Hollywood producers have dropped demands that the Writers Guild overhaul residual payments. “The move came as the two sides returned to the bargaining table with two weeks to go before the current contract expires and rhetoric about the chances of a crippling strike against the television and film industry was running high.”
Tag: 10.16.07
Enright Wins Booker Prize
Irish author Anne Enright wins this year’s Man Booker Prize. “The novelist’s family saga The Gathering beat bookmakers’ favourites Ian McEwan and Lloyd Jones to be named the best novel of the past 12 months.”
Inside Thom Mayne’s Federal Building
“One reason the complex [in San Francisco] has attracted so much attention is that it embraces two architectural values that often are at odds: sustainability and pure aesthetics. Mayne boasts of how the tower should consume just one-third the energy of a typical California office building, saving enough electricity to power 600 homes per year. But the perforated steel panels that are supposed to filter the sun and glare don’t hang straight against the slab. They careen up and over the tower: ‘I’m interested in skin as a sculptural idea’.”
Germany Gives Arthur Rubinstein Scores To Juilliard
“A collection of manuscripts and musical scores stolen from pianist Arthur Rubinstein’s Paris apartment by the Nazis has been donated to the Juilliard School by the pianist’s family.”
Iranian TV Gets A Makeover
TV in Iran is changing. “Analysts say the new programs are part of the government’s bid to use television as a more effective instrument to shape public opinion. Most series still have clear political messages, though they are conveyed with much more subtlety than in the past.”
Generational Changes At MoMA
“The large number of recent, relatively young hires at the Museum of Modern Art, including four new chief curators in the last two years, and the looming retirement of three major curators — chief curator for paintings and sculpture John Elderfield, chief curator-at-large Kynaston McShine, and deputy director (and director of P.S. 1) Alanna Heiss — suggest that the museum is in the midst of a significant directional and generational shift.”
TV Writers, Producers Clash Over Residuals
“Residual fees are at the center of labor talks underway between the Hollywood studios and the union that represents movie and TV writers. The major studios want to revamp the decades-old system, citing soaring production costs and fragmented audiences amid today’s digital revolution. But the writers say these payments help them weather Hollywood’s feast-and-famine work cycles.”
Can You Choose A Classical Music Star On TV?
BBC Two is airing an “ambitious five-part series in which the punky cellist Matthew Barley puts 18 teenage musicians through their paces, after which a panel of classical experts either votes them through to the next round or consigns them to musical history. The result, it is hoped, is that the one who survives the final cut will be the proverbial ‘complete package’ – a superstar-in-the-making who can survive the commercial market while also managing to ‘broaden the appeal of classical music’. Classical Idol this definitely isn’t, however.”
Drastic Cost Increase For Touring Art Has Canadian Museums Fretting
“With the phasing out by April, 2008, of the federal government’s Exhibition Transport Services, Canadian museums and art galleries predict that the price of shipping art across this country is about to triple.”
YouTube Rolls Out Copyright Protection Software
“The filtering tools are designed so the owners of copyrighted video can block their material from appearing on YouTube, which has become a pop culture phenomenon in its 2-year existence. The tools also give the owners of copyrighted video the option to sell ads around their material if they want the clips to remain available on YouTube.”