Tag: 12.26.05

The Lit Economy

“Literature is conventionally taught as a person-to-person aesthetic experience: the writer (or the poem) addressing the reader. Teachers cut out English’s middlemen, the people who got the poem from the writer to us, apparently confirming his point that we have to deny the economics of cultural value in order to preserve the aesthetics. But, once we’re outside the classroom, how rigidly are these conventions adhered to? How many people today really imagine “art” as a privileged category, exempt from the machinations of the marketplace?”

The Met: Volpe’s Legacy

Joseph Volpe caps 16 years running the metropolitan Opera. “Through various crises—a singer dying onstage, a bloated supersta cancelling, attendance figures falling in the wake of September 11th, Cuban billionaire patron turning out to be neither a billionaire nor Cuban—Volpe kept the great old house trundling along. Was he visionary? No. Did rival American companies—particularly the Sa Francisco Opera, with its history-making productions of Messiaen’s “Saint Francis” and John Adams’s “Doctor Atomic”—challenge th Met’s preëminence? Yes. But the chaos that has surrounded many bi houses elsewhere has been absent from the Met, and in this busines the absence of chaos is a considerable achievement.”

Ballet Victoria Takes On Canada’s Dance World

“Ballet Victoria made its official debut two years ago February with a new hip-hop inspired rendition of Peter Pan. That inaugural production, which featured the Esquimalt Singers and Dancers as a gang of young pirate recruits, was warmly received by the community and toured around Vancouver Island. It also helped the company raise the money it needed to establish a permanent dance centre, which was opened with much fanfare last summer by honorary patron Karen Kain.”

A Year Hollywood Would Rather Forget

“Almost everywhere you looked, uncertainty reigned. Attendance and box-office receipts were down more than 5%. Disney’s movie studio recorded a quarterly loss of $313 million. DreamWorks threw in the towel on its short-lived dream. Harvey and Bob Weinstein left Miramax. MGM was folded into Sony. Tom Cruise seemed to self-destruct. Julia Roberts took an extended maternity leave.”

Conscience Of the Getty

Ronald L. Olson is charged by the Getty Trust with investigating how the organization does business. “In all likelihood, the essence of our investigation is going to be made public at some point. As I see this assignment that the special committee has, it’s all about enhancing, reaffirming, some would say rebuilding, the integrity of the Getty. And how do you do that? Very often, sunlight is an important part of it.”

How Technology Is going To Change Hollywood

Google’s test project to make San Francisco wireless for free promises to change the entertainment industry. “Reportedly, Google has already lined up unused fiber-optic cable that spans the country. Such a free Wi-Fi network would mean that the Hollywood studios would no longer need to rely on cable operators—or even telephone companies—to have a two-way pipeline into homes. They could directly rent any movie to consumers and bill their credit card (like everything else is billed on the Internet) without paying a cut to cable operators or local televisions stations.”

Meet The Author On Amazon

Amazon has begun “Amazon Connect, begun late last month to enhance the connections between authors and their fans – and to sell more books – with author blogs and extended personal profile pages on the company’s online bookstore site. So far, Amazon has recruited a group of about a dozen authors, including novelists, writers of child care manuals and experts on subjects as diverse as real estate investing, science, fishing and the lyrics of the Grateful Dead.”