This week, the cultural bomb heard ‘round the world came on Wednesday, when Apple honcho Steve Jobs stepped on stage in his classic mock turtleneck and pale-wash denim to announce the tablet device meant to change virtually every industry that has been flailing for the past year. Behold: The iPad. It was...underwhelming (or at least that’s the verdict of nearly every tech blogger alive). Sure, it’s a giant, juiced-up iPhone with a beautiful screen and what seems to be a lot of brilliant thinking behind it, but in terms of being a media-cultural rescue vehicle, many are left wanting. The Apple presentation showed no sign of what magazine reading might look like on the device, and did not focus on how the potable video or audio capabilities might be used to help people in the arts do their jobs. That said, the iBook store seems to be an arrow shot directly at the heart of the Kindle, so the publishing world was surely shaken by the announcement.
Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Photo
Nearly every high school student for the last three decades has been forced to read a copy of A People’s History of the United States, and then subsequently had their mind blown by it. Such was the genius of Howard Zinn, the historian who passed away on Wednesday night at 89. The author of more than 20 books, Zinn was more than a writer or professor—he was a lightning rod for cultural change, both in civil rights and anti-war movements. His most famous book, People’s History, told the story of America through the eyes of lesser-known or lesser-represented people, providing a narrative that many had not known before its publication in 1980. As Matt Damon (who loved Zinn himself), said in Good Will Hunting, “If you want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. That book will knock you on your ass.”
Michael Dwyer / AP Photo
Actress and activist Zelda Rubenstein stood just four-foot, three-inches tall, but she still managed to make an indelible mark on American pop culture. The tiny actress with a child’s voice terrified hordes as the loony medium Tangina Barrons in all three Poltergeist thrillers, and she also appeared in many other films and shows, including Sixteen Candles, Teen Witch, and Picket Fences. She passed away on Wednesday at 76 years old, having spent the last years of her life helping lead the fight against AIDS/HIV. She made some of the first PSAs about the disease in the 1980s, when barely anyone would discuss it, and admitted to having to “pay a price, career-wise" for her involvement with the gay community and the awareness campaign about the disease. Watch a clip of Zelda speaking about her career, here.
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It’s an art lover’s worst nightmare, and this week it came true: One unlucky woman walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art tripped and fell into Picasso’s The Actor, tearing a six-inch gash in the painting’s right corner. The painting, worth $130 million, will be repaired, but according to experts has now lost half its value. Oops. The Met is apparently not too sour about the whole thing, as they have yet to release the woman’s name to the press for public mockery. (See The Daily Beast’s rundown of the art world’s worst accidents.)
Amid the bundled-up stars and many unsold films, there have been a few success stories, including the creepy claustrophobic thriller, Buried, starring Scar-Jo’s husband Ryan Reynolds as a man buried alive inside a coffin with only a cellphone and a dream. Lionsgate purchased the film for $3 million to $4 million with a strong marketing commitment. Other films, like Ben Affleck’s The Company Men, have gotten strong buzz but no buyer yet—but as the week drags on, perhaps studios will start cutting more deals.
Courtesy of Lionsgate
In a headline that sounds straight out of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Conan O’Brien may be doing business with NBC yet. His production company, Conaco, is on contract to stay with NBC through pilot season, reports THR. And shocker of shockers, NBC has picked up a Conaco project, a comedy about a Supreme Court Justice, entitled, not unironically, Justice. If Conan (who is executive producing the show), ends up making profit next year for NBC or even boosting their primetime line-up, we will all laugh for days.
Paul Drinkwater / NBCU Photo Bank via AP Images
James Taylor, the sweet-voiced folk singer, will headline the Perspective series next season at Carnegie Hall, leading four concerts. One will be with the full band, another a smaller guitar show, a third a “musical cocktail,” and the fourth a celebration of Carnegie’s 120th anniversary. As The NYT reports, Taylor’s vision for the big event sounds wild, as the singer says he will, “look back through the decades and pick out representative moments, marked perhaps with speeches, poetry, ‘political harangues,’ readings, maybe a Houdini-esque escape and, of course, music.”
Scott D. Smith / Retna Ltd.
In a move that sounds like an eerie plea to make his own version of Avatar, George Lucas announced this week that his Industrial Light and Magic studios will roll out a CGI “fairy musical” sometime in the distant future, with "music from a variety of sources” and a script from Elf writer David Berenbaum. As NYM reports, Lucas isn’t saying anything more about the film at this time, but it will be his first musical, and his first non- Star Wars project in quite a while. Somewhere, James Cameron is preparing for a duel.
Arash Radpour / AP Photo
Gifted dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham passed away last July, leaving behind his beloved Cunningham Dance Company to carry on his legacy. Now, the company is completing one final tour without its svengali, hitting 35 cities internationally, kicking off February 12. The company will perform Nearly 90, Cunningham’s final piece before his death, with “new music commissioned from Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, rock band Sonic Youth, and mixed-media composer Takehisa Kosugi.” Get your tickets now, because this is really it.
AP Photo
The tan fameballs of MTV’s surprise hit, Jersey Shore, have demanded $10K an episode (up from only a few hundred dollars), and we’ll be damned, they got it. We thought reality stars were a dime a dozen, but when you have Snooki tweeting from the Olive Garden or The Situation cooking ravioli on national television, you know you have priceless footage on your hands. Worth every penny.
MTV
