“Authors are being roped in left, right and centre to continue or complete legacies, whether it’s Sebastian Faulks taking on James Bond in Devil May Care last year, or the bucketloads of Virginia Andrews novels she has ‘written’ since her death more than 20 years ago.” It’s a tricky business, say authors who’ve tried it.
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
UK’s First City Of Culture Could Be The Countryside
There are 29 candidates longlisted for the UK’s “city of culture,” an unfunded designation “intended to build on the European capital of culture award. One is peculiarly hard to pin down geographically, and another has requested its name be withheld, which could cause a few problems for tourists should it win the title in 2013.”
Irish Artists’ Income-Tax Exemption May Disappear
“For decades Irish-based writers, musicians and visual artists have been exempt from paying income tax on their earnings under the Republic’s tax laws.” A code revision may end that. “Intended to help struggling artists, [the exemption] has been criticised in the past because high-earning performers such as U2 were paying no tax….”
Musicians Assail UK’s Proposed Piracy Sanctions
The Featured Artists’ Coalition, the Music Producers Guild and the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors have come out “against UK government proposals to kick file-sharers off the internet. Persistent file-sharers could have their internet accounts suspended in an attempt to crack down on piracy.”
Pittsburgh Symphony Conductor Extends Contract Early
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck, “whose initial three-year contract began in fall of 2008, will now remain in his post until at least 2015-16. … The extension is unusual for its length and for how early it came in the conductor’s tenure.”
Why Lang Lang Is A Musician For Our Times
“Showmen in different eras touch different chords for different generations. This is the age of instant messaging, sound bites, of atomized culture, with information packaged for our convenience in morsels, and Mr. Lang is embraced for more than his winning smile and playing very, very fast.”
NYC Chops 200 Feet Off Jean Nouvel’s Midtown Tower
“[T]he building would have been as tall as the Empire State Building minus its antenna, a fact that probably made planners tremble. … Still, the notion of treating the Midtown skyline as a museum piece is more disturbing. The desire of each new generation of architects and builders to leave its mark on the city … is essential to making New York what it is.”
Cleaned Up, Dubious Met Canvas Is Declared A Velazquez
“Experts had reason to doubt [its] authorship: Decades of varnish had discolored the canvas so much that its palette looked far darker than that of other paintings by Velazquez.” But the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent cleaning of “Portrait of a Man” revealed under “yellowed varnish and poor retouching … all the marks of Velazquez’s hand.”
New Design For Atlantic Yards Arena Is Better Compromise
Shop Architects’ revision of the Atlantic Yards arena is “somewhat more promising” than the first successor to Frank Gehry’s design. “Some of Mr. Gehry’s original ideas … have been restored,” and the structure has “an appealing rust-colored steel skin,” yet “it still falls short of the high architectural standards set by the design the city was originally promised.”
These Previews Have Not Been Approved For All Audiences
“The Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Ratings Board substantially,” and quietly, “changed its policy earlier this year so that the promotional clips from upcoming films no longer need to be suitable for ‘general’ audiences,” a.k.a. kids. Now trailers are approved for “appropriate” audiences, though what counts as appropriate is unclear.