ninme

The Times - Save the Titians - change the tax system We can no longer rely on the begging bowl to preserve great works of art for the nation, by Timothy Clifford (director-general of the National Galleries of Scotland from 1984 to 2006)

Has any museum or gallery ever been placed in such an appalling [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

The Times - A festival of grovelling to terrorists If works of art are withdrawn because of fear of reprisal, we lose the chance for open debate, by Mick Hume

Have you heard about the first novel by a young American woman that has become the “new Satanic Verses”, sparking terrorist attacks on the publishers [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

Times Online - China banned child singer with crooked teeth from singing at opening ceremony (click for the pictures)

The cute little girl whose sweet-voiced rendition of one of China’s favourite revolutionary anthems started off the Olympic opening ceremony performance may not have been all that she seemed. Little Lin Miaoke, it has been [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

The Times - The simple way to stop being uneducated Despite our sterile school system and trash culture, Britons show a healthy urge towards autodidacticism, by Libby Purves

Keira Knightley, aged 23, has told a magazine that she is “completely uneducated” and that not going to university gave her a chip on her shoulder. “It [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

Thsrs, “(The shorter thesaurus)”

Cute!

I looked up mellifluous. Dulcet, honeyed, sweet, melodic, melodious, musical.

Categories: Art and Literature

Telegraph - Bacchus, Aslan’s rival as God’s son, by Christopher Howse

I wonder if audiences are looking out for the wrong things in the films of C.S Lewis’s Narnia books. The danger is simply to think “Aslan = Jesus”, and then to puzzle out how the one allegorically illuminates the other. [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

The Times - Ancient theatres: not fit for Rolling Stones O suitably-attired-in-Manolo-Blahniks is found nowhere in the text of Euripides

The foundation stones of world theatre are cracking. We report that modern productions are destroying the ancient open-air theatres where Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides developed tragedy, and Aristophanes pioneered comedy (page 42). Most of them [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

This made me laugh:

The Times - Comment: Not Prada, but still very 2008 Times expert says Pope Benedict is no fashion victim, and might even be a fashion leader

Pope Benedict XVI is not your most obvious nomination as style icon. In his papal cassock he hardly cuts the continental dash of a brooding Jose [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

BLDG BLOG - PANDEMONIUM

Some of the coolest photographs I’ve seen recently are these long exposure shots of crowds in St. Petersburg, Russia. They were taken by Alexey Titarenko for a project called “City of Shadows.” What I think is so interesting about this is that an otherwise unremarkable technique [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

Wheat & Weeds - I Can’t Help But Like McCain

Curtsy: Dean Barnett, who comments Finally! A presidential candidate who publicly recognizes Philip Roth’s pretentious drivel for what it is. I’ve never felt closer to or more supportive of the McCain campaign.

Maybe if this whole [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

Repeating his warning…

SPOILER ALERT: TO THE FIVE OF YOU OUT THERE WHO HAVE NOT FINISHED READING THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA AND DON’T WANT CERTAIN CRITICAL PLOT POINTS OF THE FINAL BOOK GIVEN AWAY, CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.

Okay then. So, the thing with Susan never bothered me that much. Not enough to pull a Philip [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

The Times - James Bond: the movies are not enough After the huge commercial dominance of the 007 movies, the novel is fighting back, by Andrew Lycett (author of the biography Ian Fleming)

Everyone has an opinion on whether Sean Connery is a better onscreen 007 than Roger Moore. But few people can expatiate on [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

The Times - Weddings Rock So push the boat out up the aisle

We report today, not in the news pages but in the cacophonous heart of times2, on an organist from Ealing who hired a four-piece rock band for his wedding. The musicians sat demurely round the altar for most of the service, accompanying [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

The Times - E-books will never be our friends Traditional books are here to stay. Some things are worth cutting down a tree for, by Ben Macintyre

The death of the traditional book has been predicted, wrongly, from the very start of the digital revolution. This week, as British publishers announced the further digitisation of [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

Telegraph - Should we take heed of Prince Charles’s views on architecture?

The Prince of Wales has attacked plans to erect more skyscrapers in London, saying they would “vandalise” the skyline and overshadow the capital’s historic landmarks. A number of unusual-shaped glass and steel towers with nicknames like “shard of glass”, [...]

Categories: Art and Literature