The Artist Beyond The Success Artists like success of course. "But what about being trapped by success? Being widely admired and richly rewarded for something you do, but secretly wishing to do something entirely different?" A surprising number of artists harbor ambitions beyond their renown... The New York Times 08/13/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 10:14 pm
ID'ing Your Handwriting Okay, so handwriing analysis has a bit of a hinky reputation (can you really tell I have problems with my mother by the way I cross my T's?) But a new method promises accurate interpretation of handwriting. "Their method employs holography. This technique makes three-dimensional images from the interference patterns of two laser beams used to scan an object—in this case a sample of handwriting. When the holographic information in an image is transferred to a computer, that image can be interpreted as a series of troughs of varying depths, denoting the pressure of the pen strokes used to make them." The Economist 08/13/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 6:36 pm
Cityscape - Feel The Power? A proposed 60-story tower in Philadelphia that will require big zoning variances to make it work, has city planning officials pleading helplessness in compelling a better project. So what power do city officials actually have to make a more liveable city, asks Inga Saffron. Philadelphia Inquirer 08/13/04
Posted: 08/13/2004 7:19 am
Fixing The Scottish Portrait Gallery "The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, conceived by the 19th-century writer and historian Thomas Carlyle, is said by its friends to be in urgent need of a facelift. Supporters say the gallery is closer to the search for Scottish identity than any other." So now a proposal for a fix-up. The Scotsman 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 7:16 pm
Where Graffiti Went Wrong So Tony Blair's government is mounting a clumsy attack on graffiti. "The natural liberal response to this is to defend the richness and wildness of graffiti, the layers of rotting posters, scrawled secret language and spray-can calligraphy that makes dull walls speak hidden dreams in fat lurid lettering. To deny any connection between graffiti and art is not tenable, given the fascination it has exerted on serious painters since the second world war. In the 1980s the intellectualism of Twombly and Dubuffet spawned a far coarser appropriation of street painting by art dealers who fell over themselves to represent the graffitists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. And that's when it all went wrong for graffiti." The Guardian (UK) 08/07/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 6:36 pm
The Houston Symphony's $880,000 Deficit (Much Smaller Than Predicted) The Houston Symphony finished its 2003-04 season with an $880,000 deficit, much smaller than predicted. "A strike by musicians in March 2003, the first in the organization's 90-year history helped the orchestra end the 2002-03 season with a $3.6 million deficit. But the strike settlement allowed the symphony's board to implement a five-year plan to get balanced budgets on a regular basis and pay off its accumulated deficit by 2008." Houston Chronicle 08/13/04
Posted: 08/13/2004 4:34 am
Testifying For Shostakovich Interest in Shostakovich is increasing, and a flury of activity put him under examination. "Scholarship on Shostakovich is still in its infancy. There's still a lot that we don't know. The good news is that things in Russia have changed back. Now Russian scholars are going into the archives." The New York Times 08/13/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 10:11 pm
Is iTunes Killing Jazz? Okay - maybe that's an overstatement. But "the digital music era should offer listeners more information about jazz, not less. The stakes are high. If jazz fragments into millions of digital files, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle. This music could quickly become one of the mysterious art forms that is translated to the public by a small group of experts." harlem.org 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 10:03 pm
Love And Death (Threats) At The Opera Opera can be a dangerous business. To prove it, Albrecht Puhlmann has a collection of death threats, all sent to him during his time at the helm of the Hanover State Opera... Financial Times 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 8:24 pm
Examining The DNA Of Opera-Booing "Booing at the end of opera performances has long been common in Germany, but was virtually unheard of in Britain until the late 1980s. But for the past 10 years, during which ENO has traced a shaky artistic path, audiences have reverted to docility. Which prompts the question of whether audiences conform to national stereotypes - and what makes continental Europeans apparently more discerning, and certainly more partisan, than their counterparts in the English-speaking world." Financial Times 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 8:08 pm
Turning Around The Bolshoi "The years following the collapse of the Soviet Union were not kind to the estimable Moscow theatre, particularly its opera wing. Short of funds and lacking the kind of dynamic leadership Valery Gergiev brought to the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the Bolshoi often seemed to be going through the motions." But in the past few years the Bolshoi has undergone a dramatic transformation... Financial Times 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 8:18 pm
Why Idol Works As Theatre Theatre critic Richard Ouzounian wonders why, when "all of our playhouses — in Toronto, Stratford and Niagara — have lots of empty seats, waiting to be filled" that tapings for Canadian Idol pack a theatre every Wednesday and Thursday night. The answers are instructive... Toronto Star 08/13/04
Posted: 08/13/2004 7:52 am
Slate Could Fetch Premium Price Analysts are speculating that the online magazine Slate could sell for $10 million - $12 million, or twice the publication's annual revenue. "Whereas magazines generally sell for an amount equal to or just above their annual revenue, the 'prestige value' of Slate will probably warrant a significantly higher price tag." New York Sun 08/11/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 10:00 pm
When A Movie Is Too Bad To Review The new Alien Versus Predator movie is about as critic-proof as it gets; sci-fi fans have been anticipating the movie for a long time. So why did the movie studio not allow critics to see the movie before it opened today? This tactic is usually only used when a film is so bad, the critical word will sink it... Instead, banning the critics ensured AVP would be the subject of stories around America with critics speculating on how bad it must be. Toronto Star 08/13/04
Posted: 08/13/2004 7:45 am
Play It Again Sam - TV Clip Shows "TV Networks love their clip shows, those pastiches of film and TV footage that are wrapped up into programs in their own right, sometimes with a nostalgic spin, sometimes with a more current-events-oriented one. It's a genre that has proved to be as addictive as it is unchallenging. And it's yet more evidence that, while TV might not rot your brain, it certainly can massage it by playing to our celebrity and mass-media obsessions, occasionally mocking them and inviting us to mock along." Fort Worth Star-Telegram 08/13/04
Posted: 08/13/2004 6:04 am
Budget Conscious - How Much Do Movies Cost? What do movies cost to make? The short answer is that nobody but the studios know for sure. But reporting movie budgets is a hot sport. "Today's budget reporting is truth-or-dare journalism, shaped by constant manipulation and gamesmanship. The issue has become a sore subject because it reinforces the most negative stereotypes about journalists and film execs -- that the former are inaccurate and the latter are liars." Chicago Tribune (LAT) 08/13/04
Posted: 08/13/2004 5:58 am
Booming UK Film Industry Could Bust The UK film industry has been operating at record levels. "During 2003 the industry boasted record levels of production spending, with £1.16bn spent making 173 features in, or involving, the UK. And the industry now employs 57,429 people - a whopping 77% increase in the past 10 years." But some are warning that this boom could bust, like many booms before... BBC 08/13/04
Posted: 08/13/2004 4:27 am
NYT, LAT Duke It Out For Movie Coverage The New York Times is investing heavily in beefing up its reporting of the entertainment business. That's causing the LA Times to guard its turf. "Beneath the vaingloriousness of any caged match between media rivals lies the reality of their motives for fighting in the first place. And so the question has to be asked: Isn’t pouring all this money and militia into something as ultimately silly as show-biz coverage demeaning to both papers when there’s real news not being covered?" LA Weekly 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 9:08 pm
Wanted: A New Movie Critic For Chicago The Chicago Tribune is looking for a new movie critic. It'd help if you're a woman, reports the Chicago Reader. "Coverage of major film festivals is a key part of the job, as is writing larger expository pieces on developments in the industry. . . . This critic's reviews should appeal to readers as great pieces of writing, beyond their crucial function in guiding readers' moviegoing decisions." Chicago Reader 08/11/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 9:05 pm
A Saga Of Movie-Making Hell The making of an "Exorcist" prequel has been an extraordinary saga, involving "a series of wayward turns that had plagued 'The Beginning' since the beginning — a web of movie making, unmaking and remaking so infernally tangled as to give new meaning to the phrase 'development hell'.” LA Weekly 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 7:50 pm
This Summer's Movies - Skewing Older This summer's story at the movies has been adults. As in movies made for adults. "Beneath the marketing hype luring young filmgoers to the latest blockbuster, Hollywood is quietly targeting older audiences with a surprisingly broad array of movies." USAToday 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 6:49 pm
"Celebrating" The Infomercial's 20th Birthday "This year is the 20th anniversary of those ubiquitous 28-minute feature-length TV ads, better known as infomercials. Every year, men and mostly women shell out more than a billion dollars buying up stain eliminators, hair removers, veggie choppers, fat reducers and more. If you include short-form spot ads that drive people to stores searching for "As Seen on TV" products, gross revenue for such infomercials rose to $154.1 billion last year. That's almost an 81 percent jump in just six years. Combine TV, radio and Internet retailing, and it's a staggering $256 billion industry." Chicago Tribune 08/12/04
Posted: 08/12/2004 6:15 pm
PNB Announces Finalists For Artistic Director Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet has narrowed its search for a new artistic director to six. Fifty candidates applied to replace Kent Stowell and Francia Russell. Seattle Times 08/13/04
Posted: 08/13/2004 7:33 am
