Music exec blasts Academy's Grammy choices
NEW YORK, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. music executive Steve Stoute took out a full-page advertisement in Sunday's New York Times blasting Grammy Awards voters for their choices this year.
The prizes honoring the previous year's best in music were handed out Feb. 13 in Los Angeles by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
The Hollywood Reporter said Stoute's ad also singled out the Academy's president, Neil Portnow, for offering an "awards show (that) has become a series of hypocrisies and contradictions."
"Over the course of my 20-year history as an executive in the music business and as the owner of a firm that specializes in in-culture advertising, I have come to the conclusion that the Grammy Awards have clearly lost touch with contemporary popular culture," Stoute, chief executive officer of marketing company Translation, said in the ad.
"My being a music fan has left me with an even greater and deeper sense of dismay -- so much so that I feel compelled to write this letter. Where I think that the Grammys fail stems from two key sources: (1) over-zealousness to produce a popular show that is at odds with its own system of voting and (2) fundamental disrespect of cultural shifts as being viable and artistic."
In particular, Stoute noted how Eminem, Justin Bieber and Kanye West lost in some of the major Grammy categories for which they were nominated.
"We must acknowledge the massive cultural impact of Eminem and Kanye West and how their music is shaping, influencing and defining the voice of a generation," Stoute wrote. "How is it that Justin Bieber, an artist that defines what it means to be a modern artist, did not win Best New Artist?"
The Hollywood Reporter said when it went to press, NARAS had not publicly commented on Stoute's ad.
Gondry named Cannes jury head
CANNES, France, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Film director Michel Gondry is to head up the short film and Cinefondation jury of France's 64th Festival de Cannes, organizers said.
Previous heads of this jury include Atom Egoyan, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Martin Scorsese and John Boorman.
Gondry has helmed seven feature films including "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "The Science of Sleep," "Be Kind, Rewind" and "The Green Hornet," as well as several shorts and more than 70 music videos.
Organizers said in a posting on the festival's Web site Gondry, who is also a musician, "has created an incredibly original body of work colored with dream-scape qualities and Utopian ideals."
"A master craftsman, a modern-day Melies, he is a cinemagician who constantly reinvents the technical effects and enchantments of the medium of film," the posting said.
At Cannes, Gondry, alongside his fellow jury members, will award the three Cinefondation prizes May 20 and the Palme d'Or for the best short film at the closing ceremony May 22.
Monkees announce 10-date concert tour
LONDON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Three of the four original members of the 1960s pop band The Monkees are to tour the United Kingdom together, it has been announced.
Starring Peter Tork, Davey Jones and Micky Dolenz, the shows are being planned in honor of the group's 45th anniversary.
The fourth original member, Mike Nesmith, who went on to record a series of country albums, is not touring with the group, Britain's Mirror newspaper reported.
The Guardian said the 10-date Monkees tour is to begin May 12 at the Liverpool Echo Arena.
The band is known for its hits "Daydream Believer," "I'm a Believer" and "Last Train to Clarksville," as well as its eponymous sitcom, which ran from 1966 to 1968.
Painting by alleged Ripper up for sale
LONDON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- A painting by Walter Sickert, the man U.S. mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell has identified as Victorian-era serial killer Jack the Ripper, is up for sale.
Numerous brutal slayings in London in the late 1800s were attributed to the shadowy figure known as Jack the Ripper, whose identity has never been proven.
Cornwell investigated the cold case and identified Sickert as the murderer in her controversial 2002 book "Portrait of a Killer -- Jack the Ripper: Case Closed."
Sickert's "The Blind Sea Captain," which was last on exhibition 80 years ago, is expected to fetch an estimated $97,000 at the 20th Century British Art Sale in London March 9, The Daily Telegraph said Monday.
The painting had been in a private collection for decades until a few months ago.
Sickert expert Wendy Baron told the newspaper she was surprised to find a work by the artist she hadn't seen before.
Baron said the artist has created in "Captain" "an imaginary glimpse into the lives of a man broken by blindness who, but for the devotion of his old mother or wife, would be destined for the workhouse."
