“[A]ccording to a source close to the Sinatra family, Frank’s daughter and the film’s executive producer, Tina Sinatra, is worried that [Martin] Scorsese’s vision might ultimately taint her father’s legacy. ‘Marty wants it to be hard-hitting and showcase the violent, sexually charged, hard-drinking Frank, but Tina wants to show the softer side of her dad and let the focus be on the music’.”
Tag: 08.16.09
Fake Russian Constructivist Paintings Are Flooding Market
“The avant-garde works by the likes of Malevich, Popova, Kandinsky and Goncharova are attracting bigger and bigger prices at auction – last year Goncharova became the highest-selling female artist – and decorate the mansions of Russia’s oligarchs and new business elite. There is just one problem. Most of them are fakes.”
When A Perfectionist’s Life Spins Out Of Control
“Friends say [Annie] Leibovitz has begun to think of herself less as a celebrity artist leading a charmed life and more as a single mother of three fighting to keep a roof over her head and food on her family’s table.” But she is still the photographer “responsible for some of the world’s most iconic magazine covers,” and so the question remains: “How on earth could something like this have happened to Annie Leibovitz?”
Spoilers Aren’t Intrinsically Evil
“[H]ow much information is too much? What balance should a writer strike between safeguarding the joy of discovery for those who haven’t yet seen a play, and talking in such generalities that the writing becomes meaningless? … The answer is not clear-cut – it varies from show to show and writer to writer – but it raises [another] question: how much damage can a spoiler actually do?”
In Network TV, It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
For network television, “things could get a lot worse before they get better. Some observers are even beginning to question whether there will ever be a turnaround, predicting that [the] business model which has sustained broadcasters for close to 60 years has begun an irreversible decline. … ‘It’s the beginning of a structural tailspin… the total collapse of the network television model,’ [author-critic-NPR co-host Bob] Garfield predicts.”
Lord Of The Flies Author Once Attempted To Rape Teen
William Golding was an 18-year-old Oxford student at the time of “[t]he attack, on a 15-year-old named Dora,” which “is among the revelations about the Nobel prize-winning novelist in a new biography. It also turns out that when he was a school-teacher, Golding would pitch the boys in his care against each other in a real-life forerunner of his famous work.”
Ernst Katz, Founder Of Calif.’s Jr. Philharmonic, Dies At 95
“Ernst Katz, who nurtured thousands of young musicians during 72 years as the founding conductor of the Jr. Philharmonic Orchestra of California,” which he launched during the Depression, died Tuesday. “The 10,000 youths who have performed in the orchestra since its founding were charged no fees to participate. If they needed instruments, Katz lent them. If they couldn’t afford the tuxedos required for performances, Katz paid for them.”
Can The Arts Help Revive England’s Old Seaside Towns?
“Margate and Hastings breathlessly await swanky new galleries, Folkestone has set up a ‘creative quarter’, and Bexhill is sprucing up its prom. For many of Britain’s faded resorts, art and architecture are now seen as the path to renewed prosperity, while others are trying a humbler, homegrown solution.”
Unauthorized Sequels To The Great Books: Legitimate Re-imaginings Or Litigation Bait?
“It’s easy to imagine, though, that [Jane Austen] might not be amused by Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies … Were she alive and litigious, like the even more private and reclusive J. D. Salinger, Austen might go to court seeking to stop publication of Mr. Grahame-Smith’s best-selling book, or at least to get a piece of the royalties.” As Salinger did recently when he put a stop to Fredrik Colting’s 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. Should that sort of sequel be protected? “Where do you draw the line between critique or parody and outright exploitation?”
The Streep Effect (Economists And Marketers Love It)
Meryl Streep is now “not merely one of Hollywood’s favourite names, but one with a Midas touch. Her latest film, Julie & Julia, in which she plays the kitchen guru Julia Child, … has sent Child’s 1961 book Mastering the Art of French Cooking back to the top of bestseller lists, as well as triggering a boom in interest in French cuisine classes in the US.” After Streep’s performance in the ABBA musical Mamma Mia, “not only did the Swedish group’s Gold collection top the album charts, there was also a surge in demand from couples who wanted to marry on the Greek island of Skopelos, as in the film.”