"In embracing the term, the publishing industry helps itself to some Hollywood glamour. And in avoiding the most obviously appropriate word for these commercials--that is, commercials--sacrosanct literature keeps grubby commerce at an arm's length."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
He was readmitted when a "chronic infection" developed after his prostate cancer surgery. "His spokesmen said last month that the cancer was in its early stages and he hoped to return to work before the end of the year. But an update on his website said he now hoped to be back in the New Year."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
In an uncommon agreement with the producers of "A Steady Rain," the Shubert Organization will invest in their projects and guarantee them a Shubert house. The deal gives the producers "a strong advantage on the Main Stem, where real estate is a hot commodity and numerous incoming productions vie for a limited number of available theaters."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"'Twilight' came for the tweens, then for the moms of tweens, then for the co-workers who started wearing those ridiculous Team Jacob shirts, and the resisters said nothing, because they thought 'Twilight' could not come for them. They were too literary. They didn't do vampires. They were feminists. Then something happened: the release of the 'Twilight' movie...."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"Bloggers are wondering just that this week as Charles Spencer, the Telegraph's chief theatre critic, kicked the discussion off … 'The critic's obligations can be summed up very briefly,' he writes. 'Arrive sober, stay awake, stay to the end and don't take a bribe unless it is big enough to allow you to retire in comfort for the rest of your life'." Is that really all?...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
In its 120 years, the Moulin Rouge has evolved from "essentially a dancing brothel" to a music hall to Gallic neo-vaudeville for tourists. But the hall's constant is "the cancan, a strenuous chorus-line number in 2/4 time that demands balance, rhythm and stamina. It is popular entertainment incarnate, which is what drew Royal Winnipeg Ballet artistic director Andre Lewis to the Moulin Rouge as the theme for a new full-length story ballet."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"The National Theatre has confirmed the initial details of its £50 million plan to modernise its Grade II-listed London home. The scheme, designed by architects Haworth Tompkins, will aim to improve the 'transparency' of the building."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"The deficit is the result of shortages in ticket sales and annual fund donations, as well as declines in major one-time gifts and contributions from the ISO Foundation, whose board manages the orchestra's endowment." Musicians and staff took pay cuts earlier this year....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"I was pretty determinedly not a practitioner of autobiographical fiction. But the longer I get away from something - the political anger, the personal hurt, the psychological obsession - the easier it is to write about. And the more I can afford to be playful or, a better word, manipulative."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
The 68-year-old LeClerc "has presided over the sprawling library system during a revolutionary period of change, as the world has shifted to the digital era. When he first came to the position in December 1993, the library did not even have a Web site."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"A shortage of funds has prompted UC Berkeley to abandon its plan to construct a new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive downtown. The building, a distinctive and innovative design by Tokyo architect Toyo Ito estimated to cost $143 million, was to replace the museum's present, seismically endangered quarters on Bancroft Way, completed in 1970."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
The author sees lists as falling into two (very Eco-ist) categories: "those that evidence the 'poetics of 'everything included'' and those that express the 'poetics of the 'etcetera'." The former covers a finite number of items (as with a phone book) and aims for completeness; the latter (as with a medieval writer's list of devils) "is limited only by the imagination's disinclination to invent more."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"A few weeks ago Crazy Heart was just another invisible movie, one with so little promise that the company that made it refused to put it into theaters. Now, suddenly, this low-budget film about a washed-up country singer finds itself at the heart of the Oscar race, with … its star, Jeff Bridges, a likely best actor candidate."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Colorado Public Radio (CPR) said Wednesday it will stage an unusual three-day on-air fundraising drive for the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (CSO) that will include a live broadcast of a CSO performance featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
The Old City in the Yemeni capital, San'a, "is one of the world's architectural gems, a thicket of unearthly medieval towers etched with white filigree and crowned with stained-glass windows. But more unusual than their mere survival is the fact that the traditional building arts continue to thrive here."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Michael Kimmelman on the Cafesjian Center for the Arts in Yerevan: "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?" What the Center will house, however, is a different question....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
The longtime basketball star has made rap records, acted in film and TV, worked as a reserve police officer and earned an MBA. Now, "[m]oonlighting for the first time as a curator, O'Neal is overseeing 'Size DOES Matter,' an exhibition on the theme of scale in contemporary art coming in February to New York's nonprofit Flag Art Foundation."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Bees and ants, to name two, have famously complex behaviors and social structures governed by their tiny cerebella. "Instead of contributing intelligence, big brains might just help support bigger bodies, which have larger muscles to coordinate and more sensory information coming in. Like computers, … size might add storage capacity but [not] necessarily speed or usefulness."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
McCann took the fiction prize for Let the Great World Spin; Stiles collected nonfiction honors for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Keith Waldrop's Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy won the poetry award, and Phillip Hoose took honors for Young People's Literature with Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Prizes have now taken the place of reviews as "the means by which many people now decide which books to buy, when they bother to buy books at all." So supply meets demand: we have the National Best Book Awards (resemblance intentional), which has "150 active categories" and for which every book entered (fee $69 per category) becomes a finalist....
ArtsJournal
mclennan