See also: Way Behind the Music

... artists can "fingerprint" [2, 3, 4] fans ...

... 10 years from now the model for the music business will resemble the patron-artist relationship of the 17th century renaissance ...

In order to ensure that the works they commissioned were of the highest quality, patrons frequently stipulated that artists use only the finest pigments. Rich colors signaled to the viewer that no expense had been spared and reflected the patron's generosity. Artists, on the other hand, tended to place a greater premium on the skill involved in the creation of a work than on the richness of the materials. According to Leonardo, "... colors honor only those who manufacture them, for in them there is no cause for wonder except their beauty, and their beauty is not to the credit of the painter...." The Florentine writer Anton Francesco Doni was even harsher in his criticism of bright colors, arguing that they "deceive, and dazzle the minds of common men who do not have good judgment."

paid placement: ... cold-e-mailed YouTube executives and then worked out a deal to get the "treadmill" video on the front page ...

If "treadmill" is the future of music, you'd best stock up now, and then dive into the back-catalog.

The Future of Music

There are some good shots here.

Winners gallery 2007 - World Press Photo

Read books.

We all have a long, imaginary shelf of masterpieces we have not read. For years I was embarrassed by my ignorance of War and Peace, and Tolstoy's massive novel had sat on the shelf, glaring at me. Not until the mid-80s, when I passed a lovely spring on the Amalfi Coast of Italy in a tiny rented house, did I find myself ready to tackle it. I would rise at dawn (we had two babies then) and take my coffee to the terrace. There was a grove of lemon trees behind me, and I could look all the way down the coast from Amalfi to Salerno, the sunlight on the sea like scattered coins. I was absorbed for two months in that astonishing novel, making my first acquaintance with Pierre, Natasha, Bolkonsky, and the rest of Petersburg society. Forever I will associate that story with that place, and that time in my life.

I doubt you'll ever find yourself associating a YouTube video with a place and time in your life.

A Traveler's Library

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the 33-year-old director of The Lives of Others, is an imposing man with an even more imposing head of curly hair. "I hope you'll tell your readers to see my film," he said, imposingly. He also had to know my take on the (to his mind) unjust success of Pan's Labyrinth at the American box office. The Lives of Others goes up against Pan's Labyrinth in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards on Sunday, February 25.

An Interview with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Choose from a wide variety ...

El Laberinto del Fauno - undated, unspecified draft script by Guillermo del Toro (in Spanish) Pan's Labyrinth - English translation of undated, unspecified draft script by Guillermo del Toro - hosted by: Pan's Labyrinth - in pdf format

"Pan's Labyrinth" is the story of a young girl who travels with her pregnant mother to live with her mother's new husband in a rural area up North in Spain, 1944, after Franco's victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own.

Miami Vice - September 22, 2004 First Draft script by Michael Mann (based on "Miami Vice" created by Anthony Yerkovich)

See also, from Harper's Index (from the January issue, not yet online):

Annual budget of Miami's police department, expressed as a percentage of the production cost of the film "Miami Vice": 83

SimplyScripts - Downloadable Movie Scripts, Screenplays and Transcripts

Ms. Garner and Mr. Olyphant could pass as younger siblings of Julia Roberts and Johnny Depp, and you get the sense that the movie is a test of their romantic star magnetism.

If Ms. Garner blends spunk and eternal girlishness in about the same proportion as Ms. Roberts, her screen wattage is about 40 to Ms. Roberts’s 100.

Ouch.

NYT Review of 'Catch and Release'

Gold star.

HBO: The Wire

Take this, D2X and your eight frames per second!

Since abandoning modern cameras about a decade ago, he has worked exclusively with pinhole cameras and, his current preference, their room-size equivalents. He typically constructs them himself out of wood. Like the German artist Vera Lutter, who may be the most famous practitioner in this medium today, he is drawn to the monumental. Unlike Ms. Lutter, who favors industrial subjects, he prefers landmarks set under wide, open, romantic skies worthy of Ansel Adams, whom he credits as an early influence.

The last photo in the set, "Shanghai, 2004", is the best.

This month he is directing his panoramic lensless cameras at California landmarks: the Hollywood sign, then the San Francisco skyline, Golden Gate Park and the Donner Pass.

Standing in the Dark, Catching the Light

“He was so authentic, in a way that a lot of us had never experienced,” Mr. Burns said. “You wanted to be like him. You wanted to tell the truth. You’d go out to take pictures with him, and we all saw the same things he did, and then we’d come back, and he’d put up his prints, and you’d put up yours, and you were devastated.”

He added, still seeming to wince all these years later at the memory: “Sometimes you’d do some work you thought was really great, and you’d show it to him, and he’d stand there for a while and then say, ‘Well ...’ And it was like, ‘Oh God.’ That was all it took. That ‘well.’ You knew you hadn’t done it.”

The Still-Life Mentor to a Filmmaking Generation

It was a neighborhood place in a low-rent neighborhood that happened to house artists and derelicts side by side, inspiring some hard-nosed art. During her set Ms. Smith described CBGB as “this place that Hilly so generously offered to us to create new ideas, to fail, to make mistakes, to reach new heights.”

It was no surprise that real estate values finally caught up with CBGB. The wonder was that so much came out of one decrepit bar, and that CBGB lasted as long as it did.

Check out the accompanying slide show and videos.

CBGB Closes and Rock Fans Mourn