There’s a new wave of zombie movies. Zombie movies date back to the 1930s, and though they sometimes go away for a decade, they always seem to return. And what makes zombies such attractive horror fare? “They can be anything you want them to be. They can carry any metaphor you like. They can stand for man’s environmental meddling, or of our alienation from each other. They are there to be controlled.”
Tag: 04.09.04
See Broadcasters Roll Over…(What About The First Amendment?)
Where is the media protest about the government crackdown on “indecency? “That’s the most depressing and tragic aspect to this. The media, rather than standing up for the First Amendment, are giving into the people who want to trample all over it.”
“Wife” – In For A Pulitzer Bounce?
Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife” won the Pulitzer for drama last week, and the question is how much the award will have an impact on its commercial prospects. “In the last decade only two plays have won the Pulitzer while running on Broadway, and both eventually made back their investments. But this evidence is by no means conclusive. The 2002 winner, “Topdog/Underdog,” opened the same week it won the award, so it is difficult to discern the effect the prize had on sales. And in 2001 “Proof” received only a slight bump.”
Judge Says There’s Evidence Clear Channel “Abused Its Clout”
“A federal judge in Denver has ruled that there is evidence that Clear Channel, the nation’s biggest radio broadcaster and concert promoter, abused its clout by threatening to keep artists off the air unless they performed at its shows.”
China To Privitize Publishers
China has more than 500 state-owned publishing houses. As part of the country’s economic reforms, many of those publishers will be cut loose to operate as private businesses, which should revolutionize publishing in the world’s most-populated country.
Gioia Presents NEA Budget To Congress
National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia presented the Bush administration’s request for a 15 percent budget increase to Congress. “The need for national arts leadership has never been more critical. There is presently a national crisis in state, local, and private arts funding across the United States. Budget cutbacks are nearly universal, and the majority of institutions in most arts fields are currently operating at a deficit with numerous bankruptcies, even among established organizations. Our appropriations — 40% of which are directly allocated to state arts agencies and regional organizations — provide much needed stability in this challenging environment.”
Sorting Out The “Multi” In Multi-Culti
The latest attacks on multiculturalism in Britain have been coming from the left. “An elite that is unwilling to make judgements about why any one cultural practice is better than another, to set universal standards about what role individuals should be expected to play across society, and to promote a distinct set of values that a society should agree upon, finds a useful tool in multiculturalism. This is why it has been so well-suited to Western societies in the past few decades, increasingly disorientated by the erosion of cultural and political certainties. Clearly, the official promotion of multicultural policy has not provided any solution to this disorientation – indeed, by actively encouraging expressions of difference and divisions between communities, it may well have fuelled the process of fragmentation.”
Picasso To Go
“In Germany, you don’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to live with an original Andy Warhol. As you would a book from the library, you can check out original art from one of 140 publicly funded “art libraries,” or artotheken. Born in the 1960s to increase Germans’ contact with art, “art libraries” are now an established tool of municipal cultural policy, and one which, for many, act as a door opener.”
Surprise: “Passion” Breaking Box Office Records In Middle East
“Mel Gibson’s controversial movie “The Passion of the Christ,” is breaking box office records across the Middle East. With the approach of Easter, Arab Christians identify primarily with the religious message. But it’s the film’s popularity among Muslims – even though it flouts Islamic taboos – that’s turning it into a phenomenon.”
Bruni Gets NYT Restaurant Critic Job
Frank Bruni has been named the New York Times new restaurant critic. “Mr. Bruni, 39, joined The Times in 1995 as a reporter for The Metro Section before becoming a national correspondent, first in San Francisco and then in Washington. He covered the presidential campaign of George W. Bush and the first eight months of the Bush administration, and went to the Rome bureau in 2002.”