Chinese money has been buying up Hollywood movie companies with the intent of pursuing global business. So is this a problem? “When you control the movie experience, you can subtly influence public opinion. And the Chinese government has been transparent about that goal.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
This Weekend’s AJBlogs Highlights 10.09.16
This Week In Understanding Audience: What Does The Audience “Own”? and Do We Tell Audiences Too Much?This Week: Do you own the culture you just bought?… How did TV become the medium for complexity?… Should we keep audiences in the dark about what they’ll see?… Measuring the effectiveness of arts policy … read more
AJBlog: AJ Arts Audience Published 2016-10-09
On diversifying audiences This week The New Yorker had some shocking news: Andy Borowitz is only their second least funny humorist. In his “Shouts and Murmurs” piece “The Pences Visit Manhattan“, Douglas McGrath takes the blue ribbon. He …read more
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth Published 2016-10-09
Recent Listening: Izabella Effenberg Izabella Effenberg, Cuèntame (Unit Records) This is the debut album of the Polish vibraphonist and composer Izabella Effenberg, who lives in Germany. The CD brings together an imposing septet of European musicians in a chamber … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-10-08
Too late, too late! “The gentlemanliness of our statesmen is no secondary excellence. It was said by Burke of a great nobleman of the last century that ‘His virtues were his means’; that he accomplished by a gentle and … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-10-07
Ethereal & Other-Worldly: Transported by Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim The mesmerizing Agnes Martin survey, organized by the Tate Modern and now gracing the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda (to Jan. 11), enraptured me from the start: In the pocket gallery just off the first ramp is …read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-10-07
This Week In Understanding Audience: What Does The Audience “Own”? and Do We Tell Audiences Too Much?
This Week: Do you own the culture you just bought?… How did TV become the medium for complexity?… Should we keep audiences in the dark about what they’ll see?… Measuring the effectiveness of arts policy is really hard… Technology is changing the ways we experience the world.
Five AJ Highlights From This Week: A Golden Age For Music? An Arts Olympics?
This Week: The movie industry is undergoing a top-to-bottom revolution… Claim: teaching humanities fights racism… Outing the identity of Elena Ferrante sparks debate on privacy… Now be the best-ever time for music… Do we really need an Olympics for the arts?
Police Recover Van Goghs In Mafia Raid
“Italian police recovered the paintings during a raid of a Naples country house belonging to Raffaele Imperiale, a 41-year-old businessman linked to the Amato-Pagano clan, one of Italy’s notorious mafia groups. According to Reuters, police were first tipped off to the location of the paintings after arresting 11 of the group’s suspected members. Imperiale, however, remains at large and is believed to be hiding in the United Arab Emirates.”
Artists And Anonymity. There Are Problems
“It is interesting that writers cannot “reasonably expect” to keep their names unpublished, given how many have down the years. Daniel Defoe published as Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift as Lemuel Gulliver (with phoney portrait). Aphra Behn published pseudonymously. So did Henry Fielding. Samuel Richardson was anonymous and Jane Austen was just “a Lady”. Horace Walpole, all three Brontës and George Eliot all had noms de plume, and Eliot’s stuck. Even today, the famously anonymous are everywhere you look.”
Verbal Complexity Was Considered Elitist. So How Did TV Become The Place Where It Flourishes?
“We live in an epoch in which the battle for the complex and the resistant seems (“seems” is the operative word, as it often is) to have been lost. One of its early casualties was prose style. Style is not just a writer’s personal signature; and yet “classic style” is an oxymoron, because style is essentially idiosyncratic.”
On-Demand Culture Means You Don’t Own That Book, Movie Or Song You Think You Just Bought
“With the move to cloud computing and streaming content, the concept of “copy ownership” is now disappearing from entertainment as well. Software, motion pictures, and even music are increasingly a service provided to you. Streaming services and cloud content have their own worries. For example, what happens when you’re traveling somewhere with no reliable internet access? What happens when the service provider’s servers go down for days and you are paying for a service you are not getting? But the problems run deeper. The loss of ownership sends copyright law out to sea.”
Austin City Council Says Arts Groups Who Get Public Money Must Work With Union Workers Or Lose Funding
“The changes to the city’s cultural services agreement require organizations that take city money or use city property to recognize any labor organization designated via a card-check method and cooperate with it. If not, they could lose funding in future years.”
The Death Of Movies Meme Is Just Silly
“Come December – once the likes of Moonlight, La La Land, Arrival,Manchester by the Sea, Elle, Loving and a dozen more all-time classics hit theatres – it will be impossible to argue that film is dead, and everyone who advanced such a click-friendly theory will feel pretty foolish. But it would surely help if studios decided that audiences didn’t have to wait until the end of the calendar to realize that the medium would live to see another year.”