Big movie studios are so far unable to agree on which of two new DVD formats will be the standard. “Hollywood has been unable to throw its weight behind one format, and because the rival discs are largely incompatible, the studios have been unable to persuade the manufacturers to reach a compromise or to get one side to withdraw. Compounding matters, many Hollywood executives have staked their reputations – both corporate and personal – on one technology or the other, making it politically difficult for them to switch sides.”
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Judge Orders Readers Not To Talk About Harry
A Canadian judge has ordered the 14 people who were mistakenly allowed to buy copies of the new Harry Potter book this week not to divulge anything about the story. “The book was sold to 14 people who snagged a copy of J.K. Rowlings’ much anticipated “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” when it landed on shelves last Thursday at a local grocery store. The book, officially set for release this coming Saturday, has been shrouded in secrecy and its debut has been highly orchestrated to enable everyone — readers, reviewers, even publishers — to crack it open all at once. It’s the sixth in Rowling’s seven-book fantasy series on the young wizard.”
Virginia Performing Arts Center’s Rocky Road
A planned performing arts center for Richmond, Virgina is being criticized after significant changes were made in the project…
Google Libray? Time To Ask Questions…
There are plenty of big questions to ask about Google’s library digitization project, writes Christopher Allen Waldrop. There’s the privacy issue for one. “The fight’s just beginning and no one can say how long it will go on or how it will end. Google’s partners need to get their common sense back and take this opportunity to start asking the hard questions about what the Google Library Project means for libraries, their patrons, and the future. It’s the one area where the problem is not too much information but too little.”
When Ballet Met Modern (Ooooh… Not Good)
This mashing together of modern and ballet has turned into an artistic dead end. “The results are often mind-numbingly generic work in which ballet is watered down and modern dance is watered down, leaving a list of choreographic cocktails that simply never should have been mixed in the first place.”
Russia’s Greatest Ballerina Today
Uliana Lopatkina is only 30, but “despite her tender age, is now lionised almost universally as the greatest ballerina today in Russia, a country where they know about such things. Effortlessly, it seems, in the 10 years since a 5ft 9in beanpole with a square jaw and an apparently boneless body emerged from the juniors of the Kirov Ballet, a living legend has grown up around her.”
The New Home Movies (It’s A Very Big Show)
“Today’s cash-rich, time-poor masters of the universe have found a new and creative way to preserve their family history. Welcome to the age of the professionally produced family movie, where budgets almost rival broadcast TV productions. Well-heeled City bankers, consultants and the like are spending as much as £40,000 on having experienced TV crews shoot biographical documentaries about their own family, for private viewing. These productions – some 200 a year are being made by the leading company in the field – are put together with all the skill, resources and production values of proper documentary television.”
Pianist Alexei Sultanov, 35
The controversial Van Cliburn Competition winner had suffered a series of strokes over the past decade. “He was always one of a kind, always unique. He was always at the center of attention, always fiery, brilliant. People loved him or hated him, but more people loved him. Whatever one thought of Sultanov’s playing, there are many worse epitaphs than that.”
The Hidden Performer Inside All Of Us?
“The desire to perform is, I think, universally present, but the horror of failure or ridicule is almost as strong. Many people have had a eureka moment with music; a spark, a fuse, an explosion which might be talent revealed or, at least, the start of an enduring interest, love, even obsession. But perhaps the talent for hearing and enjoying music is actually separate from the ability to produce it.”
The Olympic Architecture Left Behind (It matters)
“A successful Olympics is measured not just by the gold medal tallies, the firework displays that accompany the opening ceremonies or the receipts from the television rights and the sponsorship money, but most conspicuously by what it leaves behind. With its soaring roof rising out of the Yoyogi park, Kenzo Tange’s Olympic pool for the Tokyo Games is still a landmark 40 years after it was built. It served to mark Japan’s coming of age as a modern state after post-war reconstruction. And Frei Otto’s stadium in Munich – despite the horror of the assassination of the Israeli athletes at 1972 Olympics – is a magical structure. Its elegant tent-like roofs are so popular that there was an outcry when there was a move to demolish it. But in the case of Montreal, and now sadly Athens too, the Olympic legacy is mainly seen in the form of debt.”