Gibson is setting out to introduce the first major innovation to the electric guitar in 70 years. “An audio converter inside the instrument’s body translates string vibrations into a digital signal that can travel over a standard Cat-5 Ethernet cable. The company will continue to sell traditional Les Pauls, but CEO Henry Juszkiewicz thinks it won’t be long before all guitarists go digital.”
Month: December 2003
Which Movie Awards Count
There are hundreds of movie critic associations and awards. And this is the time of year when they all weigh in with pronouncements about which movies matter. So how do you figure out which awards matter?
Liverpool At The Top (Culturally Speaking)
Excuse me, all you scoffers who snickered when Liverpool was named European Capital of Culture. “A spectacular waterfront, museums without parallel outside London, an elegant Georgian quarter, two imposing 20th-century cathedrals, the neo-classical masterpiece of St George’s Hall – where can those be matched? Past glories make every Scouse heart swell: imperial trade, cup-winning football, the Beatles.”
So Bad Language Doesn’t Matter?
Bad language is everywhere in the media. I there anything that shocks us anymore? And yet, we make gestures at protesting. “We obsess over the encroachment of vulgar words into public spaces on pain of a stark inconsistency, one that will appear even more ridiculous to future generations than some Victorians calling trousers “nether garments” does to us. At least the Victorians’ vocabulary taboos reflected mores that permeated society. Theirs was a world in which an author of a slang dictionary would have had trouble finding a publisher, people sequestered themselves under reams of fabric, illegitimate birth was a scandal, and sex was never spoken of in polite society.”
The Nature OF Nurture (Or The Other Way Around)
“Fifty years after the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA, we are for the first time in a position to understand directly DNA’s contribution to the mind. And the story is vastly different from—and vastly more interesting than—anything we had anticipated. The emerging picture of nature’s role in the formation of the mind is at odds with a conventional view.”
2003 On Broadway – Revenue Up, Ticket Sales Down
2003 Broadway grosses are “projected to be $730 million, up roughly 3.2% from the $707 million for 2002 and nearly 10% from the $664 million for 2001, when that year’s final quarter saw the aftereffects of the Sept. 11 attacks. In terms of ticket holders, however, the league is projecting figures of 11.2 million in attendance during 2003, down from the 11.4 million in 2002 and down nearly one million from the record 12.1 million achieved in 2000.”
Montreal Dance Festival Folds
Montreal’s Festival international de nouvelle danse (FIND) has closed. “After 20 years of presenting the best of contemporary dance from Quebec, (occasionally) the rest of Canada, and Europe, the biennial festival is finished, the victim of financial woes that resulted in a $600,000 accumulated deficit.”
When Tech And Media Join Up
“With more American households going to broadband, faster Internet connections are changing the movie, music, telephone, computer and cable businesses. The battles brought on by these changes are likely to occupy the media and technology industries in 2004.”
America’s Record Movie Weekend
Led by the latest installment of the Lord of the Rings, America’s movie theatres saw record holiday box office over the weekend. The total estimated weekend box office receipts for the top dozen films was $168.6 million, a record. The top 12 movies over the same weekend last year pulled in $155.9 million.
Culture To the People…
“The pompous, almost self-flagellatory, tone which compels us to suffer for our art is sounding increasingly irrelevant. Walk into the Tate’s Turbine Hall and what you will see is young people “hanging out”. That funny word from the cultural explosion that was the 1960s, “happening”, is happening again. And it is happening everywhere: at the National Theatre, whose new director Nicholas Hytner signalled his intent by putting on a blasphemous satire of trash culture; at the National Gallery, which surrounded us with ultra slow-mo videos that had us double taking to detect movement from stillness; at the Royal Opera House, which for the first time admitted a bona fide musical – Sweeney Todd -through its doors. We all felt a little dislocated in 2003.”