PBS president Pat Mitchell has a proposition: Congress should give the network $5 billion in return for giving up its analog broadcast signals. “Trading analog signals for digital is a big regulatory issue right now. The old analog signals are worth billions, since they can be used to transmit streaming data. Mitchell’s idea is that a one-time ‘grant’ is better than the feds’ reluctantly doling out a mere $300 million to PBS annually.”
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A History Of Politics In Movies
Hollywood has always been obsessed with politics, and there is a long tradition of films with political stories. “Such movies provide windows on the vast changes that have sculpted the political landscape over the years; if Frank Capra’s Depression-era civics lesson is innately optimistic, then Michael Moore’s wartime anti-Bush-administration harangue seems afflicted by a whopping dose of cynicism. But in ways that may not be immediately apparent, the two films share similarities; each is a snapshot of a political system that works only if the citizenry pays attention and, perhaps more importantly, is given the opportunity to pay attention.”
Fahrenheit Box Office Tops $100 Million
Michael Moore joined the $100 million club as his political assault ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ became the first documentary ever to top that mark at the domestic box office.”
A Post-“Partisan Review” View
A new magazine “n+1” launches. “They’re pushing literary fiction … in ways that aren’t obviously commercial but are simply based on exquisite writing and writerly insight. The magazine is dissatisfied with the coarsening public discourse. ‘We live in a time when a magazine like Lingua Franca can’t publish, but Zagat prospers’.”
Damien Hirst’s New Relationship With Death
“For an artist said to be preoccupied with death – pickled sharks, pinned butterflies, decomposing cows’ heads – the reality of it didn’t hit Damien Hirst until 18 months ago. Shortly before Christmas 2003, his great friend Joe Strummer, former lead singer with The Clash, sat down in a chair in the kitchen of his Somerset home, near Bridgwater, and had a fatal heart attack.”
Edinburgh’s New Art Fair
The Edinburgh Festival is one of Europe’s great cultural institutions. But it didn’t include visual art. After years of griping, a visual art festival will now be included. “The new Edinburgh Art Festival has risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes of despair. It was absurd that a festival founded in 1947 on the principle of showing, as the Lord Provost put it at the time, ‘all the best in music, drama and the visual arts’, should ignore an entire medium’.”
Does The Pentagon Have “Undiscovered” Art?
So Philadelphia schools have found a trove of artworks in their possession. Where else might there be public-owned art? Perhaps at the Pentagon? A Department of Defense employee “is/was resposible for maintaining accountability for this art collection, and in the mid 90s she was apparently fired/quit in part because a military Inspector General’s team discovered that the works were generally unaccounted for and in many cases improperly stored (leaky buildings, rain, moisture, etc.).”
Call To Culture – UK’s £20 million Culture Initiative
The British government has awarded £20 million of National Lottery money to be spent on cultural events throughout the country. “The European City of Culture competition stimulated the creation of a wonderful range of creative and ambitious plans in cities across the UK. The Lottery-funded Urban Cultural Programme will mean that many of those aspirations can become reality.”
Does The 21st Century Belong To China?
Phillip Dodd is leaving as director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Art to focus on Asia. “In my usual pompous way, I have a kind of wager that the 21st century belongs to a constellation of China and India and my deepest feeling is that Britain shows no sign of understanding this. There is a lack of engagement with that part of the world which is just crazy. My real worry is that we spent the past 10 years being so in love with ourselves – that’s what Cool Britannia was, like Narcissus – we thought we were the centre of the world. But the world has moved on and we are bewildered.”
Loaned Aboriginal Art Seized In Australia
Two pieces of Aboriginal art on loan from the British Museum have been seized in Australia. “Members of the Dja Dja Wurrung tribe secured an emergency order preventing the items being returned to the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens. The two bark etchings and a Aboriginal ceremonial headdress were on loan to Museum Victoria in Melbourne. Gary Murray, of the Dja Dja, accused the museums of ‘colonial arrogance’.”