Ideas

Why You Have To Be Smart To Watch Today's TV "For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. You have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all." New York Times Magazine 04/24/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 6:03 am

Copyright - A Tax On Readers? "Copyright law is a tax on readers for the benefit of writers, a tax that shouldn’t last a day longer than necessary. What do we do? We extend the copyright term repeatedly on both sides of the Atlantic. The US goes from fourteen years to the author’s life plus seventy years. We extend protection retrospectively to dead authors, perhaps in the hope they will write from their tombs. Since only about 4 per cent of copyrighted works more than 20 years old are commercially available, this locks up 96 per cent of 20th century culture to benefit 4 per cent. The harm to the public is huge, the benefit to authors, tiny. In any other field, the officials responsible would be fired. Not here." Financial Times 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 10:51 pm

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Visual Arts

Where Does British Art Stack Up? "British art, historically, has its charms. In addition to Gainsborough's perfumed rococo world, we have Constable and Turner. All three, if you have grown up with the swagging, blustering variability of British weather, are acute barometers of the national soul. But do their works make it into the world's top 10, or even top 100?" The Guardian (UK) 04/25/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 9:10 pm

Chicago's Dueling Art Fairs "Chicago will be the site of not one but two big international contemporary art fairs starting their simultaneous four-day public runs on Friday. But out of sight at both will be three of this city's more prominent, high-end contemporary art dealers." Chicago Tribune 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 8:46 pm

Dealer Massively Overcharged Sheikh For Art Why did Oliver Hoare, a leading London art dealer, invoice the world’s biggest collector Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar for massive overcharges? "On one occasion Mr Hoare invoiced Sheikh Saud £5.5 million for a jade pendant originally made for Shah Jahan. Ten months earlier the same object had sold at Sotheby’s for £454,500. Mr Hoare’s invoices are now being examined by Qatari authorities as part of the investigation into Sheikh Saud’s spending." The Art Newspaper 04/22/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 10:10 am

Expert: Famed Shakespeare Portrait A Fake "One of the most recognizable portraits of William Shakespeare is a fake, experts say. According to Britain's National Portrait Gallery, the image – commonly known as the "Flower portrait" – was actually painted in the 1800s, not while the Bard was alive." CBC 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 7:46 am

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Music

Ex-La Scala Chief Speaks Out: Unions Out To Get Me Mauro Melli speaks out about his difficult tenure and departure as general manager of La Scala. "From the day I became general manager, the Scala unions quit speaking to me. They pushed against everything: against me, against Maestro Muti, against the world. I am very sad in this moment, because I came to La Scala with great passion and enthusiasm." The New York Times 04/25/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 8:32 am

A Jazz Concert Recording That Adds History A long-forgotten concert recording of a jazz concert provides some interesting historical insight. "The tapes come from a concert at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 29, 1957, a benefit for a community center. The concert was recorded by the Voice of America, the international broadcasting service, and the tapes also include sets by the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, Ray Charles with a backing sextet, the Zoot Sims Quartet with Chet Baker, and the Sonny Rollins Trio. But it is Monk with Coltrane that constitutes the real find. That band existed for only six months in 1957." The New York Times 04/25/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 8:29 am

Do Visiting Orchestras Scuttle The Home Team? The San Diego area is getting some visits from some high-profile orchestras next season. "With their out-of-town cachet, they have more glamour than the San Diego Symphony, the city's hometown musical team, which is working hard to cultivate audiences and appreciation. Do visiting ensembles provide unfair competition to the San Diego Symphony? Or are they beneficial to everyone?" San Diego Union-Tribune 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 10:47 pm

Education Fails Classical Music Peter Maxwell Davies says what ails classical music is the lack of good education. "Successive governments have cut back on music education in state schools to the extent that music specialists have become a rarity. Not only can few teachers read or write musical notation, but the music teachers themselves are unfamiliar with the world of classical music. Can we imagine the teaching of English in circumstances where the teacher not only does not know any poems, novels or plays, but cannot read?" The Guardian (UK) 04/25/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 9:24 pm

Music Director Vs. Flutist Flutist Dawn Weiss has played flute for 25 years in the Oregon Symphony. But new music director Carlos Kalmer sent her a letter last fall complaining of her "technical errors, poor pitch control, lack of leadership, choppy phrasing, failure to connect rehearsal corrections to performances, and an 'airy and unpleasant' sound quality." Weiss worked on the issues, but Kalmer wasn't satisfied. "And so a tense drama began, pitting a prominent musician in the orchestra against her conductor. After receiving the letter, Weiss pressed ahead with an improvement program. And when her efforts failed, she decided to break with symphony protocol and brought the warning letter she received and her story to The Oregonian last week." The Oregonian 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 6:00 pm

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Arts Issues

When Arts Organizations Play The Real Estate Market The Children's Museum in San Diego has made a number real estate trades in its history, hoping to take advantage of rising prices to leverage itself into the facility and location of its dreams. Now the museum finds itself $7 million short of its goal and is struggling to raise the amount... San Diego Union-Tribune 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 6:11 pm

The Art Of The Anti-Cell Phone Message Cell phones have become such a nuisance at stage shows that they've spawned their own mini-art form - the pre-curtain anti-cell phone announcement... They're often as amusing as the shopw itself.
Baltimore Sun 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 7:22 am

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People

Edwardo Paolozzi, 81 Of the few British artists who came to international prominence soon after the second world war, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, who has died aged 81, was one of the most inventive, prolific and various. Chiefly a sculptor (and one of the first to react against the all-pervading influence of Henry Moore), he was also a highly original printmaker, some of whose collage-based silkscreen images are among the finest examples of pop art - the style he was instrumental in shaping. The Guardian (UK) 04/23/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 10:35 pm

Mailer Sells Archive To U Texas Norman Mailer has sold his personal archives to the University of Texas for $2.5 million. Stored in nearly 500 boxes weighing more than 20,000 pounds, the trove includes all manner of Mailerabilia dating back to his childhood and especially his early years at Harvard (class of '43), where he majored in aeronautical engineering and wrote an unpublished novel, "No Percentage." The New York Times 04/25/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 10:15 pm

Sir John Mills, 97 Acting great Sir John Mills has died at the age of 97. "He died at home in Buckinghamshire on Saturday morning after a chest infection that lasted several weeks. His films included Great Expectations in 1946 and War and Peace in 1956 and he won an Oscar in 1971 for playing a village idiot in Ryan's Daughter." BBC 04/23/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 6:56 am

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Theatre

Hollywood's Theatre Drain "Since the beginning of this year, four of Hollywood’s best and most established small-theaters companies — Open Fist, the Actors’ Gang, West Coast Ensemble and Theatre/Theater — have either been evicted or are considering leaving the Hollywood area due to redevelopment and rising property values. All have resided in Hollywood for years, establishing themselves in marginal neighborhoods. 'Lip service is paid to the importance of theater and the theater community and yet there’s so little public support and certainly no public assistance'." LAWeekly 04/21/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 9:16 am

Fun Rules In New Broadway Hits "The juggernaut shows are no longer based on teary epics or lugubrious legends or dark poems. The singing gloom-and-doom characters of the Great White Way -- the bedraggled street urchins and guilt-ridden Vietnam War veterans and weather-beaten felines -- have packed up their dressing rooms. One formidable survivor, that spectral opera-house haunter in the half-mask, is looking ever lonelier. Today, the hits are all about tee-hee and ha-ha and oh-ho-ho. What packs 'em in is hilarity in major chords. Monty Python, Mel Brooks, sex-crazed puppets, Harvey Fierstein in a triple-D cup: These are the new aristocrats of Broadway. Types with a thing for the funny bone." Washington Post 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 8:39 am

Cast Album As Promotional Giveaway Broadway cast albums rarely make much money. But they are very valuable as promotional tools for a show trying to hit it big. So the producers of Broadway's "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" is giving away 50,000 copies of the show's album as a way of promoting it. The New York Times 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 8:13 am

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Publishing

The Literary No-Man's Land Even well-established writers with great reviews are having difficulty getting their books sold these days. "If you speak to publishers about the sales of literary fiction - I mean we're in real trouble in this country. Sales are shocking these days, even compared to 10 years ago. And publishers are seriously cutting back." The New York Times 04/25/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 8:37 am

Books Get Wired (As A Plot Device) "A recent spate of old-fashioned low-tech printed books have all abandoned traditional narrative for Internet terminology, using e-mails, chat-room dialogues and instant messaging instead of regular prose, chapters and verses. Authors say the use of e-mails is not simply a gimmick, but a way of reflecting the world they see." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/25/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 8:19 am

Challenging Chabon On His Story Did Michael Chabon invent a personal Holocasut history to "fashion his previously banal suburban persona into a more complex Jewish identity?" After stories on a book website and in the The New York Times, the charges get nasty... MobyLives 04/25/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 8:15 am

Self-Publishing Finds Its Legs "For the first time, print-on-demand companies are successfully positioning themselves as respectable alternatives to mainstream publishing and erasing the stigma of the old-fashioned vanity press. Some even make a case that they give authors an advantage -- from total control over the design, editing and publicity to a bigger share of the profits." The New York Times 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 8:33 pm

Is The Quintessential Chicago Writer No More? "Chicago was very much a writer's town in 1951, even if no one obvious giant walked the Loop, and remains a writer's town to this day, though the one indisputable giant of the last five decades, Saul Bellow, died earlier this month. Dozens of writers in Chicago -- or from Chicago -- continue to produce critically acclaimed novels and stories, occasionally inspired but seldom intimidated by the Ghosts of Chicago Writers Past. What may be on its last legs, however, is the idea of the quintessential Chicago writer, neck-deep in despairing urban realism, following in the bottom-dog literary tradition of Dreiser, James T. Farrell, Richard Wright and Algren. You just don't hear that voice much anymore." Chicago Sun-Times 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 8:30 pm

Examining The Oprah Book Club Phenomenon Every book Oprah chose for her book club saw a huge increase in sales. So "why did the books come under so much criticism? The question goes to the core of our perceptions about culture and art. Oprah, Rooney posits, found herself caught in an ongoing unease in America between highbrow and lowbrow culture generally summed up as: If a huge number of people appreciate something, can it really be art?" Rocky Mountain News 04/24/05
Posted: 04/24/2005 7:47 pm

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Media

The Rise Of Asian Cinema The Asian film industry is coming into its own. "World culture is a growth industry, and national cinemas in Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have become a significant part of the equation. The films of the region are part of an aesthetic continuum, although it is sometimes hard to tell the voice from the echo. Individually, they are rooted in national trends, myths and cultural interests that collectively form a pan-Asian consensus." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 04/25/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 8:23 am

Rumpelstiltskin Wakes Up, Watches A Week Of TV Mary Jacobs stopped watching TV 15 years ago. As Turn-Off-Your-TV Week began she spent a solid week watching again. "My conclusion? Bad TV is much worse. It's uglier, meaner and more inane. But good TV has actually gotten better. Characters have real depth; there's more ambiguity and nuance; plots take unpredictable and interesting turns. Maybe, when the baby boomers' hair turned gray, television became more adept at dealing with gray areas. So, will I keep on watching? Probably not." Dallas Morning News 04/25/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 7:36 am

Is Our Entertainment Becoming More Exhibitionist? So now we have "movieoke" where people can go up and lip sync to their favorite movie scenes. "What's interesting about movieoke from a cultural perspective is that it seems to be another example of how entertainment — and, by extension, our culture — is becoming more and more about exhibitionism and voyeurism." St. Paul Pioneer-Press 04/24/05
Posted: 04/25/2005 7:19 am

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