“Yes. Sesame Street and its production company the Sesame Workshop do make a lot of money from product licensing, but not nearly enough to cover expenses.”
Tag: 01.03.12
David Hockney Takes A Public Dig At Damien Hirst
“A small note on the posters for David Hockney’s forthcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy contains a sly dig at another superstar artist about to launch a major exhibition. The note reads: ‘All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally’.”
Hockney’s Potshot At Hirst – Maybe He’s Got A Point
“He’s saying that students used to be taught how to draw perfectly at the expense of their individuality. Now scores of students graduate from art colleges believing that everything they do or touch or say can be labelled a work of art but they couldn’t draw a rabbit if you held a gun to their heads. There you have it: the difficulty of teaching art in a nutshell.”
Why Audiences Love Farce (It’s Not Just The Jokes)
“The very structure of farce, with its preposterous scenarios and incomprehensible plots, echoes our own lives with uncanny exactness. The old rule may be that farce punctures respectability, but in today’s world it seems to be mirroring it, as the real-life people in power endlessly slip on banana skins, from MPs’ expenses to the pratfalls of the eurozone.”
New Rules For Oscar Voting Could Result In Nomination Surprises
“A change in the counting mechanism by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, has sharply diminished the impact of second-place, third-place and other votes down the ballot, while allowing a film with as few as 250 first-place votes, in a group with almost 6,000 members, to capture a nomination.”
UK Music Sales Down For Seventh Straight Year
“According to the latest figures from the BPI, combined sales of digital and physical albums fell overall by 5.6% to 113.2m last year. At the industry peak in 2004, 163.4m albums were sold. Although digital album sales rose 26.6% to 26.6m, the growth failed to offset the sharp drop in sales of albums on compact disc, which fell by 12.6% year on year to 86.2m. A further 389,000 albums were sold on vinyl and other formats.”
Wait A Minute – Just How Was That Stradivarius Test Performed?
A recent sound test of musicians playing modern instruments versus fine old Master violins might have had some flaws…
Norway’s Best-Selling Book Of 2011: The Bible
“The first Norwegian translation of the Bible for 30 years topped the country’s book charts almost every week between its publication in October and the end of the year, selling almost 80,000 copies so far and hugely exceeding expectations.”
Is “Unplugging” From Tech The New Luxury?
“The principle is that freedom from the Internet is so rare and exotic and impossible that it is becoming a commodity: It’s not iPhones or iPads we have to worry about buying, but peace from them. Freedom, then, is a poor man’s fabulous hotel room on a cliff on a beach without wireless.”
Star Musician Youssou N’dour Runs For President Of Senegal
“N’dour, 52, announced at a concert at the end of November that he had put performing on hold and formed his own political movement, Fekke ma ci bolle (‘I am involved’ in the Wolof language).”