“A minor miracle occurred Thursday night at the Hirshhorn Museum. A new piece of contemporary art truly worked. A crowd of ordinary Joes and Jills sat through a 90-minute, plot-free piece of experimental cinema. Instead of grumbling, shifting in their seats or simply leaving, the overflow audience for ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’ sat engrossed….”
Tag: 04.24.07
FCC To Target Violent Programming
“Federal regulators, concerned about the effect of television violence on children, will recommend that Congress enact legislation to give the government unprecedented powers to curb violence in entertainment programming, according to government and TV industry sources. … For decades, the FCC has penalized over-the-air broadcasters for airing sexually suggestive, or ‘indecent,’ speech and images, but it has never had the authority to fine TV stations and networks for violent programming.”
Hollywood Backstabbing Comes To Publishing World
“(R)ough-and-tumble Hollywood business tactics, including lawsuits and personal attacks, are permeating New York’s traditionally more genteel book world.” The reason? Movie and TV rights. “Ever since ‘Gone With the Wind,’ studios have been vying for the rights to bestsellers that could become the next ‘Da Vinci Code’ or ‘Harry Potter.’ Increasingly, they’re also seeking out quality material. … The fight for the inside literary track can be brutal, and agents live in constant fear of being out-hustled.”
A Roaring Lion Has Some Wisdom For Cubs
“Do what you have to do to make a living, but figure out if you’re going to be a hack or your own person” is one sampling from Edward Albee’s unambiguous advice for high schoolers in the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts’ YoungArts program. Here’s another: “Read junk. It’s enormously encouraging to tell yourself, ‘I can do better than that.’ “
Imagination, Not Experience, The Key To Empathy
“What is critical to understanding someone is not necessarily having had his or her experience; it is being able to imagine what it would be like to have it. Thus, I do not have to be black to empathize with the toxic effects of racial prejudice, or be a woman to know how I would feel about being denied promotion on the basis of sex. Contrary to what many people believe, being empathic is not the same thing as being nice. In fact, empathy can sometimes be put to a very dark purpose.”
PEN Festival Invites Politics Into Literary Sphere
PEN American Center’s World Voices Festival of International Literature, which begins today in New York, “brings together people from 45 countries to talk not only about problems directly affecting writers, but also about other issues, from global warming and the international refugee crisis to the war in Iraq and political torture. It is that direct engagement with political topics that perhaps makes the festival — at least in the United States — stand out.”