engineered. So many 'arts centres' - the Barbican and the Lowry not least - are really arts ghettos, plonked down and squashed into the middle of nowhere to suit the exigencies of the town planner." The Telegraph (UK) 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 12:47 am Debating Censorship In Singapore Censorship is common in Singapore. But a new set of guidelines concerning censorship are about to come out. "Surveys suggest that a majority of Singaporeans are basically conservative and still want the Government to be responsible for deciding what their children should see and hear. But as our people become more cosmopolitan, there is also a group which argues that Singaporeans should decide for themselves what they want to see, read and hear and what they want their children to read, see and hear." The Straits-Times (Singapore) 01/21/03 Posted: 01/21/2003 11:59 pm People Rock Star In Tails Back in the 1960s, Thomas Nystrom was the frontman for a nationally known rock band which once opened for the Beatles. These days, Nystrom is a 58-year-old music aficionado who has spent much of his time lately battling colon cancer. But yesterday, the old Minneapolis rocker fulfilled a dream which he swears was every bit as thrilling as opening for the Fab Four. As an audience of friends and relatives clapped, stomped, and cheered, Nystrom mounted a podium at Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall in full tux and tails, picked up a baton, and led his other favorite band, the Minnesota Orchestra. The Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 5:45 am Norman Mailer At 80 At 80, with a new book out, Norman Mailer is still stuffed with big opinions. "People are always complaining in sports about how much money these athletes get. At least those athletes can answer, `I'm getting that money because I'm the best in my field.' In literature it's exactly the opposite. It's the mediocrities who make the mega-sums. That was always true to a degree, but it's intensified considerably." The New York Times 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 1:23 am Theatre House Hunting With The Royal Shakespeare As everyone knows, the Royal Shakespeare Company is looking for a new London home. "Top of its wish list are the Old Vic at Waterloo - a theatre thick with ghosts of RSC glories past - and Andrew Lloyd Webber's slightly less gilded New London on Drury Lane, home for most of the past 20 years to the composer's musical cash cow Cats, based on TS Eliot's poems." The Guardian (UK) 01/21/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 12:33 am Shakespeare Goes To Iran Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale" took a bow in Tehran this week as the Dundee Repertory Theatre Company played as "part of an initiative by the British Council to open hearts and minds in the Muslim world." The play was "performed to a sold-out theatre packed with university students, academics and artists hungry for more cultural contact with the west. 'Opportunities like this come so rarely. We only see foreign theatre productions once a year and to get the chance to see Shakespeare performed by a British cast is just incredible'." The Guardian (UK) 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 12:28 am Publishing How Random House Boss Was Ousted Why did Peter Olson fire highly respected Ann Godoff from her perch as the president of the Random House Trade Group? "Mr. Olson's motives are a matter of great consequence in the book business, where Bertelsmann's Random House division is the largest consumer publisher in the world. He said his public condemnation of Ms. Godoff's performance simply reflected honesty about a ruthless devotion to the bottom line: publishers who repeatedly fail to meet financial goals must go." She failed, so she was out. The New York Times 01/20/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 1:10 am Salon's Survival At Stake? It appears as though it's the moment of truth for Salon, the online magazine. "Once the Web was crowded with nervy upstarts such as Suck and Feed, new media sites that disparaged their traditional rivals as dinosaurs but were actually the first to disappear. Salon was one of the most celebrated - and, with 30 million page views a month, one of the most popular - but the online magazine has been struggling for years to reach profitability and recently has been teetering on the edge of insolvency. Now in what may be a last-ditch effort to stay alive, Salon is about to dramatically change its business model." Los Angeles Times 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 12:06 am Media TV Commercials - 30-Second Art "TV Commercials may be crass, loud, an insult to our intelligence. They may even be a colossal waste of money. But they're also the one brand of big-budget filmmaking that regularly makes room for artistic risks, especially when compared with most of the programs that surround them. I'd rather watch a beer ad than any episode of 'Friends,' and not just because the commercial is shorter." OpinionJournal.com 01/22/03 Posted: 01/21/2003 11:30 pm Dance Retirement By Increment Evelyn Hart has been a star with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet for more than a quarter-century, and has been a darling of critics around Canada, and internationally. But now, at the age of 46, Hart is feeling her age, and seems to be on the verge of retirement. The trouble is, no announcement has been made of Hart's departure, and the ballerina continues to dance with the company when she feels able, which is less and less often. Cancellations by the star are coming fast and furious, infuriating audiences and fellow dancers, and relations between the Royal Winnipeg and its brightest light are said to be extremely strained. Ottawa Citizen 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 6:00 am Aboriginal Dance Company May Close Australia's National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association - a dance training institute - may close after management irregularities and plummeting enrollment rates were discovered. "An internal review has been established after the - discovered it had just 10 students and 28 staff members last year." Say a board member: "Nobody had told us we had just 10 students practising on a regular basis The board had believed it had close to 80 students enrolled." Sydney Morning Herald 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 1:35 am Honoring Nureyev 10 Years After His Death On the 10th anniversary of Rudolf Nureyev's death, the Paris Opera Ballet mounts a glittering tribute. "The occasion was above all a homage. Thus, with all the pomp and reverence that the Paris Opera Ballet reserves for such occasions, it opened with a défilé, or parade, in which 250 dancers — the entire troupe as well as children from its ballet school — walked slowly toward the audience to the march from Berlioz's opera "Les Troyens." A huge photograph of Nureyev then appeared on a screen, followed by a film depicting his life." The New York Times 01/22/03 Posted: 01/22/2003 1:14 am