Enough With The Subheads, Already! There seems to be a belief on the part of newspaper and magazine editors that the people who buy their product hate to read, writes Jim Walsh. This would seem like an inherent contradiction, since the consumer who buys a periodical must presumably know that s/he will have to read it to really get full value for her/his money. But the creeping use of subheads - those little in-story boldface descriptors that only exist to tell you in advance what the words in the upcoming paragraph will say - is an unquestionable assault on serious writing, and serious reading, and Walsh isn't going to stand for it. City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 11/05/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 5:14 am
If Not Reason, Then... "The human mind is not adapted to solve rarified problems of logic, but is quite refined and powerful when it comes to dealing with matters of cheating and deception. In short, our rationality is bounded by what our brains were constructed - that is, evolved - to do." Chronicle of Higher Education 11/03/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 4:58 pm
Ideas 10, Writing, 0 Why is academic writing so bad? "One reason academic bad writing is evergreen is vocational. The bad writing in question is not the merely quotidian clunkiness and hack writing that's inevitable in a vast profession under constant pressure to publish - it's the notoriously opaque, preening, self-admiring, inflated prose of 'theory.' And for the moment, for whatever bizarre reason, 'theory' is what gets promoted and given tenure, therefore aspiring Assistant Professors and adjuncts have to crank it out, whether they actually like doing the stuff or not. But another reason, and one with a more malign effect, is the easy availability of an array of defense mechanisms." Butterflies & Wheels 11/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 4:28 pm
Sotheby's Opens Big "In the auction world, all it takes is three determined people with big egos and bank accounts to match. That's why a 1917 Klimt landscape sold for $29.1 million last night at Sotheby's sale of Impressionist and modern art. The price surprised even the auction house experts. The painting, which depicts a house and its flowering gardens in a rich tapestry of colors, wasn't the only bright spot of the evening. The best works fetched high prices, but some of the rest went unsold without so much as a nibble." The New York Times 11/06/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 6:16 am
Michelangelo's Moses Sees New Light A five-year restoration of Michelangelo's "Moses" in Rome has been unveiled. "Restorers in the Italian capital have been quietly working away on the majestic sculpture of a seated Moses since 1998, careful to steer clear of a heated debate over the best way to clean the sculptor's monumental David nude in Florence." Stuff.nz (Reuters) 11/05/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 6:43 pm
Will Warhol Market Crash? So one in six Warhols is said to be fake. Now "New York is bracing itself for a Warhol washout at next week's sales after a two-year price boom that has seen as much as £4 million change hands for a wallsized Warhol canvas." London Evening Standard 11/05/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 4:01 pm
Record For Modigliani Steve Wynn put down some serious cash for for a Modigliani image of a nude. "It brought $26.8 million, above Christie's $25 million high estimate. After the sale, art experts were quick to point out that Mr. Wynn had paid nearly $10 million more for the painting when he bought it privately in the mid-1990's." The New York Times 11/05/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 2:47 pm
Cincinnati Hall Ready For Renovation A proposed $3.8 million renovation of Cincinnati's Music Hall got a big boost this week, as the county approved $2 million in new bonds to go towards the project. "Of that, $1.5 million will go toward the Music Hall renovation to create a new space for Cincinnati Opera, and $500,000 will pay for new stage lighting." Cincinnati Post 11/06/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 6:43 am
Taking A Stand For The Music The world of hip-hop has expanded well beyond its musical roots in the last decade, and that's not necessarily a good thing. For many of today's hottest rappers, the music is almost secondary to the culture of intimidation and implied violence which grew out of the "gangsta rap" culture of the 1990s. But not every hip-hop artist is in favor of the genre's current direction, and Wyclef Jean is one of a handful of high-profile musicians making a direct plea to his colleagues to return hip-hop to its musical roots and put an end to the cycle of real and imagined violence. New York Post 11/06/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 6:21 am
Sweet Honey's Rock To Retire "You always know what to expect from a name brand like Sweet Honey in the Rock. Despite the comings and goings of 23 singers in its lifetime, Sweet Honey's rich harmonies and socially conscious lyrics make it as recognizable as a drumbeat, as uplifting as a revival meeting. But what will happen when 61-year-old Bernice Johnson Reagon, the group's founder, retires in late January, Sweet Honey's 30th anniversary?" Philadelphia Inquirer 11/06/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 5:51 am
Time For A New Name For New Music? Greg Sandow thinks it's time to rename contemporary classical music. "I think we might need another term for what we talk about here. Our genre, obviously, is 'new music' — but what does that mean? The words themselves don’t say very much. There are all kinds of new music—new salsa, new merengue, new Christian rap, new Mariah Carey remixes. Which 'new music' do we mean? Well, new classical music, I guess." But taht's not very accurate either...
NewMusicBox 11/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 6:35 pm
Microsoft's Allen Hands Out Some Cash Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's foundation has handed out $12.45 million in grants to cultural and public service groups in the Pacific Northwest. At least $2 million of the money is earmarked specifically for arts groups in the Seattle area, and will be dispensed not only to the city's largest arts and music groups, but to many fringe organizations as well. Seattle Times 11/06/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 5:41 am
Latino USA Latinos are now the largest ethnic minority in the US, and they're having a big influence on mainstream culture. "There are now more than 35 million Latinos in the US. In the last year, Spanish has become the most popular foreign language in American high schools and universities." BBC 11/05/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 3:52 pm
Legacy Of A Shock Artist Sarah Kane was not your average playwright. Her works, which appeared on various London stages in the 1990s, featured rape, torture, and a man gnawing on infant corpses. She was despised by the theatrical establishment, but defended by some of theater's luminaries. She killed herself at age 28. Assessing a legacy like that is the type of exercise for which few in the theater world have the stomach, but one Montreal director is determiend to try. National Post 11/06/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 6:28 am
Carnegie Hall's 'Nice Guy' Stands Firm Running New York's most high-profile concert hall is no picnic. So Robert Harth is an unlikely figure as Carnegie Hall's latest top man: he is, by all accounts, soft-spoken and generous with his time, "the type New York power brokers eat for breakfast." In fact, when the ill-fated merger of Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic was announced this fall, many observers predicted that Harth would eventually be shunted aside by the Phil's dynamic Zarin Mehta. Instead, Harth is now being celebrated for standing firm against the Phil's desire to take over the primary programming responsibility for the hall, and for his commitment to broadening the scope of Carnegie Hall's musical offerings. The New York Times 11/06/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 6:08 am
Orrin Hatch - Senator, Musician, Composer US Senator Orrin Hatch is a "musician and a songwriter and a producer—a member of ASCAP—and whose works have been recorded by Gladys Knight, Donny Osmond, Brooks and Dunn... One time I was kidding and I said that I even wrote a song during a boring committee meeting and I got an irate letter from one of my Utah constituents saying, 'How dare you use your government time to write your lousy music,' and I thought I'd better not make that claim any more'." NewMusicBox 11/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 6:29 pm
Getting A Grip On Coetzee J. M. Coetzee, this year's Nobel laureate for literature has "successfully turned a temperament into a style. His novels cannot be pinned down to a history, be it apartheid South Africa or Bush's increasingly authoritarian America. Yet it's hard to believe that the Nobel committee, in coming to its judgment, wasn't moved by the way Coetzee's most astute writing speaks to this moment." Slate 11/05/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 6:23 pm
Confronting An Ugly Past Russians are not generally eager to discuss the dark period in which Josef Stalin ruled their nation, and who can blame them? During his rule, Stalin ordered the killing or banishment of more than 10 million of his countrymen, a human catastrophe which even today is underrecognized as one of the great governmental crimes of the 20th Century, and which Russia has never fully confronted. "Indeed, though millions of their compatriots died or were imprisoned on Stalin's watch, many Russians don't consider him among the 20th century's most evil men. In a poll early this year, a clear majority of Russians said Stalin's role in the country's life was, on balance, positive." Now, a new play being produced in Moscow is putting the horror of the Stalin regime on full display, and forcing modern Russia to acknowledge and deal with the dictator's true legacy. Newsday (New York) 11/05/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 5:59 am
Teachout: Why The Producers Doesn't Have Legs So why is The Producers fading on Broadway? Terry Teachout believes he knows: "To see 'The Producers' is to be immersed in that older style of comedy, and for anyone born before 1960, the experience will be as nostalgic as a trip to the county fair. Somehow I doubt that was what Mr. Brooks had in mind, though. My guess is that he still thinks it's titillating, even shocking, to put swishy Nazis on stage. It's no accident that he hasn't made a movie for years and years: Broadway is one of the last places in America where he could draw a crowd with that kind of humor, and it's not an especially young crowd, either." OpinionJournal.com 11/06/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 6:09 pm
- Previously: The Producers Failing To Produce "The Producers opened as a monster hit on Broadway. It was supposed to stay that way, packing houses for years. But it hasn't turned out that way. "Less than three years after its incomparably auspicious opening, The Producers, in the eyes of many on Broadway, has become an underachiever. Its box office grosses, which set record highs — more than $1.2 million per week — in its first year, have fallen about 20 percent in the last 12 months. It now ranks below newer shows like Hairspray and Mamma Mia! as well as The Lion King." The New York Times 11/02/03
The Science Of Theatre (Why Not?) There have been a number of plays in recent years that take up science as a topic. But most of them bury the science behind personalities. But why not put science or math upfront? "Doing mathematics can often feel like the creative process of a theatre improvisation. You set up a tableau with conditions for collisions of ideas and let the thing run. Very often it gets nowhere - but sometimes there is a dynamic created that clicks. Like the rules of a theatre game, the conditions push you in extraordinary unexpected directions that too much freedom would stifle." The Guardian (UK) 11/04/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 4:41 pm
Tour Too Much Trouble "Surely, the thinking goes, if a publisher is really "behind" a book, the house will pony up the money and the arrangements for an author’s soon-to-be-triumphant national tour." Yet the reality is that book tours today usually aren't worth the effort or expense... New York Observer 11/05/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 7:24 pm
Something New To Annoy Bill O'Reilly National Public Radio has received an enormous gift from the will of the late philanthropist Joan Kroc, amounting to more than twice the network's annual operating budget. The gift of $200 million came as a total shock to NPR staffers, who are speculating that the money could be used to rescue several music and culture programs which fell to the budget axe this year. Alternatively, the network could decide to use the gift, which seems to have no strings attached, to expand its focus on news and information programming. NPR's board will meet in the next several weeks to decide how the bequest will be spent. Washington Post 11/06/03
Posted: 11/06/2003 5:22 am
Miscalculating Reagan How did the CBS Reagan mini-series get to be so controversial? "The producers of 'The Reagans' were so intent on re-examining their subject's legacy that they missed the missile-defense shield surrounding Mr. Reagan, now incapacitated by Alzheimer's disease. He is not just a beloved former president; he is the Moses of the conservative movement. Rather than treading lightly, the stars gloated about how controversial their film would be." The New York Times 11/06/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 7:44 pm
Special Screeners - Newly Hot "Special screenings are hardly a new idea. Publicist Peggy Siegal, considered by some to be the mother of this invention, has been doing them for more than 20 years. But their importance to film marketers—especially those with smaller budget art-house movies—has supersized in the last 30 days. Film marketing was already a difficult gambit in a 24/7 world of celebrity stimuli and instant, online gratification, but last month the Motion Picture Association of America made it even more difficult when it decided to severely limit how film distributors could raise the awareness of their films and still be considered for the one of the best marketing tools out there, an Oscar nomination." New York Observer 11/05/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 7:13 pm
BBC Viewers Vote Titanic The Worst Movie Ever The movie Titanic, released in 1997 starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has raked in the biggest box office in history - $1.8bn (£1.1bn) at global box offices - almost twice as much as its nearest rival. But that didn't stop BBC1 viewers from voting it the worst movie in history. BBC 11/05/03
Posted: 11/05/2003 3:37 pm
