Category: today’s top story

Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Lynch, T.R. Knight, and now Zachary Quinto … “Why has this wave of openness hit TV? You’d think that, since TV comes into our homes every day, since it has a more intimate relationship with viewers, it might be more vulnerable to pockets of viewer disapproval. But the TV business is a more flexible testing ground than the movies.”

“The Philadelphia Orchestra Association Thursday secured the main prize in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy case: a deeply concessionary labor deal from musicians” – a contract “calling for a 15-percent pay cut, reducing the size of the ensemble, and replacing the defined-benefit pension with a defined-contribution plan.”

“A man suspected of hiding precious artwork stolen from the Paris Museum of Modern Art last year claims that in a panic, he threw the paintings” – Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, Matisse and Leger, together worth about $134 million – “in a garbage bin on a Paris street and [that they may have been] destroyed with the rest of that day’s trash.”

The Sept. 30 premiere of Huang Ruo’s Dr. Sun Yat-Sen at Beijing’s “Egg” arts center was cancelled; the center cited “logisitcal dificulties”, while commissioning company Opera Hong Kong was “told the opera was not politically serious enough.” Now some cast members are trying to back out, and co-producer Guangzhou Opera House has cancelled the piece as well.

Marzieh Vafamehr “has been sentenced to one year in prison and 90 lashes for her starring role in Australian film My Tehran for Sale … [which] explores cultural oppression in Iran and taboos such as drug use.”

“Billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is shrinking while only a small chunk of money goes to emerging art groups that serve poorer communities that are more ethnically diverse, according to a report being released Monday.”

“Bill Ruprecht, Sotheby’s chief executive, said the Chinese are spending about $4 billion a year on Chinese paintings world-wide. That’s more than Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales last year of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art combined.”

“[The] 80-year-old Swedish psychologist and poet Tomas Tranströmer, just awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, writes surreal, imagistic poems that explore his fascinations with the music of memory and nature. If you want to get to know his work, here are a few good entry points.”

“Battling a major budget crisis, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra abruptly canceled half of its 20 scheduled concerts over the next two months Tuesday, but vowed to return to full operations in early December.”

“The hourlong single-camera project” – titled Harve Karbo – “will revolve around a Los Angeles private investigator whose work frequently includes a who’s who of Hollywood.”