“Musicians have always mined the past for inspiration. But what happens when the seam is worked out? When every style and genre has been revisited, reworked and mashed-up? When every trend and teen tribe has been repackaged?”
Tag: 06.09.11
The Orange Prize Effect
What has become of the winners of the prestigious Orange Award for Fiction after their wins?
Will 3D TV Sports Change The Way We Watch TV?
“3-D sports on TV is young and immature, but rife with potential to permanently alter how we view (literally and figuratively) sports on television. What they’re still trying to figure out, one year into their grand experiment, is how to bring all the pieces together so that 3-D sports is just another accepted offering for sports fans’ TV spread.”
Union Files Suit Against “Spider-Man” On Behalf Of Taymor
“On Thursday the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the union that represents theater directors including Julie Taymor, said it had filed an arbitration claim against the producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” for failure to pay royalties to her.”
The Value Of A Tony In Box Office Terms (Some Numbers)
“On average, winners of the Tony for best musical saw their average weekly gross jump 48 percent, from $656,784 in the eight weeks before the ceremony to $972,006 in the eight weeks after. By contrast, the other nominees saw only a 21 percent increase in their weekly gross in the comparable time frames.”
How Kodak’s Super 8 Film Changed Moviemaking
“Introduced by Kodak in 1965, super 8 was the cheapest film around – each roll was about $5, and worked on cameras that started for under $30. Many families purchased super 8 cameras … and soon kids were out in the backyard, playing auteur. … [A] slew of today’s most successful filmmakers got their start shooting on super 8 film.”
The Rap Music That Fuels The Arab Spring
“Since December, musicians have been responding to – and provoking – the protests in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, and much of the music being made about these movements is hip-hop. … Songs are rapped in both English and Arabic, and international collaborations have helped to spread the music over the Internet, via Facebook and YouTube.”
Plan For New (And Expensive) Private College Provokes Furor In UK
“A huge row erupted in Britain this week over plans for a new private college that will charge £18,000 a year (nearly $30,000) for one-to-one Oxbridge-style tutorials and lectures from ‘celebrity professors.’ The New College of the Humanities, launched by Anthony Grayling, … aims to emu late the American liberal arts model and counter what he called the ‘crazy situation’ in English higher education.”
Claude Leveillee, 78, Quebec’s Singer-Songwriter-Actor-Icon
After beginning his career on French-Canadian television, Léveillée developed into the standard-bearer for le chanson in Quebec; he found a measure of international fame when he was discovered by Edith Piaf, for whom he wrote several songs.
Jorge Semprun, 87, Spanish Writer, Holocaust Survivor, Culture Minister, Oscar Winner
After fleeing Franco, fighting with the French Resistance, and surviving the Buchenwald death camp, Semprún became something of a Spanish Elie Wiesel, writing acclaimed books about the lingering effects of fascism and the Holocaust. (He won an Oscar for the screenplay to Costa-Gavras’s Z.)