Two years ago in London, publishers were “ringing showbiz agents and asking whether their biggest clients had ever thought of doing a book.” It worked: “Throughout this autumn, at least seven or eight of the Sunday Times non-fiction top 10 have been memoirs by television faces.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
GM Pulls Out Of Montreal Jazz Fest
“The Montreal International Jazz Festival is falling victim to the global economic slowdown. The festival’s main sponsor, General Motors, has decided not to renew its five-year sponsorship contract, which expires at the end of next year.”
What Flaubert Got Right About Shopping
“It is not simply that Emma Bovary wants things. Shopping is a key to her dreams, a way of widening the horizons of her provincial, bourgeois but boring, life… Shopping in modernity is not a simple matter of material greed. As Emma’s musings demonstrate, shopping links the localised world with the expanding horizons and dreams of the modern world.”
Download Sales To Pass The One Billion Mark
“Annual sales of digital songs will surpass 1 billion downloads this year, a first for the struggling music industry… Still, that’s not enough to offset the decline in CD sales. This year’s album sales are off 45% from the same time in 2000.”
Shaking Off The Auld Sod
In New York this year, a full raft of plays and productions from Ireland has been upending any and every preconception Yank audiences might have about theatre from the Emerald Isle in the new century.
Was It Illegal To Freeze Ballet BC’s Bank Account
“Although Scotiabank says it was within its rights to freeze a Ballet British Columbia bank account and use its funds to pay off a credit-card debt, an expert in insolvency law suggests such actions could be in violation of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.”
In Art Installation, All England Becomes A Symphony
The Fragmented Orchestra, installed at the FACT Gallery in Liverpool, consists of 24 “neurons,” microphone/speaker units placed at various points throughout the country; each neuron picks up sounds and transmits them to the central “brain” (a computer), which plays them on speakers in the gallery and sends them out to other “neurons.”
Film and TV Actor Sam Bottoms, 53
“Sam Bottoms, who started his acting career as a teenager in The Last Picture Show and played surfer Lance Johnson in Apocalypse Now, died Tuesday in Los Angeles of brain cancer. He was 53. He was the brother of actors Timothy, Joseph and Ben Bottoms and the husband of producer Laura Bickford. “
Piven’s Problem With Broadway: Too Much Sushi
When Jeremy Piven pulled out of the current Broadway revival of Mamet’s Speed-The-Plow this week, his excuse – “a high mercury count” – was greeted with some skepticism. Now Piven’s doctor has spoken publicly, saying that the actor’s considerable consumption of sushi (twice a day) has indeed led to mercury poisoning.
Even Damien Hirst Can’t Sell In This Art Market
“New York art dealer Christoph Van de Weghe had eight works by Damien Hirst in his booth at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair earlier this month. He sold only two… The unsold works included an $850,000 cabinet filled with cigarette butts and a blue canvas with 15 butterflies.”