“Bookstore sales rose again in May, albeit at a much more moderate clip than the surprising 8% rate posted in April. For the first five months of the year bookstore sales were up 4.9%, to $6.60 billion.”
Tag: 07.15.08
Screenwriters: Execs Meddle Too Much In The Product
“Screenwriters have become the latest group to criticise senior television executives for having too much creative control over drama production, claiming there is a lack of consultation when it comes to key decisions about their scripts.”
James Levine’s Surgery Successful
Tom Levine said in a statement released by the Boston Symphony Orchestra that his 65-year-old brother’s surgery Tuesday “went exactly as planned and expected, and has been described by the doctors involved as completely successful.”
Minneapolis Institute Tries To Reassure Local Artists
Minneapolis Institute of Arts director Kaywin Feldman moved Tuesday to reassure Minnesota artists of the museum’s continued commitment to showcasing their work.
The Latest Movie To Take A Try On Broadway
“9 to 5: The Musical includes Parton’s original score as well as 20 new songs, and stars Allison Janney, Stephanie J. Block, Megan Hilty and Marc Kudisch. It is due to open on Broadway on April 23, 2009.”
Solzhenitsyn Novel Finally Makes It Into English (40 Years Later)
“An uncut edition of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle, a highly praised and controversial novel published 40 years ago and heavily edited because of its story of a Soviet prison camp, is finally coming out in English.”
The Amazing Disappearing Movies
“In 1984, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the second film in the franchise, spent 12 weeks in the top 10. Five years later, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade spent 10 weeks in the top 10. Today, eight weeks in the top 10 — which generally requires that a movie is playing in at least 1,000 locations — is a significant achievement. By contrast, some of this summer’s less successful movies had the theatrical half-life of a June lightning bug; one or two weekends and they fell off the radar.”
You Don’t Paint Me Flowers…
“Despite the phenomenal marketability of flower paintings, no one does them any more. What proliferates instead is botanical art. Flower portraiture is not of itself contemptible; the greatest Dutch flower painters were aware that the flowers they were depicting were worth more than their depictions, and treated them with a special awe and excitement; but they were never unaware of their fragility.”
Too Much Study (What Young Actors Really Need)
“How well prepared are young actors to succeed in a profession in which 80% earn less than £10,000 a year, and is three years at drama school still the best way to enter that profession? It’s a question worth asking when it increasingly seems that the entirely untrained can just stroll up for an audition and get a shot at stardom in a reality casting TV show.”
500 – All The Books That Ever Won The GG Prize
For nine years, the John Meier “has been trolling the Internet, used-book stores and libraries, as well as stalking publishing houses, in his quest to collect a copy of every English-language first edition book to win the Governor-General’s Literary Award for fiction. Through detective work, a wide network of scouts and sheer tenacity, he has managed to amass multiple copies of every winner going back to 1936, for a collection nearing 500 books.”