"Elite athletes distinguish themselves through hard work, grit and, most importantly, raw talent. However new research, along with a study conducted by New Scientist, points to another trait of the most accomplished jocks: a handsome face." It seems that "the same genetic variations could influence both traits."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Oprah Winfrey plans to … retire the Chicago-based syndicated talk show that made her rich, famous and, if not a kingmaker, a maker of a media empire, several bestselling authors and perhaps even a U.S. President." When her syndication contract ends in 2011, she will devote her energies to her new cable TV network....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"In an online poll conducted by the National Book Foundation, [Flannery O'Connor's] collection 'The Complete Stories' was named the best work to have won the National Book Award for fiction in the contest's 60-year history." The competition was formidable: collected stories of John Cheever, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty as well as Ellison's Invisible Man and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Director Tom Morris's Juliet and Her Romeo, planned for next spring at the Bristol Old Vic, "uses Shakespeare's text, but casts the lovers in their 80s, with their anxious children, not their parents, seeking to prevent an imprudent and costly match."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Very little remains, and what remains is puzzling. … [Most of the survivors] were mural paintings, preserved (ironically) by the lava of Vesuvius, while the paintings in other cities, such as Rome itself, were destroyed or faded away. Was the art of these two provincial towns inferior to the art of the capital? If we saw real Roman painting, would that make the work that's survived look very average? Or is this as good as it got?"...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
That would be Bang on a Can's Julia Wolfe, whose latest album has works for four drum sets, six pianists, eight double basses, and nine bagpipers. She's written an accordion concerto and a piece for musicians in pedicabs. "The last time I did something practical … was [in graduate school] at Yale - I wrote a woodwind quintet."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
A newly rediscovered letter reveals the awful truth. "His skills were so poor that when the composer from Worcester started playing a specially inscribed trombone for a dear friend, she ran out of the room in a fit of hysterical laughter, leaving the composer swearing in frustration."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
The Independent offers a debate on the question, with entries from, among others, theatre director Simon McBurney, novelist Lionel Shriver, Serpentine Gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones, and nine thoughtful readers. (Says Shriver, "This assignment is a formula for sounding like a prat.")...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Artist Jeanne-Claude, who created the 2005 Central Park installation 'The Gates' and other large scale 'wrapping' projects around the globe with her husband Christo," has died "at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"The Story Museum has existed online for the past four years, holding events across Oxfordshire and running storytelling pilots in schools, but [a £2.5 million] donation enables it to start constructing a permanent home in Oxford."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"Roth can comfort himself with the fact that a roll call of literary fiction's great and good, from Booker winner John Banville to acclaimed Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Goncourt winner Jonathan Littell and Whitbread winner Paul Theroux," are also in competition this year for the Literary Review's bad sex in fiction award....
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"The center, a mad work of architectural megalomania and historical recovery, is one of the strangest but most memorable museum buildings to open in ages. Imagine an Art Deco version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stretching nearly the height of the Empire State Building, its decorations coded with Armenian symbolism. Did I mention the artificial waterfalls?"...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"A medium-sized popcorn and medium soda at the nation's largest movie chain pack the nutritional equivalent of three Quarter Pounders topped with 12 pats of butter, according to a report released today by the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"They are more limited in terms of their experience, and to engage a new work is a major challenge," the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer says. "I've learned that you have to be patient; you have to give them an opportunity to digest this music and make it their own. But ... I've seen them rise to the challenge."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"Kim Bui-Burton, president of the California Library Assn., described conditions as 'extraordinarily difficult.' Never lavishly funded, libraries started to falter with last year's credit and mortgage disasters. Now, she said, they are being battered by deep state and local cuts."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"Rita Marcalo has stopped taking her medication ahead of the event at The Bradford Playhouse, which the audience will be invited to film. Arts Council England, which is funding the performance, said it aimed to raise awareness about the condition." An epilepsy charity has "urged Ms Marcalo to reconsider the event."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
More than midway through her three-year contract as music director of the conductorless New Century Chamber Orchestra, "Salerno-Sonnenberg hinted strongly that she's inclined to stay a fourth year.... For now, New Century concerts have taken on the fascinating cast of a soloist meshing her distinctive traits with an integrated orchestral texture."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"Architectural plans released today for the $250-million, 225,000-square-foot George W. Bush Presidential Center, to be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, carry no hint of the swagger, bravado or taste for confrontation that Bush was known for as president." Rather, Robert A.M. Stern's design is handsome and contextual....
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
Daniel Day-Lewis told Oprah "that he managed to avoid dancing in a movie directed by Rob Marshall, who happens to be an accomplished Broadway choreographer. That's kind of like signing up for swimming lessons and then not getting in the water."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
On Friday, "an assortment of academics, federal bureaucrats, and staffers from private think tanks and research organizations will assemble in Washington, and in cyberspace at www.nea.gov." The forum is an attempt "to broaden and improve the statistical evidence" that what artists do "is not just fluff and filigree, but part of the dollars-and-cents fiber of the country."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference