Ideas Fan Fiction - Is It Stealing? "In the past few years, a curious literary genre known as 'fan fiction' has been flourishing. The term refers to all manner of vignettes, short stories and novels based on the universes described in popular books, TV shows and movies. Similarly derived works are appearing in music, where fans are using their computers to mix songs from popular artists into new works that they call 'mashups.' Movie fans are taking digital copies of films such as the 'Star Wars' epics and creating alternate endings or deleting characters such as the much-maligned Jar Jar Binks. The explosion of these part-original, part-borrowed works has set authors of fan fiction against some media companies in a battle to redefine the line between consumers' right to 'fair use' and copyright holders' rights to control their intellectual property." Washington Post 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 4:26 pm Destruction of An Historic Culture Iraq was once a center for art and culture. But it has been in "steep decline for twenty years. The loss into exile of three million people, among them many of the country's most gifted, has arguably been far more destructive than recent wartime damage. The reduction of the entire middle class to deep poverty, one result of the international sanctions imposed since 1990, compounded the misery. The sanctions — or, as Iraqis say, the siege—had the further effect of sealing them off from advances elsewhere in the world, and even from the hope of catching up. In the past decade a kind of rottenness set in. When I saw Baghdad in 1990, with its neat, palm-lined boulevards, it looked not unlike Kuwait or Riyadh. A decade later the city looked more like Khartoum or Kinshasa, a place of brownouts, grasping bureaucrats, and leaky drains, its broken streets packed with the aimless unemployed." New York Review of Books 07/03/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 4:19 pm Visual Arts Ossuary Is A Fake An ossuary thought to have been the resting place of the Biblical James is a modern fake, not an ancient relic, says a commission of antiquities experts. "A media frenzy followed last October's announcement that André Lemaire of the Sorbonne University in Paris had found an inscription - James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus - on a light brown limestone box of the type commonly used for burials in first-century A.D. in Jerusalem. It seemed that this box, or ossuary, had once held the bones of James, brother of the biblical Jesus, who was stoned to death in A.D. 62 according to the historian Flavius Josephus. Publicized in the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review, the ossuary was hailed by Time magazine as possibly 'the most important discovery in the history of New Testament archaeology'." Archaeology 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 10:14 pm Ossuary Isn't Fake Experts Say Several experts have contested claims that the James ossuary is a fake. "Several paleographic, geological and linguistic experts previously examined the box and saw nothing suspicious. 'They all may be mistaken, I recognize that, and if it's a forgery, I want the forger put in jail. But we're not there yet by any means'." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/19/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 10:10 pm Library Of Congress Buys $10 Million Map The Library of Congress has bought the "Waldseemuller world map of 1507, a cartographic treasure and the first known document to call a land mass America. The old and rare chart is also the first to depict two oceans instead of one. The price was $10 million." Washington Post 06/19/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 9:33 pm Afghan art Still Imperiled "Two years after the Taliban destroyed much of Afghanistan's cultural heritage, attempts are being made to restore what is left." But the task has been hampered because since "US-led forces evicted the Taliban from Afghanistan 18 months ago, the international community has done little to help the government of Hamid Karzai restore the museum or get back thousands of artefacts looted from Afghanistan over the previous decade." The Guardian (UK) 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 6:58 pm Music Concert-Hall-As-Billboard This week Dallas' Meyerson Hall - home to the Dallas Symphony - is going to be transformed into a giant billboard. The IM Pei-designed building will be bathed in projected-light advertisements for a car-maker and publisher. "The projections will emblazon the symphony hall's north walls facing Woodall Rodgers Freeway with intricate, abstract designs reminiscent of computers, in a tribute to Bill Joy, Internet wizard, Sun Microsystems co-founder and another of the Audi 8." Dallas Morning News 06/19/03 Posted: 06/19/2003 7:03 am Lincoln Center In Search Of A Plan What's to become of Lincoln Center now the New York Philharmonic plans on leaving for Carnegie? The planning is complicated. Center officials even considered turning Avery Fisher Hall into an opera house in hopes of enticing New York City Opera to stay... The New York Times 06/19/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 9:09 pm Stop Giving Us Those Made-up Stars Album sales in the UK fell by 4% in 2002 and music sales dropped by 13% in the first quarter of 2003. What's the cause? Some blame music downloading. But others blame recording companies who manufacture stars rather than creating artists. "Economically it's much easier for a record company to sign one pretty young male or female, give them some songs, put them out there, and get a very fast return on their investment." BBC 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 7:56 pm De Waart To Hong Kong? Will Edo de Waart become the next music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic? "In a press release issued late Wednesday afternoon, the HKPO said that the 62-year-old Dutch maestro 'has expressed an interest in the music directorship of the HKPO, but would like to get to know the Orchestra before considering the possibility further'." De Waart is ending his tenure as music director of the Sydney Symphony and is former music director of the San Francisco Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra. Andante 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 3:22 pm Arts Issues Why Are High-Culture Audiences So White? Why are there so few African-Americans at Pittsburgh's high-culture events? Audiences for the symphony and for theatre are mostly white, as they are in most American cities. One reason? "You're comparing a population that has half as much income as another group, and it's not surprising that you'd see this showing up in [the spending of] discretionary income," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 06/19/03 Posted: 06/19/2003 7:28 am South Bank Blues "Artists shudder when they mention South Bank's Royal Festival Hall; there is no concert hall like it in the rest of the civilised world." Indeed, London's South Bank has been a major cultural failure that has bedeviled generations of administrators. What's the problem? "The arts centre is a 1950s conceit, based on new-town shopping malls where one stop covers all needs. It does not fit the specialised tastes of the 21st century." London Evening Standard 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 8:14 pm Does UK Arts Policy Value The Right Things? "There are many in the arts world who believe that the government's obsession with education and diversity has actually obscured what artists aim to do - produce wonderful work. But are "access" and "excellence" mutually exclusive? Are there too many strings attached to arts funding? Has the government been too utilitarian in its view of the arts, valuing its economic and social by-products, from tourism promotion to crime reduction, over its intrinsic worth?" England's arts ministers take on the questions. The Guardian (UK) 06/19/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 7:02 pm When Benefactors Default (What Should Happen?) Recently the Metropolitan Opera took the unusual step of prying off a donor's name from its building when the promised gift failed to arrive. So "what can be done when donors can't meet commitments? Nonprofits can bring lawsuits to force donors to pay up, but seldom do so. Lawsuits are unproductive if the donor does not have the funds and usually spell public relations disaster for both parties. The public, off-with-his-head (or in Vilar's case, off-with-his-name-plaque) approach may be the last, necessary resort in some cases, but it's not likely to win future support from the donor if his fortunes recover. It also may have a chilling effect on prospective donors. OpinionJournal.com 06/19/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 3:53 pm Theatre Six Shows Closing On Broadway Broadway saw its usual post-Tony box office bounce last week. But the awards also signalled the closing of six shows this month as producers realized they were on the downside and not likely to survive. Backstage 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 10:01 pm Publishing Newspaper Gets Its Hands On Harry The New York Daily News finds out a local health food store has copies of the new Harry Potter book for sale, sends a reporter out to buy up the last copy and write about it in the paper. "People just didn't believe the book was available in a neighborhood health food store. The astonishment on people's faces was incredible." New York Daily News 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 7:47 pm Rowling Sues NY Paper Harry Potter author JK Rowling has filed a lawsuit against the New York Daily News after the tabloid published minor excerpts from her latest book. BBC 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 7:21 pm Harry Loose On The Streets Police fear that the 7000+ copies of the new Harry Potter book stolen from a trailer earlier this week "will be illicitly distributed throughout the north-west, jeopardising the launch. The books will have a high currency among criminals because Harry Potter fans have had to wait almost three years to read the latest adventures of the boy wizard." The Guardian (UK) 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 6:56 pm Books, Books, More Books...Does Anybody Read Them? "The bulging bookshelf has become a tradition in most British households - a sort of intellectual trophy cabinet, each spine potentially revealing something about the owner. For some, the bigger the bookshelf, the bigger the brain. Research has shown that few of us ever look at our old books, but at the same time would never dream of throwing them out." The Scotsman 06/17/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 6:03 pm The New Outsiders - Really? "Recently, Central Europe has played host to a new generation of expatriate writers and, some believe, has once again become the displaced kingdom of some of the greatest prose and prose-writers - this time, in English. But outsiders toting backpacks and wielding Platinum Plus cards aren't the right kind of outsiders for literature. They're a Mercedes-length from the edge, and literature needs someone on the precipice. It's dangerous on that precipice, but the danger, well, illuminates the prose. And there's no more of that danger left in this Europe, once again at the edge of Empire." The Forward 06/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 3:48 pm Media Digital Debate - What Should Be Legal? "Does the entertainment industry has the right to prevent the 'sharing' and downloading of digital copyrighted media? What methods should it employ to deter, or stop, the downloading? Is music sharing tantamount to online theft? Or is it the consumer's right to have unfettered access to online materials, including copyrighted media?" Lawrence Lessig, an expert on Internet law from Stanford University's Law School, and Matt Oppenheim of the Recording Industry Association of America debate... The NewsHour (PBS) 06/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 3:44 pm A Prince Of A Filmmaker Prince Chatri Chalerm Yukol is one of Thailand's best filmmakers. He's also royalty. "A link between moviemaking and royalty isn't a novelty in Thailand, it's a tradition. Prince Chatri's father, Prince Anusorn Mongkolgala, was a Thai cinema pioneer who apprenticed under 'King Kong' directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack when they filmed the silent docudrama 'Chang' in Thailand in 1927. His son studied geology and film at UCLA in the 1960s, and became friendly with classmate Francis Ford Coppola. Almost 40 years later, Coppola's company, American Zoetrope, is presenting Chatri's lavish battle epic to U.S. moviegoers." Los Angeles Times 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 2:49 pm Dance Dance Lives In Aspen Santa Fe Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, founded in 1996, is the real thing, writes Anna Kisselgoff. "The company has 12 engaging and very good dancers, two ambitious and smart directors who come out of the Joffrey Ballet organization, and the obvious enthusiasm of wealthy board members in Colorado and New Mexico." The New York Times 06/19/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 9:16 pm American Ballet Theatre - In Need Of A Makeover American Ballet Theatre has a problem. "The median age of the ABT audience hovers around 55. These guys got hooked during the ballet craze of the 70s, and they will keep showing up into their dotage. But then what?" So ABT commissioned a media campaign to jazz up its image. But, writes Apollinaire Scherr, "ballet shouldn’t have to compete in the same market as inspirational seminars and Adam Sandler movies. ABT has everything it needs to draw an audience of its own: a large, well-trained corps, excellent coaches, a smartly conducted orchestra, brilliant, ardent principal dancers and a palpable group pleasure in exuberant performance. So what’s the problem? Why isn’t the Met bubbling over with new life? Why hasn’t ballet maintained its popular appeal?" New York Press 06/18/03 Posted: 06/18/2003 2:44 pm