“The legal battle over ownership of a $10 million Picasso masterpiece looted by the Nazis during World War II may shift from Los Angeles to Chicago if a tentative ruling issued Thursday by a California judge becomes final and survives appeals.”
Blog
Robert Hughes On Trial Remotely
When art critic Robert Hughes goes on trial next month in Australia charged with dangerous driving in a 1999 accident, he won’t be in the courtroom. Instead he’ll attend through a video link from the US. “Hughes’ lawyer proposed the video appearance in January, telling the court it was uncomfortable for Hughes to travel because of injuries suffered in the accident.”
Cutting Out The Middleman – Harry Potter Goes Direct To Schools
Booksellers are protesting that the Scholastic, the publisher of the Harry Potter books, has been taking orders for the book directly from schools, bypassing the booksellers. “Publishers have an obvious motive to sell direct: They keep more of the money. Scholastic has been selling books, including the earlier Potter works, at fairs for years. But this is the first time a Potter book has been pre-sold, offered before publication. And some retailers say they can’t afford to lose any sales during a difficult economic time.”
Libeskind – Bringing Your Feelings To Work
Daniel Libeskind’s design for the World Trade Center site, which he calls ‘Memory Foundations’, “epitomises American society’s current morbid preoccupation with death and conflict. Several architecture commentators have pointed out that the subjective nature of Libeskind’s work is something new among architects, who rarely express their own feelings and tend to be more comfortable talking about the functional and technical aspects of buildings. The difference between Libeskind and a cool, rational architect such as Norman Foster is something like the difference between Princess Diana and a regal head of state.”
Making The Case For Arts & Humanities
Chairmen of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities go to the US Congress to plead their cases for funding. “We cannot defend what we do not understand. But even as our country prepares for a possible war, numerous polls, studies and reports indicate that many students at both the secondary and university levels lack even a basic understanding of their country’s past. From my perspective this is a national emergency.”
Theatre – Political Action Reasserts
After a period in which political theatre seemed to have disappeared for awhile, politcal theatre is back in America. “Indeed, responding to a number of political exigencies — among them the elevation of George W. Bush to the presidency by the Supreme Court, the Sept. 11 attacks, the looming war in Iraq and more generally the perceptible shift to the right in national perspective — American stages have been reasserting the theater’s traditionally liberal bias with an almost vengeful fervor.”
2002 – Year Of The Woman In Hollywood
It’s been a great year for women in Hollywood. “Not just the sheer number of good women’s roles, but their breadth and range in terms of age and ethnicity, made this a watershed year. A genuine one, not the phoney annus mirabilis of a decade ago when a defensive Hollywood gave itself undeserved brownie points by declaring 1992 ‘The Year of the Woman’ – an especially hollow gesture in a mediocre year in which the best woman’s role went to a man: Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game.”
How To Enjoy Your Museum Visit
Haven’t been to a museum in awhile and you’re wondering what the right way to appreciate what’s inside? The Onion has a helpful guide. Tip #12: “Spend a minimum of 30 seconds, ideally 45, staring at each exhibit so no one will suspect that every molecule in your body is screaming to get the hell out of there and go to the mall.”
Unreal – Why “Reality” TV Can’t Last
Can the “reality TV” sensation survive? “Simple economics dictates the phenomenon will run its course. TV executives, apparently forgetting the law of supply and demand (not to mention the flameout of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’), have scheduled a record 42 new ‘unscripted dramas’ to bow before September. Nor can they afford to feed the phenomenon long-term: Studios make their real money in syndication fees, and no one wants to watch reality reruns.”
No Humans Were Used In The Creation Of This Screenplay
New screenplay-writing software is so sophisticated, you just plug in a few sentences and the computer does the rest. “I mean, how hard can it be when the very first ‘story box’ in the program, which asks what your movie is about, offers this reassurance: ‘If you do not yet know what your story is about, leave this question blank and return to it later’?”