Rethink.

Outgoing Academy President Sid Ganis made a surprise announcement Wednesday morning in Beverly Hills, Calif. As most media outlets reported, the number of nominees for the Best Picture category will be doubled to 10 at the 82nd Academy Awards, which will be presented on March 7, 2010. At the beginning of the press conference, Ganis said, "This morning's event is about the Academy Awards, but it may not be exactly what you think it is. “We'll be casting our net wider and in casting that net wider who knows what will turn up,” he said, adding that a documentary, animated or foreign language film could be included in the larger field. "And what do you know, maybe even a comedy in that group of 10," Ganis added sardonically. The reason for the change is somewhat retrospective and retroactive. For nine years there were 10 nominees; the 16th Academy Awards (1943) was the last year to include a field of that size; “Casablanca” was named Best Picture. In 1931/32, the...

Looking out the window of the tour, I thought to myself, "Where am I? What is this place?" That was last Tuesday afternoon, June 16th. Today, I'm still asking that same question to myself - if only to a smaller extent. I am spending the summer as a design editor at the Chautauqua Institution's daily newspaper, the Chautauquan Daily . I'll be here at this utopia-like place until the end of August. That may answer the first question I asked myself, but there's still the second... Trying to describe the Institution is very hard. Over dinner Tuesday night, Institution president Tom Becker gave us a better idea of the place. It's like chocolate in that it's incomparable to anything else, he said. For me, Chautauqua is like many things: a resort, a summer home or lake house, a small college town, Disney World and, in a sense, Monaco. On Monday, resident archivist and historian Jon Schmitz stopped by the newsroom and helped describe the Institution anecdo...

Left my home in Toledo for a cottage along Chautauqua Lake in western New York. It's a four-hour drive - essentially like driving to Chicago. What waits for me there is a design internship at the Institution's daily newspaper. I'll give you the details some time tomorrow. Off to New York I go until the end of August!

As promised in Monday's post , here are the percentage breakdown figures for the public voting on the "Britain's Got Talent" finale , in order of highest percentage: Act % of vote in SF Diversity 24.9% Susan Boyle 20.2% Julian Smith 16.4% Stavros Flatley 16.3% Aidan Davis 6.5% Hollie Steel 3.9% Shaheen Jafargholi 3.8% Flawless 3.6% Shaun Smith 3.4% 2 Grand 1% It looks like Susan Boyle did not lose by too much . Doing a simple calculation, based on the reported approximately 4 million votes, Diversity received around 996,000 votes; Ms. Boyle received around 808,000 - a difference of 188,000 votes . The difference between Julian Smith and Stavros Flatley, however, is VERY CLOSE : approximately 4,000 votes , according to my estimates. Well,...

Saturday evening was full of "Talent" for all of Britain. And it appears the country was all tuning in to find out which act would walk away 100,000 pounds (approx. $159,000) richer and get a spot to perform for Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Variety Performance show in December. A remarkably large 19.19 million viewers tuned in to the finale, making it the most successful TV show in the country for five years, according to the show's official Web site. More than 71 percent of people with a TV on had it tuned to "Talent." Granted, 19.19 million viewers seems average compared to the American standard. The final night of "American Idol" garnered more than 23 million viewers ( source ), which was considered low. Of course, one must also consider the size of the United Kingdom, which has a population more than five times smaller than the United States ( source ). Here are a few more interesting facts from the show's site: • That many people haven...