In Tokyo, plans to exhibit a painting by Adolf Hilter have been scrapped. “A spokesman for Toshiba Entertainment, the film’s Japanese distributor, reportedly said that too much interest in the painting had led to the exhibition’s cancellation.”
Tag: 02.04.04
The Dark Side – More Familiar With Darth Than Shakespeare
A UK survey reveals that those asked could identify a quote from Star Wars more easily than one from Shakespeare. “When asked to complete the line ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your…’ from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, some people said swords or money rather than ears.”
In Appreciation Of Ann Miller
Ann Miller was one of the movie greats, writes Rex Reed. “She couldn’t sing like Judy or swim like Esther, but they couldn’t machine-gun tap, either. She loved the spotlight, she loved the attention, she loved the camera, and she loved to dance.”
Death Of Classical Recording? Nahhh!
Norman Lebrecht predects the end of the conventional classical recording business. But Anthony Tommasini begs to disagree: “Smaller labels like Nonesuch and Naxos, which once just filled in the gaps with records of specialty repertory and adventurous artists ignored by the majors, are proving that it is possible to release important recordings at midrange prices and still pay the bills. And though the financial repercussions from the downloading of CD’s have the recording industry feeling besieged and impotent, some bold orchestras have, like many rock groups, taken matters into their own hands and released self-produced CD’s, recorded live and available on the Internet.”
Crippling Classical Music On iPods
Digital music players are great… for pop music. For classical? Well, the way music is indexed on these things makes it impossible to sort and search. It’s a nightmare. “It’s enough to make you scream. Before classical music is ever going to take off in digital downloads, the whole classical-recording database–this is a mammoth job, but it’s got to be tackled–will have to be rejiggered. Music has to show up correctly labeled, and fully searchable, by composer, composition and performers (with each artist’s role correctly specified).”