“Israel leads the world in per-capita new titles per year – more than 4,000, or about 70 a week. ‘I think that there is no need to publish more than 1,500 to 2,000 new books a year in Israel, tops. In France, 25,000 new books are published every year, but its population is 10 times the size of Israel’s. In other words, they publish about half the quantity that we do, and France is a cultural superpower. Everyone there reads books on the streets and in the Metro’.”
Tag: 12.23.05
Market For Electronic Games Softens In 2005
Electronic game sales are down for 2005. “Sales in November appeared to be particularly soft, falling 14 per cent to $47 million in the month that included the release of the highly anticipated XBox 360 from Microsoft.”
Better Dancing Makes Better Lovers?
Rutgers University anthropologists, for the first time collaborating with University of Washington computer scientists have linked dancing ability to desirability. The best dancers, they found, have the greatest body symmetry.
Fletcher Named To Run Aspen Music Festival
“Alan Fletcher, head of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music, has been named the new president and chief executive officer of the Aspen Music Festival and School.”
NY Transit Strike Hit Off-Broadway Hard
“In three chaotic days, the Transit Workers Union inflicted a lot of pain in Gotham. The realm of off-Broadway theater — which operates on razor-thin margins — felt more than its share.”
Hyperion Pays Out On Settlement
The beloved classical recording label Hyperion has settled its dispute with a musicologist who sued over copyright. “Hyperion last week settled costs with Carter Ruck, the firm which represented Lalande, Lionel Sawkins, after receiving an invoice for £758,000. The final settlement left Hyperion with a total bill of £950,000, which included their own costs and damages to Dr Sawkins – close to what Hyperion would spend on music-making over an entire year.”
Picasso, Chagall Stolen
A Picasso and a Chagall have been stolen from a Palm Desert gallery. The Picasso, “Femme Regardant par la Fenetre,” is a 1959 linoleum cut in shades of brown and black of a nude woman reclining and looking out a window, printed by the artist and worth about $53,000. The Chagall, a 1964 lithograph titled “The Tribe of Dan,” is a multicolored religious work in blues, yellows and reds, also printed by the artist. It illustrates one of a series of 12 stained glass windows Chagall made for an Israeli university, and is worth about $35,000.
Theatre Of High Ambitions And Low Cost
Several off-Broadway theatres are keeping ticket prices low and the theatre experimental. It’s working. “These spaces measure success less by commercial cachet than by how well they keep up with exciting new work. All of them keep an eye on not only submissions and recommendations but also on offerings at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and one another’s work. While each has a different economic model and aesthetic emphasis, all have infrastructure in place to market and offer technical support for everything on their stages, which means they have the prerogative, and the incentive, to choose only work they want to see there, whether or not their name is above the title as producer.”
Hollywood Limps Out Of A Down Year
“This is the third straight year of decline in Hollywood ticket sales – the first such stretch of bad news in 40 years. Because of the continued falloff – sales are down 12.6 percent from 2002 – a growing number of analysts wonder if America’s movie habits are changing permanently.”