Penguin is flexing its muscles to get itself more prominence in bookstores. “If a store commits to stocking a ‘good amount’ of Penguin titles and agrees to ten displays per year ‘in prime selling space,’ it receives an extra 1% discount on all titles published within the last year. Stores have to make a three-year commitment and must agree to promote both adult and children’s titles. To some small publishers, the move, coming from the country’s second-largest publisher, seems like yet another sales obstacle on a road already scattered with them. ‘The net effect is going to be less exposure for small houses’.”
Tag: 06.24.03
Canadian TV – Looking For A New Deal
“The Canadian TV racket used to be a simple thing: Buy U.S. programming cheap, sell ads for more than what you paid for the shows and presto chango! Your broadcast licence became a licence to print money. Lots of money.” Not anymore. So Canada’s big media companies are fighting for changes.
Middle East Archaeology At Standstill
“Since the start of the current Palestinian uprising more than two years ago, archaeology in the disputed territories has ground to a virtual standstill. And the demands placed on security forces on both sides have left many important archaeological sites vulnerable to looting.”
Camp: Where You Can Belt It Out
You’ve heard of fantasy baseball camps. Now there’s fantasy Broadway camps. “Now, for folks who’ve imagined belting to the back of the house like Betty Buckley or Nathan Lane, the Broadway Musical Fantasy Camp (BMFC) is here.”
Differently-Abled Movement
The field of disabled dance has grown out of “a combination of forces: the broader movement to improve the rights of the disabled; the growth of physical therapy; and the influence of contact improvisation, which is more accepting of different kinds of bodies and movement.”
From Venice To Basel (Oh What A Relief It Is)
The Basel Art Fair is “strategically timed to consolidate the impressions made and deals struck in Venice [at the Biennale]. This year we could not wait to leave the pavilioned heat and enter the temperate climate of Switzerland and the air-conditioned neutrality of Basel’s exhibition halls. It was not only the most searing heat since 1908, nor humidity pushing 90 per cent, nor 40,000 art professionals who for three days were simply pushing, that made this the most disappointing Biennale for many years. There was a strong sense that the exhibition’s format had run its course.”
Sistine Chapel Online
Now you don’t have to travel to Rome to see Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel paintings. The Vatican has put its art online. “Now, at the click of a mouse, they will now be able to zoom up to the recently restored ceiling, under which the painter – who only wanted to be a sculptor – spent endless months, between 1508 and 1512.” The Vatican website gets 50 million visitors a month.
Lloyd Webber Oratorio – Sincere, But…
An oratorio written by Andrew and Julian Lloyd Webber’s father William in 1948, gets its world premiere. “If sincerity alone were the key to a work’s success, St Francis of Assisi would be a winner, but unfortunately the score falls down on so many crucial issues of drama, variety, pacing and characterisation that it emerged in this belated premiere, given by the Joyful Company of Singers, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and a team of fine soloists conducted by Peter Broadbent, as more of a curiosity than a real find.”
Some Librarians Still Refuse Computer Filters
Many libraries say they’ll give up federal funding rather than install content filters on their computers, as the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this week. “We just don’t feel we as librarians need to be in the position of telling people what they should read, see or hear. When you put filters on computers, that’s what you’re doing.”
Ragtime Opera
Scott Joplin’s only opera – which he never saw performed in his lifetime – is getting a rare production. “The only large-scale work to survive from the pen of the greatest of the ragtime composers, ‘Treemonisha’ is still a comparative rarity in performance for reasons that have as much to do with history – the piece was never performed during Joplin’s lifetime, and his original orchestrations have been lost – as with the opera’s intrinsic merits.”