Relationships between actors and directors can get frosty at times, and the relationship tends to be fraught with tension at the best of times. So what’s it like when they’re married to each other? The word “dramatic” springs to mind…
Author: sbergman
Hitting Back At A Harry Potter Knockoff
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, has agreed to testify against the publishers of an encyclopedia of the Potter lexicon. Rowling has supported many of the fan-produced spinoffs of her work, but she and her publisher call the new lexicon copyright infringement. “Their objection is that the book merely repackages Ms. Rowling’s work and, unlike the free fan sites, is intended to make money for its publisher.”
New Leonardo Illustrations Found (Or Possibly Not)
“Reported discoveries of lost works by Leonardo da Vinci are almost as common as, well, images of the Mona Lisa. The latest attribution to be proposed involves the design for the illustrations in a chess book from around 1500.”
NBC’s Mixed Messages
NBC is making a point of “bringing back the family hour” of evening television this year. So why does the network appear to be undermining its own stated goal by airing blatant vulgarities in its sitcoms featured in exactly that hour?
Too Much Of A Good Thing
What if the problem with classical music isn’t that it’s elitist or stuffy, but that we’re so inundated with it that we can’t hope to truly appreciate or understand it fully? “It’s not just music — it’s cultural effusions in general… There is an overabundance of art around, and it can’t be properly digested.”
Can This Man Save The UK’s Cultural Funding Model?
The new chief of England’s Arts Council “is more used to the shadows than the limelight… a policy man working out of the public eye, but a frequent sight in the audience at the theatre and concerts, often nursing a pint of bitter in the interval.” But unassuming or not, Alan Davey will be expected to guide the council through a critical period in its history.
Why The CBC Could Be Wrong About Classical
The CBC claims that its Vancouver-based (and soon to disband) CBC Radio Orchestra is anachronistic and too expensive to maintain, despite the fact that it actually makes up a measly 0.0035% of the broadcaster’s budget. Meanwhile, CBC is also gutting its classical radio programming. “Have we really reached the point where to voice a preference for classical music is to disenfranchise oneself?”
Forget Guitar Hero – Why Not Play A Whole Orchestra?
A video game that’s making the rounds of concert hall lobbies this year allows anyone to play conductor, leading a real orchestra on the screen before them, which actually reacts to their movements. “The challenging part of making the games was ensuring the pitch didn’t change as the video slowed or sped up.”
Leeds, Center Of Opera
England’s Opera North might well be the most innovative and exciting company in the UK, in an age when regional companies elsewhere are cutting back and programming cautiously. “The priorities for Opera North are now all about gentle expansion.”
Is BBC’s Online Video Crashing The Internet?
“The success of the BBC’s iPlayer is putting the internet under severe strain and threatening to bring the network to a halt, internet service providers claimed yesterday. They want the corporation to share the cost of upgrading the network — estimated at £831 million — to cope with the increased workload. Viewers are now watching more than one million BBC programmes online each week.”