Do We Have Too Much Choice?

During the last couple of decades, the American economy has undergone a variety revolution. Instead of simply offering mass-market goods, businesses of all sorts increasingly compete to give consumers more personalized products, more varied experiences, and more choice. As the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.”

New Mexico Symphony’s Stalled Contract Talks

The New Mexico Symphony Orchestra has been negotiating with its musicians on a new contract for a year, but the 2004-05 season has now ended with little progress. Could there be a strike? “Since 1995, the salary for the NMSO executive director has gone up by more than 65 percent, and expenses for administration and production personnel have increased by more than 100 percent. Yet most of the orchestra’s 35 core players earn an annual salary that’s less than what they were paid in 1992.”

Groking The Movie Biz (Not Really)

How does the movie business work? We don’t really knoww. According to a recent academic paper, the effectiveness of “star power” is one of many “puzzles” that haunt the movie business, an industry where executives “rely heavily on tradition, conventional wisdom, and simple rules of thumb.” Despite extensive market research dating back to the ’20s, Hollywood is the King Lear of the entertainment world: It has always but slenderly known itself.

What Good Is A Film Festival?

“A film festival sounds vaguely intellectual, an oasis of cinematic contemplation in the midst of the crass commercial marketplace. But a film festival is an aberration; people don’t need further encouragement to go to the movies. When the most misguided Hollywood remake of a half-remembered TV show can make $10 million in its opening weekend, it could even be argued that people go to the movies too much. There are few good reasons for film festivals to exist, and yet they proliferate like cancer clusters across the country.”

Americans For the Arts – Looking For Value In Austin

Members of American for the Arts gather in Austin for the group’s annual meeting. “Robert Lynch, AFA’s president and chief executive officer, presented findings from the organization’s latest research effort: an analysis of municipal, state, and regional arts agencies in 2003, the first year that saw a decline in arts funding after six years of increases. As the national economy has crept back from its post-Sept. 11 slump, however, arts funding has either increased or plateaued.”

Why The Movie Slump? Poll Says Look To Home…

A new poll says that 73 percent of those asked prefer to see movies in their home on DVD or videocassette rather than in the theatre. “The same poll found that only 22 per cent of people preferred to see movies the old-fashioned way – in a movie theatre. The numbers may provide fodder for those who believe the proliferation of at-home entertainment technologies is permanently changing moviegoing patterns.”

Radio You Can Interact With

“A team of students from Carnegie Mellon University have developed Roadcasting, a collaborative, mobile radio system that will allow car drivers and anyone else with a computer, a wireless connection and digital music files to not only broadcast their own station, but influence the play lists of other Roadcasting DJs transmitting in the area.”

Want To Live Longer? Get Some Friends

A new study says that having close friends is more important to a healthy happy life than close family ties. The study reports that “those with the strongest group of friends and confidants were found to have lived longer than those with the fewest friends. Close contact with children and relatives had little impact on survival rates over the 10 years.”

Tough Times For Critics?

“Serious arts criticism is looking beleaguered these days in the face of forces ranging from a celebrity-besotted media to the rise of critic-bloggers on the Internet to falling newspaper circulation to suspicion of anything that might be considered “elitist.” The age of great critics – popular, influential writers such as Virgil Thomson on classical music, Clement Greenberg on visual art, Edwin Denby on dance or Pauline Kael on movies – is long gone. Today, critics are more likely to be glorified touts giving thumbs up or down than probing thinkers and literary stylists.”

The Freud Phenomenon

“In the late 1980s, not yet antique but merely old-fashioned, Lucien Freud was shunned by the museums and his practice seemed to have reached a dead end. And while there are particular circumstances that explain Freud’s resurrection–above all the simple fact of his survival which illogically confers on a career the stamp of authenticity and sincerity–it is also linked to the much remarked upon revival of painting in the last few years.”