The Hollywood is different and the faces are new, but I fear we've been marooned here before. Even in the glory days of Hollywood, there was always scandal lurking just beneath the surface. But these days, dysfunctional behaviour is out in the open and is no obstacle to a career. No wonder so many of today's stars think they can get away with anything How we fell in love with 'insanity chic'
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Sticks & Stones, But Arrows ... Oooh, arrows!
Everyone knows you can't read a book on an empty stomach. Hold out the promise of a $50,000 commission for an Australian author to write a free novella and the doors to you are sledge hammered ... Like any good line from a publicity machine, the immortal words unspoken in this year’s Book Alive campaign are being repeated at many writers’ workshops signalling tough competition ahead. “If you your novella ends up being judged as the most likely to woo hungry readers into bookshops then $50K is yours.” A good idea is supposed to be worth more than money ... Brett Osmond, not relation to Maggie Osmond, of Book Alive fame, said: We learnt a lot over the first two years and the Government has earmarked another (sexy) $6 million, so we can really built something.” A sense of greate good and love is in the air ;-)
Every popular song is about it, half our books and film obsess over it and everybody wants it. On the one hand love can lift us; on the other it can destory us!
• The bike ride that reminds you your optimism was misplaced :-) [Death of a Salesman Playwright Arthur Miller; It is big, very big: 3176 blockbusting pages at the last, local count Book of Numbers ]
• · Why aren't people angry? asks a character in David Hare's documentary-style play The Permanent Way. Somewhere between the emotion and the belief, the pedal has gone. His anger is directed, glacially, against the Blair Government. His acclaimed production of The Permanent Way is a devastating analysis of what is wrong with Britain, a paradise of ignorance where nothing works and no one wants to know Cold River: Look back in anger; In memoirs of the children of Holocaust survivors who have traced their parents' experience, the sheer weight of bearing witness and the urgency of the personal voyage elevate them into the universal, no matter how particular the circumstances or how small the canvas Dance with evil
• · · Creative disagreements and personality differences: Eucalyptus, along the Cold River, the Australian film bringing together Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman and acclaimed director Jocelyn Moorhouse, has imploded in an apparent clash of egos, opinions and, more than anything, words on paper Crowe scuttles Eucalyptus film ; When Australian director Hattie Dalton was refused funding in Australia for her short film about a man who works in a sperm donor clinic, she returned to London, where she is currently living, to try her luck there. Banking on Aussie filmmaker
• · · · Indie-style films, backed by the big studios, are proving to be a money-spinning hit with niche audiences Small is beautiful ; Seven: Desperate Housewives and Lost ; Ingvar Kamprad: What is it about the opening of an IKEA store that sends normal people manic? Flat-packed addiction - it's a mystery
• · · · · Andrea Levy has won the Whitbread Book of the Year, one of Britain's top literary prizes, for Small Island, her critically acclaimed novel about a Jamaican couple in postwar Britain Immigrants' story wins Whitbread ; London Calling: Belle de Jour aka Sarah Champion, Kate Holden, Jeannette Angell, Catherine Millet, Melissa P., Leigh Redhead, Rosemary Neill, and Jozefina Imrichova are finding a common ground between dirty movies and high culture. Not clever enough to be a journalist, or even a journaliste? Not clever enough to fake the blog? She's clever enough to quote Dashiell Hammett in a sex scene with a client who's an author (ha!); clever enough to structure a conventional romantic story with a character she calls "the Boy"; clever enough to maintain a witty rapport with parents, ex-boyfriends, madams, and even clients; clever enough to have clever clients; and clever enough, above all, to survive a life of prostitution with sense of humour, decency and some literary style intact. (Oh, and a heart of gold.) The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl ; Oldest tricks in the books: Writing courses in crisis
• · · · · · Between sips of caffe latte and laments about the staggering cost of property, the Irish are beginning to ask themselves: Who do we want to be as a country now that we have all this money? This is what is happening to many rich Slavs; we even gave a good name to slavery centuries ago: Sudden pots of gold leave Irish with identity crisis ; Victorian parents are naming their children after multinational companies and expensive brands such as Lexus, Pepsi, Nike and Armani, the State's birth registry shows. Bizarre symptoms of a postmodern consumer culture