The extent to which copyright law plays a role in the increasingly divisive debate over politics and the media which reports on politics is exemplified by a new documentary focusing on the Iraq invasion. Filmmaker Robert Greenwald wanted to use a clip of President Bush ham-handedly defending the invasion on NBC’s Meet the Press, but his request was denied by NBC, which owns the content that goes out over its affiliate stations. But if networks can truly withhold such content from public use, the public persona of a president who chooses to hold very few public press conferences, and who speaks mainly in controlled (and copyrighted) settings is in serious danger of manipulation by the handful of companies that control Big Media.
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Poet Donald Justice, 78
Donald Justice, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Midwestern poet whose works were renowned for their precision of style, has died following a stroke. “Mr. Justice was acclaimed as both a poet and a teacher. His poetry followed an unusual trajectory over the decades, starting out in a traditional way, diverting into the experimental and surreal, and returning to meter and rhyme in the end.”
The Concrete Renaissance
Concrete is cheap, and efficient, and comparatively easy to work with. What it is not is attractive, and so it is understandable that architects and artists have not frequently embraced it as a medium. “But concrete has a rich history in aesthetics. Though it has been responsible for much that was dreary and utilitarian, it was also the glop that built the Pantheon in Rome. And now architects have returned to it as an aesthetic device.”
Improving A City’s Look (Primarily With Big Nudes)
Photographer Helmut Newton was already in the late stages of setting up a foundation in his name in Berlin when he was killed in an auto accident earlier this year. He did not live to see the opening of the foundation. “But now more than ever it has become his memorial, and an eye-catching one at that. Where stern portraits of bewhiskered generals once presided over the foyer of the officers’ club at Jebensstrasse 2, near the Berlin Zoo station, five of Newton’s trademark ‘Big Nudes’ now proclaim his place as a pioneer of erotic fashion photography.”
Fay Wray, 96
“Fay Wray, an actress who appeared in about 100 movies but whose fame is inextricably linked with the hours she spent struggling, helplessly screaming, in the eight-foot hand of King Kong, died on Sunday at her apartment in Manhattan. She was 96.”
FCC Ruling May Show The Limits Of Broadcast Sex
The FCC has responded to complaints from a right-wing watchdog group by ruling that two popular TV shows – Will & Grace and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – did not violate the commission’s decency standards by airing episodes which contained, respectively, simulated lesbian sex and two principal characters (of opposite genders) engaging in sex. Neither program contained any nudity, and the FCC ruled that while sex was clearly shown to be taking place in the Buffy episode, there was “little evidence that the activity depicted was dwelled upon”. The ruling may give broadcasters a guideline for what the FCC will find acceptable in future.
Trove of Unpublished Poetry Found in UK
250 pages of unpublished poems by Philip Larkin have been discovered in the library archives of the poet’s hometown. “Larkin, who died in 1985 aged 63, was chosen as the [UK’s] best-loved poet of the last 50 years in a 2003 survey by the Poetry Book Society.”
Cleveland Seeks Funds For An Arts Festival
The city of Cleveland does not have a large, annual, tourist-attracting arts festival. It would like to have one. And plans are well underway for the launch of the “Festival of Arts and Technology”. And all it will take to start it up is $1 million from the Cuyahoga County general fund. But that’s not chump change in a metro area of Cleveland’s size, and the county authorities are taking a close look at the plans before signing on.
Short Films Gaining Traction
A decade-old London film festival devoted exclusively to short films has begun to have a real impact on the prominence of a frequently neglected corner of the film industry. “When the inaugural festival was held nine years ago, it attracted around 1,000 viewers. This month’s event will screen almost 400 shorts to an estimated total audience of 13,000.”
Apathetic For a Reason
Today’s twenty-somethings are constantly tagged with the ‘apathetic’ label, due in large part to their disdain for traditional activism and their embrace of an overtly cynical worldview. But could the apathy and cynicism stem from the devastating reality that a small but vocal band of activists can no longer have the world-changing impact they once did? Anyone who sits and watches a film like “Fahrenheit 9/11” or “The Corporation” will be angry at the world afterwards, but if you don’t believe that you can do anything about it, what’s the point of trying?