Blog

“Beatles” Suitcase A Fake

A suitcase bought in Australia and thought to be a long-lost trove of Beatles music, is definitely full of fakes. “Many of the items in the suitcase appeared to be fakes, including ticket stubs for the band’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night which were reproduced from images that appeared in a book.”

New: Top Of The (Download) Charts

It won’t be long before music charts that only count CD sales will be obsolete. Napster has announced it is starting a top downloads chart to rank music popularity. “The Napster Online Music Chart will count down the top 20 tunes based on sales as well as songs that have been streamed (listened to online but not bought for permanent download) in a show that goes out Sundays at 7pm.”

Elmer Bernstein, 82

Film score composer Elmer Bernstein has died after a long illness. “Although he only won one Oscar during his 50-year career, for Thoroughly Modern Millie, he was nominated 14 times, most recently in 2002. As an accomplished pianist, Bernstein moved to Hollywood from New York in 1950 as his movie career took off. Among more than 200 film and TV credits were the scores for To Kill a Mockingbird, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Ten Commandments and The Age of Innocence.”

A Kilkenny To Rival Edinburgh?

Edinburgh, Shmedinburgh… There’s a serious new festival rival to the Scottish behemoth. It’s Kilkenny, where “what used to be a local arts week has transformed into an international festival that is becoming a viable alternative to its bigger, brasher Scottish counterpart. Last year, Kilkenny acquired a dynamic new director in the shape of Claudia Woolgar, who has tilted the festival towards eastern Europe.”

In Sydney – Just Put On A Show

“Sydney’s independent theatre scene is thriving. Whether or not it’s a by-product of the lack of work available, it’s a sign that certain practitioners aren’t content to leave their unemployed fate in the hands of others. Actors, directors, writers and designers are joining forces to produce their own stories, show their work and hone their craft.”

Judge: Booker Sludge

Tibor Fischer slogs his way through 126 novels that, “as a judge for this year’s Man Booker Prize, I was required to read, because it’s clear most publishers don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Taste: there’s no escape. Nevertheless, there are books that I don’t like, but I can see they are proficiently written and that others might enjoy them. Yet some entries were so execrable I reckoned they must have been submitted as a joke…”

Libeskind, Post-Cool

It wasn’t long ago that architect Daniel Libeskind was cool. “But a string of large projects – and wide popular acclaim – have dampened the enthusiasm with which some architects view him. Is there a tinge of jealousy? Or after the high-mindedness of his conceptual projects and the buzz of the Jewish Museum, is there disappointment about discovering that Libeskind is an ordinary architect after all? Could it be, some murmur, that he is just a form maker? A showman? Is there something just a little bit kitsch about his work?”

Filling The American Indian Museum

Native Americans have had a big role in deciding what will go in the new National Museum of the American Indian, due to open in Washington DC next month. “What they did not want, museum officials found, was the static display of 10,000 years of tribal life and culture. Their ideal museum would celebrate the glories of the past, to be sure, but they also wanted their artifacts and their contemporary culture to be accessible. ‘This is an important opportunity to show tribal people as participants in a living culture, not something in museums or in history books.”