“Michael Copps, a Democrat whose crusade against media consolidation has helped make him Hollywood’s public-policy enemy No. 1, is more proselytizer than pencil pusher.”
Tag: 11.05.07
Will The Web Benefit From Writers’ Strike?
“Faced with a long drought of fresh scripted material on network and cable TV, are we all going to end up junkies for the junk on YouTube? Hey, catch you later on MyDamnChannel.com! FunnyOrDie.com — it’s alive again!”
Protesting Media Images Of Blacks
“The rallies are taking place as civil rights leaders, cultural critics and others use the moment to debate how to represent the diversity of black life while minimizing offensive words and images. A big issue is the distinction between standards and censorship.”
TV Targeted At Adults (And It’s Working)
“The maverick, year-old channel bears a name that embraces its mission: Retirement Living TV. It targets viewers 55 and up with original shows about health, finance, politics and entertainment as well as news.”
It’s Official – Hollywood Writers On Strike
“The first strike by Hollywood writers in nearly 20 years got under way Monday with noisy pickets on both coasts — a walkout that will disrupt everything from late-night talk shows to soap operas.”
John Silber, Architecture Crank
“Move over, Prince Charles. Former Boston University president John Silber covets your title as the world’s leading Architecture Crank.”
Harvard Green Lights Two Museum Projects
Renovation “could take until 2013 to complete, could cost well over $100 million, and is considered long overdue. Designed by architect Renzo Piano, the renovation will force the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums to close their doors for about five years, starting next June.”
Lost Mark Twain Play Bows 100 Years Later
“Twain arrives on the Great White Way – nearly a century after his demise – with the art-world comedy Is He Dead?. The lost 1898 work was unearthed by a Twain scholar five years ago and has been extensively rewritten for a $2.4 million production.”
Reading – Loving You To Bytes
“It’s an old and reassuring story: bookish boy or girl enters the cool, dark library and discovers loneliness and freedom. For the past ten years or so, however, the cities of the book have been anything but quiet. The computer and the Internet have transformed reading more dramatically than any technology since the printing press, and for the past five years Google has been at work on an ambitious project, Google Book Search.”
Is Philip Glass Underrated? Or Overrated?
“Philip Glass is without a doubt America’s most famous living composer of classical music… Yet Glass’s seventieth birthday, which fell on January 31st of this year, failed to create much hullabaloo in the ordinarily anniversary-addicted classical world.” The problem may be that Glass’s prolific catalog includes as many clunkers as masterpieces, and much of his output does have a tendency to sound the same. “Certainly, no one can deny that Glass possesses an instantly recognizable signature sound; the question now is whether that signature is being produced by automatic pen.”