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Thursday, November 12, 2009

current top story
Most Late-Night TV Watchers Are Women, The Writers Men
"In the 1980s, [David] Letterman pioneered the kind of college-age male humor that dominates late night. But now, his audience is almost 55 percent women; [Jay] Leno's is more than 53 percent, and [Conan] O'Brien's just over one half. Yet the writing room and sensibilities of the show itself remain largely male." The New York Times 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@06:47AM

music
New GM Is Proving City Opera Doomsayers Wrong "The rabbit-out-of-the-hat success" that was New York City Opera's season opener "was begun in late February, weeks after George Steel was appointed general manager and artistic director amid suspicions that he knew little about running an opera company." But "so far, his decisions aren't wrong." Philadelphia Inquirer 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:59AM
publishing
Nigeria's Achebe Says He Isn't Father Of Modern African Lit "It's really a serious belief of mine that it's risky for anyone to lay claim to something as huge and important as African literature ... the contribution made down the ages. I don't want to be singled out as the one behind it because there were many of us - many, many of us," said Chinua Achebe, who given the label by Nadine Gordimer. The Guardian (UK) 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:41AM
publishing
Exam Software: Bad Prose, Churchill; You, Too, Hemingway "The wartime leader had a style that was too repetitive, according to the computer being tested for the online marking of school qualifications. It rated Churchill as below average in the equivalent of an A level English exam." The Times (UK) 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:31AM
visual
A First For Tate Britain: A Female Director Penelope Curtis, 48, "the curator of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, takes the helm from Dr Stephen Deuchar who will leave the gallery in December after 11 years in the role. The Oxford modern history graduate is an established scholar and author with an interest in 20th-century British art." The Telegraph (UK) 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:15AM
media
Gore's Current TV Shifts From User-Generated Content "Current TV's retrenchment shows the difficulty of grafting the freewheeling culture and sensibilities that have thrived over the Internet onto established mediums like television.... [J]ust as advertisers have shied from supporting websites that feature amateur video, so too they appear no more willing to support user-generated content on TV." Los Angeles Times 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:03AM
issues
Most Late-Night TV Watchers Are Women, The Writers Men "In the 1980s, [David] Letterman pioneered the kind of college-age male humor that dominates late night. But now, his audience is almost 55 percent women; [Jay] Leno's is more than 53 percent, and [Conan] O'Brien's just over one half. Yet the writing room and sensibilities of the show itself remain largely male." The New York Times 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@06:47AM
media
Indie-Film History Goes Back A Hundred Years "Nickelodeons were once as common as coffee shops, and the nickel-a-pop silent films they showed were as disposable as YouTube videos. That made for a lot of competition in the early days of the movie business -- competition that fueled the rise of an indie-films culture as early as 1909." NPR 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@06:28AM
music
He Was Influential -- But His Students Were Stars Henry Cowell "was a prolific composer whose own music was eclipsed by the works of his students." The director of a San Francisco organization that's celebrating him this week "discovered Cowell through the pioneering percussion music of the composer's famous pupils John Cage and Lou Harrison." Wall Street Journal 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@06:12AM
theatre
Stratford, Shaw Festivals Saw Recession-Related Declines "Both festivals had a slow start due to the recession, a major leap forward once their shows opened and the government came through with additional marketing funds, but an ultimate downward turn by the time the curtain fell." Stratford slipped 4.7 percent in attendance and 1.7 percent in revenue; Shaw was down 6.5 and 8 percent. Toronto Star 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:59AM
media
Lion For Sale? MGM Looks To Be Headed To Auction "Several sources say they expect that MGM will essentially be auctioned off within the next few weeks. This would mean that a major, such as Time Warner, could buy the MGM-UA library while another entity might acquire the logo, and yet another deal could be made for United Artists." Variety 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:54AM
media
Digital Media's New Health Hazard: Secondhand Smut "[T]he increasing popularity of laptops and handheld devices, and the prevalence of wireless Internet access, means there's a greater chance of becoming a bystander to a complete stranger's viewing proclivities." Skeeved-out bystanders say they're not prudes. "The trouble was knowing that they couldn't escape [the porn], not until the plane landed or the Metro doors opened." Washington Post 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:40AM
publishing
Barbara Kingsolver: No, Really, I'm Not A Political Novelist "There goes Kingsolver, inserting Nicaraguan contras into 'Animal Dreams,' a father-daughter story about Alzheimer's. There she goes again, talking about Native American tribal rights, smack dab in the middle of 'Pigs in Heaven.' ... 'I never quite know what people mean by political,' says Kingsolver, 54." Washington Post 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:22AM
visual
At NY's Scruffy Downtown Galleries, Art Is Selling Again "The global financial crisis punctured the art bubble last year, drying up cash and driving up caution. Now the tide seems to be turning for young galleries of the East Village and Lower East Side," which "can afford to charge less" than Chelsea galleries "because they have smaller staff and lower rent." Bloomberg 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:16AM
visual
A Warhol Goes For $43.8M, And Art Market Dares To Hope "Five bidders vied for Warhol's 1962 '200 One Dollar Bills' at the Sotheby's sale last night," where competition for the painting "underscored returning buying confidence to the art market, pummeled a year ago by the world financial crisis." Bloomberg 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:05AM
music
Opera Drought In The O.C. Following Opera Pacific's Collapse There's been nary a note of professional opera in Orange County since Opera Pacific closed a year ago, and there's none on the horizon but a single performance of a single-soprano piece by the Long Beach Opera next May. But a group of boosters is working to end the drought, with imports first and maybe resident productions later. Los Angeles Times 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:52PM
dance
UK Dance Cos. Pitch Program Proposals To A Panel, Live "Dance companies and artists are to be given the chance to pitch projects to a team of 18 producers, including Sadler's Wells, The Lowry and The Place, in a Dragon's Den-style scheme." (Dragon's Den is a BBC program that "sees entrepreneurs pitching for investment from some of Britain's top business brains.") The Stage (UK) 11/09/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:50PM
music
Marsalis Can't Seem To Finish His Blues Symphony The world premiere of the piece, by the Atlanta Symphony, was first planned for summer 2008 and has just been postponed for the third time. Marsalis "keeps missing his deadline. Two of the planned seven movements are completed and playable. Two more are in rough draft form. The rest is still in Marsalis' head." artscriticATL 11/10/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:49PM
people
'The Amazing' Carl Ballantine, Slapstick Magician, Dead At 92 He was "an inveterate quipmeister whose stand-up comedy persona, an incompetent magician known as the Amazing Ballantine or Ballantine the Great, predated and influenced the antic characters of Steve Martin and others." He was also known as "the scheming, profiteering seaman Lester Gruber on the television series McHale's Navy." New York Times 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:47PM
theatre
Sophocles As PTSD Therapy For Soldiers "The Pentagon has provided $3.7 million for an independent production company, Theater of War, to visit 50 military sites through at least next summer and stage readings from two plays by Sophocles, Ajax and Philoctetes, for service members." New York Times 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:46PM
ideas
A Thoroughly Modern Tongue: Electronic Media Are Changing Japanese "Now the Japanese language is being transformed by blogs, e-mail and keitai shosetsu, or cellphone novels. … So what do these changes mean for a language long defined by indirect locutions and long, leisurely sentences that drift from the top of the page? Is Japanese getting simpler, easier or just worse?" New York Times Book Review 11/08/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:43PM
issues
Royal Opera/Ballet's Manchester Plans Uncertain Due To Ambassador-Live Nation Merger The Royal Opera House plans a full-fledged northern branch at Manchester's Palace Theatre, which was owned by Live Nation; new owner Ambassador Theatre Group may or may not want to proceed with the deal. Says ATG's CEO, "At a time when everybody is tightening their belts, we need to all be sure we can find the money to do it." The Stage (UK) 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:41PM
music
Leonard Slatkin Off The Podium Through November "He's back in America with his doctors and they've said, 'Go rest and come back at the end of November and we'll do a check-up'," said the maestro's manager. Slatkin, music director of the Detroit Symphony, has been out of commission since suffering a heart attack on Nov. 1 after conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Detroit Free Press 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:39PM
people
Douglas Campbell, 87, Shakespearean Veteran And AD Of Guthrie Theatre A "rough-and-ready, red-haired Scot," Campbell was a mainstay of Tyrone Guthrie's companies: the Old Vic, the Stratford Festival in Ontario (where he acted and directed for 25 seasons), and the Guthrie in Minneapolis, where he served as artistic director during the 1960s. The Guardian (UK) 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:35PM
theatre
Mark Ravenhill Gripes About Being Bypassed For Newbie Playwrights "Shopping and F***ing playwright Mark Ravenhill has criticised the theatre industry for placing too much emphasis on producing the work of first-time writers, claiming more time should be spent developing 'long-term' relationships with talent." The Stage (UK) 11/10/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:34PM
music
How Teetering Orchestras Are Like Teetering Newspapers Anne Midgette: "The main problem is that both fields seem to be incapable of coming up with an actual new business model, in part because both fields are so deeply invested in their own traditions that they tend to confuse those traditions with their function." Washington Post 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:32PM
ideas
The First Bank Of Anti-Matter Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats, the founder of the bank, is issuing anti-money backed by anti-matter, which he defines as "the physical opposite of anything made with atoms, from luxury condos to private jets." He adds, "Like all banks, The First Bank of Antimatter will issue more currency than we have assets." New Scientist 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:31PM
dance
A Sort Of Dancing With The Stars On Ice "It now seems like such a brilliant idea that it is a surprise no one had thought of it before: pairing figure skaters with hockey players for ice dancing routines in the ultimate ice rink reality show. That's what the [CBC] has done this fall with Battle of the Blades, a huge hit across Canada." New York Times 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:29PM
media
The Problem With 3D TV: Those Ridiculous Glasses "It's brilliant in theory - but the actual practice of sitting at home wearing cardboard glasses watching TV is rather less so. Channel 4's black-and-white cardboard specs might … come from Sainsbury's rather than the bottom of a Frosties packet, but … how [do] you safely manoeuvre a cup of tea to your mouth" while wearing them? The Guardian (UK) 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:28PM
people
Bruce Weber Photos Of Roberto Bolle - A Whole Book Of Them The photographer whose very name symbolizes the fusion of beefcake and art spent three years working with ballet's current reigning heartthrob. Roberto Bolle: An Athlete In Tights "features writing from Bolle, as well as texts by Elsa Morante and illustrations by Paul Cadmus and Jeremiah Goodman." Vanity Fair 11/09/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:18PM
publishing
Linden MacIntyre Wins Canada's $50K Giller Prize "Mr. MacIntyre's The Bishop's Man chronicles the emerging crisis of conscience in a worldly priest who has been assigned to keep a lid on church-related sex scandals that are destroying the lives of the faithful in rural Cape Breton." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 11/10/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@08:06AM
media
In Gaza, A Women's Film Festival Challenges Hamas "Through The Eyes of Women, the three-day program that started Tuesday, includes 27 films, all by female directors, five of whom are from Gaza. Most of the rest hail from other Arab states, with eight from the West Bank." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 11/10/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@08:00AM
media
Can Chicago Lure Big Indoor Shoots From Hollywood? "If all goes according to plan, the city will be home to an enormous new soundstage complex sometime next year, located in almost 50 acres of buildings that formerly housed Ryerson Steel.... In theory, it could mean Chicago will be a draw for the kinds of movies that necessitate large-scale special effects." Chicago Tribune 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@07:49AM

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Kehinde Wiley - The World Stage

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Today's Headlines (by topic)

ideas
A Thoroughly Modern Tongue: Electronic Media Are Changing Japanese - New York Times Book Review 11/08/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:43PM

The First Bank Of Anti-Matter - New Scientist 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:31PM

more Ideas...

dance
UK Dance Cos. Pitch Program Proposals To A Panel, Live - The Stage (UK) 11/09/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:50PM

A Sort Of Dancing With The Stars On Ice - New York Times 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:29PM

more Dance...

issues

more Issues...

media
Gore's Current TV Shifts From User-Generated Content - Los Angeles Times 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:03AM

Indie-Film History Goes Back A Hundred Years - NPR 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@06:28AM

Lion For Sale? MGM Looks To Be Headed To Auction - Variety 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:54AM

Digital Media's New Health Hazard: Secondhand Smut - Washington Post 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:40AM

The Problem With 3D TV: Those Ridiculous Glasses - The Guardian (UK) 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:28PM

more Media...

music
New GM Is Proving City Opera Doomsayers Wrong - Philadelphia Inquirer 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:59AM

He Was Influential -- But His Students Were Stars - Wall Street Journal 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@06:12AM

Opera Drought In The O.C. Following Opera Pacific's Collapse - Los Angeles Times 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:52PM

Marsalis Can't Seem To Finish His Blues Symphony - artscriticATL 11/10/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:49PM

Leonard Slatkin Off The Podium Through November - Detroit Free Press 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:39PM

How Teetering Orchestras Are Like Teetering Newspapers - Washington Post 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:32PM

more Music...

people
'The Amazing' Carl Ballantine, Slapstick Magician, Dead At 92 - New York Times 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:47PM

Douglas Campbell, 87, Shakespearean Veteran And AD Of Guthrie Theatre - The Guardian (UK) 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:35PM

Bruce Weber Photos Of Roberto Bolle - A Whole Book Of Them - Vanity Fair 11/09/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:18PM

more People...

publishing
Nigeria's Achebe Says He Isn't Father Of Modern African Lit - The Guardian (UK) 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:41AM

Exam Software: Bad Prose, Churchill; You, Too, Hemingway - The Times (UK) 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:31AM

Barbara Kingsolver: No, Really, I'm Not A Political Novelist - Washington Post 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:22AM

more Publishing...

theatre
Stratford, Shaw Festivals Saw Recession-Related Declines - Toronto Star 11/11/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:59AM

Sophocles As PTSD Therapy For Soldiers - New York Times 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:46PM

Mark Ravenhill Gripes About Being Bypassed For Newbie Playwrights - The Stage (UK) 11/10/09
email this story | Posted 11/11/09@09:34PM

more Theatre...

visual
A First For Tate Britain: A Female Director - The Telegraph (UK) 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:15AM

At NY's Scruffy Downtown Galleries, Art Is Selling Again - Bloomberg 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:16AM

A Warhol Goes For $43.8M, And Art Market Dares To Hope - Bloomberg 11/12/09
email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:05AM

more Visual...