Omaha has a new concert hall. “For a mere $92 million, Nebraska’s largest city has a sonically satisfying 2,000-seat concert hall and a ‘black box’ space that can seat as many as 450.”
Tag: 11.19.05
French Political Official Gets Bio Pulped
“Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s energetic interior minister, somehow found time while quelling suburban riots last week to ensure an authorised biography of his estranged wife, Cecilia, is unlikely to see the light of day.” How? He called the publisher, who then pulped 25,000 copies before they could go on sale.
de Young Taps Portland’s Buchanan
San Francisco’s M.H. de Young Fine Arts Museum has plucked the director of the Portland Art Museum to be its next director. John E. Buchanan, Jr. is credited with increasing attendance in Portland, and with expanding the museum’s collection of modern art. He also led a $125 million campaign in Portland. He will replace de Young’s longtime director, Harry Parker, who retires in December.
Using Art To Fan The Flames Of Bigotry
Two new and surprisingly popular graphic novels released in Japan are causing observers to worry about a startling rise in Japanese animosity towards the country’s Asian neighbors. The long-form comics, sporting the titles Hating The Korean Wave and Introduction to China, openly mock what some Japanese see as inferior societies, and even advocate open confrontation with China and South Korea. Worse, the visual depictions of the various nationalities reveals an ugly racism that has permeated Japanese society for more than a century.
Sour Grapes? GOP Hits Back At Public Broadcasters
Hot on the heels of a blistering report charging the former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with misusing funds and undermining the agency’s mission, the CPB’s inspector general is “launching an investigation into whether public television and radio stations around the country inappropriately used federal funds to lobby against threatened budget cuts this summer.” Not surprisingly, the request for the new investigation came from 14 Republican members of Congress, who were infuriated by what they saw as a liberal witchhunt to oust CPB chair Kenneth Tomlinson because of his conservative political views. The inspector general says openly that he doubts he will find any wrongdoing by local stations, but will look into the matter, regardless.
AGs Want Smoking Warning On DVDs
32 state attorneys general have banded together in an effort to convince Hollywood to place anti-smoking warning labels on DVDs. The effort comes on the heels of a new study showing that teens are often convinced to take up smoking when they see movie stars doing so. The studios on the receiving end of the warning label request say they will consider the proposal individually, and warn against any move that would take away filmmakers’ “creative rights to depict human behaviors.”
Die, Youngster, Die!
Putting kids on television has always been a reliable way to get a certain demographic chunk of the population to tune in. But these days, the apple-cheeked youngsters featured in prime time are less likely to spew cuteness than blood. “Television has become an extremely inhospitable place for middle-class children, and in some sense, for the demanding ideals by which they are now raised – a gory receptacle for any and all of our collectively sublimated parental ambivalence. Against our new universe of Humvee-inspired strollers, television constructs a parallel one, in which children are routinely maimed, killed, abused, mocked, mistreated and kept central – but according to a contravening morality.”
The Great Big GoogleLit Debate
“If there was any point of agreement between publishers, authors and Google in a debate Thursday night over the giant Web company’s program to digitize the collections of major libraries and allow users to search them online, it seemed to be this: Information does not necessarily want to be free. Rather, the parties agreed, information wants to be found. But when it comes to how information will be found and who will share in the profits, the various sides remain far apart – not surprising, perhaps, since the issue has already landed in federal court.”
Eats Shoots And (Does It Rudely)
“Two years ago, Lynne Truss was vaulted into unexpected celebrity when, after a long and quiet career as a novelist and critic, she published a short, witty book on punctuation. Initially brought out in London with a hopeful first printing of 15,000 books, ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’ went on to sell some three million copies in hardcover.” Now she’s back with another sermon: “Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door.” The book’s basic contention is that people in public places no longer bother to treat one another with even a semblance of Old World courtesy or respect.
Who Would Want This Job?
The much-beleaguered Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre will soon have a new executive director, and he will have his hands full the minute he sets foot in his office on February 1. But even before officially starting work, Harris Ferris (currently head of Nevada Ballet Theatre) is attempting to mend some of the in-house fences that were demolished when the PBT made the decision to lay off its entire orchestra for the 2005-06 season. Ferris will meet with the orchestra this week in what he says is an effort to “eliminate the acrimony,” and to listen to the musicians’ complaints about PBT’s management system. Ferris says it is still possible that the orchestra could return this season, but those comments were undermined when PBT cut ties with its conductor over the weekend.