R.I.P. - Western Union Has Delivered Its Last Telegram After 145 years, Western Union has stopped delivering telegrams. "The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn't help. Email could be counted as the final nail in the coffin." LiveScience.com 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:16 pm
US Congress Considers Full Assault On Free Use A reform of the Trademark Act would prohibit artists from using company marks in any way. "The Act would give companies considerable leverage in preventing artists and photographers from employing their marks in images by claiming the mark is being 'diluted'. The bigger the company, the more famous the trademark, the easier it will be to prevent you guys from using it. National companies with highly recognizable marks would have more leverage than any single creator or small business and would easily outspend any of you to prevent your using their mark." Stockphotographer.info 02/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:13 pm
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Greening The Skyline, For Health And Profit Can towering skyscrapers and natural beauty ever really coexist? A new generation of architects doesn't see why not, and the corporations that populate high-rises across America are beginning to see the benefits of a different kind of urban planning. "Not so long ago, green construction was largely dismissed as prohibitively expensive and as just so much political correctness. But the arrival of the Condé Nast tower in Times Square in 1999, designed by Fox & Fowle and billed as the first green skyscraper in New York, sent the message that corporate America saw something to gain from the green model." The New York Times 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:54 am
A New Look At Abstract Expressionism A new documentary focusing on the revolutionary changes that hit the American art scene beginning in the 1960s has an intriguing premise: that artists of the era consciously abandoned any attempt to cater to existing public interests and began creating art that viewers would simply have to "catch up" to. But in the years since Warhol, Stella, Hockney, and others burst onto the scene, much of the museum-going public has managed to embrace the revolutionary style they embodied. Boston Globe 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:38 am
Art Loss Register Helps Find Long-Missing Paintings "The mystery surrounding the theft of seven French Expressionist paintings from a wealthy American collector almost 30 years ago has been solved by a London court case. The canvases, worth at least £20m, are thought to have shuttled back and forth for decades between Massachusetts, Monaco, a Swiss bank vault and the British offices of Sotheby's." The Guardian (UK) 02/02/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 10:34 pm
Crafts Council On The Precipice Of Disaster England's Crafts Council "is in crisis, victim of a miasma of resignations, rows and inertia that swirls round one of the worst policy mistakes made by the arts establishment since Labour took power in 1997. Where did it all go wrong?" The Telegraph (UK) 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:04 pm
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Union Wants Lip-Synchers Exposed The UK Musicians Union is pressing British broadcasters to institute an on-air system to notify viewers when a musical performance is being lip-synched, saying that such a system would encourage more bands to perform live. "Just as when you buy a can of beans and it tells you what's in the beans, we think if you are going to buy a ticket for a show or watch a band on the TV, you should know exactly what it is you are buying and what you are watching." BBC 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:03 am
Ozawa Ill Conductor Seiji Ozawa, 70, has canceled all his winter engagements with the Vienna State Opera, where he is music director, due to a severe bronchial infection and a case of shingles. Ozawa, who has led the VSO orchestra since 2002, is expected to recover, and plans to keep all his summer engagements. Boston Globe 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 5:47 am
New MD In Winnipeg The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra has named 35-year-old conductor Alexander Mickelthwate to be its next music director, beginning this fall. Mickelthwate, currently an assistant conductor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, replaces Andrey Boreyko, who led the WSO for four seasons. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 5:17 am
Why UK Orchestra Players Are Quitting "One could argue that in this country we do not get the orchestras we deserve: we get far, far better than that. And it is the players who are subsidising us. String players are the rank and file of the orchestra, the infantry. Of the 600 or so orchestral string players in full-time work across the country, few earn more than £25,000 a year. Many are on much less. Orchestral rates of pay in western Europe are high, where a premier-league player can earn up to £50,000. In America, where there is no state funding for the arts and orchestras rely mainly on private sponsorship, the average starting salary is $58,000 (£32,805), more than one and a half times that of British recruits. But it's not just the money and lack of career advancement that prompts some players to hang up their bows..." The Guardian (UK) 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 10:38 pm
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The Joint Chiefs Have Time To Read The Comics? "In a protest with an unusual number of high-level signatures, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and each of its five members have fired off a letter assailing a Washington Post cartoon as 'beyond tasteless.' The Tom Toles cartoon, published Sunday, depicts a heavily bandaged soldier in a hospital bed as having lost his arms and legs, while Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in the guise of a doctor, says: 'I'm listing your condition as 'battle hardened.''" Washington Post 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 7:06 am
Welsh 'Direct Funding' Plan Defeated By One Vote The Welsh National Assembly has narrowly defeated a controversial plan submitted by Culture Minister Alan Pugh which would have bypassed the Welsh Arts Council and seen six of Wales' largest arts groups funded directly by the Assembly. It didn't take long for the official debate to descend into shouting and accusations of hidden agendas. "The truth of the matter is that he who pays the piper calls the tune," said one Assemblyman opposed to the plan, which opponents feared would make arts groups vulnerable to interference by politicians. The Western Mail (Cardiff) 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 5:24 am
New London Arts Center Takes It To The Streets Bob Geldof is in on a new arts center in Camden Town in the north of London. "There is a buzz about the Roundhouse that is reminiscent, to those of us who were kids at the time, of Camden Town in the Sixties and Seventies: a place where our world was remade in a purple haze of invention. The risk is high when you let the streets in, but what other way is there to understand what's going on?" La Scena Musicale 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 4:58 pm
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Simon Rattle's Rough Year "Life isn't getting easier for Simon Rattle. The golden boy of classical music who seemed incapable of wrong moves has become the single most visible conductor in the world - while having a contentious split from his second wife, losing sleep thanks to Jonah, his 11-month-old son with his new partner, Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozená, and, as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, receiving unnervingly polarized reactions from critics and audiences... He also faces chronic funding uncertainty with his home orchestra, whose city of residence is virtually bankrupt. Even a sunny, seemingly unflappable personality like Rattle's can't whitewash these circumstances. Can the collective wear and tear be worth it?" Philadelphia Inquirer 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 5:44 am
Wendy Wasserstein, Feminist Wendy "Wasserstein's humor contributed to feminist discourse in the theatre in numerous ways. Her plays are simply funny, and tweak the stereotype of feminists as humorless and strident. She wrote bright, comic plays with a twinge of sadness, melancholy that became more evident and more cutting as her career went on." Feminist Spectator 01/30/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:27 pm
- Teachout: Wasserstein, A Dissenting View Terry teachout wasn't a fan: "In fact, I didn’t think much of any of Wasserstein’s plays, and I dreaded having to say so in print, since she was an exceedingly nice lady. I fudged the point in my review, calling her “one of our best theatrical journalists, a keen-eared social observer with a knack for summing up cultural watershed moments like the coming of age of the baby boomers and putting them on stage to memorable effect.” All true, and none of it incompatible with the fact that I considered her to be a glib, punch-pulling lightweight, a kind of feminist Neil Simon who never cut too close to the knuckle." About Last Night (AJBlogs) 01/31/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:15 pm
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West End Posts Record Year At The Box Office "Box offices have never been busier, figures for 2005 show. From Billy Elliot to Guys and Dolls they have been packing them in: during 2005 a record 12.1 million customers, compared with 10.1 million in 1986, spent a total of £375,163,339 on London theatre tickets." The Times (UK) 01/31/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 10:28 pm
- Is London's West End Lagging? "Signs of a West End slump are beginning to worry its leading lights. Cameron Mackintosh, the millionaire impresario, has admitted that business is slow, and curtains have come down early on some West End productions." The Independent (UK) 01/30/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 10:25 pm
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Page Six vs. WaPo The famously aggressive gossip columnists at the New York Post have come out swinging against Washington Post arts writer Philip Kennicott, following Kennicott's scathing review of a new book about the effort to stop the looting of Iraq's national treasures and mount a recovery effort following the American invasion. The Post calls the review "an unprovoked hatchet job... on Manhattan Assistant DA-turned-war-hero Matthew Bogdanos" and Bogdanos himself is quoted asking "What has that man [Kennicott] ever done for 'culture?'" New York Post 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:15 am
- More Than Just A Book Review? Was Philip Kennicott's review of Thieves of Baghdad really an "unprovoked hatchet job"? He does allow that there is "a good narrative and a lot of fascinating detail in this book." But then, he also accuses author Matthew Bogdanos of subscribing to "an interpretation of military culture that goes beyond mere duty and includes a disturbing degree of entitlement -- to bend rules, disdain criticism and place oneself above the people one serves." Read the full review here... Washington Post 01/22/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:12 am
Frey Releases "Readers' Note" Not an apology, the note is James Frey's "explanation for making up incidents in his memoir. "I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories require," Mr. Frey said, explaining the reason for the changes. "I altered events all the way through the book." The New York Times 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:10 pm
Lost In Translation JM Coetzee has had his work translated into many languages. "The necessary imperfection of translation - brought about in the first place by the incapacity of any given target language to supply for each single word in the source language a corresponding single word that would cover, precisely and without overlap, the denotation of the original and its major connotations to boot - is so widely accepted that the translator becomes accustomed to aiming for the best possible translation rather than a hypothetical perfect one. But there are occasions where less than perfect translation of a key word can have serious consequences." The Australian 01/28/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:07 pm
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The Brokeback Agenda Okay, Brokeback Mountain is a good movie, but are those eight Oscar nominations for Ang Lee's "gay cowboy" flick really about rewarding great filmmaking? Or is this just Hollywood's way of thumbing its nose at the right-wingers who currently control America's political system? Stephen Hunter says that Brokeback "makes an argument with images craftily employed to communicate ideas. Nothing in it is arbitrary... generally, the movie is cruel to family. It seems to think family is a bourgeois delusion" and that homosexuality is a natural reaction against the imprisonment of traditional American family life. Washington Post 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:59 am
Box Office Slump? Don't Tell The Brits "In a year when blockbusters went bust in the United States and films fizzled in Europe, Britons flocked to the cinema -- to see a teenage wizard, a magical wardrobe and a psychedelic chocolate factory. The U.S. box office slumped to its lowest level in almost a decade in 2005, dragged down by a slew of underperforming action films and lackluster sequels. Ticket sales also fell across much of Europe. But while a strong pound and an uncertain tax climate have fueled fears for the future of British filmmaking, British filmgoing is in great shape." Chicago Tribune (AP) 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:45 am
Success Is Nice, But It's Not Really The Point Former eBay president Jeff Skoll has crafted a niche for himself as a different kind of Hollywood mogul. "After cashing out of eBay with $2 billion in his pocket, he started Participant Productions, a movie company that had a remarkable burst of critically acclaimed films last year... If you notice a lack of boneheaded action, smarmy romance, and brain-dead comedy, it's because Participant's mission was to make not blockbusters but messages - movies that promote social and economic justice." Wired Magazine 02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:34 am
China Bans Geisha Over Casting Chinese censors have banned the film Memoirs of a Geisha, calling the casting (two Chinese actresses portray Japanese geishas in the film) "insensitive... because of Japan's atrocities during their occupation of China in the 1930s." China has also banned Brokeback Mountain due to its storyline involving a homosexual love affair between two cowboys. BBC 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:09 am
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New Swan Lake To Hit The Road A new production of Swan Lake that has been making serious waves since its premiere last year in Shanghai is preparing to take the "unconventional blend of classical ballet and traditional Chinese acrobatics" on a major world tour including Russia, Japan, Germany, and the U.S. The production, which includes acrobatic feats worthy of Cirque du Soleil, is a complete reimagining of Tchaikovsky's famous ballet, and even changes the storyline to make it more relevant to modern Chinese audiences. The New York Times 02/02/06
Posted: 02/02/2006 6:49 am
San Francisco's Claim To Dance The dance capital of the United States? How about San Francisco, which, Rachel Howard points out, has the highest concentration of dance activity in the countyr. Here it is, A to Z... San Francisco Chronicle 01/29/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:20 pm
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