Tuesday, January 3
The New Seven Wonders
"The Acropolis in Athens made it, as did Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, China's Great Wall, the Colosseum in Rome, the Inca temple of Machu Picchu in Peru, Stonehenge and the Moai - the Easter Island statues. Less immediately obvious choices in a final shortlist of 21 contenders for the New Seven Wonders of the World, announced in Switzerland yesterday, included the Kremlin in Moscow, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty."
The Guardian (UK)
01/01/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 6:11 pm
Why Are British Universities Segregated?
"The figures on the ethnicity of students at higher education institutions for 2003-04, provided by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa), reveal a deeply worrying racial divide among British universities. There are 53 institutions with less than 5% ethnic minority students. About 20 institutions have more than 40%."
The Guardian (UK)
01/02/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 6:02 pm
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The Big Business Of Art theft
The Art Loss Register lists 160,000 stolen works of art. "Art theft is big business. Interpol reckons that it ranks fourth among the highest-value criminal activities, after drugs, arms smuggling and money laundering. The FBI puts its value at $5 billion a year."
Los Angeles Times
01/02/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 12:39 am
Antiquities And The Rules Of The Game
"The laws governing the antiquities trade are now so complicated that no one can be sure of them, and the chain of ownership for any given object--even when it is traceable--may be so tangled that nobody knows who officially owns what. But there is more at stake today than the fate of an antique vase or even a curator's freedom. What hangs in the balance is the very future of museums. Or to put it another way, "Whither the Elgin Marbles?"
OpinionJournal.com
12/30/05
Posted: 01/02/2006 11:23 pm
Italian Restorers Try To Patch Relations With Greece
Italian restorers are working to try to repair a priceless ancient Greek statue, and the results of their work will have diplomatic consequences. "In an incident that went almost unnoticed at the time, the authorities in Athens last year suspended all further digs by Italian archaeologists in Greece and slapped a five-year ban on an Italian lecturer. The sanctions were imposed after officials learned that the 4th century BC statue, found in an Italian dig on Crete, had fallen and been smashed in transit."
The Guardian (UK)
01/03/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 6:05 pm
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The End Of Wild-West File-Sharing
"File-sharing barons are facing their own day of reckoning after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer. Over the last four months, several Napster heirs have shut down and others are contemplating what they once couldn't abide -- doing business by the entertainment industry's rules to survive."
The Globe & mail (Canada)
01/03/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 7:43 am
Audubon Gets Extension To Surrender Instruments
Members of the quartet have been given more time before they have to turn over their instruments to the musician who sued them. "The extension came as progress was being made in negotiations with David Ehrlich, the violinist who sued Clyde Shaw, Doris Lederer and violinist Akemi Takayama after they ejected him from the quartet in 2000."
Richmond Times-Dispatch
01/03/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 7:29 am
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Previously: Court Seizes Audubon Quartet Instruments A federal bankruptcy court judge in Roanoke, Va., has ruled that the three remaining original members of the Audubon String Quartet must turn over their instruments to a bankruptcy court trustee to satisfy a judgment won by the fourth quartet member. "The legal battle has been long and bitter. It has divided the music world and split loyalties in and around Blacksburg, Va., where the quartet moved in 1980 for a residency at Virginia Tech, which ended after the lawsuit." The New York Times 12/15/05
Ears In The Seats
"We think of concerts as fixed entities. In our age of mechanical reproduction, live performance has become - like a book, a movie, a painting - an object that can be recorded, examined and stamped with approval (or disapproval). So we tend to think that everyone who attends the same performance is hearing the same thing. But that's not true, and not only because of vagaries of taste or hearing. It makes a big difference where you sit."
The New York Times
01/03/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 12:25 am
Mozart - Genius Or Hard Work?
Mozart was a genius, right? Well, "as the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth approaches this month, one film-maker is setting out to prove that such astounding achievements were a product more of hard graft than genius, as has often been assumed."
The Observer (UK)
01/01/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 10:52 pm
English National's Melodrama (In Three Acts)
The mess at the English national Opera is the stuff of operatic tragedy. "Since the music director Paul Daniel resigned, with cat-calls from another senior executive ringing in his ears, events have taken on a life of their own. The artistic director has gone, and a Greek chorus of the great and good penned a letter of open revolt aimed at the chairman. He duly resigned in December. Then 94 per cent of the staff voted last week to strike."
The Independent (UK)
01/01/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 5:50 pm
Mozart's Best Piece?
His Clarinet Concerto, according to a poll on the eve of the composer's 250th anniversary year. "It was followed by his Requiem and the Ave Verum Corpus in the survey of 103,000 Classic FM listeners. Next on the list was the piano concerto No 21 and then The Marriage of Figaro."
BBC
01/02/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 4:23 pm
South Africa's Hottest Band (And The Color Barrier)
The band is mixed race, even if most of its audiences aren't. "The racial mix of Freshlyground would draw little notice in Europe or the United States. But in a South Africa still struggling to unite its fractured population after centuries of rigid discrimination, the band has become a sensation, drawing audiences in both traditionally black venues and traditionally white ones."
Washington Post
12/30/05
Posted: 01/02/2006 4:22 pm
Missing Violin Turns Up After Reported Stolen
"A $175,000 violin that was reported stolen turned up Friday on the steps of a San Bruno church, and San Francisco police said it was never stolen after all." The student who reported it stolen "admitted that the violin had never been stolen and that she had filed a false police report."
San Francisco Chronicle
01/02/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 3:55 pm
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Car Prowler Nabs A $175,000 Violin
A rare violin has been stolen from the trunk of a car in San Francisco. "The violin was crafted by Nicolo Gagliano in the 1760s and is valued at more than $175,000 US. Gagliano studied under legendary violin maker Antonio Stradivari. "I've always left my violin in the trunk and it has always been fine," said Sabina Nakajima, 23, a student with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music."
CBC
12/30/05
Posted: 01/02/2006 3:54 pm
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Cultural Rehab
Newcastle and Gateshead are the poster cities for cultural renewal. "Gone is almost all the industry - steel, coal, warehouses, shipyards, docks - that made this one of the world's great manufacturing centres. Instead of a culture based on the dignity of labour and trade is a theme park of heritage sites and palaces of art, liberally sprinkled with restaurants and cafés. Nineteenth-century industry has been transformed into 21st-century leisure. They call it urban regeneration, and here they've invented a new civic identity to characterise it - NewcastleGateshead."
The Telegraph (UK)
01/02/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 11:54 pm
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A Nobel Speech Too Far
Harold Pinter's Nobel speech was critical of the UK and US. But to have more impact, he might have looked at Dario Fo's Nobel talk a few years earlier. "By equating the modern farceur with the jesters of the middle ages, Fo made it clear that ideas have always been dangerous ? and that artists who entertain by rattling those in power continue a noble tradition. Art, truth and politics will always be in conflict. Fo made this point using laughter, and because of this, his Noble lecture was an extension of his art. Pinter's lecture is not. His Nobel speech stands in opposition to his plays, the best of which exhibited the power of few words and silence."
Los Angeles Times
12/30/05
Posted: 01/02/2006 11:00 pm
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"Phantom's" Record Run
This month, Phantom of the Opera will have played continuously on Broadway longer than any other show in history - 18 years. And three of the original cast members are still performing in the show. "After a special gala performance on Jan. 9, "Phantom" will have been performed 7,486 times, one more than "Cats," which closed five years ago."
Washington Post
01/02/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 4:27 pm
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Publishers Reject Classics In Test
London's Sunday Times submitted two classic Booker-winning books to publishers as the work of newcomers and they were rejected. "One of the books considered unworthy by the publishing industry was by V S Naipaul, one of Britain?s greatest living writers, who won the Nobel prize for literature. The exercise by The Sunday Times draws attention to concerns that the industry has become incapable of spotting genuine literary talent."
The Sunday Times (UK)
01/01/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 12:48 am
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Starz To Offer Downloadable Movies
The premium cable channel Starz is offering movies for download on demand. "The service, dubbed "Vongo," is available for a monthly subscription of $9.99 and will eventually include more than 1,000 movies, short films and other programs. The films will be available at the same time they are offered on the Starz premium movie cable channel, about five to six months after they are released on DVD." Yahoo! (AP)
01/02/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 8:15 am
Does On-Demand Signal End Of Prime Time?
When any programming is available whenever the viewer wants it, what does that portend for those carefully strategized prime-time lineups? Miami Herald
01/01/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 7:56 am
Lost Everywhere
"This season, "Lost" is the fourth-ranked show in total viewers and the all-important 18- to 49-year-old demographic. But "Lost" has become something more, a model for a new media age, one that has far-reaching financial implications for artists and producers as new technology almost demands that they produce original content for Internet sites and blogs, DVDs, podcasts and books." Los Angeles Times
01/03/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 7:54 am
Will "Bubble" Change The Movies?
The movie industry is anxiously watching the release of Steven Soderbergh's "Bubble" later this month. It could change how we see movies. "Bubble will be the first feature released simultaneously in cinemas, on pay-per-view television and on DVD. As such, it is widely being seen as a portent of things to come." The Independent (UK)
01/01/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 7:47 am
What Will You Pay For Media?
"The best things in life -- TV, radio, newspapers -- used to be free, or pretty darned close to free. And now they're not. So the media question for 2006 is: What are you going to pay for, and why?" Boston Globe
01/03/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 7:34 am
What's Turning Us Off Movie Theatres?
"As the box office closed out 2005, moviegoing was down 7% with about 1.4 billion tickets sold for the year. While studio executives disagreed over why theater attendance declined (some blamed the movies themselves, others cited the allure of DVDs and video games, and several others said the 7% slide was statistically meaningless), a number of industry leaders did concede that exhibition must improve if Hollywood is to prosper ? stadium seating, in other words, is simply not enough." Los Angeles Times
01/03/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 12:18 am
The Future Of Podcasting?
"If I had to guess, I would say that what we now call podcasting will soon vanish into a much richer soup of downloadable media. Our car stereos will download programs over wireless Internet connections, and they'll be waiting for us when we strap on our seatbelts. Our TiVos won't need to record TV shows in real time, because we'll purchase the pre-recorded programs, and they'll also be delivered via the Internet." Slate
12/30/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 5:00 pm
The Movie Numbers Game
How is it that movie box office numbers for the weekend are announced before the weekend is over? "These box-office 'results' released over the weekend are simply a studio's own estimate of its movie's weekend performance. Distribution executives arise at dawn on Sunday mornings to crunch their numbers and report them to the media. Making a weekend projection on a Sunday morning is quite similar to how the media call political elections when they have the results of only a handful of precincts: You compare the numbers you have against some past results to make an educated guess." Slate
01/02/06
Posted: 01/02/2006 4:56 pm
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Dreams For British Dance
Ismene Brown has plenty of dreams for UK dance - starting with: "Wales at last has its own ballet company, and the new Welsh National Ballet, linking up with Welsh National Opera in lively opera-ballet bills, soon establishes an individual artistic identity, as Birmingham Royal Ballet and Northern Ballet Theatre have done in the Midlands and the North."
The Telegraph (UK)
01/02/06
Posted: 01/03/2006 12:07 am
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