“Thousands of movies made in Hollywood before 1950 no longer exist. Some were destroyed by malice, others by negligence (90 percent of all silent films). And of those movies made since 1950, there are no guarantees. But such matters are the domain of film preservationists, and while their work should not be undervalued, just as significant is another species of movies you can’t see: movies that do exist, that may even be no more than a few years old, but that remain as elusive as those maligned masterpieces of von Stroheim and Welles. Movies, in other words, without distribution — or with distributors who, for one reason or another, refuse to release them.”
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DVD Sales Slow To A Run
DVD sales are slowing from their torrid pace of the last few years. “Hollywood shipped 403m DVDs to America’s stores in the first quarter of this year—one-fifth more than in the first quarter of 2004. That is a healthy growth-rate, but far slower than in the whole of 2004, when nearly 50% more DVDs were sent to shops than in 2003—and much lower than previous years’ dizzier increases of 100% or more.”
Sorting Out Implications Of The Hyperion Case
Music labels are worried that the recent judgment against Hyperion requiring the company to pay royalties to a musicologist who had prepared scores will kill certain kinds of recording. “What may set precedent is that, while musicologists have sometimes received recording royalties before, a court had never required a company to pay them, as far as I know. To require payment means classifying a musicologist with composers, who gained the right to royalties from for-profit performance of their work over a century ago. This may be why, whatever the legal merits, many people have decried the decision.”
How To Fix A City Waterfront
Many waterfront cities have…well, blighted waterfronts. “How to reclaim all that wasted property? There are plenty of models: the self-consciously quaint shopping mall at Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, slowly turning into a dilapidated relic; the strip of skater heaven along the Hudson River; the maritime Pacific Bell stadium in San Francisco; the harborside courthouse in Boston. Everyone with a slice of waterfront to save, however modest, should also make a pilgrimage to the North Fork village of Greenport, where Mayor David Kapell’s decade-long quest to restore a patch of bayside blight has finally come to fruition.”
California’s New Poet Laureate Al Young On Art:
“It is only very young and inexperienced cultures that don’t understand that art and culture are the most important byproducts of any society. You’re not remembered for your armies or your navies…. You’re remembered for your music and for your stories. For your literature. For your dance. For your film. For your painting. For your great art. That is what ennobles a society.”
Steal It If It’s Anonymous?
“The classical music world has discovered a fact about copyright law that has long bothered folklorists and ethnomusicologists: under certain circumstances, the law allows individuals, in effect, to “privatize” works that are common property. Anonymous works handed down via oral tradition — the sort that make up the musical heritage of many small-scale societies — have always been vulnerable to legal appropriation.”
Book Critic Kipen Joins NEA
San Francisco Chronicle book critic David Kipen has been named the National Endowment for the Arts’ new director of Literature. “Among his new responsibilities, Kipen will design and lead national leadership initiatives, develop partnerships to advance the literature field, and recommend panelists and manage the review process for literature applications.”
Philadelphia Orchestra And Philly Pops Merge
The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philly Pops have merged operation. “Musically, little will change. Peter Nero, 71, will continue to lead the Pops. The number of Philadelphia Orchestra players who currently gig with the Pops is not expected to grow. But the consolidation gives the Philadelphia Orchestra a chance to boost its budget and donor base and allows it to concentrate on its main mission.”
Norman Lebrecht, Performer
Norman Lebrecht is asked to narrate a performance of Schoenberg’s “A Survivor from Warsaw”. “To study an orchestral masterpiece of this magnitude is pure pleasure, physical as much as intellectual. To perform it in a public concert hall is a privilege that beggars description, a moment where we are humbled by the materials we handle. I cannot remember everything. The seven minutes of Survivor pass like a flash and the reward of applause seems undeserved. I want to do it again, to do it better, to do it justice.”
Oh, We All Love A Great Pirate Yarn (Don’t We?)
Readers have been served a double helping of pirate books in the last couple of months, for reasons that defy analysis. The cowboy and the gangster, twin pillars of America’s self-image, continue to inspire screenwriters and novelists, although the cowboy, these days, seems to be limping as badly as Walter Brennan. But what can explain the allure of pirates?