“The neat streets of Oslo are not a natural setting for crime fiction. … And Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, is now associated more with financial misjudgment than gruesome murder. Yet in the past decade Nordic crime writers have unleashed a wave of detective fiction that is right up there with the work of Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Elmore Leonard and the other crime greats.”
Tag: 03.13.10
Campaigning For Carol Channing To Get Kennedy Center Honors
“A slew of celebrities are joining forces to demand that legendary actress Carol Channing be selected for the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors. Among those voicing their support for the nomination are Lily Tomlin, Chita Rivera, Phyllis Diller, Lucie Arnaz, Buzz Aldrin, Kate Linder, Tommy Tune, Loni Anderson, Alison Arngrim, Tippi Hedren and Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein.”
UK Orchestra Association Charts Five-Year Plan For Orchestras
The Association of British Orchestras has launched a “five-year vision” that calls upon the government to “value orchestras, fund us wisely, legislate supportively and make a real commitment to maintaining music education in schools”.
Pressed For Money, Florida Opera Innovates Digitally, Scores A Hit
“In addition to saving dollars on elaborate built sets, this approach had the effect of outfitting what some might call an overly familiar opera with a new look, one immediately engaging to a young audience brought up on the irreverent styles of popular culture – not a bad strategy to counter opera’s admittedly unfair geriatric image.”
Interactive Fiction – Take Your Pick
“If there’s one word that summarizes the gap between other media and interactive fiction, I’d say it’s `exploration.’ There is no single, imperative path through the work. The person behind the keyboard is not a passive consumer of the story, not observing the story, but actually in it, doing stuff.”
Downside Of The Web
“Whatever you do gets re-used and re-mashed so many times its origins are lost. You start to lose the context of information and therefore the meaning. You have music samples, for instance, that might have a touch of novelty but are no longer part of a musical culture that has any history or heritage. That’s happening to ideas as well, where you have little snippets that get passed around on things like Twitter without context.”
Follow Van Gogh Restoration Online
A new blog will allow art lovers to follow the restoration, step by step, of Dutch post impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh’s famous “The Bedroom”, the Van Gogh Museum said Thursday.
The World’s Most-Read Blogger
“Since he began blogging in 2006, Han Han, 28, has been delivering increasingly caustic attacks on China’s leadership and the policies he contends are creating misery for those unlucky enough to lack a powerful government post. With more than 300 million hits to his blog, he may be the most popular living writer in the world.”
Can E-Readers Survive Tablets?
“Although dozens of tablets are scheduled to hit the market this year — from companies like Apple, HP and Dell, as well as upstarts like JooJoo — executives in the e-reader industry aren’t particularly worried. Instead, they say, tablets and E Ink-based reading devices are likely to co-exist, targeting different groups of consumers based on their purchasing power, the extent of interactivity they need and their reading patterns.”