Canadians: US Inflates Damage Of Runaway Productions

A new study suggests that American TV and movie producers have exagerated the impact of American productions that film in Canada. “A Canadian consulting firm last week released a hard-nosed 45-page report accusing the U.S. industry of employing inflated statistics and scare tactics in blaming its northern neighbor for wooing productions away from the United States.”

Lincoln Centre’s $1.5 Billion Impact On NY

A new study measures the economic impact of Lincoln Centre on New York City. It’s significant. “Direct spending on operations by Lincoln Center and all of its resident organizations, the report says, totaled $530 million in 2003; fully $350 million of that figure represented spending on employee wages and benefits. This translated into 9,000 full-time, part-time, and contract positions, equal to approximately 5,500 full-time employees.”

This Year’s Turner: Not Good Enough For Controversy?

Richard Dorment recalls a time when the Turner Prize mattered to him. “This year, the shortlisted artists don’t rise to the level of being controversial. Tate Britain has mounted the Starbucks of art exhibitions: a show of almost interchangeable artists all working with film and video and all politically engaged in exactly the same, wholly predictable way.”

A Fugitive’s Tale (It’s Scandalous)

Radovan Karadzic is on the run, a $5 million bounty on his head, and facing charges of genocide in Bosnia at The Hague’s war crimes tribunal. But that hasn’t stopped him from writing and publishing a book. “The strong autobiographical element is a reminder of a man with a large ego and a small sense of responsibility. It is scandalous that he should have had the leisure to write anything but a confession. The fact that he has been able to publish a book does not inspire confidence that Nato and the Bosnian Serb police are doing enough to harass him and his network of loyal supporters so he can be brought to justice.”

More On The Liz Taylor Van Gogh Case

A family claiming ownership of a Van Gogh painting looted by Nazis and now owned by Elizabeth Taylor, has gone to court in Los Angeles to try to get her claim on the painting voided. “If the dismissal motion is successful it could set the stage for a major legal battle between the two-time Oscar-winning actress, who purchased the van Gogh at auction in 1963, and the heirs of the German Jewish collector who first bought the landscape in 1907 and who, they claim, subsequently lost it “as a result of Nazi economic and political coercion” before the start of the Second World War.”