Category: today’s top story

Fan films are movies based on real TV shows or movies. They’re written and produced by hardcore fans and it’s a thriving subculture. “Once you reach a certain point and you have an episode out there, it is like crack. You just want to do more and get more response and keep telling new and interesting stories. It is really addictive, but not dangerously addictive. I’m not driving myself into the financial ruin column yet.”

“You’d think from looking at the headlines that there would be no point buying CDs at the moment because it’s a dying format. But it still accounts for more than 90% of the market in value terms. And as far as albums are concerned, it’s still the vast majority of the market. The perception that the CD belongs in the dark ages is totally wrong. Certainly, the CD remains a superior product to any digital alternatives: cheaper, easy to rip and burn, secure and coming with all the added peripherals such as cover, liner notes and lyrics.”

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said sales last year dropped to 1.7 billion, compared with 1.9 billion in 2005. Although digital music sales doubled last year, they failed to compensate for the overall fall in music sales.”

“She was the telegenic ‘diva next door,’ a friendly redhead from Brooklyn whose friends called her Bubbles; she was an aggressive Manhattan snob who never let it be forgotten that she did hold grudges. She was the warmest and most brilliant American coloratura soprano of her time; she was a high-culture power broker and adept political infighter. Those who knew her slightly liked her enormously; those who knew her better were sometimes a little afraid of her.”

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art has been in a dispute with artist Christoph Büchel over an installation that went wrong and was ultimately canceled by the museum. But now the museum is showing the incomplete installation under some peculiar circumstances. “Yellow tarps affixed to construction fencing block the visitor’s view of most of the materials assembled for the project. This is to propound the idea that the museum is not actually exhibiting Büchel’s unfinished work and cannot therefore be sued for doing so. If the US District Court in Springfield rules in the museum’s favor, then the fencing will be removed.”

“Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who died of AIDS-related complications at 38 in 1996, is the second American to be posthumously represented in the high-profile American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Unfortunately, the show mostly represents a lost opportunity for any of scores of living American artists,” Christopher Knight writes. A superstar, Gonzalez-Torres “hardly needs Venice to secure his reputation. Other artists do.”

“The financial power of the creative industries … was the subject of a report from the Work Foundation published the day before the change of premiers,” Mark Lawson writes. The foundation “encourages us to view (government) handouts (to cultural powerhouses) as ‘investment’ rather than ‘subsidy’. Yet it’s still startling to read arguments applied to the arts that few politicians or lobbyists would now dare invoke in relation to railways, telecommunications or post.”

“Few people familiar with the Smithsonian in Washington and its various underperforming, weirdly performing and, in some cases, barely existent art and culture museums were much surprised by” its recent troubles, Holland Cotter writes. “The institution has been deteriorating for a while, which has come to seem like part of its musty machinery. Besides, in the grand arena of national politics, why should anyone care about the sins and missteps and of a museum complex? One reason is selfish: As taxpayers we are footing the bill.”

“Citing a harsh report on missteps at the Smithsonian Institution, Senator Dianne Feinstein declared at a hearing on Tuesday that the museum complex should move quickly to replace its ousted top executive rather than take an estimated six months to a year. … Responding to Ms. Feinstein, Roger W. Sant, the chairman of the Smithsonian Board of Regents executive committee, testified that choosing a new secretary was ‘the most important job that we have to do right now, and I believe we need to take the time to do it right.'”