Universal Pictures, which foisted the movie on the world, “did catch a break, however.” A volunteer public-health group’s threat “that the studio found to be the biggest smoking offender would be publicly shamed on nearby billboards” was foiled when “billboard vendors throughout Los Angeles … refused to run the ad.”
Tag: 10.19.09
Mark Morris Names The Greatest Threat To Dance
“Dance itself. The one reason people don’t take dance seriously is because a lot of choreographers don’t take dance seriously. Audiences don’t want to see the kind of self-indulgent, boring dance that is so prevalent today.”
In Athens, Acropolis Museum Awaits Marbles’ Return
“For decades, the main argument against the return of the sculptures — known as the Elgin or Parthenon Marbles — was Greece’s lack of a suitable location for their display. The new Acropolis Museum is a stunning rebuttal.” To highlight what’s missing, the museum intersperses “plaster casts of the sculptures housed in London … with original pieces.”
Musicians’ Hearing Outperforms Regular People’s
Several recent studies have “found that serious musicians are better than other people at perceiving and remembering sounds. But it’s not because they have better ears.” It’s because of their training and how that training changes their brains.
How Shazam Names Those Tunes
Shazam, the iPhone app whose raison d’être is song identification, “creates a spectrogram for each song in its database–a graph that plots three dimensions of music: frequency vs. amplitude vs. time. The algorithm then picks out just those points that represent the peaks of the graph….”
Wanted: The MPAA’s Next Washington Lobbyist
“Proper candidate must have solid Capitol Hill contacts, be able to multitask and have great people skills. Position reports to quarrelsome entertainment executives at six global media conglomerates who often have conflicting agendas and can be somewhat mercurial. … Key issues include piracy, or as we now call it, ‘content protection.'”
China, Its Critics Clash Over Free Expression In Frankfurt
“China was the ‘honored guest’ this past week at the Frankfurt Book Fair…. But what Beijing hoped would be a celebration of its cultural achievements turned into a tug of war between control and free speech, as much a showcase for Chinese dissidents as the state’s approved writers.”
Report Links Arts Education, Graduation Rates
“In a report to be released on Monday the nonprofit Center for Arts Education found that New York City high schools with the highest graduation rates also offered students the most access to arts education.”
Tate To Make Kids’ Movie With Wallace & Gromit Creators
“The idea is to use great artworks from the Tate collection to inspire children aged five to 11 to contribute their ideas to the film. They will then create every aspect of the animation, from drawing the characters to devising the plot and sound effects.”
Riccardo Muti’s Chicago Symphony Meet-And-Greet
“Like the great architect and city planner Daniel Burnham before him, Muti” — the CSO’s music director designate — “is making no small plans. When he spoke of taking the CSO into Chicago neighborhoods to reach minorities and incarcerated and at-risk youth, he revealed a civic and humanitarian vision Burnham surely would have admired.”