“Being uncomfortable. False ownership of terms. False ownership of cultures. Troubled histories. Finger-pointing. Segregation in an integrated world (or is it integration in a segregated world?).”
Month: January 2013
Do Arts Beamed To Movie Theatres Hurt The Arts?
“Much like those New Yorkers, arts administrators find themselves in the dark, fretting about how this rapidly growing trend will affect them.”
Emergency Funding For Storm-Damaged South Street Seaport Museum
“The museum was forced to close after the storm destroyed its telecommunications, electrical, heating and air conditioning systems. It reopened in mid-December and estimates that repairs will cost $22 million. As a result, it is still seeking contributions.”
Nobel Releases Documents About Controversial John Steinbeck Win
“Although Steinbeck was praised by the committee “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception” when his win was announced, the newly declassified documents show he was actually chosen as the best of a bad lot.”
How The Debate About Movies Is Changing
“Does controversy help or hurt a movie’s Oscar campaign? For that matter, does campaigning help or hurt during Oscar season?”
Even The “Hand-Made” Is Moving Online
“Craftsy, an 18-month-old, Denver-based service, is teaching skills that people used to learn mostly from adult-education classes or YouTube. Like Etsy and Pinterest before it, Craftsy is benefiting from the dovetailing of women’s interests in hand crafting and spending time online.”
Movies Won’t Go Away – Are They The New “Short” Form?
“Unlike the best long-form series, which build their fictional worlds over months or years, the best movies present relatively narrow segments of time in which the crucial qualities are compression, concision and intensity.”
The Philharmonie De Paris Is Becoming A Giant Money Pit
“Paris’s futuristic new classical concert venue, the Philharmonie de Paris – a vast metal construction which promises to transform the northern Paris skyline – is on track to become the world’s most expensive concert hall despite attempts by some politicians to block it because of its spiralling price tag.”
Putin Grants Gérard Depardieu Russian Citizenship
The obstreperous screen legend has been loudly announcing his plans to leave France over the new government’s tax increases on wealthy citizens. Now President Vladimir Putin has offered the actor a Russian passport and residency permit. Said a grateful Depardieu, “I love your culture, your intelligence. My father was a communist of that era. He listened to Radio Moscow! That is my culture too.”
2012 In Books: A Couple Of Lit Crits Sitting Around Talking
Daniel Mendelsohn and Laura Miller toss around the year’s literary disappointments (no bogus memoirs exposed!), shenanigans (lots of bogus reader reviews exposed), and the nature of bad reviews.