“What happens to poetry in the Digital Age? In one of the first academic works in the field, Swedish researcher Maria Engberg has studied how the ability of the computer to combine words, images, movement, and sounds is impacting both writing and reading.”
Tag: 09.07.07
Grace Paley’s Fiction, Short And Straight To The Heart
“Like all the greatest masters of the short story–Chekhov, Hemingway, Sholom Aleichem, Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel–Paley had an uncanny genius for containing a world within a sentence. … Why did Paley never write a novel? At the beginning of her career, her first editor suggested it, and Paley later wrote, ‘I tried, for a couple of years. I failed.’ In a sense, the question is as absurd as asking why Chekhov never did, or Carver, or Borges.”
Gender-Switch The Classics — But Only To A Point
“Cross-dressing is a vital part of theatrical tradition. It has also acquired an extra layer of significance in an age when women feel a new empowerment and want to extend their theatrical territory. But in society, as Caryl Churchill reminds us in Top Girls, it is pointless for women to ape role models. Equally, in theatre, there is little purpose in women (or men, for that matter) merely replicating the opposite gender.”
Uzbek Theatre Director, A Seattle Resident, Is Killed
“Mark Weil, a prominent theater director in Uzbekistan whose productions caused controversy in the tightly controlled former Soviet state, was stabbed to death in the Uzbek capital, a theater spokeswoman said today. He was 55. Weil, a part-time Seattle resident who founded the Ilkhom theater more than 30 years ago, was attacked in front of his apartment building in Tashkent late Thursday night….”
What Does Hirst’s Jeweled Skull Sale Say About Us?
“Damien Hirst, the British artist most famous for displaying sharks and sheep floating in formaldehyde, has just sold a platinum cast of a human skull, covered in 8,601 diamonds, for $100 million… It’s said that the only thing an auction record proves is the existence of two dumb rich guys, competing to pay more for something than anyone else on the planet has ever thought it was worth. [But] you could say that the price tag, with its nice round number trailing all those lovely zeros, is the most important and valuable art supply that went into the piece, and is what makes it work.”
Low Ratings? More Sex!
Will this be the season in which the line between mainstream TV sex and porn is finally blurred into irrelevance? It’s sure looking like it… “[The] escalating emphasis on explicit scenes as well as themes is the result of seismic changes already rocking Hollywood and the larger society, say culture watchers: the competition for market share in a spiraling world of entertainment choices, the mainstreaming of pornography, and the explosive growth of an unregulated Internet.”
Now That’s A Marketing Device!
So, what’s the hot ticket at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival? Um, we can’t tell you. Well, we can tell you, but we can’t tell you its name. Or more specifically, we can’t tell you one of the words of the title of the film that is making the first-time filmmakers who made it overnight sensations on the festival circuit. Oh, the hell with it: the flick is called Young People F***ing.
Chicagoans To Vote On What Landmark Gets $1m
“Historic preservation is a good cause, but, truth be told, it’s always been a little nerdy… But now, it seems, preservation is almost cool — or at least cool enough” for American Express to launch “an online vote that will let people pick a favorite [Chicago] landmark from a list of contenders vying for $1 million in rehab funds.”
Levine, Boston Impress In Europe
Some concertgoers in Boston may have their doubts about some of the programming decisions that Boston Symphony music director James Levine has made in his first two seasons in the Hub, but in Europe, where the BSO is currently touring, Levine and the Bostonians are making an impressive splash with some gems of the standard 20th century repertoire.
Nothing Gross About This Musical
In a move which is causing a stir in Broadway circles, producers of the new Mel Brooks musical, Young Frankenstein, have announced that they will not be releasing reports of “grosses” for public consumption. “These figures include attendance and average ticket prices, among other statistics, and are still the most reliable way to gauge what is selling and what is not… Reporting grosses is customary, not mandatory.”