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IT’S ROSY IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT

The future, that is. The digital film revolution promises some big improvements in the way movie theaters do business. All well and good. But can they afford the new toys in the first place? For many exhibitors, the issue in front of them is survival. They’re struggling to climb out of the red after a financial squeeze caused in part by growing competition from other media and an ambitious period of new theater construction and refurbishment designed to lure customers. – Los Angeles Times 03/10/00

A MUSEUM BY ANY OTHER NAME

In Britain, fears that the country may be “over-museumed” after a rash of building. So some of the latest museum editions aren’t calling themselves “museums” at all. Bristol’s newest $180 million baby doesn’t have the word in its name. Instead, the 11-acre site has the unwieldy name of “@ Bristol” and the emphasis is all on the toys of new technology, IMAX movies and video. – The Telegraph (UK) 03/10/00

C’MON, ADMIT IT

Think you’re well read? At a certain point, don’t you despair of the sheer volume of everything out there that’s worth reading? “Let’s not pretend: when did you last read a book by any of the younger Russian novelists? You’ve read Victor Pelevin? Really? ‘Chapaev i pustota,’ or the translation, ‘The Clay Machine-Gun’? Did you finish it? Did you understand it?” Really? – The Guardian

“RECKLESS INDISCRIMINATE SEDUCTION”

Media critic Todd Gitlin says that rather than uplift and educate people, modern media conglomerates are a Band-aid. “Fortunes are to be made in offering ever-reliable analgesics to a public hungry for fast relief,” he says. The guys who run the networks, the newspapers, the studios, the magazine and music companies are getting richer while our civic life grows poorer. – Toronto Star

DOES ART MATTER? CALL … :

Students at the Ottawa School of Art have put up statues all over town with cards attached to them reading: “Does Art Matter? Call this number to argue your case.” If people decide to call, they have three minutes to sound off. It’s part of a class project to find out how much the average person on the street cares about art. – CBC

THE NEW PUBLIC ARTISTS

“Unlike earlier artists – Dadists in the 1910s and twenties, feminists in the seventies – who have thrown grenades at the establishment from the hypothetical outside, these artists are relatively calm about their complicity with the ‘system’: museums, galleries, funding institutions, advertising. Call it ‘new genre public art’ as one 1995 book does; call it a return to the streets.” – Feed