“Last year’s top five had one film, the fourth Twilight, with a US setting; two, if you count the last Transformers, which really belongs to the multimillion-dollar globetrotters that rule the roost now. The new orthodoxy is: if a film is set in America, with strong American themes, the less chance it stands in the new globalised mainstream.”
Month: February 2012
Foreign Countries Ban American Movies For The Darnedest Reasons
Sure, it makes sense that India would forbid The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – all that rape and violence. But Burma/Myanmar banned The Simpsons Movie over pigment, the French government cut the entire second half of an African art documentary, Ireland banned the Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business for anarchy, and China blocks all films depicting time travel.
Classical Music Cruise Goes Belly Up, Leaving Fans In Lurch
A retired Chicago Public School teacher gets feisty after being robbed of a classical music cruise
Meryl Streep: How Opera Training Helped Me
“I learned the importance of breath. There was a thing I learned in my lessons from Estelle — to breathe from your back. She would always say, there’s room in the back — that you expand three dimensionally. … I use it all.”
The Free Open-Source Textbooks That Will Save Students $70 Million
“Using Rice’s Connexions platform, OpenStax will offer free course materials for five common introductory classes. The textbooks are open to classes anywhere and organizers believe the programs could save students $90 million in the next five years if the books capture 10 percent of the national market.”
Canadian Book-Reading Program Steps In Controversy
“In extending Canada Reads to include works of non-fiction for the first time since the contest’s inception 10 years ago, the CBC has inadvertently transformed a friendly, domestic literary debate into a geopolitical furor focused on volatile questions of truth and justice in distant totalitarian regimes.”
The Art Hotel That Challenged Guests To Steal Its Art
“One couple failed because they Tweeted their every move. One man attempted to hook the picture off the wall with a long broom. Having eluded such elaborate ruses, Pulp Fiction will now be donated to Crime Stoppers, a division of the police, and will be auctioned off to raise funds for crime fighting.”
The Music That Takes Over Your Smart Phone
“A startup called SonicNotify embeds inaudibly high-pitched audio signals within music or any other audio track. When a compatible app hears that signal, it triggers any available smartphone function to link you to websites, display text, bring up map locations, display a photo, let you vote on which song a performer plays next and so on.”
How Should Mike Kelley Be Remembered?
“He may be an artist so identified with his own moment that his flame will gutter when individual pieces of larger enterprises are broken up and confined in permanent exhibitions. This is the context where deceased artists (without their own museums) have to compete to be noticed and live on, and it’s one reason painters have an advantage in art-history books.”
Ten Museums Contend For This Year’s £100,000 Art Prize For Innovation
“M Shed in Bristol, Turner Contemporary in Margate, The Hepworth Wakefield and Glasgow’s Riverside Museum are among the 10 museums in contention. The prize rewards excellence and innovation for a project completed or undertaken in the previous year.”