Your Brain On Work - Use It Or Lose It "A mentally stimulating career may help to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, research suggests. According to a study carried out in the United States, those who develop the debilitating form of dementia are more likely to have had jobs that do not tax the brain. The discovery lends weight to the 'use it or lose it' theory." Nature 08/10/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:12 pm
Lying Liars And The People Who Can Tell... "For decades, psychologists have done laboratory experiments in an attempt to describe differences between the behavior of liars and of people telling the truth. Some researchers, however, are now moving away from those controlled conditions and are inching closer to understanding liars in the real world. The researchers are examining whether several behaviors that have emerged as deception signals in lab tests are associated with real-life, high-stake lies." Science News Online 09/10/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:09 pm
Hilton Kramer On Henri Cartier-Bresson "No other photographer of his time lived and worked so long or commanded the admiration of so many artists, critics, editors, museum curators and connoisseurs of photography—not to mention the public at large—and none bore worldwide fame with a more appealing combination of intelligence, authority, insouciance and self-deprecating irony." New York Observer 08/11/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 9:17 am
Clyfford Still Estate To Denver Clyfford Still's estate paintings will go to the Denver Art Museum. "Patricia A. Still, the artist's 84-year-old widow, has chosen Denver as the repository for more than 2,000 works from the abstract expressionist's estate. Putting an exact value on the gift is difficult, because Still's paintings are rarely sold, but Mayor John Hickenlooper said the collection's value could be as much as $1 billion.
Denver Post 08/11/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 8:18 am
Coming To A Stamp Near You The US Postal Service produces only 35 new stamp designs each year. But a new service lets consumers design their own stamps. "PhotoStamps allows anyone to design their own image and emblazon a stamp with it. Thus, be prepared to see a wave of stamps with babies, cats, weddings and other personalized images and logos arriving in a mailbox near you." Wired 08/11/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 6:39 am
Edinburgh Artists: Where's The Art? Visual artists are attacking the Edinburgh Festival for not including visual arts in its annual lineup. "You are morally responsible for including visual art - or you mustn't call it the greatest festival in the world. Without the visual arts being properly supported you develop a misunderstanding of the purpose of art - you can't tell the whole story through music." The Guardian (UK) 08/11/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:16 pm
Orchestra Beats Turmoil With Better-Than Expected Financial Year Ontario's Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony has suffered under controversy since dismissing its music director Martin Fischer-Dieskau earlier this year. But the fuss hasn't damaged the orchestra financially. "The symphony had set itself a target of $1.28 million for the fiscal year that ended July 31. It has managed to raise $1.43 million." CBC 08/10/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 9:31 am
Carnegie Hall's Fresh Blood Carnegie Hall is one of the world's great concert halls. So everyone is wondering what London Symphony Orchestra manager Clive Gillinson - a "London orchestral musician, raised on grit and gruel, bring to this lavish, long-running party? Personal qualities apart – and Gillinson has been head-hunted, to my knowledge, by at least six of the top US musical institutions – he will add a dimension of difference, a whiff ofrenewal, which is exactly what is needed." La Scena Musicale 08/10/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 9:22 am
Could Classical Music Get A Little Less White? (We're Pessimistic) Divesity is an issue in classical music, where musicians in orchestras (and the soloists who play with them) are overwhelmingly white (not to mention audiences, too, but that's another story...) "It's a question of exposure and it is a deficit that is passed on from generation to generation. Seeing droves of black people in opera houses and concert halls is the exception, and that means the seeds have been planted for the next 20 years. I am afraid I have no optimism for the future." The Guardian (UK) 08/11/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:28 pm
Schwarzenegger Terminates Arts Funding Increase California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed an increase in his state's arts budget. "Last year, state funding of the California Arts Council, a state agency that gives grants to local groups, fell from $17.5 million to $1 million. Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his line item veto power to take out what would have been a $1 million increase in arts funding by the Legislature, leaving the allocation at just over $1 million. The cuts have made the California Arts Council last in the United States in per capita funding." Sacramento Bee 08/10/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:47 pm
Dan Brown - Hanging Upside Down Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown has a strict routine for writing: "The 39-year-old Dan Brown gets up and starts writing each day at four in the morning. He writes with an antique hour glass on his desk and at the end of each 60 minute period he does sit-ups, stretches and push-ups. He also confesses to wearing gravity boots." BBC 08/11/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 6:33 am
Even Regional Theatre Shuns Playwrights "It's bad enough that some of the best and brightest theater talents are fleeing to television and the movies. But when the regional theater - where you felt you always had a home - blocks their main stages to you, you might as well start packing your sunscreen for the West Coast. And many already have." Hartford Courant 08/08/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 8:27 am
An Off-Broadway Theatre's Artistic Implosion For more than 30 years the Cocteau Theatre, a small Off-Broadway company presenting classics in the 140-seat Bouwerie Lane Theater in the East Village, has been a valuable asset of New York theater. Then last week, a sizeable number of the organization's board (and several actors) resigned in a dispute... The New York Times 08/11/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:20 pm
More Pop - Now A Beach Boys Musical For Broadway In the latest pop-music-comes-to-Broadway deal, a musical featuring songs by the Beach Boys - Surf's up! "Good Vibrations," a new musical using more than 30 Beach Boys songs - will open on Broadway in January. Backstage 08/10/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:05 pm
A Canadian "Chain" Novel In Canada, 19 writers from across the country participate in writing a novel - each contribting 600 words before passing it along to a colleague. "As the chapters crossed invisible borders, the initial linear plot took bizarre turns as creative visions clashed, and as they erased and re-introduced plot changes, such as the female protagonist's ever-changing pregnant condition. 'The book is not art, it's a game. I don't think the writers were very generous with each other, you would do something, and then the next character would undo it'." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/11/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 6:46 am
BookNotes To End In December After 800 author interviews, Brian Lamb is quitting his BookNotes show on C-Span. Why? "He spends 20 hours each week reading books in preparation for "Booknotes," he estimates. That's 1.8 years of his life that have been dedicated to reading since the show debuted April 2, 1989. Now he wants to reclaim some of that time for his personal life. Has it come to this? The author-interviewer, arguably the most quirky and dedicated on television, the creator and curator of one of TV's few institutions for avid readers -- has he finally tired of books?" Washington Post 08/11/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 6:18 am
A Russian Blockbuster Outpaces Hollywood A Russian movie is proving an unexpected hit at the box office. "Blood, action and suspense helped "Night Watch" rake in $13 million in the first three weeks after it was released July 8, almost as much as the last "Lord of the Rings" film made in two months in Russia. The previous best-performing Russian film made $3 million." Washington Post 08/11/04
Posted: 08/11/2004 8:59 am
The Next Big Thing In Video: HD The next big thing in video? High-definition DVD's. "On one side, Sony, along with 12 leading companies in the computer and consumer-electronics industries, is pushing a format called Blu-ray. It has the capacity to hold as much as six times the number of TV shows and movies that a current DVD holds. Blu-ray also promises spellbinding clarity..." BusinessWeek 08/11/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:41 pm
TV: The New "Artistic" Refuge? While TV networks "wallow in reality-TV and makeover pablum, the "highbrow" end of the medium—HBO, Showtime, etc.—has remade itself as the natural habitat for drama that's as inventive and daring as many films. TV's new artistic credibility is making the small screen an alluring alternative for directors, offering freedom from the stresses of financing and distribution that beset any adventurous filmmaker." Village Voice 08/11/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:38 pm
Hollywood - Where "Indie" Is Just A Name What, exactly qualifies a movie as an "indie" movie these days? Some indie movies have big stars. Some are being made by big Hollywood studios? "A good number of companies are doing more of these films with an individual voice and an indie feeling." So what is indie in a fast-changing landscape? Backstage 08/10/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 10:02 pm
Guillem Cancels Royal Ballet Season Royal Ballet star Sylvie Guillem has cancelled her season at the Royal Opera House after suffering an ankle injury... BBC 08/10/04
Posted: 08/10/2004 9:57 pm
