“The search has begun for members of the public to become living works of art on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth. More than 2,400 people will stand on the central London plinth for one hour each, over 100 days from 6 July. Artist Antony Gormley, who created the Angel of the North, said he hoped the whole of the UK would be represented in the work, entitled The One and Other.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Research: Boys’ Bad Grades In English Are Girls’ Fault
“Boys do best with ‘as few girls as possible’ in English lessons at primary and secondary school, Steven Proud, a research student at Bristol University, will tell the Royal Economic Society’s conference. But when it comes to maths and science, both boys and girls at primary school achieve up to a tenth of a grade more when there is a high proportion of girls in the class, Proud found.”
Rediscovering Movie History Through DVD On Demand
“The recent launch of the Warner Archive Collection could well portend a revolution; it’s DVD on demand” — as in, they’ll burn you one — “a way for Warner (and, one hopes, for every other studio) to make movies available without spending the $75,000 to $100,000 it costs to release an old title into an ominously contracting marketplace. … Virtually none of the movies in this collection has been available on DVD before. Many never even made it to VHS.”
Why Newspaper Tales Make Great Cinema
“Newspaper movies get made because good drama usually involves moral dilemmas — and when it comes to complicated choices, the daily work of a newspaper reporter is a perfect vehicle. If you look back on the history of newspaper movies, virtually all of the great films, comedy or drama, involve wrestling with difficult choices and establishing some sort of moral compass. … [T]he issue always raises its head — how far will you go to get the story?”
Proposed Cuts Would Hit LA’s Libraries, Arts Agencies Hard
“L.A. County’s three biggest government-supported cultural institutions figure to reap $60 million in taxpayer funding for the coming 2009-10 fiscal year, their subsidies holding up well despite falling property values and other recession-spurred declines in tax receipts that are draining public coffers. Public libraries and municipal arts agencies didn’t fare as well” in recent proposals, which call for significant cuts.
Dutch Company Buys Rodgers & Hammerstein Catalogue
“Broadway’s best-known collection of show tunes is to come under the same ownership as work by Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten after a $200 million (£137 million) deal expected to be announced today. Rights to The Sound of Music and other musicals written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein are to be sold by their daughters to Imagem Music, the owner of the Boosey & Hawkes classical library.”
Wii Shoulder? Players Get Physical, And Injuries Show It.
“To say that Wii injuries are an epidemic would be an overstatement, but they are proliferating along with the popular video-game system. Interviews with orthopedists and sports medicine physicians revealed few serious injuries, but rather a phenomenon more closely resembling a spreading national ache: patients of all ages complaining of strains and swelling related to their use — and overuse — of the Wii.”
Trailblazing Lighting Designer Tharon Musser Dies At 84
“Tharon Musser, who said she ‘painted with light’ and proved it with her lighting designs for more than 150 Broadway shows — including ‘Follies,’ ‘A Chorus Line’ and ‘Dreamgirls,’ all of which won her Tonys in the 1970s and ’80s — died Sunday at her home in Newtown, Conn.”
The E-Book’s Impending Makeover Of Reading And Writing
“It will make it easier for us to buy books, but at the same time make it easier to stop reading them. It will expand the universe of books at our fingertips, and transform the solitary act of reading into something far more social. It will give writers and publishers the chance to sell more obscure books, but it may well end up undermining some of the core attributes that we have associated with book reading for more than 500 years.”
Coachella’s Temporary Architecture A Blueprint For Future?
“The curator of Coachella’s art programs, Philip Blaine, commissioned a number of pavilions this year that straddled the line between architecture and installation art. They also took advantage of the growing prominence of temporary structures in a world suddenly drained of capital. The short-term future of American cities, after all, involves lots of provisional and low-budget projects — and a whole lot fewer iconic towers.”