Tough Lessons For The Movie Industry

Hollywood is agressively fighting illegal downloads. But isn’t this counter-productive? “Will Hollywood adapt and survive, or will it continue to escalate its apparently futile battle against the collective intelligence of a million resourceful and highly motivated computer geeks worldwide? (The kind of people who recently unlocked the supposedly resilient copy protection on Hollywood’s new HD DVD format.)”

How Bloggers Will Affect Oscar

“Roll your eyes all you want. Don’t take Oscar bloggers seriously. Hell, they don’t even take themselves seriously. Still, Oscar chatter leads to Oscar buzz, which can lead to Oscar nominations, which lead to money in the form of additional box office, increased DVD sales, and bigger paydays. As Hollywood blogs and the Hollywood hype machine both exist on chatter, it was only a matter of time before they struck an unseemly alliance.”

The Two Sides Of Fan Fiction

“Is the growth of Internet-based fan fiction a cultural development to be wholeheartedly applauded? Not quite. The good news about the Internet is that, in a world without gatekeepers, anyone can get published. The bad news, of course, is the same. Much fanfic is hosted on sites such as fanfiction.net, where authors can get their work online in minutes–which means that professional-quality stories coexist with barely literate fluff, and reader reviews will sometimes congratulate an author on good grammar and spelling.”

Becoming A Concertmaster

Being the concertmaster of a major symphony orchestra is both a powerful and lucrative gig, but getting there frequently means following a very different path than that followed by other orchestral musicians. Some music schools have even begun offering separate courses of study for high-level students interested in learning the musical and personal skills necessary to lead an orchestra from the first chair.