“Kane Cunningham has paid £3,000 for the next bungalow set to fall over the cliff and will film its end. He said the house symbolised ‘lost dreams, financial disaster and threatening sea levels’.”
Tag: 12.23.09
Culture Of The 2000’s From A to Z
A decade of moments…
Handel’s Messiah, Entrepreneur Edition
“The link between The Messiah and money goes back a long ways. It turns out composer George Frideric Handel, whose names means “market” in German, wasn’t only a musical wiz, but an entrepreneurial one.”
Las Vegas’s New Cluster Of Starchitecture
CityCenter Las Vegas – 187 million square feet of floor space, 67 acres, $8.5 billion – includes buildings by Daniel Libeskind, Norman Foster, Cesar Pelli, Rafael Viñoly, Helmut Jahn, and Kohn Pedersen Fox, plus public artworks by Henry Moore, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg and Maya Lin. How does it all work?
Slate Sorts Out The Lists Of The ’00s’ Best Movies
“Which movie is the best of the decade? Is there any consensus among the accumulating lists? To find out, we collected all of the rankings we could find and synthesized the results using a simple scoring system.” The regularly updated, interactive list-o’-lists is called The Aught-omatic, and it has two films running neck-and-neck for the top slot.
Paris Opera Ballet Tries Out Hi-Def Simulcasting
The company’s Diaghilev/Ballets Russes centennial program was transmitted live to 30 cinemas in Britain. Who went? A “dance audience, small but devoted and knowledgeable. And they were clearly delighted with the screening, which turned out to be not a substitute for performance but a different experience altogether – and, in some ways, better.”
Charlotte Symphony Hits Fundraising Target, Will Play On
“The Charlotte Symphony will play for another season. The financially beleaguered group announced Tuesday that it has reached its year-end goal by raising $500,000 in cash to match an anonymous $500,000 grant that was offered in August.”
The Most Pirated Movies Of 2009
“Now, according to data from TorrentFreak, Star Trek was downloaded nearly 11 million times this past year, just edging Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in total downloads. Interestingly, for all the fuss about the Wolverine leak, the film barely makes the top 10.”
Ancient Rabbinic Customs For Christmas Eve
“[T]he two main customs observed by many 21st-century Jews on Dec. 25 [are] eating Chinese food and being the first to see the Christmas blockbuster. But less well-known are the more historic – and, to be blunt, more bizarre – Christmas Eve customs that Jewish communities have kept secret, even from most Jews.”
Vatican Newspaper Gives The Simpsons Its Seal Of Approval
In an article titled “Aristotle’s Virtues and Homer’s Doughnut,” “L’Osservatore Romano on Tuesday congratulated the show on its 20th anniversary, praising its philosophical leanings as well as its stinging and often irreverent take on religion.” The paper even suggested the possibility of a “Simpsonian theology.”