New York Magazine critics have made their lists…
Tag: 12.12.05
Why Pinter Matters
“The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter, as a playwright, a screenwriter, a director, and a mentor, has had an enormous influence on the theatrical landscape of his time. He began his career as an actor, and, even at the outset, with comparatively crude command, he turned his actor’s understanding of subtext into a metaphysic.”
Can Apple Conquer Video?
“While the iPod has given Apple a foothold in cars and offices, it has yet to make the move into living rooms. The cable companies have a clear advantage here, as does Microsoft with its Media Center PCs and the enormously popular Xbox. Apple will become a force here on the day when the iPod is expressly designed to plug into your television—not to mention your car stereo and broadband network. If Steve Jobs can make the iPod an entertainment hub, Apple will be the company to beat, a feat it could never accomplish with personal computers.”
Going For The Center – Wherever That Is…
“So does the U.S. still matter in dance terms? For the moment, it does. Someday, possibly soon, it won’t. The America of the world’s imagination, in dance terms, is New York. That’s where people outside the U.S. still understand that cultural control holds sway. And it remains a place where everybody would love to present their work.”
Are Hollywood’s Special Effects Ruining The Movies?
“Hollywood studios would like to believe that digital effects are worth the cost, if only because they hold the prospect of a licensing cornucopia for toys and video games. But, alas, the studios also confront the less happy reality that even state-of-the-art CGI, if it gets out of synch with the story, does not create an audience either at the movie houses or on DVD.”
Independent Thinking – Dreamworks Sale Proves How Difficult
“Sunday, DreamWorks ended its 11-year run as an independent company by agreeing to be sold to Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc., in a deal valued at $1.6 billion. The sale highlights the enormous, perhaps insurmountable, challenges facing an independent company with hopes of competing against massive media conglomerates.”
TV Writers Want Extra Pay For Advertising
Trying to combat ad-skipping devices like Tivo, TV networks are turning to product placements in the scripts of shows. But now some writers are putting up a fight, demanding more pay in exchange for scripting product plugs into their shows.”
Rushdie: The Culture Inside All Of Us
Salman Rushdie writes that “when we, as individuals, pick and mix cultural elements for ourselves, we do not do so indiscriminately, but according to our natures. Societies, too, must retain the ability to discriminate, to reject as well as to accept, to value some things above others, and to insist on the acceptance of those values by all their members. This is the question of our time: how does a fractured community of multiple cultures decide what values it must share in order to cohere, and how can it insist on those values even when they clash with some citizens’ traditions and beliefs?”
BBC Kills “Horrific” Ad
After receiving 1,300 complaints, the BBC has pulled a promotional trailer for digital TV – “which some viewers complained was ‘horrific’ and ‘disturbingly psychotic’.”
Japan’s Culture Of Comics
Comic books may be an American invention, but Japanese comic book culture has taken things to a whole new level…