“Paula Petrella, daughter of the deceased screenwriter Frank Petrella … says MGM Holdings Inc and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment have infringed the copyright of a 1963 screenplay upon which she alleges 1980 movie was based.” The legal issue is “in what circumstances a defendant in a copyright case can win based on the failure of the plaintiff to assert his or her claim at an earlier stage.”
Tag: 10.01.13
Bossa Nova Isn’t Elevator Music, It’s “The Highest Flowering Of Brazilian Culture”
Caetano Veloso: “Bossa nova is a sacred music for many Brazilians. It’s political and nationalistic and poetic. … It was possibly the first popular music where the themes were existential. It’s part of what makes it high art. … It’s a form of high modernist art that somehow became one of the most popular musics on earth.”
What Did in NYCity Opera? Look To The Board…
and a board chair who spent down the company’s endowment.
Actress Ruth Maleczech, 74, Avant-Garde Earth Mother
“As co-creator of [the experimental troupe] Mabou Mines, Ms. Maleczech directed and/or appeared in many of the company’s productions. A regular presence in the downtown theatre scene in the 1970s and 1980s, she became something of an earth mother figure not only to her own outfit, but to the New York avant garde theatre community in general – a role only buttressed by her warm, matronly aura.”
Research: How America’s Response To 9/11 Shaped A Generation’s Notions About Privacy
“For the generation that developed their political identities in the wake of 9/11 it appears that their political attitudes have been shaped more by the privacy they were asked to give up after the attacks than by the attacks themselves.”
Why Talent Is Wasted When It Can’t Move Freely
Utopist cyber thinker Stewart Brand is famous for coining the phrase “information wants to be free.” When knowledge is embodied in people, the phrase is even more powerful: “talent wants to be free”.
“America’s Cleanest Writer”
Adam Gopnik: “With the sudden appearance of a ‘liberal’ Pope – albeit a liberal Pope who is, as many exasperated Catholics have pointed out, just as strong as ever on Church teachings on abortion and homosexuality, just less inclined to fetishize them before other, more urgent ones – there may be no more serendipitous moment to be thinking again about the writer J. F. Powers.”
Here’s The Poet To Read About The U.S. Government Shutdown
Constantine Cavafy, an Alexandria-born Greek poet-historian from the turn of the last century, “whose lifelong immersion in Greek history, from the fall of Troy to the fall of Byzantium, left him with few illusions about the possibilities for political progress – and make him the perfect poet to be reading just now.”
NYC Opera – A Tale Of Struggle For Much Of Its Life
“City Opera was a shadow of what it had been in, say, 1969-70, when it presented 145 performances of 21 works, from Puccini’s “Bohème” to Ginastera’s “Bomarzo.” Sadly, that scrappy, idealistic company really vanished a few years ago.”
UK National Theatre’s Next Director Must Not Be Hytner-Lite
“Running the National Theatre famously drove him to thoughts of suicide, but Richard Eyre has said that the theatre’s next artistic director has a harder task than most, namely to ‘redefine the function and practice’ of the venue.”