“So-what books have been proliferating. A lot. Some reasons: They’re light and user-friendly. They require no attention span. They supposedly make good gifts, although 78 percent of recipients will glance at this kind of book exactly twice before consigning it to oblivion. That’s not a real statistic. Neither are most of the statistics that show up in these things.”
Blog
Smithsonian’s Shameless Cash Grab
Did the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum sell its soul to the devil this week with the announcement that it would screen the latest Harry Potter flick in its IMAX theater? “The screening decision had nothing to do with education, or enlightenment, or any of the other grand ideals public museums have always been built around… no one is even pretending that this is about anything other than getting as much cash as possible, as quickly as possible.”
Brits To Investigate Waterstone Acquisition Deal
The British Office of Fair Trading will investigate Waterstone’s proposed purchase of rival Ottakar’s. “The OFT received more than 350 letters from consumers, publishers and authors opposed to the £96m deal, which was announced in September. Yesterday the watchdog said that the weight of opinion was a key factor in its decision to send the proposed deal to the Competition Commission for scrutiny.”
Gibson On The Holocaust? No Thanks.
News leaked out this week that actor/filmmaker Mel Gibson, who ignited a firestorm last year with his bloody biopic, The Passion of the Christ, would be involved with a new ABC-TV project dramatizing the memoir of a Holocaust survivor. It didn’t take long for Jewish groups nationwide to respond, accusing Gibson of “minimizing” the Holocaust in past statements, and demanding that he not be a part of the project.
Rutter: Carols Rock
John Rutter has written many a Christmas carol and he knows they’re not “serious” music. But. “The carol repertoire is the richest and most varied collection of folk art: a wonderful historical ragbag of doggerel, some inspired poetry, much memorable melody and a few of those irritating ditties that lodge unwanted in the brain.”
The Biggest Art Fraud Of The 20th Century
“Between 1986 and 1994, Myatt churned out more than 200 new works by surrealists, cubists and impressionists, passing them off as originals with the help of an accomplice, John Drewe, an expert at generating false provenances. Despite the fact that many of Myatt’s paintings were laughably amateurish (they were executed in emulsion, not oil), they fooled the experts and were auctioned for hundreds of thousands of pounds by Christie’s and Sotheby’s. It was, said Scotland Yard’s art and antiques squad when they finally caught up with Myatt in 1995, bursting into his Staffordshire studio at the crack of dawn, ‘the biggest art fraud of the 20th century’.”
Grammy Nominee List Released
The Grammy nominees have been announced, and conductor Mariss Jansons, pianist Martha Argerich, and the Emerson String Quartet lead the pack of nominees in the classical categories. In the contemporary music category, composer Osvaldo Golijov’s 11-song cycle, “Ayre,” competes with works by William Bolcom, Ned Rorem, Peter Boyer, and Carlos Franzetti.
Hollywood Pushes NY To Toughen Piracy Penalties
“As part of its worldwide campaign against piracy, the film industry is pushing for tougher penalties for smuggling a camcorder into a cinema in New York, which has the country’s worst bootlegging problem and some of the weakest penalties. A bill pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America would make operating recording equipment inside a theater a criminal misdemeanor, raising the maximum punishment to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.”
Time For The Non-Profit Newspaper?
Arguably, American newspapers are badly-served by the publicly-owned profit model. But aren’t newspapers as institutions more important than their business model? “The St. Petersburg Times, with its Poynter connection, is a rare example of a nonprofit. How could other newspapers be liberated from the for-profit world to concentrate on their mission? There are two tax-favored models before us: public broadcasting and real estate investment trusts.”
The Once and Future King of Broadway?
It’s hard to get any more Broadway than Neil Simon – the celebrated playwright remains the only living writer to have a Broadway theater named after him, and this season, no fewer than three Simon revivals are playing New York’s biggest stages. So it’s easy to forget that it took Simon decades to achieve critical acclaim, and even longer to win the Pulitzer he so coveted. At 78, two years removed from a kidney transplant, Simon is still working, planning a sequel to The Sunshine Boys and turning his autobiography into a stage play.