Tag: 12.08.05

Rutter: Carols Rock

John Rutter has written many a Christmas carol and he knows they’re not “serious” music. But. “The carol repertoire is the richest and most varied collection of folk art: a wonderful historical ragbag of doggerel, some inspired poetry, much memorable melody and a few of those irritating ditties that lodge unwanted in the brain.”

The Biggest Art Fraud Of The 20th Century

“Between 1986 and 1994, Myatt churned out more than 200 new works by surrealists, cubists and impressionists, passing them off as originals with the help of an accomplice, John Drewe, an expert at generating false provenances. Despite the fact that many of Myatt’s paintings were laughably amateurish (they were executed in emulsion, not oil), they fooled the experts and were auctioned for hundreds of thousands of pounds by Christie’s and Sotheby’s. It was, said Scotland Yard’s art and antiques squad when they finally caught up with Myatt in 1995, bursting into his Staffordshire studio at the crack of dawn, ‘the biggest art fraud of the 20th century’.”

Grammy Nominee List Released

The Grammy nominees have been announced, and conductor Mariss Jansons, pianist Martha Argerich, and the Emerson String Quartet lead the pack of nominees in the classical categories. In the contemporary music category, composer Osvaldo Golijov’s 11-song cycle, “Ayre,” competes with works by William Bolcom, Ned Rorem, Peter Boyer, and Carlos Franzetti.

Hollywood Pushes NY To Toughen Piracy Penalties

“As part of its worldwide campaign against piracy, the film industry is pushing for tougher penalties for smuggling a camcorder into a cinema in New York, which has the country’s worst bootlegging problem and some of the weakest penalties. A bill pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America would make operating recording equipment inside a theater a criminal misdemeanor, raising the maximum punishment to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.”

Time For The Non-Profit Newspaper?

Arguably, American newspapers are badly-served by the publicly-owned profit model. But aren’t newspapers as institutions more important than their business model? “The St. Petersburg Times, with its Poynter connection, is a rare example of a nonprofit. How could other newspapers be liberated from the for-profit world to concentrate on their mission? There are two tax-favored models before us: public broadcasting and real estate investment trusts.”

The Once and Future King of Broadway?

It’s hard to get any more Broadway than Neil Simon – the celebrated playwright remains the only living writer to have a Broadway theater named after him, and this season, no fewer than three Simon revivals are playing New York’s biggest stages. So it’s easy to forget that it took Simon decades to achieve critical acclaim, and even longer to win the Pulitzer he so coveted. At 78, two years removed from a kidney transplant, Simon is still working, planning a sequel to The Sunshine Boys and turning his autobiography into a stage play.

Ballot Mishap Delays Start Of Hollywood’s Self-Congratulation Season

“The group that traditionally presents the first big awards of the Oscar season said Wednesday it had delayed announcing its winners after questions were raised about its voting process. A spokesman for the National Board of Review downplayed the flap, explaining that voters had mistakenly been sent a memo that was mislabeled as an ‘eligibility list’ and did not include all the 2005 films that qualified… The delay lends new clout to the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Assn., which will be the first out of the gate this awards season with their picks for 2005 when they announce their choices on Saturday.”

Turner Prizewinner Mussels His Way Into Canada

Artist Simon Sterling, fresh off his Turner win, has announced plans for a new project in Toronto, and the he’ll be employing the services of a much-hated invasive species to help him symbolize the original invasive species of North America- European colonizers. “The core proposal involves casting a replica of Henry Moore’s Warrior with Shield, a 1954 bronze in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and sinking it into Lake Ontario for six months, where it will become encrusted with zebra mussels before being displayed as the centrepiece of an exhibition of Starling’s work.”

C.S. Lewis: Floor Wax or Dessert Topping?

The debate over C.S. Lewis and his children’s books is nothing new, of course, and some of the combatants in the seemingly endless debate go well beyond mere literary argument. Is the Narnia series “a timeless fantasy about talking beavers, friendly fauns and a mystical lion named Aslan? Or insidious militaristic propaganda cunningly used to inoculate innocents with rigid Christian dogma penned by a pervy pipe-puffing Oxford prig who actually didn’t very much like little children and might have slept with a woman old enough to be his mother? When he wasn’t drinking. In pubs. With J.R.R. Tolkien.” And in an age in which children’s fantasy is a major literary sub-genre, scholars are just warming up their Lewis screeds.