Author: sbergman

We’re Now Using Awards Shows To Forecast Awards

Hollywood’s Producers’ Guild is out with its annual list of nominees for producer of the year in film and TV. This would be the ultimate “inside baseball” news, except for the fact that the Guild traditionally does an uncanny job of predicting how the Oscar race will shape up. “Over the last 14 years only four films that didn’t win the Producers Guild award… went on to receive the best picture Oscar.”

Actors’ Strike Looms North of the Border

“The simple news is this: Unless a deal can be reached in the next four days, actors will be on the picket lines first thing Monday morning and all film and television productions employing members of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists will come to a grinding halt. But, in fact, talks between actors and producers involve a much more complicated story.”

All You Need Is Love For The Art

Even as prices in the art world continue to spiral out of control, a new web site is offering art lovers a chance to “adopt” paintings, sculptures, and sketches for the mere price of an e-mail exchange with the artist. “In an art world where money and status loom large, a transaction that revolves around one person’s response to another person’s art is not only unusual, it is potentially subversive.”

Students Becoming The Teachers

As music education in public schools continues to go the way of the dodo, several prominent music colleges have begun stepping in to fill the gap. The hope is that the people in charge of American schools will eventually recognize the inherent value of arts education, and make music a regular part of the curriculum again.

Egypt Leaps Into The Antiquities Recovery Game

Remember all those Egyptian mummies that caused such a stir in American museums a couple of decades back? Yeah, well, Egypt would like them back, if you don’t mind. (And even if you do, actually.) “Egypt’s lead sleuth in the country’s hunt to reclaim ancient antiquities has gained a reputation for often strong-arming curators and bullying museum directors. But while he’s attracted critics in his hunt for Egypt’s mummies and pharaonic masks, his hard-nosed techniques are indeed paying off.”

Sniping At Studio 60

In the age of the instant online review, people working on a new television show have to get used to some negative reaction. But the blistering critiques that have been directed at Aaron Sorkin’s highly touted “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” this season have been notable not only for their vitriol, but for who’s been doing the complaining. Much of the criticism of the show has come not from the great unwashed viewing masses, but from the very comedy writers whose story the show purports to tell.

Soprano Attacked By Bedbugs

A soprano with New York City Opera is suing the Hilton hotel chain for $6 million, claiming that she suffered more than 150 painful and scarring bedbug bites while staying at a Hilton in Phoenix. She may require laser surgery to reduce the scarring from the bites, and claims that the incident could hurt her career in the increasingly image-conscious opera world.

Honeymoon Over For OC Concert Hall

A new $235 million concert hall in Orange County, California, has been drawing rave reviews since it opened in September. But as the newness wears off, some patrons have begun complaining about bad sightlines, poor wheelchair access, uncomfortable seats, and an air conditioning system that seems to be set to “Arctic” on many nights.

More Trouble For The Getty

A 7-1/2 -foot statue of the goddess Aphrodite owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has long been the subject of a contentious debate over whether it was illegally obtained. Now, journalists covering the Getty’s recent troubles have “found new information that undermines the statue’s official history, bolsters claims that it was illicitly excavated in Sicily and shows that the museum bought the Aphrodite despite repeated warnings that it had been looted.”