A legal conflict is brewing over one of the summer’s biggest potential blockbuster movies, the Crusades epic “Kingdom of Heaven,” with a prominent author accusing the film’s director, Ridley Scott, and the studio releasing the film, 20th Century Fox, of stealing his research for their screenplay.
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The Big Review Review
It’s not enough to just have reviews of culture these days. Now we have reviews of those reviews. “The traditional objects of culture – books, movies, art – are becoming ever more distant. In their place are reviews of reviews, museums of museums and many, many lists.”
Matthew Bourne – The Debate Revived
“This is ridiculous. Theatrical dance, throughout its history, has swung back and forth between storytelling and abstraction. For every Marius Petipa there was a Michel Fokine, for every Balanchine an Agnes de Mille, insisting that movement had to “mean” something. In the end, it never mattered. Narrative or abstract, some dance shows were good, and some weren’t. But Matthew Bourne, for his own reasons, has revived this weary debate. He comes, as he has put it, from “Cockney East London,” so he presumably has some feelings about social class. Furthermore, he didn’t see his first ballet until he was nineteen, and didn’t take his first dance lesson till he was twenty-two, so he may, in the past, have had misgivings about his credentials.”
Foetry: Exposed In Public
“Foetry.com launched on April 1st of 2004 to expose the status quo in American poetry publication: many books published are winners of contests that are often large–scale fraud operations. Judges select their friends, students, and lovers from pools of manuscripts numbering in the hundreds or thousands, accompanied by an entry fee, usually around $20–$25. Some of the competitions are sponsored by university presses. As soon as Foetry.com was launched, the defenses began.”
Cat Stevens’ Bad Year
Singer Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) has had a rough year. “In September last year he was escorted off a flight from London to Washington and grilled by the FBI, which then deported him as a security threat. Since then, he has been wrongly accused of supporting terrorist groups by the Sunday Times and the Sun, who were last month forced to pay damages. “Ever since I became a Muslim, I’ve had to deal with attempts to damage my reputation and countless insinuations seeking to cast doubt on my character and trying to connect me to causes which I do not subscribe to,” he grumbled after the out-of-court settlement.”
Peter Maxwell Davies On Demand
Composer Peter Maxwell Davies has started his own recording company. But not just any company. “The solution was radical. Rather than simply reissue set-packaged discs, the decision was made to offer a much more flexible product through the medium of the internet. The formula they came up with does just that, and at remarkably low prices. There are two ways of obtaining your personalised disc. One is simply to download the required pieces, together with an “owner’s booklet”, which will contain the required sleeve notes (including a libretto in the case of an opera), to your hard disc, then pay the appropriate money. The other is to choose your tracks, pay for them, and place a request for the disc to be compiled and posted out to you.”
Broadcast “Indecency” Wars Are Just Heating Up
“Leading lawmakers and the new leader of the F.C.C. have proposed a broad expansion of indecency rules, which were significantly toughened just last year. They are also looking for significant increases in the size of fines and new procedures that could jeopardize the licenses of stations that repeatedly violate the rules.”
Why Are There Now Ads On “Public” TV?
“To raise money for noncommercial programming, producers and distributors increasingly allow their corporate underwriters to turn their credits into something resembling regular commercials. Since the mid-1990’s, the underwriter announcements that precede and follow many public television programs (and usually conclude with the narrator thanking “viewers like you”) have gradually adopted many trappings of regular advertising, despite appearing on “commercial-free” television.”
Art Direct To Your Cell Phone
“This month, a New York-based Web site that celebrates graffiti and other street art began testing a system” that would allow “art lovers to download images created by emerging artists onto the video screens of their cellphones. Calling it a “curated online art gallery for your mobile phone,” the founders of the Web site, woostercollective.com, are hoping it will provide a new way for struggling young artists to make money, in much the same way that a songwriter can earn money from radio play or an actor from reruns.”
The Poet Of Melbourne
“The idea of being a career poet is an odd one to most of us – writing poetry doesn’t pay, for a start – but it implies someone who is out there seeking publication and renown, and respect from one’s peers. Kris Hemensley doesn’t seek such things. And yet he’s been writing seriously and steadily for 40 years, his work is held in very high regard, and he has arguably done more for poetry than anyone else in Melbourne.”