Michael Stotts is leaving as managing director of New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre because of conflicts with the theatre’s board. Stotts declined to detail the conflicts other than to say there were “clashes between me and some board members. There is a culture of governance that made it very difficult for a managing director to do what that person was hired to do. I’ve been increasingly frustrated with these differences in the last few months and so it was time for us to part ways.”
Tag: 08.04.05
Hollywood Wins In CAFTA Copyright Accord
The Central American Free Trade Agreement included a big win for American lobbyists for tougher copyright laws. “You wouldn’t know it from a political debate veering between labor standards in Nicaragua and the evils of protectionism, but one major section of CAFTA will export some of the more controversial sections of U.S. copyright law. Once it takes effect, CAFTA will require Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to mirror the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s broad prohibition on bypassing copy-protection technology.”
“Unendurable” London Mask To Close
Behind the Iron Mask, a three-actor chamber musical based loosely on The Man in the Iron Mask opened this week in London’s West End to terrible reviews, and announced it will close. How bad were the press notices? “It’s so bad that it is merely unendurable,” wrote Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph. “There’s no insane flourish to its mediocrity, no sublimity to its awfulness. It is just relentlessly, agonisingly third-rate.” The cast, he said, “perform as if they have been on a prolonged Mogadon bender”.
Why We Laugh?
“One theory of why people laugh — the superiority theory — says that people laugh to assert that they are on a level equal to or higher than those around them. Research has shown that bosses tend to crack more jokes than do their employees. Women laugh much more in the presence of men, and men generally tell more jokes in the presence of women. Men have even been shown to laugh much more quietly around women, while laughing louder when in a group of men.”
A Congressional Agreement On NEA Funding
“While the Senate’s version of the bill, passed in June, increased the NEA’s budget by $5 million, bringing it to $126.3 million from $121.3 million, the House’s version was twice as generous, with an increase of $10 million setting the endowment’s funding at $131.3 million. In the end, the Senate-House conference committee agreed to raise the NEA budget by what the Senate had recommended, but not without applying additional cuts.”
Video Games – Mainstream Mass
“Gaming has gone from a minority activity a few years ago to mass entertainment. Video games increasingly resemble films, with photorealistic images, complex plotlines and even famous actors. The next generation of games consoles—which will be launched over the next few months by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo—will intensify the debate over gaming and its impact on society, as the industry tries to reach out to new customers and its opponents become ever more vocal.”
Patently Absurd
America’s patent system is broken, impeding the orderly processing of ideas. “Lawyers, companies, inventors and politicians all agree that the nation’s patent system is in desperate need of reform. They cite concerns about proliferating litigation, questionable licenses and a potential decline in American competitiveness. The question is how to reform: For all the complaints, little consensus has emerged on how to fix the system.”
Brain Calisthenics
How to keep sharp mentally? You have to exercise. “Among people who work with older adults, the concept of “cognitive fitness” has become a buzzword to describe activities that stimulate underutilized areas of the brain and improve memory. Proponents of brain-fitness exercises say such mental conditioning can help prevent or delay memory loss and the onset of other age-related cognitive disorders.”
Niche Publishing Gone Wild
It seems that no niche is too small to have its own magazine these days. Among titles launched in recent years: “Face Painting International”, “Russian Bride of New York”, and “Modern Ferret”. Of course, launching a mag is comparatively simple. Keeping it afloat for more than a few issues is another matter entirely…
Homolka Film Canceled In Montreal
The Montreal World Film Festival has canceled plans to screen the premiere of a new Hollywood film based on the horrific killings perpetrated by Canadian serial killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo after half a dozen sponsors threatened to pull their funding. Lawyers representing the families of some of Homolka and Bernardo’s victims had previously tried to stop the screening by invoking Canada’s child pornography laws, but in the end, it was good old-fashioned capitalism that forced the festival to bow to pressure brought by the people writing the checks.