“After a promising start, topping the Billboard 200 chart in its first week with 359,000 copies sold, Madonna’s MDNA is expected to suffer an 88 percent drop in sales to 46,000 according to Forbes. The album’s steep decline would set the record for biggest second week drop in history.”
Tag: 04.10.12
What Happened To Our Politically Adventurous Novelists?
“Some politically committed authors immediately come to mind, such as Dave Eggers – for his novels on Sudanese refugees and post-Katrina New Orleans, and his establishment of children’s reading groups – but the paucity of their number reinforces how few there are.”
Freedom Of Expression Is Meaningless If You Can’t Offend
“Censorship might be legitimate when a writer incites violence or war, but Gunter Grass’s poem does neither. His transgression is to write something that many people find offensive and (given his history, as a conscript in the Waffen-SS) deeply insensitive. However, this is no reason for censorship: freedom of expression is meaningless without the right to offend.”
The End Of DVD Stores?
“While niche independent stores have the best chance of survival, a report by market forecasters IBISWorld on DVD hire outlets proclaims the ”end of an era” for rentals. Industry revenue, which was $1.6 billion in 2008-09, will slump to nearly half that – $858 million – by 2016-17, the final year of the forecast, the report said.”
The Un-Choreographer
A leading exponent in Britain of physical theater, the genre that combines expressionistic, stylized, often unison movement with text, music and design, Hoggett is a choreographer who stretches the definition of the term. He’s never been a dancer and he has no technical training — he doesn’t so much design steps as elicit them from his performers.
Uh-Oh! Yahoo! Proposes Putting Ads In Digital Books
It suggests users could be offered ads as hyperlinks based within the book’s text, in-laid text or even “dynamic content” such as video. Another idea suggests boxes at the bottom of a page could trail later chapters or quotes saying “brought to you by Company A”.
Movie Trailers As Art Form
“This is the new world of trailers, in which the Internet and rabid fan culture have turned one- to three-minute ads, once seen only in theaters, into events promoted and analyzed as avidly as the films themselves.”
Anonymous Hits Netflix, Trying To Start Boycott
“Monday afternoon saw a case of the Internet hype machine gone wildly out of control in which a Twitter account associated with the hacktivist movement Anonymous launched an online boycott of Netflix over the video subscription company’s newly-formed political action committee.”
At Canadian Opera Co., Where Are The Canadian Operas?
“The COC is an international-calibre opera company that routinely sells out houses with powerful productions of European classics … but it has been 13 years since the company programmed a piece of music written by a Canadian in its main venue.” This doesn’t seem to bother subscribers, but it drives the Canadian music community crazy.
The Lion King Is Now Broadway’s Box Office Champion Of All Time
“Nearly 15 years after it made its debut to both critical and popular acclaim, The Lion King has topped The Phantom of the Opera as Broadway’s highest-grossing musical of all time. The show, based on the Disney animated film of 1994, has grossed $854 million.”