“A French filmmaker whose documentary about a violent street gang in El Salvador provoked controversy earlier this year has been found shot in the head. The body of Christian Poveda, 52, was discovered in a car in Tonacatepeque, a poor rural area 10 miles outside the capital San Salvador. … La Vida Loca (Crazy Life), Poveda’s latest film, focused on the hopeless and brutal lives of various fantastically tattooed members of [the] Mara 18 [gang].”
Tag: 09.03.09
From Glass House, Amazon Throws Stones At Google
“The day after Amazon.com filed its objections to the [Google books] settlement in federal court, the Authors Guild fired back with a letter accusing the book retailing giant of wanting to corner the market on e-books. In its 41-page brief Tuesday, Amazon called the settlement ‘a high-tech form of the backroom agreements that are the stuff of antitrust nightmares.'” The guild’s response: “Amazon’s hypocrisy is breathtaking.”
Need A Job? Let The Fourth Plinth Be Your Platform.
“During his stint on the plinth,” 23-year-old Alex Kearns, a recent university graduate, “revealed a giant scroll featuring his CV details. He listed his abilities in three foreign languages, his interests including ‘plinth dwelling’ and his contact details, brandishing a placard that read: ‘Give Me a Job!'” And someone did.
What Makes A Classic
“You can do what you want to a classic – set Hamlet in outer space or have a monkey play the prince – and it will bounce back. It can be stretched and pummelled and it will always return to its original shape. The classics are classics because they are foolproof. Plagiarism enhances them. Satire strengthens them. The internet proliferates them.”
British Library Puts Its Sound Archive Online — For Free
“The British Library revealed it has made its vast archive of world and traditional music available to everyone, free of charge, on the internet. That amounts to roughly 28,000 recordings and, although no one has yet sat down and formally timed it, about 2,000 hours of singing, speaking, yelling, chanting, blowing, banging, tinkling and many other verbs associated with what is a uniquely rich sound archive.”
Jerry Saltz To Glenn Beck: Don’t Like NY Art? Try Curating It
Fox News’ Glenn Beck plays paranoid art critic? A challenge to him, then: “Curate two exhibitions in New York,” one of “images (or actual artworks) that exist in New York City that he would like to see demolished,” the other “a show of CONTEMPORARY ART that he approves of.”
Downloader Links To ‘$675K Mixtape’; Labels Not Amused
The songs Joel Tenenbaum was fined $675,000 for illegally downloading are now available on Pirate Bay as “The $675,000 Mixtape.” “Although there is no evidence that Tenenbaum was responsible for putting the playlist” there, “the record companies have accused him of defiantly encouraging further illegal downloading by linking to the service directly, from a website created for his defense.” They want a court order to make him stop.
The Station Fire Vs. The Observatory
“There is nothing quite so wild as a fire that, as of Wednesday morning, had spread across 140,000 acres — an area roughly as large as the City of Chicago. … And there is nothing quite so man-made as a domed observatory sitting on a mountain — a small, human presence dwarfed by its natural surroundings. … [Daniel] Burnham and the architects are all about permanence. The Station Fire is all about eradicating permanence.”
Pushing Accordions (And Why Not?) In Oak Lawn, Illinois
“‘I am going to sell you an accordion,’ said Anne Romagnoli,” the octogenarian proprietor of the Italo-American Accordion Co. “‘Not right — ‘ began the teenage boy. ‘No, listen, I’ve got to sell you an accordion. Why can’t I sell you an accordion? You need an accordion. Look at you.’ … You need an accordion? She sells accordions. You need a leather strap to shoulder that 30-pound instrument? She sells the leather straps. Need anything else? She sells nothing else.”
Artists Protest Toronto Film Fest’s Spotlight On Tel Aviv
“An international group of more than 50 prominent filmmakers, writers, artists and academics” are objecting to what they call “the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of … an apartheid regime.”