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12-21-2004 Articles of Interest "Rightly so, with the 400 films that were rated by the MTRCB, only 50 were local productions. A good quality local movie would need a budget of P15-20 million (roughly US$268,000 to US$357,000 at US$1=P56). Hollywood films’ top 10 for 2004 have a production budget of US$50-150 million, grossing as much as US$120-400 million per film. In 2002, Hollywood movies world market share amounted to $63 billion or 68.7% of the total. "The music industry could not be far from this debacle. The Philippine music market is worth about US$30 million a year. This figure includes productions of local and foreign artists. Globally, as of 2002, 75% or over $32 billion of the global music market is controlled by five companies. The consolidation process continues this year as two pairs of companies announced merger plans. If both mergers go through, three companies will control 75% of the global market." Go to story TIMSS 2003 (downloadable PDF) Philippine achievement scores and rank: Math Grade 8: 378, fifth to the last (int’l. ave. 467) Math Grade 4: 358, third to the last (int’l. ave. 495) Science Grade 8: 377, fourth to the last (int’l. ave. 474) Science Grade 4: 332, third to the last (int’l. ave 489) "Learning to live should also mean that you learn to die, that you assume absolute mortality as the basis, and learn to accept it, without expectation of salvation, hope for recovery, or delivery for yourself or for another. The classical philosophical exhortation since Plato: to philosophise is to learn to die..."--Jacques Derrida, Go to story and here "Soon, I will be dead. I have a recalcitrant tumour in the neck, and it's a real pain. It's given me plenty of time to prepare for my death, and now it's finally going for the kill. I am completely powerless in the face of it. My only option is to flee to my mind, where I have so, so much to say and tell... but I have no one to tell it to. This is the loneliness of death." Go to story "A group of psychologists claim a test can measure prejudices we harbor without even knowing it. Their critics say they are politicizing psychology." Go to story "Michelangelo was attacked for his unsentimental, contorted portrayals of the Virgin Mary. But his critics missed a crucial clue, says James Hall." Go to story "...for many pseudo-scholars, art is merely an innocuous container into which their political machinations can be poured. Their criticism is merely an "index prohibitrum of political correctness." i The minds and personalities of the masters are routinely subjected to low grade psychoanalysis, which often consists of attempts to darken the motives and characters of some of the most important achievers in the history of western civilization. This charade is certainly offensive, but far worse is the way in which our eyes are distracted from the beauty and pleasure that can be obtained from simply gazing at art." Go to story "This celebration of the ordinary is often promoted as a democratic, anti-elitist affirmation of the people. In fact, what it reveals is the patronising assumptions of an elite that turns its own inability to construct a meaningful sense of cultural authority into a virtue. Not surprisingly, this sentiment is particularly conspicuous in the media, where programmers possess formidable resources for turning the ordinary into an entertainment format. But the cultural influences that have shaped the emergence of reality TV are not confined to the media. Similar influences are at work in the arts, education, academia and especially in the sphere of politics." Go to story "In the two hundred years since industrialisation – a geological millisecond – we’ve increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere by 35 per cent; a third of that has appeared in the last four decades. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, such as methane, trap heat that would otherwise radiate into space. As greenhouse gas levels rise, the lower atmosphere heats up and the climate changes, sometimes in unexpected ways." Go to story "This movie version of the play will just about do. It has most of the virtues and most of the faults endemic to such ventures, but it exposes the latter less grossly than some. As Shylock Pacino succeeds as any good, experienced actor should, and Jeremy Irons is appallingly sad as Antonio, just as he promises to be in the opening line of the play. He cannot understand why he is so sad but the film all too insistently offers a complete explanation. Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio shows us why the Christians in this play are, on the whole, such an unlikeable lot. Lynn Collins as Portia looks as good as she ought to, and redeems some tiresome moments in the early scenes by being startlingly good and grave in the trial scene. Since the piece is set in Venice there is a lot of photography, and some of the results are indeed beautiful. The movie runs for 131 minutes and feels longer, partly no doubt because quite often nothing strictly relevant is actually happening – and certainly not because it includes boring quantities of Shakespeare’s text." Go to story "Few films in recent times have generated so much pre-release ballyhoo as Oliver Stone’s Alexander. This was to be expected, as the project was the conjunction of two factors that made it a publicist’s dream: one of filmdom’s most talented and controversial directors had turned his attention to the career of an ancient king who is arguably the most famous secular figure in history But what would the director of previous films fraught with controversy and conspiracy do with the enigma of Alexander’s character and aims?" Go to story (PDF) "Will Master Chief Ever Frag Moby Dick?" Go to story
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