Indian film star Rajkumar has been released after being held hostage for 109 days in a forest by one of India’s most notorious bandits. The kidnapping saga had gripped India for months, inciting riots and an outpouring of emotion for the former matinee idol. – BBC
Tag: 11.15.00
THE WRITING’S ON THE WALL
Supertitles have become common in opera houses. But what about the theatre? No, not for translation purposes – the Royal Shakespeare Company experiments with using supertitles to aid audience members who are hard of hearing. – The Guardian
RABBIT, HIDE
He’s already won two Pulitzer Prizes, but John Updike may soon have another, altogether stranger, honor to his name: the 2000 award for the worst sex in fiction. “To make the shortlist, an author must be deemed to have written the worst or the most embarrassing sex scene in a book published this year.” – CBC
ROWLING ROUTED
The shortlist for the Whitbread Book of the Year Award (which, unlike the more revered Booker, proudly honors what’s popular, not just literary) was announced yesterday, and J K Rowling was noticeably absent. “The judges have thought the almost unthinkable by overlooking J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter children’s books, while including the former drug addict and ‘gonzo’ journalist Will Self, who has declared: ‘My books are crap.’” – The Telegraph (UK)
GET TO KNOW OUR AUTHORS
In an attempt to increase traffic to its site, Barnesandnoble.com introduces a new series of video author interviews available by streaming media. Publishers benefit with lots of free promotion. – Inside.com
OPPRESSION OF EXPRESSION
A group of Chinese poets was arrested and charged with “illegal assembly” at a literary symposium on the future of Chinese poetry – the first such event in the country since exiled writer Gao Xingjian (whose work is banned in China) won the Nobel Prize for literature last month. – China Times (Taiwan)
PAUL TAYLOR AT 70
Paul Taylor is 70 and going strong. “The dancers call him ‘Boss’ and Taylor describes his company as ‘family’, although he adds: ‘With all the dysfunctions, too’. It matters to him that dancers average ‘around 10 years’ with the company before they move on. It has hurt him when they have finally gone.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
JUDGMENT AND A DEAL
“MP3.com announced a distribution agreement with the Universal Music Group on Tuesday, shortly after a federal court awarded the world’s largest record company $53.4 million in attorney fees and statutory damages stemming from one of the Web site’s streaming audio services.” – Sonicnet
OLD TRADITIONS DIE
The Vienna Philharmonic is changing, despite itself. “There are now three Australians in the orchestra. There are also two Americans, a Canadian, and both harpists are French. Over the next four years, seven viola-players are due to retire and it is a safe bet that most of the newcomers will be foreign and probably female. The pressure for change has come primarily from guest conductors who, accustomed to industrial-strength precision playing in American orchestras, have complained about Viennese frailties – notably the trombones and tuba – without recognising that those wavery underpinnings were part of what audiences identified as the Vienna Philharmonic sound.” – The Telegraph (UK)
OPERA ON THE SILVER SCREEN
“The idea of capturing opera on film, surprisingly, goes back to the beginning of cinema. Thomas Edison told the New York Times in 1893 that his intention was ‘to have such a happy combination of photography and electricity that a man can sit in his own parlor, see depicted upon a curtain the forms of the players in opera upon a distant stage and hear the voices of the singers’.” – Los Angeles Times