“The committee will be led by Louise H. Bryson, a Getty trustee since 1998. Other trustees on the committee include Agnes Gund, Joanne Kozberg, Luis Nogales, William E. B. Siart, Mark Siegel and Jay S. Wintrob.”
Tag: 05.10.06
Why DVD Piracy Flourishes In Mexico?
“Unlike middle-class U.S. consumers, poor people in Mexico can’t afford to go to the movies, or even buy or rent authentic videos or DVDs. The typical cost of a movie ticket is 50 pesos (about $5), and more than half of Mexico’s workers earn less than $13 a day.” But even poor Mexicans can afford to spend 10 pesos on pirated movies sold on the streets…
The Politics Of Ranking Your Friends
“If the Internet was once ungoverned by etiquette, those days are gone; MySpace and its siblings, by many accounts the future of the Net, are rife with discussions of good manners versus unforgivable faux pas. There isn’t an aristocratic class, just yet, but you can see the lines forming in the sand, renegades and bad boys posting bulletins pell-mell, uploading risque pictures, collecting “friends” as if it’s all some big popularity contest — while mannered netizens look on disapprovingly. Screw up and you just might get dumped, online and off.”
Starbucks’ Movie Ambitions
Starbucks is getting into movies. “Last week, it announced an alliance with William Morris Agency, a talent and literary agency that will help Starbucks identify music, film and book projects to consider for marketing and distribution in its stores.”
Broadway To High School: Chicago’s OK After All
Students at a high school in the Bronx were told this week they will be able to stage a production of “Chicago” in their school after all. The Broadway producers of the show had originally said rights for the show would not be granted because the school was too close to Broadway. “No one within a 75-mile radius of the New York production can get the rights. Those who violate the rules could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation.”
Famed Bay Area Berkeley Bookstore To Close
“Cody’s Books, the venerable independent bookstore that has served generations of UC Berkeley students, has announced that it will close its flagship store on the south side of campus because of declining sales and competition from chain stores and the Internet.”
Do Magazines Matter Anymore?
“This is, by consensus, the time to be violently shaking up magazines. The Web has arrived; the readers are leaving; the industry’s grip on the pinnacle of the words-and-pictures trade is getting sweatier and slipperier. Many Condé Nast magazines are about to skip excitedly into the Web business. All around, it’s a time for youth and change, or something like them.”
Banville’s “Art” Comments Irk Critics
Irish writer John Banville caused an uproar when he won the Booker Prize. “In a low, steady voice of thanks, he said: ‘It is good to see a work of art being recognised!’ Many cheered, whether for the unapologetic arrogance of the remark or for the truth of it, or perhaps stirred by the whiff of drama in the room. But the sense of outrage among certain of the glitterati only ratcheted up a notch, to spew out the next day in newspaper column-centimetres of invective.”
Creating Billy Elliot (Again. And Again.)
“Billy Elliot made a phenomenally successful transfer from screen to stage last year. On Friday, Stephen Daldry’s production celebrates its first birthday, and the three original Billys – the cast works on a rotation system – will return for a special gala.” And this brings up an interesting question: where, exactly, do they keep finding new Billy Elliots? As it turns out, there’s a factory for that…
Is The U.S. On The Verge Of Going Bilingual?
To judge from the furor raised by conservatives last week when a group of Latin recording artists released a Spanish version of The Star-Spangled Banner, you would have thought that America was on the verge of losing its very soul. Ariel Dorfman says that we’d better get used to it. “This Spanish is not going to fade away as Norwegian or Italian or German did during previous assimilated waves… If this prophecy of mine is right, and America will sometime in the near or distant future be articulating its identity in two inevitable languages, then the question looms: how will the citizens of the United States react to this monumental challenge?”