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‘Casablanca’ piano auctioned for $600,000, less than expected – UPI.com
NEW YORK, Dec. 15 (UPI) — A piano briefly seen in 1942′s “Casablanca” sold at auction for $602,500, about half of the highest estimates for the item, New York’s Sotheby’s said.
The winning bidder, whose name was not reported, bid $500,000 on the item Friday, though commissions added $102,000 to the total, The New York Times reported. Sotheby’s had estimated the piano would sell for between $800,000 and $1.2 million.
The piano was one of two used in “Casablanca,” and was small, with 58 keys, 30 fewer than a conventional piano.
It was used in a flashback scene at a Paris cafe named “La Belle Aurore.” The piano was on camera for 1 minute and 10 seconds, and actor Dooley Wilson, who played Sam in the classic film, mimicked playing it while singing in the film, the Times reported.
Sotheby’s last auctioned the piano in 1988 for $155,000, the second-highest price for Hollywood memorabilia at the time, the newspaper said.
via ‘Casablanca’ piano auctioned for $600,000, less than expected – UPI.com.
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How to Cope With a Terrible Review – Businessweek
Critics’ latest frosted-tipped punching bag: celebrity chef and television host Guy Fieri.
Sure, the New York Times suggested that “everything at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar is inedible,” but Fieri is by no means alone. This year, for example, Eddie Murphy’s A Thousand Words (“a tired, formulaic comedy,” as one reviewer called it) scored 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and Rolling Stone denounced Lana Del Rey as “just another aspiring singer who wasn’t ready to make an album yet” (and that’s nicer than some critiques on Twitter following her flawed performance on Saturday Night Live).
Might today’s reflexive culture—which thrives on reviewing, liking, commenting, and sharing, often anonymously—have made critics more hostile? What superhuman public figure hasn’t at some point, however brief, been the object of scorn recently (besides Ryan Gosling)?
The bright side is that making a comeback, while tough, is not impossible—consider how far Ben Affleck (receiving critical acclaim for directing Argo and The Town) has progressed since his turn in the cringe-inducing Gigli. Sometimes there’s nowhere to go but up. Here are some tips on how to deal with a bad review.
via How to Cope With a Terrible Review – Businessweek.
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How This Guy Lied His Way Into MSNBC, ABC News, The New York Times and More – Forbes
Ryan Holiday could be called an “expert.” As head of marketing for American Apparel, an online strategist for Tucker Max, and self-styled “media manipulator,” he can talk social media and modern advertising with the best of them – he’s done so both online and in print on countless occasions. He is not an expert in barefoot running, investing, vinyl records, or insomnia. But he is a liar. With a little creative use of the internet, he’s been quoted in news sources from small blogs to the most reputable outlets in the country talking about all of those things.
Holiday, 25 years old and based in New Orleans, mostly wanted to see if it could be done. He had been getting blogs to write what he wanted for years, and had developed a sense of how stories were put together in the internet age. He thought he could push the envelope a bit further.
“I knew that bloggers would print anything, so I thought, what if, as an experiment, I tried to prove that they will literally print anything?” he says. “Instead of trying to get press to benefit myself, I just wanted to get any press for any reason as a joke.”
He used Help a Reporter Out HARO, a free service that puts sources in touch with reporters. Basically, a reporter sends a query, and a slew of people wanting to comment on the story email back. He decided to respond to each and every query he got, whether or not he knew anything about the topic. He didn’t even do it himself — he enlisted an assistant to use his name in order to field as many requests as humanly possible.
via How This Guy Lied His Way Into MSNBC, ABC News, The New York Times and More – Forbes.
Strange Random Lie Quote:
“The truth is messy. It’s raw and uncomfortable. You can’t blame people for preferring lies.” ― Holly Black, Red Glove
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Sotheby’s sale sets Miro record, others disappoint | Reuters
Reuters – Sotheby’s set a new auction record for Spanish artist Joan Miro on Tuesday when his 1927 painting “Peinture (Etoile Bleue)” fetched 23.6 million pounds ($36.9 million), but elsewhere the sale failed to meet expectations.
Overall, the auctioneer raised 75.0 million pounds ($117.7 million) at its impressionist and modern art evening sale in London, just beating the low estimate of 73 million pounds but falling short when buyer’s premium is taken into account.
The auction was the first in a busy season of sales of fine art in London which, if the highest expectations are met, could raise up to $1 billion.But it painted an uncertain picture, with the New York Times describing proceedings on the night as “lackluster” and “bumpy.”
Confidence in the art market has been sky high in 2012 despite broader economic concerns, with emerging collectors from Russia, China and the Middle East helping push values to record highs as they seek to snap up the most coveted works.
On offer at Sotheby’s was one of Miro’s most important paintings, and the previous auction record for the artist of 16.8 million pounds was comfortably eclipsed.
“His works from this period are supremely modern, timeless and of great universal appeal, making this precisely the type of painting that today’s international collectors are prepared to lock horns over, as they did this evening,” said Helena Newman, head of Sotheby’s impressionist and modern art in Europe.
via Sotheby’s sale sets Miro record, others disappoint | Reuters.
Strange Random Auction Quote:
“I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I’m going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.” – James Lee Burke
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- Depardieu’s Miro up for sale (reuters.com)
- Sotheby’s Canadian art auction sets records (cbc.ca)
- ‘The Scream’ sells for record $120 million (dawn.com)
- Rare Working Apple-1 Computer Sells for Record $374,500 (pcworld.com)
- Art of Seduction (thisislondon.co.uk)
- Munch’s “The Scream” Sells for $107M at Sotheby’s, $119.9M with commission, Setting A World Record (elliottingotham.wordpress.com)
- Francis Bacon portrait study to fetch £5-7 million (telegraph.co.uk)
- Lichtenstein and Bacon Paintings Top Sotheby’s Sale (nytimes.com)
‘Striking’ number of Kiwis walk around barefoot – NY Times | NATIONAL News
New Zealand newspapers are “huge”, the Maori language is “everywhere”, and a disconcerting number of Kiwis walk around without shoes on, a New York Times travel writer says.
Arriving in New Zealand as an American for the first time is a “rather smooth experience”, but there were still a number of things about our country which took Seth Kugel by surprise.
“Kiwi society functions in a way both recognisable and reassuring to Americans: everyone speaks English, people shake hands when they meet, and they eat bacon and eggs for breakfast,” he says in Notes From a New Zealand Newbie.
“Still, another country is another country, and since it is my first visit here, I decided to jot down all the reminders that I wasn’t in Kansas (or New York or California) anymore.”
Kugel, who writes a weekly travel column for the Times as the ‘Frugal Traveller’, says people in New Zealand like walking around without shoes – at supermarkets, on streets, “all over”.
“It’s not everyone, but it’s a significant enough minority to be quite striking and a bit disconcerting. Sure, city sidewalks are clean. But they’re still city sidewalks.”
Prior to coming Downunder, Kugel had only heard of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and was consequently “misled by the English-sounding names”.
But the Maori language is in fact everywhere, he tells readers.
“I was unprepared for the hundreds of towns with Maori names: Rotorua, Whanganui and Whangarei, for example, along with plenty of street and river names.
“Certain words are used frequently, even by those with no Maori ancestry.”Pakeha”, for example, is a common word for people of European origin – used by both Maori and European New Zealanders.”
via ‘Striking’ number of Kiwis walk around barefoot – NY Times | NATIONAL News.
Strange Random New Zealand Quote:
“Terrible tragedy of the south seas. Three million people trapped alive.” – Thomas Jefferson Scott
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- All action in the Kiwi film industry | BUSINESS News (exitbusiness.wordpress.com)
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- Online Maori Dictionary (extracurly.wordpress.com)
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