After the end of the year, the awards season begins in earnest. A documentary reports that there are “565 show-biz awards competitions each year, of which 100 are televised. That’s better than one broadcast every four days.” Why so many? The awards “mainly reflects outstanding achievement by the industry in ginning up ever more shows for viewers to watch – and thus ever more outlets for promoting entertainment product to the public.”
Blog
NYU To Film Student: No Porno
This fall a New York University student proposed making a film in which there would be pornography. University officials have forbidden her to and say they would “issue a written policy requiring student films and videos to follow the ratings guidelines of the Motion Picture Association of America, with nothing racier than R-rated fare allowed.” Is this a threat to academic freedom?
The Downfall Of MTV
“MTV has always pursued teenagers; what has changed is the sort of teenagers it is chasing, and what ideal of cool it established to court them. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the network tried to convert its viewers, suggesting to hungry-for-hipness suburban teens that there was something out there cooler and more compelling than their own high school melodramas. The gospel has since changed. What MTV is selling its teen audience now (with “Sorority Life,” “Fraternity Life,” “Spring Break: Cancun,” a more juvenile “Real World”) is a bland vision of the immediate future in which the first years of college look pretty much like high school, but without parents or homework. The focus is on having fun, not being challenged by new or different experiences.”
Oregon’s Balanchine Shift
Oregon Ballet Theatre is fast being made over into a Balanchine company. “For OBT, long known as a haven for contemporary pop ballets, it’s a radical shift. And Christopher Stowell, the company’s first-year artistic director, is doing the shifting.”
WTC Memorial – The Impossible Dream
Everyone want the memorial at the World Trade Center site to be special, writes Martin C. Pedersen. “Unfortunately, the more I studied the designs, the less promising I found them. None are fully realized. They all feel provisional, like ambitious first drafts. Still I am reluctant to condemn them, because the designers were handed a near-impossible brief.”
Plundered Book Ring Broken Up
A sophisticated book-stealing ring in Edinburgh has been busted. The kingpin of the operation had accomplices steal the books, and he removed anti-theft identifiers before selling them at a discount to retail prices. “Undercover police kept watch as he took regular deliveries from thieves targeting W H Smith, Waterstones and other outlets, said Marc Gadsden, prosecuting. He was so successful that in just eight months he made an estimated £240,000, the barrister alleged.”
Which Dictionary Is Best?
YiLing Chen-Josephson wonders which dictionary is best, and designs a test. “I restricted my testing to seven of the relatively affordable and frequently updated college dictionaries (the type of dictionary used not only in the most dormitory rooms but in the most homes and offices as well). To determine my rankings, I looked up seven times over words that I knew but wanted to understand better (like regret, jealous, and overdetermined); words with disputed usages (including aggravate, disinterested, fortuitous); words with potentially interesting etymologies (e.g., chauvinism, juggernaut, lagniappe); neologisms and slang (e.g., blogger, booty, yay); anything friends had looked up recently (e.g., Panglossian, condominium, alembic); as well as the words I didn’t know in the last book I read, J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello.”
Greek Parliament Considering Parthenon Museum Approval
The Greek parliament is considering a bill that would legalize construction of a new museum at the Parthenon. Backers of the museum are trying to build the 50-million-euro museum to try to pressure the British Museum into returning the fifth-century-BC Elgin, or Parthenon, Marbles before the 2004 Olympics. “But critics who argue that important ancient ruins found on the museum plot will be destroyed during construction have successfully challenged parts of the project before the Council of State.”
Sweeney In The Opera House
“The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has come to rank with Wozzeck and Peter Grimes in opera’s catalogue of 20th-century tragic heroes,” writes Rupert Christiansen. And thus “Sweeney Todd” comes to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. The dialogue is being miked…er, make that “reinforced.” Why? Audiences are lazy today, says the production’s conductor. “It’s very destructive. I recognise that synthesizers are useful, but they eliminate instruments like the harp or guitar, and we’ve lost the possibilities of creating a deep string sound. It’s a joy at Covent Garden to be playing Sweeney Todd with a 50-piece orchestra.”
Ivan and Dinos and Jake Bat About Conceptual Art
Ivan Massow and the Chapman brothers debate conceptual art. But the exchange gets off to a rocky start, with the Chapmans firing back a dismissive shot: “We must apologise for agreeing to collaborate in a discussion on the merits and downfalls of modern art, since we now find ourselves forced to decline further participation. The first point of contact with Mr Massow has baffled us with so many negatives that any productive exchange seems doomed…”