Suddenly, content in the media is getting the once over for “objectionable” material. “Hoping to avoid millions of dollars in fines and protect their licenses, the networks’ gatekeepers are now rushing to cover naked body parts, cut foul language and monitor anything that smacks of poor taste … except when they’re not. The only consistent thread running through the current crackdown — which has ensnared culprits ranging from a chronic provocateur like ousted radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge to an accidental offender like NBC’s “ER” — is how wildly inconsistent it all seems.”
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Art Of The Film Credit
Consider the film credit: “At their best, they use the requisite list of names and credits as a mere leaping-off point for clever experiments in graphic design, typography and kinetic wizardry.”
Info-Edu-Propa-tainment – If It’s All The Same To You…
The lines between news, comedy, propoganda and entertainment are so blurred these days, it’s sometimes difficult to tell them apart, writes Frank Rich. “At such absurd moments, and they are countless these days in our 24/7 information miasma, real journalism and its evil twin merge into a mind-bending mutant that would defy a polygraph’s ability to sort out the lies from the truth.”
Saatchi Being Investigated For “Monopolizing” The Art Market
Collector/gallery owner Charles Saatchi is being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for allegedly monopolising the art market. “Charles Thomson, a gallery owner who has made it his mission to burst the BritArt bubble, has now taken the extraordinary step of submitting a formal complaint to the OFT. He claims that Mr Saatchi’s pre-eminent commercial position as the key patron of dozens of young artists is monopolistic and anti-competitive.”
The Brain – One Man’s Theory
The brain’s cortex contains “at least 30 billion neurons with 1 million billion connections between them; counting one a second, it would take 32 million years to count them all. There are also multiple brain regions, 200 types of neurons, even large-scale neuronal deaths. How does such an object function, let alone give rise to consciousness?”
In Praise Of Dr. Seuss
What is the enduring appeal of Dr. Seuss? “Seuss is Aristophanes with rhythm. For the reading adult, his stories have a pulsing speed that makes an easy and compulsive read. For all ages, there is a moral ferocity for which only a consummate satirist can be forgiven.”
Generation X, Generation Mellow?
Generation X movie-makers are generally been known for their ironic take on the world. But as they grow older, there are signs that that defining sttitude may be mellowing…
New Tactic: File-Sharers Are REALLY REALLY Bad Guys
The recording and film inductries are pressuring the US Congress to make file-sharing peer-to-peer networks illegal, and lawmakers are complying, introducing bills that suggest file-sharing networks are the haunts of terrorists, pornographers and big bad evildoers. “In defending the Pirate Act, Senator Orrin Hatch said the operators of P2P networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography. With these “human shields,” the P2P companies are trying to ransom the entertainment industries into accepting their networks as a distribution channel and source of revenue.”
Checkpoint Airport Art
Wonder where those items confiscated from airline passengers at security checkpoints end up? An artist bought a few hundred pounds of the items and made art out of them. “In the massive Plexiglas case, wrapped in a heavy chain Maloney bought at Home Depot and hand-painted a rust color, are deer antlers, a tuning wrench for bongo drums still in its plastic case, his and her handcuffs, knitting needles, a decorative diaper pin, metal brushes, hair picks, a painted horseshoe, knives and forks, tweezers, meat thermometers and fishing hooks along with the lines and sinkers.”
The New Museum Paradigm
Museums need to find new strategies for operating, writes Adrian Ellis. “Just as public collections will be reshaped over the next quarter century by the converging demands for restitution from an ever growing and more sophisticated set of parties, so the tensions between the enormous financial value of collections and the lack of liquidity of the institutions that own them are likely to manifest themselves in increasingly strange ways. The sector’s response to restitution shows every sign of being piecemeal, defensive and ultimately damaging to its long term standing in the eyes of the wider community in which museums operate.”