Author: Douglas McLennan

Westerners Revere Originals. In Asia Copies Are Just As Good

The Chinese have two different concepts of a copy. Fangzhipin (仿製品) are imitations where the difference from the original is obvious. These are small models or copies that can be purchased in a museum shop, for example. The second concept for a copy is fuzhipin (複製品). They are exact reproductions of the original, which, for the Chinese, are of equal value to the original. It has absolutely no negative connotations.

Don’t Blame The Movies For Oscars’ Low Ratings

Right-wing culture warriors and the Hollywood old guard like to argue that it’s because liberal Hollywood has lost touch with its audience, but there’s an ugly undertone to leveling that accusation in a year when the academy’s membership, at least in terms of demographics, is more like the country as a whole than ever before. In some ways, the academy’s taste has actually gotten more populist.

Will #MeToo Reform The Dance World?

“I was a ballet dancer and choreographer for 10 years. Now, six years after leaving dance, I am shocked by the elements of the culture that I once accepted as normal. In the ballet world, disordered eating is dismissed as ambition, and dancers have no job security and little ability to voice concerns or opinions about how they’re treated in the workplace. Yet it’s difficult to separate culturally sanctioned, low-level abuse from the necessary stress of a demanding art form.”

Ross Douthat: A Cultural Explanation For The Decline Of The Oscars

The key problem for the Oscars is not, as Hollywood’s critics on the right sometimes suggest, that the movie industry’s liberal politics are dragging down both box office numbers and Oscar ratings — that the desire to preach is swamping the desire to entertain. There is a political problem, but it is secondary: The key issue for the academy is that the Hollywood system no longer produces enough of the kind of movies that a mass-audience awards spectacle requires.

Last Of The Movie Projectionists

As the movie industry has gradually shifted from 35mm to simpler, less finicky, more device-friendly digital film, even moviegoers at places like BAM—who tend to be better versed in the finer points of cinematic geekery—are often unaware or unimpressed to learn that they’re being treated to screenings in older formats.

Netflix Says Most Subscribers Watch On Their TVs

Netflix says 70 percent of its streams end up on connected TVs instead of phones, tablets or PCs. That number isn’t a shock — Netflix has been clear about the importance of TVs for a long time, and it’s why the company has spent a lot of energy working out integration deals with pay TV distributors like Comcast and Sky — but it’s a good reminder that not everything is moving to the phone.

The Great Tuba Crime Wave

The tuba, the biggest and lowest-pitched among the brass family, can run from around $2,000 for beginner band models to more than $20,000 for specialized professional versions, says Martin Erickson, a past president of the International Tuba Euphonium Association. People with “nefarious” intentions, he says, probably try to resell tubas or use them in other bands. “You don’t expect tubas to fall into that sort of thing.”

High French Court Rules Against Peggy Guggenheim Heirs Over Operation Of Venice Palazzo

In its judgment on 7 March, the Cour de Cassation found that the 1996 agreement between Pegeen Vail’s descendants and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation “imposed no constraint on the number or the duration of the displays of other collections, nor did it require a constant presentation of all the works” in Peggy Guggenheim’s collection.