The world’s most famous film festival wasn’t always the glittery affair it is now. “Technical mishaps provoked great power spats. Eleventh-hour crisis management narrowly averted meltdown. Even for a gathering of film people, there was more than the usual complement of hustlers and chancers in attendance. Worse, the public were invited.”
Tag: 05.06.07
Why Aren’t Lyrics Texts Included In Digital Downloads?
“At Yahoo and elsewhere, lyrics remain a notable omission from digital music files either purchased or acquired through subscription models. Not only do consumers not receive song lyrics with their download, they can’t search for songs by lyrics within Yahoo Music Unlimited or any other digital music service including iTunes.”
How Will Libraries Accomodate “Nontraditional” Publications?
“How do libraries — institutions that by nature require a strict, stately style of micromanagement — assimilate self-published and occasionally category-defying dispatches from the cultural hinterlands?”
Supreme Court: Rethinking The Patent Process
The US Supreme Court argued in a recent ruling that “the current patent regime threatened to stifle the sort of creativity that the Founding Fathers had originally created the system to foster. Courts have been upholding patents for technologies or designs that didn’t need them, that would have been developed in the ordinary course’ of events. In doing so, they have allowed bogus inventions to steal business from legitimate ones, and discouraged true innovation. To correct this, the Supreme Court made it more difficult for patent applicants to claim that they’ve actually invented something, while also making it easier for older patents to be challenged.
What Happened To Literature Of The Working Man?
“Considering so many of us spend our days toiling in offices, where are the great novels of working life? …Work ought to occupy the literary imagination as much as sex, money, or power, and yet for the most part the Anglo-American novel has spent at least half of the first two or three centuries of its development resolutely denying its existence.”
Chicago Theatre Facing Crunch As Shows Run Long
“These are heady days, indeed, for Broadway in Chicago, which took some flak for dark theaters in the early days of the restoration of the Loop’s theater district, and now has batted away the naysayers… But all of a sudden, a new problem has presented itself. Since its creation, Broadway in Chicago has run two subscription seasons a year. But that requires moving shows in and out with sufficient rapidity to create multishow seasons for regular patrons to buy. When you have a limited number of theaters, and when those theaters are full of the same shows for months or years, that becomes very difficult to do.”
Duck! The Second Floor’s Coming Right For Us!
“It sounds, at first blush, like an oversize architectural joke — a skyscraper where each floor would revolve independently around a central core, not only making a 360-degree rotation but also creating a constantly shifting profile.” But architect David Fisher isn’t joking, and his vision for a spinning skyscraper is on the way to becoming reality in the wealthy Arab metropolis of Dubai. This week, Fisher has been attempting to sell Chicago officials on the idea of a similar structure in America’s Second City.
Internet (And Complacency) Killed The Video Star
MTV, that pop culture juggernaut of the last three decades, is finally, blessedly, culturally irrelevant. “There was a time in the 1980s and ’90s when the channel had the ballast to send an act to the top of the Billboard charts, but ‘American Idol’ is the new boss. There was a time when the word ‘clip’ meant an MTV video with artistic and commercial punch, but now the word refers to the virals that ricochet through YouTube. And there was a time when a band had no future without MTV exposure, but now a MySpace page or a position on iTunes is more essential. When it comes to the buzz biz, MTV is out of the loop.”
Is Paris Saving Itself, Or Chasing Architectural Fads?
Paris is attempting to engineer “a much-needed jolt to the city’s aging urban core… Supporters laud the development, known as Paris Rive Gauche, as a futuristic alternative that could help revive the city’s economy and its struggling universities while creating much-needed housing. But some in this always-opinionated city denounce it as a stale corporate wasteland.”
Elation & Disappointment: Kellogg’s City Opera
As Paul Kellogg prepares to step down from the helm of New York City Opera, observers are assessing his 11-year-tenure, and wondering how the incoming Gerard Mortier will build on Kellogg’s legacy. “If Mr. Kellogg has had his setbacks, he has a record of innovation and achievement to be proud of. Few leaders of performing-arts institutions have been as effective at defining and carrying out a company mission.”