Moving Art (Different Expectations?) "Although there has been a dialogue between film and visual art since film was invented, you can’t simply compare a feature film with static art. But put the film in an art gallery and implicitly that is what you are doing. You are inviting comparison, not with the films that struggle to survive in the hard commercial world of the cinema, but with the art forms you expect to find in the gallery. And expectation is a key part of it." The Scotsman 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 12:01 am
Expert: David's Bad Posture "For centuries, Michelangelo's statue of David has been regarded as the epitome of male beauty and perfection, but now it is claimed he is more an example of human frailty, a physical wreck whose poor posture would result in a bad back, a weak hip and ankles and poor flexibility." The Guardian (UK) 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 11:10 pm
Mummy Of The Scream? "An Inca mummy kept in a Florentine museum might have been a source of inspiration for Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream," an Italian anthropologist claims." Discovery 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 9:21 pm
In Search Of A Hot Pre-Fab Shelter Magazine runs a competition to design and build a pre-fab house that really works. "The results are in, and they are decidedly mixed." OpinionJournal.com 09/08/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 8:50 pm
Edinburgh Museums See Big Attendance Increase Edinburgh's museums saw a huge increase in visitors this summer - a 24 percent increase... Edinburgh Evening News 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 9:52 am
Hush Hush: Classical Musicians And Hearing Loss "An often-cited study by Canadian audiologist Marshall Chasin measured hearing loss among rock musicians and found that about 30 percent were afflicted in some way. Among their classical music counterparts, the figure was 43 percent. Yet while noise-induced hearing impairment is a well-known issue in the rock world, long highlighted in educational campaigns featuring The Who's Pete Townshend and rapper Missy Elliott, the discomfort from loudness suffered by classical musicians is generally kept hush-hush." Chicago Tribune 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 9:16 am
Kansas City Symphony Hires Music Director The Kansas City Symphony has hired 44-year-old Michael Stern as its new music director. "Until recently, he was chief conductor of the Saarbruecken Radio Symphony in Germany." Kansas City Star 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 8:13 am
Christiansen: Scottish Opera's "Insane Ambition" Rupert Christiansen is unsympathetic to the plight of Scottish Opera. "Despite a decidedly dodgy balance sheet and the failure to secure a future for its chorus, the management continues to programme at an almost insanely ambitious level. Over the coming year, Scottish Opera must take a new route, under new artistic leadership. The company has been ill served by the Scottish Arts Council, but it should also take responsibility for its own arrogance and misjudgments." The Telegraph (UK) 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 8:02 am
Americans Take Banff Americans dominated at this year's 8th Banff International String Quartet Competition. "In music, as in the visual arts, European pre-eminence can no longer be taken for granted, in part because of the superior educational opportunities afforded on this side of the Atlantic." Toronto Star 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 12:12 am
Court: Rappers Must Pay For Samples "An American federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work — even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music. Lower courts had already ruled that artists must pay when they sample another artists' work. But it has been legal to use musical snippets — a note here, a chord there — as long as it wasn't identifiable." Yahoo! (AP) 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 10:43 pm
The Recognition Is Great, But... Competitions for composers are a difficult thing. How do you declare a "best" piece? Based on what? On the other hand, winning competitions is the only way many composers can get recognition for their work... NewMusicBox 09/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 10:21 pm
Disney Could Lose Mickey Mouse In South Africa If Disney loses a case in South Africa contesting rights to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight it might have to give up numerous trademarks in South Africa."Relatives of the song's original composer, Solomon Linda, say they are entitled to $1.6m in royalties from the track, used in The Lion King. If Disney loses the case, it may have to sell over 240 trademarks, including Mickey Mouse, to pay the family." BBC 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 8:46 pm
Foreign Student Applications Down At US Schools As it's become more difficult for international students to get entry into the United States to go to school, the number of students applying to US schools has dramatically declined. "U.S. graduate schools this year saw a 28% decline in applications from international students and an 18% drop in admissions, a finding that some experts say threatens higher education's ability to maintain its reputation for offering high-quality programs." USAToday 09/07/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 12:17 am
Spielberg Gets Legion Of Honour Filmmaker Steven Spielberg has been awarded France's highest civilian honor. "He was made a knight of the French Legion of Honour to recognise his work fighting hatred and intolerance. President Jacques Chirac said Spielberg's holocaust film Schindler's List ensured that past atrocities were remembered along with heroic deeds." BBC 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 8:54 pm
Lloyd Webber On the Comeback? Andrew Lloyd Webber's last two shows didn't do well. Now he's got another show opening and a chance o get back on track. "Whether something is actually any good is quite different from whether it is commercial. This time I have gone out as far along the operatic route as I have ever done, if not further. It's what I wanted to write at this particular point." The New York Times 09/08/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 11:49 pm
Off-Broadway's New Palace Dodger Stages is "a gleaming new theater complex" on the edge of the Broadway theater district. It is "one of the most expensive Off Broadway theater projects ever - $23 million - and includes five theaters and a range of amenities not always found in the regions Off Broadway, including ample air-conditioning, big dressing rooms, three bars and - its owners proudly point out - "more women's bathrooms than you'll find in any space like this." The company hopes "the new complex would provide the company with an opportunity not only to produce theater without breaking the bank but also to regain some of the youthful energy of the company's early days." The New York Times 09/08/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 11:39 pm
The Abbey's Black Cloud Dublin's powerhouse Abbey Theatre is having a dreadful year. "Last week the incredulous staff were told that one third would have to go, the axe falling hardest on those engaged in bringing on new writers, which they felt was particularly unfortunate in an institution known worldwide as a "writers' theatre". The theatre's studio space, the Peacock, may be closed and its director sacked. To top it all there was an organisational foul-up about the dates for an ambitious run of "18 plays in 14 days" during the Dublin theatre festival later this month." The Guardian (UK) 09/08/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 11:23 pm
Sign Of The Times: Downsizing Sweeney Todd "A 1989 Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd at Circle in the Square that used just 14 actors and a synthesizer band of three was wittily re-dubbed "Teeny Todd." Now a new cut-price West End version of this tale of throat cutting employs only nine actors and no band -- the actors double as musicians -- to become Teeny-Tiny Todd." Back Stage 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 9:01 pm
First-Time Author Vs. The Publishing Machine (Is This How It Works?) A writer spends a couple of years researching and writing a long book, only to be apalled by the process of getting it to print. Where's the editing? The support? The promotion? Is this really the state of book publishing in the early 21st Century? Columbia Journalism Review 09/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 10:03 am
- Teachout To Firt-Time Author: Get Real Terry Teachout is a self-described "cynical old author with several books under his belt" and is amused by a first-time author's expectations of how the publishing business works. Here's "a more realistic perspective" on the way things work. About Last Night (AJBlogs) 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 10:01 am
Future Shock - Sci-Fi Goes Soft The world of science fiction is in crisis. Declining sales and a lack of creativity has fans of the form concerned. "It's not just an issue of whether or not the golden age of sci-fi faded with the passing of proponents such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick, compounded by the fact that Ray Bradbury's only recent contribution has been to complain that Michael Moore appropriated the title of his classic book Fahrenheit 411 for his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 9:24 am
Another Who-Was-Shakespeare Book "The life and works of a man whose life is so plain and whose works are so fancy produces the kind of book that belongs less to a scholarly genre than to a performing genre, a hoop for a scholar to jump through when he no longer has anything to prove, as Lear is a role for an actor to jump through when he has done all the others. To the long run of such life-and-works books, the Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt now offers his own reading." The New Yorker 09/06/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 10:03 pm
Movie Piracy's Global Reach Movie industry executives say that virtually any movie they produce is now pirated and distributed illegally within hours of its release. They paint "a sobering picture of how quickly piracy -- aided by the latest technology -- continues to escalate worldwide, whether it's a vendor selling copies on a blanket from a street corner or a state-of-the-art online service." Chicago Tribune 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 9:17 am
TV Networks Fail To Diversify "Five years after the NAACP blasted the `virtual whitewash' of prime-time TV, little has changed in Hollywood. Of the 23 new scripted shows premiering on the six broadcast networks in the coming weeks, only nine feature minority actors in lead or supporting roles. The award for whitest network goes to WB." Boston Herald 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 9:02 am
MGM Sale Could Signal Market High Does the sale of the MGM movie studio signal a perception that Hollywood has maxed out its profitability? As far as the entertainment business goes, there are more profitable games... BusinessWeek 09/07/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 12:55 am
Montreal Film Fest Chief On His Way Out? Is the longtime director of the Montreal Film Festival on his way out? "Commentators have been complaining for years about Serge Losique's festival, founded in the mid-1970s, around the same time the Toronto International Film Festival began. For years, the competition was fierce and the two festivals were considered arch-rivals. But for more than a decade, it has been glaringly obvious that Montreal's festival is not in the same class as TIFF, which has become the pre-eminent festival in North America." Toronto Star 09/08/04
Posted: 09/08/2004 12:07 am
Electronica Linz This year's Ars Electronica Festival in the Austrian town of Linz transformed the city into a giant art installation. "Huge speakers lined the banks of the Danube River as well as the streets and rooftops of Linz. Music -- classical, folk, cyberpunk and sounds that simply defied classification -- were piped in through some speakers. Others produced interesting sound effects intended to enhance or alter a listener's experience of a place -- a loop of placid brook babble playing at a crowded bus stop, for example." Wired 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 10:57 pm
FCC Fines 20 CBS Stations Over Superbowl Breast The FCC has fined 20 CBS stations a record $550,000 for singer Janet Jackson's bare breast flash earlier this year during the Superbowl halftime show. Yahoo! (Reuters) 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 10:48 pm
Moore: Fahrenheit Could Forego Oscar Contention Michael Moore says he's willing to make Fahrenheit 9/11 ineligible for the documentary Oscar by showing it on TV this fall. Academy Award rules say movies shown on TV within nine months of their theatrical release are not eligible for an Oscar. Yahoo! (Reuters) 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 10:37 pm
News Alliance - Public Radio And Newspapers An increasing number of public radio stations are getting their news reporting from newspapers. "The journalistic and promotional deals range from occasional on-air interviews of newspaper reporters to elaborate newscasts based in print newsrooms, but they carry similar benefits. Pubcasters gain access to large news staffs, investigative resources and the credibility of the area's news leader. And the dailies, eager to retain or build readership, gain exposure to news consumers who may not be in the habit of subscribing." Current 09/07/04
Posted: 09/07/2004 9:09 pm
