West Virginia is trying to fight an obesity problem with a popular video game “that uses ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ to boost students’ physical activity. All of the state’s 157 middle schools are expecting to get the video game, and officials hope to put it in all 753 public schools within three years. A pilot project began in 20 schools last spring.”
Tag: 01.26.06
A Matisse Bio Where Once There Was None
How did Hilary Spurling come to write her Whitbread-winning biography of Matisse? “My publisher was probably the only person in the world to realise that nobody had written a biography of Matisse and he suggested that I do it. I felt my heart leap – I assumed it had been done, and was thrilled it hadn’t. I was all wrong for it: I wasn’t an art historian, I wasn’t French and I am a woman. I thought these things would be a problem, but they helped.”
Garcia-Marquez: I’m Done
Nobel-winner Gabriel García Márquez has retired from writing. “I’ve stopped writing. 2005 was the first year in my life that I didn’t write a line. With all the practice I’ve got, I’d have no problems writing a new novel. “But people do notice if you haven’t put your heart into it.”
Expert: Keep Marbles In Britain
A leading archaeologist is against Britain returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. Even loaning them. “It is not an option. What are we going to do — send in the SAS to bring it back? If we loan it, it is not going to come back.”
More Women On Chicago Non-Profit Boards
In contrast to the for-profit world, non-profits in the Chicago are including more women on their boards of directors. A new survey “found that 94 percent of them had at least one woman director and 89 percent had at least one woman executive. Women accounted for 36 percent of all executive officers and 26 percent of all top earners at the 35 non-profits.”
The New CW – A Shrewd Play?
What does the merger of the WB and UPN channels into CW mean to the TV landscape? “This move makes a lot of business sense, and television was built on selling soap, so you couldn’t call it unexpected. The merger of two small networks into one small network (with a new name: the CW), may turn out to be that rarest of true cliches: a win-win. Not only for the bean counters, but for the viewers. Neither UPN or the WB is profitable.”
Music’s Great Growth Industry – Ringtones
Ringtones are turning into a big money-maker for the recording industry. “In 2005, tones pulled in $600 million, 20% ahead of estimates and more than double the 2004 take. The year’s leader, 50 Cent’s Candy Shop, sold 1.9 million downloads, more than the top-selling digital song: Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl, with 1.2 million. As options build and the cellphone is positioned as a digital command post, growth seems inevitable.”
The Weinsteins Apres-Disney
What’s next for the post-Miramax Weinsteins? Their first films after leaving Disney don’t suggest any great feats of derring do. “The Weinstein brothers’ success has been as much about branding as about discovering good films. The Weinsteins may have seen the artistry behind “Pulp Fiction” and “The Piano,” but the company’s reputation for daring and for aggressive Oscar campaigns with budgets bigger than some movies’ are about savvy marketing and public relations.”
Getty Villa Reopens
“The concept of a sizable museum devoted solely to the art of ancient Greece, Rome and Etruria (the region of modern Tuscany and Umbria) is inspired. For one thing, the modern notion of an art museum as a place of public enlightenment grew, like America itself, from the 18th century European revival of classical ideals. Ours is likewise an era when nothing succeeds like ostentatious displays of power. Expect the remarkable Getty Villa to be an enormous popular hit.”
Mozart As You Want To See Him
“Accepting Mozart, and putting him and his aesthetic at the centre of the classical canon, also seems to require some distortion of what and who he was. People have been poring over his scores and letters ever since he died, and what they’ve written about the character revelations they find there often tells more about the authors than about Mozart. Like early-modern Europeans in the New World, they tend to see what they expect to see.”