“For centuries, printed journals destined for university libraries have been the focus of publishing activity. The winds of change, though, are sweeping through these quiet and dusty corridors. Because of the internet, cost and distance are no longer barriers to providing the results of research to more than just a restricted and privileged few. This is leading people to ask why those results are not, in fact, freely available to all.”
Tag: 08.05.04
Outdated Classism, Or Individualized Education?
A new British reality TV show is taking its contestants on a sociological journey to the past, and possibly the future, of public education. The participants, all mediocre-to-abysmal students, are plucked from their regular classes, and placed in specific vocational training programs, as many UK students were in the 1960s. “At the end of the series, the results of the pupils’ exams in woodwork, metalwork and domestic science will be compared with their GCSE results. But the most interesting aspect of the programme will be whether they thrive on learning practical skills in a disciplined environment.”
Flapping Desperately Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
The hottest ticket at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival is a new stage adaptation of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The show is already set to move to London’s West End once the Fringe run is over. But the production has been in trouble from the start: director Guy Masterson quit three weeks into rehearsals, headliner Christian Slater came down with a nasty case of chicken pox, and opening night has already been delayed.
Getting Classical Back On The Cultural Radar Screen
John van Rhein writes that a unifying idea in classical music just isn’t as important as a unifying commitment to bring the form back to prominence: “Rather than worry about Big Ideas and where they’re coming from, let’s create the societal conditions that allow many schools of composition to flourish and composers to do their best work… Being reasonably conversant with classical music, its traditions and history used to be considered one of the marks of an educated person. No longer… No wonder our symphony orchestras are going in for spoon-feeding [audiences.] Daniel Barenboim said it best: ‘Music has lost a large part of its place in society.’ Full stop.”
It Takes A Village To Lift A Plotline
Fans of popular children’s book author Margaret Peterson Haddix have been contacting her recently to ask if she is aware that filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has appropriated the plot of one of her novels for his new suspense film. In fact, the plotline of The Village, which grossed more than $50 million in its opening weekend, is srikingly similar to that of Haddix’s 1995 book, Running Out Of Time. Shyamalan was also accused of stealing the plot of his 2002 film, Signs, from a Pennsylvania screenwriter.
The Grey Lady Gets Retro
The New York Times has been publishing fiction this summer alongside its news reports. (No Jayson Blair jokes, please.) Specifically, the Times is trying to single-handedly bring back the phenomenon of the serialized novel, printing entire well-known works of literature in its pages over the course of a week or two. (The serials are apparently running only in New York editions of the paper.) The paper is waiting to review the circulation numbers before deciding whether to continue with the program.
Too Much of a Good Thing in Chicago?
Even as Chicago struggles to preserve the reputation of its international art fair, Art Chicago, the stage is being set for a major “art war” in the Second City. As things stand now, Chicago will see not one, not two, but three major art fairs next summer, all within weeks of each other, and all insisting that they are the real Chicago art fair. A battle for top exhibitors and the high-rolling collectors they attract is already raging.
Blame Canada (and Enforce Those Trade Rules!)
“Out-of-work film technicians – those actors, prop men and other entertainment industry workers whose names unfurl on the screen as moviegoers scramble out of the theater – are rallying behind international trade rules to stem the flow of film and television production to Canada. With the Teamsters leading the fight, the Film and Television Action Committee… has sent 20 pages of comments to the new Unfair Trade Practices Task Force of the Commerce Department and demanded that the Bush administration take action against Canadian film subsidy programs, which have lured United States filmmakers north of the border and siphoned tens of thousands of jobs out of the country.”
New Foote Play Gets A Look
A recently unearthed play by Horton Foote has been hauled out of a desk drawer and thrust onto a New York stage this summer for its first “major commercial production.” But unlike many unpublished works by well-known playwrights, which tend to be underdeveloped and youthfully insecure, Foote’s work, which received its premiere at Whittier College in 2000, is a mature play, written when the author had already achieved a great deal of critical acclaim. “The reason it has not been staged before has more to do with his gentlemanly sense of propriety than any reluctance by a producer to stage it.”
Copyrights, Parodies, and Right of Fair Use
Creators of the satirical web site JibJab have decided to go to court to fight for their right to keep running a popular parody of a Woody Guthrie song featuring cartoon images of President Bush and Senator John Kerry. The site had been threatened with a lawsuit by Ludlow Music, which owns the copyright on the Guthrie song, but JibJab decided to strike first, filing a lawsuit of its own in a U.S. District Court. The case could have far-reaching implications for artists’ rights in the digital age.