浮生略记

20 movies which make you wish you'd gone to college

Film critic Jo Berry didn't go to university (which may have been wise in the current climate), but here are her choice of 20 films which make her realise that she just may have missed out on a true experience....

The not-so-big four

Apr 8th 2009 | LOS ANGELES
From The Economist print edition

Broadcast television is declining at an accelerating rate

“IT’S amazing how little has changed around here,” says a character in the final episode of “E.R.”, which aired in America on April 2nd. Indeed, it seemed like old times for the hospital drama: 16m people tuned in, not many fewer than it drew a decade ago. But the impression of good times is no more real than a stage set. For programmes like “E.R.”, and for broadcast television itself, much is changing.


The recession has been cruel to a business that depends almost entirely on advertising. Local television stations, many of them owned by or affiliated with national broadcasters, have seen advertising revenue fall by as much as 40% as car dealers and other retailers cut back. Later this month the national networks will test the market for advance advertising. It should prove better than the local market, but still difficult. And this painful cyclical problem coincides with a bigger, structural one: the audience for the “big four” broadcast networks is eroding.  

It is not that people are watching less television. In the last quarter of 2008 the average American took in 151 hours per month, an all-time record, according to Nielsen, a market-research firm. The trouble is the growth of choice. More than 80% of American households now get their television via satellite or cable. To them, the broadcast channels are just items on a menu containing hundreds of dishes.


The networks can still produce hits. “American Idol” and “CSI”, respectively an amateur singing competition and a forensic-science drama, routinely attract more than 20m viewers—three times as many as the most successful cable shows. But occasional triumphs do not add up to a sustainable business model. 

Chris Silbermann, president of International Creative Management, a talent agency, says the big change is that mediocre television now struggles to attract a healthy audience. The ratings seem to back him up. Between the first 12 weeks of 2005 and the first 12 weeks of this year, the audience for the top-rated broadcast show (often “American Idol”) fell by 9%. But the number watching the tenth most popular show was down by 17%, and the audience for the 20th in the list was 18% smaller.

So far, the big broadcast networks have been able to persuade advertisers to spend more for each eyeball they reach. Although they can no longer round up huge audiences, they are still the best way of reaching very large ones. And advertisers tend to see broadcast television, with its consistently wholesome quality, as a safe place to promote their products. Cable is still viewed as a rather wild frontier populated by wrestlers and televangelists.

Yet this, too, is changing. Last year’s Emmy awards were dominated by cable shows. “Mad Men”, which is set in an advertising agency, was voted best drama. It was the first time the award had gone to a show on basic cable (it is shown on the AMC channel) as opposed to a premium network, such as HBO. Such acclaim changes attitudes to cable generally. Bruce Rosenblum, the head of the television group at Warner Bros, reckons the growing profile of original cable shows may gradually erode the huge premium that advertisers will pay for broadcast.

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13446620  

The End Of ‘Wife Wear’

PARIS — The establishment rules of what to wear were bent — and then broken — when female politicians stepped out in pants or when a rebellious Princess Diana refused to flatten her hairdo with a hat. So why did Michelle Obama’s colorful and individual wardrobe for her European visit create such amazement and excitement?

It is because the clothes she chose put an end to that most obnoxious of fashion non-statements: wife wear.

“Wives wear pink” was once a mantra for all those dutiful spouses standing by their men, whether as an appendix to a new role for the husband or as a unwilling partner to a confession of marital infidelity.

Political wives in particular have had their parameters drawn around a smart suit and a tailored coat, a hat as an optional extra and nylons de rigeur (meaning rigorously applied).

Although Nancy Reagan famously wore red and Barbara Bush chose royal blue, the spirit has been the same since Jacqueline Kennedy set the gold standard of tailored coat and pillbox hat in 1961. That first lady may have looked her most glamorous in a silk headscarf, a pair of Capri pants, bare legs and ballerinas — but in public she was obliged to look “appropriate.”

The ideological gulf between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in last year’s presidential election was reflected in their clothes: the trouser suit for the feminist Democrat; the suit, but mismatched for modernity, for the Republican vice-presidential hopeful.

At that point, no one looked much at Michelle Obama’s choice of clothes or read into it any message. Right up to that crowning moment of delirious joy on election night, when Mrs. Obama took to the stage with her family in a bright dress, half-covered with a cardigan, there were no expectations of her as a fashion icon.

But with that woman-friendly “cardy,” turning her broad back on the mannish jacket, the future first lady was re-defining what was appropriate for the White House, for Buckingham Palace and for the daunting task of being photographed beside the former model and French presidential wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Whereas Mrs. Obama implied that the knit she pulled on over a scarlet and black Narciso Rodriguez dress in Chicago was merely to dispel the chill, her London appearances suggest otherwise. From a black cardigan with the British prime minister at 10 Downing Street to a sparkly knit from the sportswear brand J. Crew with his wife, the message was clear: not just that a White House wardrobe need not be expensive, but that it does not have to be formal. Only a string of pearls links Mrs. Obama with any kind of historic dressing up.

The cardigan — whether it was in black from the niche designer Azzedine Alaïa or in a bold plaid pattern from the Japanese Junya Watanabe — is a signal that powerful women no longer need to prove their strength by dressing shoulder to padded shoulder with men. The only jacket that the first lady wore in Europe was taut, short and again from Alaïa.

For Mrs. Obama has broken with another cherished rule: that her wardrobe has to wave the national flag. Unlike Jacqueline Kennedy, who asked her sister Lee Radziwill to smuggle Givenchy gowns to New York and who had her milliner copy European styles, the New First Lady has embraced diversity. Her wardrobe has focused on Asian designers — often first-generation Americans — rather than the well-known names.

Thakoon Panichgul’s scarlet and black dress hit the headlines at the Democratic convention and the Thailand-born designer scored again in Strasbourg with the colorful coat and bow-necked dress that stood up defiantly against Mrs. Bruni-Sarkozy’s prim Dior outfit.

Jason Wu, 26, born in Taiwan, was catapulted to fame when his one-shoulder white gown, embellished with organza flowers, was worn by the first lady at the inaugural balls.

Where in the mix are Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein — those pillars of American fashion, or Donna Karan, its female flag-waver? Only Michael Kors scored for the official first lady photograph, which caused controversy over Mrs. Obama’s bared arms (although Jacqueline Kennedy wore a similar dress).

Unlike Mrs. Sarkozy, whose natural style is streamlined and sporty but whose public wardrobe is built on France’s iconic fashion names, Mrs. Obama has eschewed the famous worldwide brands. Mr. Alaïa, who created the black dress with frothy frills that Mrs. Obama wore on Friday in Baden-Baden, is the ultimate insider’s designer. Etro and Moschino, the Italian labels that provided tops to go with pants, are also outside fashion’s “magic circle” of Armani, Gucci, Prada and Versace.

It is no secret where Mrs. Obama finds her wardrobe: via the Chicago boutique Ikram. But although she exudes pride both in being the wife of the first African-American president and as a mother of two girls, the only fashion message she seems eager to convey is that she is her own woman.

Hats off (especially pill boxes and “My Fair Lady” millinery) to women who fought for equality by grabbing pantsuits from their male equals. But the first lady is making her own contribution to fashion history by dressing as a woman of strong character — rather than as a presidential wife.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/fashion/07iht-ffirst.html?hpw