Movie trailers have become an artform intheir own right. “At the multiplex, it is now common for a theater to present seven, sometimes 10 trailers before the feature film (as is the case now with the latest “Star Wars” episode).” Now there’s a festival to screen the best of them. “At the Golden Trailers, known as the Trailzees, organizers showed 95. It was like some kind of extreme scientific experiment you would perform with crack monkeys in cages. If it were legal.”
Tag: 05.29.05
Bye Bye Rock (On The Radio)
More and more radio stations are abandoning the rock music format. “With the share of people age 18-34 listening to modern-rock stations down more than 20 percent in the past five years – and with thriving numbers for 13-21-year-olds, a demo some big advertisers don’t care about – rock radio should be on a quest to redefine itself. But it’s not. “
Rolling Over Star Wars
Star Wars is a juggernaut that has little to do with whether or not it is a good movie (which many critics say it is not). “Whether the final Star Wars installment is good or bad seems largely irrelevant. Regardless of what ink-stained critics aver, the benighted masses that queue up at theaters at 3 in the morning will continue to debate the philosophical intricacies of C-3PO, Anakin Skywalker and Count Dooku with all the gravity and entrail scrutiny with which monastics once pondered Cartesian dualism.”
Ringing Endorsement – Ringtone Tops Music Chart
For the first time, a cell phone ring tone is set to top the British music charts. “Crazy Frog Axel F,” a ring tone based on the sound of a revving Swedish mo-ped, is the first tune being used on mobile phones to cross into mainstream music charts.”
The NEA Visits Congress
Will the National Endowment for the Arts get a funding boost? There are recommendations for an increase. But still, some legislators balk at the idea of government support for the arts…
EBay’s Bootleg Biz
Even as big recording companies prosecute downloaders for trading in copyrighted recordings, there’s a better place to find illegal music: EBay. Sellers are offering lots of bootlegged recordings for sale, and for some reason no one’s being sued.
Are Stadiums The New Museums?
“Few famous architects had sullied their hands with stadiums before Herzog and de Meuron did so in Basle (for the club they support, FC Basle) and Munich. They are still building Beijing’s Olympic Stadium for the 2008 Games. All this signals a new era: stadiums are becoming keynote urban buildings, as cathedrals were in the Middle Ages and opera houses more recently. When Norman Foster’s new Wembley opens in 2006, it will be his first stadium in more than 40 years in architecture.”
Ediface Complex
“Almost all political leaders find themselves using architects for political purposes. It is a relationship that appeals to egotists of every description. That is why there are photographs of Hitler and Mussolini, Tony Blair and François Mitterrand and the first President Bush – as well as countless mayors and archbishops, chief executives and billionaire robber barons – each bowed over their own, equally elaborate architectural models looking just as narcissistically transfixed as the beatific Saddam beaming over his mosque.”
Colorado Opera: You Will Donate
Want a shot at the best seats in Colorado Opera’s new theatre? It’ll cost you the price of the tickets plus a “donation” of $100-$500 a seat. Gotta pay for that new building somehow. And the number of donors has gone up.
The Case For (Or Against) PBS
Recent political fighting over American public television has David Shaw wondering why we still need PBS…”We now live in a cable world, a “500-channel universe,” and while I would not argue that many of these cable offerings match PBS at its best, they (and Fox) do provide many alternatives to the three original networks we had in 1967.”