The standard account of Europe’s twentieth century is in turns anguished, relieved and elegiac. Shadowed by the departed Golden Age, it recounts the travails of an older and calmer civilization torn apart by the barbarians within, and able only to survive after 1945 at the cost of losing its global primacy (and thus its claim on the title of civilization itself).
Tag: 04.30.08
Timed-Release: Music Industry Experiments
Making money from recording music is no longer a simple strategy. When and what to release is proving a complicated strategy as the recording industry tries to calculate how to make the most money out of its products.
Will Recession Make Movie Business Boom?
“Moviegoing historically has proved more than resistant to downturns — theater attendance actually increased during three of the last four recessions. And this year, Hollywood hopes the downturn could kindle a near record-breaking May-to-September season.”
Viral Movie Marketing To Make Your Head Hurt
Gone are the days when marketing a movie online involved simply buying a URL like DarkKnight.com and uploading a trailer. Warner Bros. has launched more than 30 Web sites during the past year in support of the latest in the “Batman” franchise, a trail of virtual bread crumbs intended to sate fans until the July 18 release.
Ontario Gives A Big Boost To Arts Funding
“That means that for its 2009-2010 operations, the provincial arts council will have almost $60 million to distribute to hundreds of individual artists and cultural organizations – the most money it has ever been allocated. It’s a signal that Queen’s Park is interested in all parts of the creative community, not just the flashy players such as the Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Luminato, which got a $75 million bonanza earlier this month.”
London’s First New Concert Hall Since 1982
“The 420-seat venue is part of Kings Place, the next stage of the transformation of King’s Cross after the reopening of St Pancras station.”
Have Moving Images Killed Reality?
“The diffusion of information technology hasn’t revolutionized everything. Existence is always a negotiation between fact from fiction. Long before MGM or the Internet, Cervantes and Flaubert were writing about characters who acted as if ‘life itself were just like a book.’ Most of us can still tell where one ends and the other begins.”
The Classical Music Mega-Concert
“The stadium classical music gig is coming to Britain. O2 , the concert venue in the former Millennium Dome, announced yesterday that it will stage a monumental production of Carmina Burana next January.”
London’s Parliament Square – A Public Mess
“One of Britain’s defining landmarks, it lacks any of the elegance of London’s great urban spaces – such as St James’s, Bedford or Belgrave squares – or the historic drama of a Trafalgar Square or George Square, Glasgow. With its fumes and noise, this is not a place for congregating, strolling, or even protesting. Instead, outside the so-called Mother of Parliaments and abutting one of the finest abbeys in northern Europe, Britain boasts an oversized roundabout barely able to come to life on even the grandest state occasions.”