Where do kids get their music these days? Increasingly less from MTV. No, the new music guru is video games. “Recent surveys show that more than 40 per cent of game players have bought a CD from an artist featured in a game, 40 per cent have learned of a new band from a game, and 27 per cent have gone out and bought the CD.”
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Those Dangerous Hollywood Movies
“Movies have long been a magnet for scrutiny, hysteria or moral panics, though obviously television now draws much of that dubious attention. Still, nothing can get commentators and even politicians going like a Hollywood movie. Consider Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, made mostly with Gibson’s money but also with funds from investors, and released by a large theatrical distributor–thus, like many so-called “indies,” a Hollywood movie in all but name. The Passion of the Christ represents a strange historical irony, because it was precisely the type of Catholic conservatism animating Gibson’s controversial blockbuster that inspired Joseph McCarthy’s tirades against Hollywood movies.”
Aussie Theatre In Decline
Theatre is on the decline in Australia – few audiences and fewer productions. “When they are young and starting out, writers hone their skills on the theatrical fringe. But these fringe companies are disappearing. The number of new works being staged around Australia dropped by more than a third in the past 20 years. More specifically, there has been “a jaw-dropping decrease” in theatrical activity in Melbourne in the decade to 2003 – down by 20 productions to 36.”
Sprucing Up London’s “Intellectual Highway”
Plans have been announced to spend £35 million to redo an urban corridor in London that is home to one of the biggest concentrations of cultural institutions in the world. “On and around the road are institutions including the V&A, Science and Natural History Museums, Imperial College, the Royal Colleges of Art and Music, the Goethe Institute and Institut Français, the English National Ballet, and the Royal Geographical Society.” The street needs to be made more accessible, turning it into “the most significant intellectual highway in Britain”.
Celebrating Peter Brook
“In a matter of weeks, on March 21 to be exact, Peter Brook turns 80. This is quite a milestone by any reckoning. One would be hard pushed to identify another living British director whose contribution to theatre has been so immense – and yet all the signs are that there’ll be no great song and dance made when this anniversary comes round.”
Death Of The Pop Single
“The single is now over. Not the pop song, of course, which blasts over everything from car ads to party political broadcasts, but the single record, which has now gone the way of the tape-to-tape. Just before Christmas, it was announced that more songs were downloaded from the internet than were bought as CDs or records in shops, and, this week, it emerged that sales of new songs were being outstripped by their sales as mobile phone ringtones. Downloading means no physical record, no sleeve, no artwork of any kind, just a piece of sound that will most often be deployed now by young people as a way of alerting them to another sound they like much more: the sound of each other talking. When the song becomes tired, consumers will simply press “delete”. Given that pop music has always been the most nostalgic of art forms, the new disposability might sit oddly.”
Muti Still Miffed At Covent Garden
Last year after 20 years trying to convince Riccardo Muti to conduct in its house, Covent Garden had to watch as the maestro walked out at the last minute. And Muti? He puts the blame squarely on the opera company: “I think that Covent Garden didn’t behave properly. La Repubblica wrote a line that was wonderful. It said, ‘In this story, for once, the English behaved like Italians, and the Italians behaved like the English.’ That said everything.”
A Literary Prize Ready For The Spotlight?
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are – by some acounts – Britain’s most prestigious literary awards. Its list of winners is long and impressive. “Yet outside the world of the highbrow literary cognoscenti, few have heard of the awards, despite the fact that they are the UK’s oldest and, many would argue, most prestigious. Now one man armed with a grand vision and a plan to increase the prize money fivefold is aiming to take them out of the shadows.”
Prize Mentality – What’s It Doing To Our Books?
“Britain has great fiction. A lot of it. But what is the prize system which now dominates the British literary world doing to that fiction? One winner means all the rest are losers. Many don’t deserve that label. Fiction is, thanks to the Victor Ludorum ethos that now drives critical judgment, a gladiatorial combat. Is it a fair fight?”
Chicago Museum Attendance Declines Fourth Straight Year
“Attendance at Chicago’s top 10 museums fell for the fourth year in a row, although the pace of the declined slowed enough that museum officials expect a turnaround this year. In 2004, 7.48 million people visited at least one of the museums, down 1% from 7.57 million in 2003, according to a report released today from the Museums in the Park.”