Arts and Culture - In the News | Truthdig

Art Market Gets a Boost from Sotheby’s, Warhol

2009-11-13T05:43:43+00:00

Sotheby’s enjoyed a windfall Wednesday when the auction house’s New York HQ nearly doubled its estimated high of $67.9 million for its contemporary art bid-fest, in which Andy Warhol’s works figured prominently among the biggest-selling successes of the evening.

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Emma Thompson, Petition Tourist?

2009-11-11T02:14:14+00:00

British actor Emma Thompson has drawn the ire of Roman Polanski’s supporters by removing her name from a pro-Polanski petition she’d signed following the Polish filmmaker’s September arrest in Switzerland. On Tuesday writer-filmmaker Yann Moix archly accused Thompson of “petition tourism.”

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Marion Barry Does Reality TV

2009-11-09T21:57:39+00:00

So Marion Barry ultimately wasn’t able to be Washington, D.C.‘s “mayor for life,” but he may get his own reality TV show. According to the Web site DCist, Barry, who’s now a city councilman, is currently filming a pilot for the show, although his chief of staff couldn’t say which network or production company was behind the project.

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Ni Hao, Mickey Mouse: Disney Goes to Shanghai

2009-11-04T23:22:01+00:00

In a deal two decades in the making, China is opening its doors to the Walt Disney Co., having finally given the quintessentially Western enterprise the go-ahead to bring Mickey Mouse and his fellow characters to Shanghai with a new Disney theme park tailored to the Chinese megalopolis.

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Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Father of Structuralism, Dies at 100

2009-11-03T20:23:05+00:00

French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who wrote several seminal works during his six-decade career and is responsible for those seemingly inscrutable structuralist texts you may have grappled with in college, died last weekend at 100.

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Google Enters the Musical Fray

2009-10-30T04:41:14+00:00

Google expanded its sprawling multimedia empire this week by adding a music feature to its array of search options, which means that the average, law-abiding music buff won’t have to shell out 99 cents or settle for a 30-second snippet of a new song on iTunes, nor hope that the song will eventually queue up on a Pandora playlist, to hear the whole thing online.

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PR Guru Helps Stars Come Out

2009-10-28T22:02:20+00:00

Despite Hollywood’s reputation for being a liberal hotbed, some stubborn forms of prejudice persist, such as the lingering notion that it’s a potential career-killer for certain high-profile types to come out of the closet. Luckily, those who are willing to try have at least one industry expert ready to give them a hand with the press, the public and their risk-averse bosses.

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Top Writer-Director Breaks With Scientology Over Proposition 8

2009-10-26T18:45:56+00:00

The Church of Scientology counts several high-profile figures from the world of entertainment among its members—Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley, to name a few—and they sometimes act as public advocates for their religion. However, one of their own, screenwriter and director Paul Haggis, has very publicly left the fold after taking issue with the church’s stance on Proposition 8.

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Disney Offers Refund for Baby Bupkis

2009-10-26T06:39:52+00:00

Somehow the Walt Disney Co. managed to convince the parents of one-third of America’s babies to spend $200 million a year on Baby Einstein videos. The tapes were supposed to smarten kids up, but watching TV from ages 1-3 could actually cause attention problems. Under pressure, Disney is now offering refunds. (continued)

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R.E.M. and Their Musical Friends Push to Shut Down Guantanamo Bay

2009-10-22T18:36:24+00:00

The veteran alt-rockers of R.E.M. are joining forces with other musical acts such as Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and Roseanne Cash in a bid to close Guantanamo Bay. Their group effort, the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, sprung in part from their joint outrage about their music reportedly being blared at high volumes to upset prisoners held at the detention center in Cuba.

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