“As long as the particulars of Academy voting are suppressed, we movie lovers will find Oscar Night less exciting as we watch it, less likely to lodge in our collective memory. Hollywood is supposed to be the best at creating drama, suspense, thrills — at putting on a great show. If we knew not only who the winners were, but by how much they won, the Oscar show could be the Super Bowl of movies.”
Tag: 02.22.09
Cultural Revolution – How Our Cities Will Recover
“Creative types come to New York to exchange ideas with like-minded people, but also to have the mass media spread their work. What happens when websites such as Pitchfork (started by a Minneapolis kid in his bedroom) can do much more for a band’s fortunes than Rolling Stone? What happens when fashionistas listen more to blogs than they do to Vogue?”
Can An Author Be Too Prolific?
It depends. In some forms of writing, volume is a desired skill. But then, aren’t we a little suspicious of the literary writer who cranks out too much work?
Making A New Case For Mendelssohn
“The Mendelssohn industry has a story to tell that is different from those of, say, Mozart or Brahms. The music of those composers has been fully explored, even if most performers usually concentrate on the top-drawer works. In Mendelssohn’s case something like a third of his music — about 270 of his 750 works — is unpublished and mostly remains unperformed.”
Cracking The “Beautyy Code” (It’s All Science And Math)
Horace “Woody” Brock “believes he has cracked the secret of beautiful design. He even has equations and graphs to prove it.”
James Levine’s Boston Symphony Experience – Five Years On
“Overall, the sonic flourishing of the orchestra under Levine’s baton is unmistakable. Big ensembles are not wholly transformed in five years, nor can any longstanding symphonic legacy be erected so quickly. But Levine and the BSO have grown toward each other, and this venerable ensemble whose reputation and general morale had declined under the long tenure of Seiji Ozawa, is clearly changing for the better.”
Screen Actors Reject Hollywood Contract Offer
“The national board’s vote was 73 percent to 27 percent against the proposal, the guild said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Studio negotiators demanded a contract that ran through 2012, rather than three years from the last expiration in June 2008, the guild said.”