Pop artists sometimes insert little spoken interludes between track of an album. But does anybody really care about them? ‘Since fans who buy albums on CD still account for most music sales, fans are still buying a lot of interludes. But that may not mean they like them, if digital sales are any indication.”
Tag: 02.18.07
Aaron Sorkin At Double Speed
“In his outdoorsy-casual ensemble – jeans, boots, navy-blue shirt over a snowy white T-shirt – Sorkin looks relaxed enough. But when he opens his mouth, he sounds exactly like the kind of overcaffeinated, hyper-articulate character who goes ping-ponging through an Aaron Sorkin show. And in that word-slinging world, rewriting a play while you are also writing a TV series is probably your idea of a really good time.”
Who Will Provide Video On The Web?
“It has become evident that the question of who will rule video on the Web is incredibly tangled. For now, most of the sticky strands lead to Google, and big media companies are trying to figure out whether to fight it or join it. That already hard question has been complicated by some fresh headaches for Google.”
Charge: Japanese Publisher Bows To Gov Pressure
“Kodansha Ltd., Japan’s largest publisher, said Friday it had dropped plans to release the translation of ‘Princess Masako: Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne’ next month because of author Ben Hills’ refusal to publicly admit mistakes in the book and apologise. ‘The real reason is that they have submitted to bullying by the Japanese government not to publish the book,’ Hills says.”
Oscar’s Colors
The Oscars have struggled with diversity over the years. So will this year’s winners be more diverse? “I think the color barrier is coming down, but it takes a generation or two to die off. It’s a slow process.”
“Scream” Theft Decoy? (A Crime Story)
Was the theft of Munch’s “Scream” merely a diversion for another crime? The “gang needed what Sicilians call an ‘illustrious corpse’ to distract attention. What could be more spectacular than stealing The Scream? After all, it caused a sensation when the other version of Munch’s picture was stolen from Oslo’s National Gallery in 1994 and recovered in a sting operation. Stealing the Munch Museum version proved an even bigger story. And that was the point.”
Language Extinction – The Death Of Ideas
“Of the estimated 7,600 languages known in the world today, half are endangered and could be lost forever within a few decades. The extinction of ideas we now face has no parallel in human history, and most of the world’s languages remain undescribed by scientists. So we do not even know what it is we stand to lose.”
Controversy Over A Word In A Children’s Book
“The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the ‘scrotum’… The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books.”
Best? Really? Best? Who Says?
No one ever seems happy about which movies get nominated for Oscar’s highest honor. “We ask it every year, but here we go again: What the [insert favorite invective here]?! Just what do Academy voters mean by ‘Best Picture’ anyway?”
State Of The Book Nation
“There were $10 billion worth of books sold last year, a negligible slip of 0.02 percent over 2005. One of the encouraging signs was the adult hardcover (not that kind of “adult”) segment, which showed a 4.1 percent increase. Adult paperbacks posted an 8.5 percent rise for the year. On the down side, books for young and high school readers seemed to be losing ground.”