Internet addresses for Broadway musicals are getting as elaborate as the shows themselves.
Tag: 08.24.08
Art Critic John Russell, 89
“Russell, who contributed elegant, erudite art criticism for more than a half-century to The Sunday Times of London and The New York Times, where he was chief art critic from 1982 to 1990, and who helped bring a generation of postwar British artists to international attention, died on Saturday.”
iPhone Opens New Possibilities For Music Lovers
“Now that Apple has opened up the platform (both the old and new versions) to third-party applications, musically savvy users can choose from several intriguing programs. All of them can be downloaded from the App Store via iTunes, which works whether you are Windows- or Mac-based. Many are free; others tend to be nominally priced.”
Will Italy’s Film Comeback Hold Up?
Italy’s trumpeted cinematic resurgence, following its Cannes double whammy with nods for “Gomorrah” and “Il Divo,” is likely to get a reality check in Venice.
Libraries – No Longer A Quiet Zone
The biggest change in libraries in recent years? Silence. Once as essential to libraries as books themselves, silence is now as elusive as that stolen copy of Lord of the Flies – except it hasn’t been pinched, it’s been driven out. Libraries, you see, are meant to be fun.”
America’s Opera Capital: Seattle?
Speight Jenkins, general director of Seattle Opera, goes so far as to claim for his company the highest per capita attendance of any opera company in America.
Can Chicago Jazz Festival Survive Changing Times?
“As the oldest of the city-sponsored downtown music festivals [the Chicago Jazz Festival] has struggled to break out of well-worn habits to create fresh new formats. The question is whether the pace of change has been brisk enough to keep the Chicago Jazz Festival competitive in a rapidly changing music world.”
Have Movie Producers Gone Too Far With Product Placement?
“Blockbuster producers are being taken to task by a study that singles out the most blatant sell-outs. Marketing monitor Brandchannel, which has tracked product placement in big-budget films since 2001, is handing out some dubious accolades.”
A New Movement: Architecture For The Public Good
They are challenging their entire profession to take the high design standards usually reserved for elite clients and systematically deliver them to society’s most vulnerable: to design hospital rooms that give the chronically ill a sense of control over their lives, libraries that will make children spend hours with a book, or simple structures that grant working immigrants new dignity. In other words, to convince ordinary people and those on the margins that architects don’t just make giant, radical shapes. They can make giant, radical change.
What Makes Humans Unique
Why do humans, “alone among species, have art. The attraction to stories, plays, paintings and music — experiences with no obvious evolutionary payoff — is puzzling. Why does the brain contain reward systems that make fictional experiences enjoyable?”