UK arts are getting more funding from private sources. “A report released today by the charity Arts & Business reveals that private support for the arts has leapt from £393m to £452m in the last two years. However, there is concern within the industry that the figures could be seen by the government as an excuse to slash public arts subsidies.”
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Didion To Bring Book To Broadway
Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” is coming to Broadway. “The memoir, which was published in October and has since sold more than 200,000 copies, is to be adapted for the stage by Ms. Didion herself, with an eye toward a spring 2007 opening on Broadway. The play, imagined as a one-woman show, will be produced by Scott Rudin, the Hollywood and Broadway producer, and directed by David Hare, the respected British playwright. No casting has been announced.”
What Happened To The Movie Villains?
“Why don’t the movies have plausible, real-world villains anymore? One reason is that a plethora of stereotype-sensitive advocacy groups, representing everyone from hyphenated ethnic minorities and the physically handicapped to Army and CIA veterans, now maintain liaisons in Hollywood to protect their images. The studios themselves often have “outreach programs” in which executives review scripts and characters with representatives from these groups, evaluate their complaints, and attempt to avoid potential brouhahas.”
Soderbergh’s Anarchic Movie Strategy
Director Steven Soderbergh is planning on releasing his new movie to “theaters, DVD, and high-definition cable TV – all on the same day. It’s an experiment that threatens to uproot the film industry’s long-standing ‘release window’ formula, which staggers a picture’s release on various platforms to maximize profits.”
BBC Evacuation Puts Radio Off Air
BBC’s Radio 2,3 and 4 went off the air for a while Monday afternoon. “The break in transmission was caused by a staff evacuation at BBC Broadcasting House in London which led to the networks being taken off the air.”
Tax Credit For UK Filmmakers
The British government proposes instituting a tax credit for producers making films in the UK, with 16% relief for large budget films and 20% for small budgets.
What’s The Right Price For Digital Music?
“Piracy is clearly here to stay, but as iTunes has shown, the record companies’ best strategy is to provide an easy-to-use service that offers music downloads at a fair price. But what price is “fair”? Apple says it is 99 cents a song. Of this, Apple gets a sliver—4 cents—while the music publishers snag 8 cents and the record companies pocket most of the rest. Even though record companies earn more per track from downloads than CD sales, industry execs have been pushing for more.”
Wikipedia Makes New Rules For Contributors
Plagued by complaints of misinformation, Wikipedia will “now require users to register before they can create articles. The website hopes that the registration requirement will limit the number of stories being created. ‘What we’re hopeful to see is that by slowing that down to 1,500 a day from several thousand, the people who are monitoring this will have more ability to improve the quality. In many cases the types of things we see going on are impulse vandalism’.”
The Teen Pulp Connection
“Teen pulp, which evolved out of children’s books and rebelled against their supposed strictures, appears to take up far more real estate on the shelves of bookstores than books of more subtle literary bent for the pre-adult set. The genre also reflects a different set of expectations about how books are read and why.”
Brubeck At 85
He’s still performing 80 concerts a year. “While Tatum, Louis Armstrong and others were inventing jazz, Brubeck was hoping to learn it. Now, some 70 years later, he’s the most successful popularizer in postwar jazz history.”