While readers often note the number of stars a critic gives a movie in a review, most critics dislike the star system. “If I give the animated film “Cars” and the global-warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” three stars each, are they equally good? Am I comparing them to each other? Or am I comparing them to other animated and documentary films?”
Tag: 08.18.06
Rethinking The Ph.D.
How do you reform the way Ph.D.-level education is taught without sacrificing the quality of the degree? There are some proposals: “One involves non-residential Ph.D. programs for students who are older than most who earn doctorates. The other involves doctoral programs that are run by more than one university — and that sometimes cross state lines and public/private distinctions. Officials at the meeting said they believed there was strong demand for both kinds of programs, and wanted to find ways for their agencies to encourage such innovations.”
Why Solving Deeply Theoretical Math Matters
So the landmark Poincare problem has been solved by a mathematician, and there’s much rejoicing across the land. But “it won’t help anyone build a bridge, aim a rocket, crack a code, or privatize Social Security. Mathematicians, no dummies, like to point out that, in some unspecified future, Perelman’s theorem might pitch in to help with these problems in ways that aren’t obvious now. But its real significance is like that of the fact that a times b is equal to b times a; it’s a basic structural statement about how the world is organized. If you prefer order to chaos, that’s something worth caring about.”
Ebb’s Final Curtain Call A Smash With Critics
Curtains, the final show collaborated on by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb before Ebb’s death in 2004, is currently running in Los Angeles, is already ticketed for a Broadway debut next year, and “judging by the reaction of audiences and critics, Ebb’s faith in his final show was not misplaced.”
Report: Ebert A Long Way From Full Recovery
“Film critic Roger Ebert suffered another health setback earlier this month, but friends and co-workers of the ‘Ebert & Roeper’ co-host remain guardedly optimistic about his condition. Ebert, who has been hospitalized in Chicago since June, underwent his third surgery in as many months on Aug. 6… Media insiders are buzzing that doctors removed at least part of his jaw and that the critic’s recovery could take many months.”
Wait. Hollywood Stars Pay Taxes?
Those increasingly valuable gift bags that are handed to Hollywood celebrities attending awards shows are certainly extravagant, but the IRS would like to remind the recipients that they are most decidedly not tax-free. Like any other gift, their value is taxable, and thanks to the horde of entertainment reporters in attendance at any awards show, the IRS knows exactly what the gift bags are worth, and who got one. “The value of the gifts must be reported on a celebrity’s tax return. They count as income because the IRS does not believe the gifts are given ‘solely out of affection, respect or similar impulses.'”
That’ll Buy A Lot Of Shrubs
You know your museum project is going well when you haul in a $5 million gift just for landscaping. “A trustee of the Denver Art Museum [has] donated $5 million for landscaping around the institution’s soon-to-open $90.5 million addition… The new civic and cultural space, which, like the addition, was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, links the Golden Triangle and Civic Center and provides a gathering point for visitors to the cultural complex.”
ChiTrib Announces Literary Prizes
“Joyce Carol Oates, a writer known for exploring the margins of society in richly imagined novels shot through with sometimes lurid violence, is the winner of this year’s Chicago Tribune Literary Prize,” a lifetime achievement award. Other Tribune prizewinners this year include Louise Erdich (for her novel, The Painted Drum); Taylor Branch for At Canaan’s Edge, his examination of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement; and children’s book author Kate DiCamillo.
The Revolution Does Not Come With Liner Notes
Mark Swed says that the downloading revolution is nothing to be afraid of, and that all we stand to lose is our space-hogging collection of plastic jewel cases. Still, “how the iPod and the Internet will affect music cannot be predicted. We have yet to make the required paradigm shifts in our thinking. At this early stage, you could be forgiven for believing that nothing more than another step on the evolutionary ladder of music reproduction has been taken, and only for the sake of convenience.”
Is Bayreuth In A Rut?
The Bayreuth Festival is still the toughest ticket in Europe during the summer, and the Wagner family have kept the music coming even through their endless (and often embarrassingly public) spats. But critics have not been terribly kind to Bayreuth’s new Ring cycle, and some are suggesting that the “stultifying weight of this dreary new [production]” is merely a symptom of a larger malaise afflicting the festival.