“The arts matter because they are local and relevant to the needs and wishes of local people. They help citizens to express their needs and to clothe them in memorable forms. They offer a way of expressing ideas and wishes that ordinary politics do not allow. The arts regenerate the rundown and rehabilitate the neglected. Arts buildings lift the spirits, create symbols that people identify with, and give identity to places that may not have one. Where the arts start, jobs follow. Anywhere that neglects the arts shortchanges its people.”
Blog
Is Scotland Falling Behind In The Digital Revolution?
The country’s digital literacy is at stake. “The Executive has always said that broadcasting services are a reserved matter , but they have so many points of influence that impact on broadcasting: media literacy, economic development, how Scotland is placed in the digital revolution. It is related.”
Are Hollywood’s Special Effects Ruining The Movies?
“Hollywood studios would like to believe that digital effects are worth the cost, if only because they hold the prospect of a licensing cornucopia for toys and video games. But, alas, the studios also confront the less happy reality that even state-of-the-art CGI, if it gets out of synch with the story, does not create an audience either at the movie houses or on DVD.”
Independent Thinking – Dreamworks Sale Proves How Difficult
“Sunday, DreamWorks ended its 11-year run as an independent company by agreeing to be sold to Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc., in a deal valued at $1.6 billion. The sale highlights the enormous, perhaps insurmountable, challenges facing an independent company with hopes of competing against massive media conglomerates.”
TV Writers Want Extra Pay For Advertising
Trying to combat ad-skipping devices like Tivo, TV networks are turning to product placements in the scripts of shows. But now some writers are putting up a fight, demanding more pay in exchange for scripting product plugs into their shows.”
Rushdie: The Culture Inside All Of Us
Salman Rushdie writes that “when we, as individuals, pick and mix cultural elements for ourselves, we do not do so indiscriminately, but according to our natures. Societies, too, must retain the ability to discriminate, to reject as well as to accept, to value some things above others, and to insist on the acceptance of those values by all their members. This is the question of our time: how does a fractured community of multiple cultures decide what values it must share in order to cohere, and how can it insist on those values even when they clash with some citizens’ traditions and beliefs?”
More On Those Sex-Obsessed Artists
“Promiscuous Picasso, Lord Byron the philanderer, Dylan Thomas the boozy womaniser: these were not simply bonking Bohemians, it seems, but artists doing what their genes told them to do. According to the researchers the greater the artistic endeavour, the larger the sexual appetites. (There are some obvious exceptions to this rule: Julio Iglesias once boasted that he had had sex with 3,000 women, but has never yet sung a decent song.) Artists have more sex, of course, because that is what they are expected to do. As rule breakers, they are assumed to act on impulse, unconstrained by the mores that apply to the rest of society.”
BBC Kills “Horrific” Ad
After receiving 1,300 complaints, the BBC has pulled a promotional trailer for digital TV – “which some viewers complained was ‘horrific’ and ‘disturbingly psychotic’.”
Kitty Carlisle Hart At 95
“George Gershwin asked me to marry him, but I knew he didn’t love me, so I said no. He was sweet and vulnerable, successful and good-looking with an instant appeal. So terribly boyish. But he needed constant approval. So he had constant ladies. Whenever he met one, he pretended that he had written a waltz, just for her, that moment. He’d always use the same lyric and just put her name in the blank space. It was his mating call.”
Harper Collins To Digitize
Harper Collins say it will digitize 20,000 books in its catalogue in a bid to rein in potential copyright violations on the internet. “The move comes as the US publishing industry is bringing lawsuits against web search leader Google over its effort to scan copyrighted books in libraries – a move the industry fears would set a dangerous copyright precedent.”