We’re falling away. Who? “People who drone on about the sanctity of the printed page, the ‘Republic of Letters,’ the artifact of the book, yadda yadda yadda. Why the course correction? I love books, I buy books, and I just can’t make the case for paying double for a product that is, after all, ephemeral.”
Tag: 05.31.11
Theatre, A Powerful Journalistic Tool
“[T]heatre is a tremendous platform for journalists, a medium that offers more space, more words, and more scope than newspapers and TV and radio news bulletins. … Twenty-five thousand words have more impact than 250; and they become stronger still when actors are speaking them on a stage before a live audience.”
‘Butoh Vérité’
“While the influence of butoh is unmistakable in” choreographer Ledoh’s work, “the label doesn’t quite stick. Borrowing a definition from film, he calls what he does ‘butoh vérité’. He wants to pierce the genre’s trappings – glacial speed, bodily distortions, and white body paint – and focus the attention on the reality underlying the external phenomena.”
The Softer Side Of Ai Weiwei (Now In Hardcover)
“Before his rants about corruption made him persona non grata with the Communist Party, before he started agitating for the rights of children and evicted tenants, before he denounced the Beijing Olympics, there were the cats.”
Dancing In the Jefferson Memorial? Sorry, Not Allowed
“We can’t know for sure what Thomas Jefferson would have thought of the arrests Saturday of five people who were dancing in his memorial. According to reports, they were grooving in silence to protest an earlier court ruling banning dance within the Jefferson Memorial.”
The Death Of Photographic Film?
“If I extrapolate the trend for film sales and retirements of film cameras, it looks like film will be mostly gone in the U.S. by the end of the decade.”
Which Movies Are Successful? The Sequels We Know (Doesn’t Matter If They’re Any Good)
“When it comes to summer blockbusters, more important than actual content is audience familiarity. Summer theatergoers don’t care what the New York Times (or SlashFilm, or us) has to say about the latest Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay film: These tent-pole sequels are summer staples specifically because so much money has been poured into them to generate mass audience appeal.”
Steve Martin Listed As Victim In Art Forgery Scandal
“German police believe that American actor, comedian and collector Steve Martin played a minor role as a victim in what may be Germany’s biggest-ever art forgery scandal.”
The Complicated Question Of Selling Spanish Language Books In America
“It seems like the definition of an untapped market: Spanish speakers make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but only 4 percent of books sold in the country are in Spanish. It’s a surprising shortage that has prompted vendors and customers alike to take new steps to prove that there is a viable market for Spanish-language books.”
The New Whitney Museum – A Tale Of Missed Opportunities
“Piano’s Whitney needed to live up not just to his own immense portfolio but also to the array of 21st-century architecture clustered around the High Line, and to the museum’s current home by Marcel Breuer, one of New York’s most distinctive architectural achievements. Instead, he has capped the High Line with a pale, metal-clad tower, interlocked with a stack of horizontal blocks that step back in the manner of a clunky cruise ship.”