Is it a novel? Is it a collection of short stories? “Genres don’t come into existence every day, but in the past few years a good number of writers have started exploring the previously blank territory that lies between the collection of short stories and the novel proper. It starts to look like a new form altogether.”
Tag: 05.17.05
Toronto’s Rings Rakes In The Cash
“Toronto’s Lord of the Rings musical is becoming a hot ticket around the world with $1 million in tickets sold internationally on the first day they were offered. Because of the international appetite for the J.R.R. Tolkien epic, Toronto’s Mirvish Productions decided to begin public ticket sales on the internet on Sunday – a day before tickets could be purchased by telephone… The internet sales added to approximately $3 million the company has already racked up in group ticket sales to large parties, like tour operators who buy blocks of tickets.”
Luke, I Am Your President…
Ever since critics began screening the latest (and last) installment in George Lucas’s Star Wars epic, the whispers have been building that, perhaps, the turning of young Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side and the concomitant rise of the Empire are not wholly devoid of reference to current political theatre. Specifically, Skywalker, (or Darth Vader, as he comes to be known in the film,) seems to utter a number of hubris-inspired challenges which sound suspiciously like lines previously used by President Bush. Lucas, for his part, insists that it’s all a coincidence.
Movie “Sanitizers” Rile Industry
“The business of cleaning up movies has sparked a round of skirmishing in the culture wars and launched a patent brawl in the technology industry as well. Hollywood directors say that removing swear words and bare breasts compromises their artistic vision and violates their copyrighted material. Meanwhile, a Florida company claims that a technology used to skip over the dirty parts steals from its own patented method used to skip right to the dirty parts.”
How The Internet Is Changing Class Dynamics
With students now able to instantaneously check on the internet what teachers teach in their classes, the dynamics of the classroom are changing. “The immediate availability of vast amounts of information, and the ability to make perfect infinite copies, to communicate, and to distribute instantaneously will, by necessity, alter the ways we learn and teach. Transparency holds out the promise of a deeper, richer and more democratic educational experience, but also an implied challenge to the traditional academic order.”
A Vote On NEA Money This Week?
The US Congress may vote this week on a budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. The proposed budget calls for no increase. “The bipartisan Congressional Arts Caucus, composed of House members who support the arts, is prepared to introduce an amendment from the floor calling for a minimum increase of $9 million for the NEA. The House Appropriations Committee reallocated about $6.5 million to the new American Masterpieces initiative from the Challenge America arts program, and the caucus’s amendment would restore the Challenge America funding.”
Virginia Museum Gets $100 Million Present
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has received a gift of $100 million in art and cash from collectors James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin. “The McGlothlin assembly includes works by American artists from the 19th and 20th century: George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam and Martin Johnson Heade. The art ranges from oil paintings, pastels and watercolors to sculptures, and it forms “one of the most important American art collections still in private hands,” Brand said. The art is valued at $70 million.”
XM Passes 4 Million Subscribers
Satellite radio seems to be gaining a toehold in the US. XM says it has passed the 4 million subscriber mark and was on track to hit its goal of 5.5 million subscribers by the end of the year. “XM said it added 1 million subscribers since late December. XM’s rival in the satellite radio business, the New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., reported last month that it had 1.4 million subscribers and expected to have 2.7 million by the end of the year.”
The Musician With No Memory
“In his former life, Clive Wearing was a music producer for the BBC and the choirmaster of the renowned London Sinfonietta ensemble — but all that has been deleted out of his memory. Life before the illness has left few traces. Garden variety amnesia — people forget about their past lives — is not terribly uncommon. But forgetting on a continuous basis; that is very rare indeed. To Clive Wearing, the world is an ongoing riddle. He looks around and sees an unfamiliar room. Frequently, strangers stand in front of him and claim to be nurses. They claim that he has been living here for many years. All Wearing knows is: He has just woken up from a deep haze. For 20 years Clive Wearing has been continuously waking up.”
Ex-Seattle Symphony Concertmaster Settles With SSO, Stand-mate
The ex-concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony has settled with his ex-stand partner over comments he made on his blog. “I regret having posted statements that were interpreted as being about my former stand partner, now the acting concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. It is my understanding that some people have come to misapprehend my remarks which were intended to be humorous.”