Americans work up outrage over copyright violations in countries such as China. But “a century and a half ago, another fast-growing nation had a reputation for sacrificing standards to its pursuit of profit, and it was the United States.”
Tag: 08.26.07
Lighting Up The Washington Night
“The strange thing about Washington’s nocturnal beauty is that none of it was planned, yet none of it was accidental either. A sense of hierarchy has grown up around the buildings that glow, though no policy has been written to perpetuate it.”
Nureyev Documentary – Filling In The Blanks
“Some may grouse that his Nureyev film is not really a dance film. The dance sequences are just snippets, but the oral history fills in many blanks. Many of the talking heads — early teachers, childhood acquaintances, dancers, fans, admirers, an old flame Nureyev seriously considered marrying — are quoted in the Kavanagh biography, but none register in print as memorably or as vividly as here.”
Art Rising In The West(ern)
The Coeur d’Alene auction of western art was first held in 1985. “That year, there were 132 lots and it brought in $200,000. Last year there were 276 lots fetching $27.4 million, a record that many thought could not be matched. Last month Mr. Stremmel raced through 307 lots in under five hours to bring in $35.4 million, or about $28 million, if you strip away a cache of French Impressionist and Latin American masters that were oddly tucked into this year’s sale.”
What Becomes A Successful Sequel?
Sequels are the surest thing in Hollywood to a safe bet. So “Hollywood responded this summer with an unprecedented number of franchise movies — nine in all — most of which scared up satisfying revenue if not critical approval. But only three films succeeded on both fronts.”
PBS Ups Latino Programming
After the flap over the lack of hispanics in Ken Burns’ WWII documentary, PBS seems to be airing more hispanic programs. “PBS spokeswoman Lea Sloan said it was unfair to credit the Burns controversy for all of this activity, and noted that PBS already airs more Latino-oriented programming than other mainstream networks. But she did note that the episode caused PBS to work harder to reach out to this rapidly growing part of the population.”
A Really Bad Orchestra (It’s A Hit!)
“This hottest of hot tickets is an Edinburgh band called the Really Terrible Orchestra. And were you to ask what it does, the answer would be that with true Scottish candor it lives up to its name, or rather down to it: an orchestra that plays terribly.”
German Orchestra Goes To Iran
The German orchestra Osnabrueck Symphony will perform in Iran this week. Last year the Teheran Symphony performed in Germany. “It’s a very small step in improving relations between the people in the two countries.”
Cormac McCarthy Wins UK’s Oldest Fiction Award
Pulitzer Prize-winning US author Cormac McCarthy has won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
The Miracle Of Nureyev
A new documentary looks at one of the most interesting dancers of the 20th Century. “Nureyev’s genius was to make things that belonged to the public domain entirely his own, immediate and pressing.”