Christopher Ondaatje (brother of writer Michael) is endowing a new writing prize to be given annually to the book published in the Commonwealth or Ireland that best evokes a “sense of place.” Ondaatje: “These prizes are important if they are unique or innovative and they spur enthusiasm by writers so that they will strive for it,” Ondaatje says. “It is also good for the book business and the literary world that there is a new prize that generates interest. Finally, it is good for the Royal Society because they are doing something new for them.”
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A Great Year, But Still There Are Complaints
Broadway had a record year at the box office. But “the box-office upturn has not gladdened some local critics. They have seized the occasion of this Sunday’s Tony Awards to bemoan the dearth of serious new work on Broadway: a hackneyed lament. For at least three decades, cost has dictated that challenging drama be based off-Broadway and in America’s regional theatres, where, despite the price of tickets and the distractions of television and the internet, it remains quite robust.”
The British Museum At 250
The British Museum turns 250 years old this week. “In its lifetime, the museum has acquired some of the most important archaeological objects, including the Rosetta Stone and the world’s oldest glass – Egyptian, dating from 1460 BC. And as the home of the British Library, which grew out of the royal library and now receives a copy of every book published in the UK, it has nourished the minds of Charles Dickens, Karl Marx and Lenin, to name a few.”
Liverpool? Why Liverpool?
Liverpool isn’t the capital of anything, least of all culture. “Nobody can seriously hold that Liverpool has more ‘cultural assets’ than London, Edinburgh, Manchester or Birmingham. Its theatres, galleries and museums do not outrank theirs. Liverpool had The Beatles, the beat poets, a river front and fine buildings which the city fathers have so far failed to demolish. But everyone has left who was not screwed to the floor. Liverpudlians are legendarily cussed and given to drinking. That is not culture. Nor can London’s army of Scousers talk: why are they reading this and not back home saving their city and reading the Post?”
UK Film Audiences Forsake Brit Films, Buy American
More and more Britons are going to the movies. But British films are losing ground, says a new study. “Although younger people are flocking to the cinema in ever increasing numbers they are overwhelmingly watching films made by the big US studios. No solely British film reached the list of top 20 films released last year, nor the top 20 list for the past 10 years.”
Ode To Liverpool. Yes, Liverpool, Damn it.
Liverpool has been a blighted hulk for a long time. Now it’s been named the European Capital of Culture, and maybe that will help pick up the city and return it to its former glory. “A hundred years ago the city was the gateway to the empire, the port from which nine million emigrants sailed off to the promised lands of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” It was then “Britain’s only really multicultural city which teemed with Lascar seamen from the Indies, the descendants of African and Black American sailors, Jews from the Pale of Settlement, and the largest Chinatown in Europe. It was a city with its back turned against the land, one which barely inhabited the country it was nominally part of.”
Colorado Governor Slashes At Arts Staff
First Colorado Governor Bill Owens is instrumental is slashing the state’s arts budget from $1.9 million to $200,000. Now Owens is telling the arts council that it mustn’t spend the money on itself. “Currently, he said, 82 percent – $165,000 – is allotted to infrastructure. Owens asked that only $40,000 be used.”
Is Pixar The New Disney?
After five consecutive hits—Pixar’s other two movies are the inspired Toy Story 2 and the middling A Bug’s Life—the animation studio must now be considered ‘the most reliable creative force in Hollywood. Perhaps not since Preston Sturges made seven classic comedies in a row between 1940 and 1944 has one name been such a consistent indicator of audience and critical pleasure.’ The ‘next Disney’ comparisons that have long been lavished upon Pixar and its creative head, John Lasseter, have become more emphatic: Now Pixar and Lasseter are compared not just to Disney, but to Disney during its ‘golden age some 60 years ago,’ as the Los Angeles Daily News put it.”
Tonys – Predicting A Good Hair Day
“Ask anyone on Broadway what’s going to win best musical, best book and, yes, best score, and the answer is ‘Hairspray,’ the big favorite in many musical categories, a blockbuster hit that broke early from the gate — it opened in August — and never let up.”
Decades Of Media Consolidation
Media mergers and ownership consolidation aren’t just a recent phenomenon. Back “in the late 1960s, during a flurry of media-industry mergers, The Atlantic published several articles that pointedly asked, Who controls the media? and How big is too big?” Some of the questions the magazine explored then seem applicable once again.