“Amy E. Ryan, the [Boston Public Library’s] president, said yesterday that because of steep budget cuts the only alternative to closings would be slashing hours at 18 library branches, with the smallest facilities open only one to three days a week.” The BPL has 26 neighborhood branches.
Tag: 02.18.10
The Curious Dullness Of Season Announcements
“[I]t’s relatively rare that a[n] orchestra’s season announcement generates genuine excitement. They’re received, often, with the mien of a greedy child: what are you giving us, and how good is it, and are you playing my favorite piece?”
Is Performance Capture Acting Or Animation?
“[U]nlike the great majority of best picture nominees, the ‘Avatar’ actors have not nabbed a single major critic’s award, or guild prize. The snubs reflect the apparent ambivalence of the film community — especially actors — to ‘Avatar’ and its revolutionary use of ‘performance capture’….”
The Enduring Greatness Of Django Reinhardt
“The legacy of Django Reinhardt enjoys a currency that those of comparable jazz icons do not. In recent months, the centennials of both Lester Young and Art Tatum came and went almost unnoticed, but Reinhardt,” whose centennial was last month, “is omnipresent–more so than during his lifetime.”
Eight Years In The Making, A Wrinkle In Time For The Stage
South Coast Rep “associate artistic director John Glore became intrigued with the story of a pair of children who travel through time to save their father, after his then-9-year-old daughter made a shoe box diorama of a scene in which Meg finds her father imprisoned in a cell by the dreaded ‘it.'”
Huck Finn, Victim Of His Own Sales Power?
Ever since he bought a trio of Huck Finn Cabbage Patch dolls in the 1980s, a UCLA English professor has been amassing a collection of “knickknacks, toys and Huck-themed gadgets” — not because he likes them but in order “to show students how commercialism sold one of American literature’s most enduring characters down the river.”
MoMA’s Exhibition Design Guy, Making Vision Reality
Jerome Neuner’s “job — one that often goes unsung in the museum world and … unnoticed by the public — is to serve as a kind of mediator between the visionary (the grand dreams of curators and artists about how a show could look) and the practical (how the show will fit within walls, some of them load bearing).”
Apple E-Books Might Not Be So Costly
“[A]ccording to at least three people with knowledge of the discussions, … Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99.”