Critic Hughes Disparages BBC Art Poll

The BBC is polling its audience to choose Britons’ favorite piece of art. “In what the BBC has described as the first ever national survey of paintings to be held anywhere in the world, the public have been invited to vote for any painting in Britain to determine the nation’s greatest work of art. The poll has attracted such artistic luminaries to discuss their favourite painting as Jack Vettriano and Boris Johnson, but held no attraction for Time Magazine critic Robert Hughes who was scheduled to appear on Saturday’s broadcast. Yesterday, he dismissed the poll as a ‘minor circulation-building exercise’ and said he refused to discuss it because it was of ‘no relevance’.”

In Praise Of The Memoir

Genres may come an go, but the memoir is an enduring form. “The well-written memoir has continued to promote the not-entirely-outrageous view that a properly interesting life is a worthwhile thing to read about. It also plays with the notion that sometimes (just sometimes) people might want to read about a life whose values are not like theirs. More often than not, innovation comes before a fall, but not so in the memoir game, where some of the best British writing finds its audience.”

Judge: Da Vinci Code Didn’t Steal From Earlier Book

An American judge has ruled that “The Da Vinci Code” did not infringe on the copyright of a book published in 2000. “Although both novels at issue are mystery thrillers, ‘Daughter of God’ is more action-packed, with several gunfights and violent deaths. ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ on the other hand, is an intellectual, complex treasure hunt, focusing more on the codes, number sequences, cryptexes and hidden messages left behind as clues than on any physical adventure.”

Selling On Stage (Product Placement Gears Up)

“Product placement is such a growing phenomenon that Nielsen, the ratings arbiter, has started keeping track of the extent of its growth. Here’s their distressing discovery. In the first three months of 2005, there were 12,867 instances of placement in the Top 10 prime-time programs on U.S. television.” Now theatres are getting in to the product placement game…

A Theatre Showcase Pays Off

“The first Playwright’s Showcase of the Western Region, held in Denver last August, attracted 168 entries from 18 states, making the fledgling effort, which returns Friday to the Arvada Center, one of the largest of its kind in the United States – at least geographically.” It’s not nationally prominent, but there are plenty of success stories coming out of last year’s showcase to pump up optimism for this year’s event.

Urban Design As A Video Game

“Today, thanks to ever more sophisticated software, urban planning itself has increasingly come to resemble a SimCity-style public-policy game. Since the game’s debut, the maturing technology known as Geographical Information Systems (GIS)–software for synthesizing database, mapping, and modeling data–has supplanted the paper blueprint roll as the urban planner’s dominant tool, enabling planners to map over a geographic region everything from gas lines to transit systems to weather patterns. But it’s not just professionals who have their hands on the technology.”