The Man with the Golden...Bookbag?
Rare Hamlet goes on the block
Lincoln Center to get "architectural striptease"
CBC News Online with files from the Arts Report
The Man with the Golden...Bookbag?
LONDON - The publisher of Ian Fleming's original James Bond series has commissioned two "prequel" books about the U.K.'s most celebrated spy -- before the vodka martinis, the Honey Ryders and the gadget-filled Aston Martins.
Written by actor and novelist Charlie Higson, the two new books will tell the story of 13-year-old James and his escapades while attending Eton College, the alma mater of Fleming, George Orwell, members of the Royal Family and 19 British prime ministers.
With a number of adult thrillers, screenplays and TV shows on his resumé, Higson called the offer by Penguin Books "too good an opportunity to turn down."
"I've grown up with Bond, and while I've had to finally accept that I'll never play him in the films, writing about him is even more exciting," he told the Independent newspaper.
In the first book, set in the 1930s, the young Bond travels to a remote Scottish castle where a wealthy American is conducting "some very disturbing experiments." Scheduled for publication March 2005, the work will also describe Bond's struggle with the death of his parents in a skiing accident, an event often cited as the motivation behind his later choice to become a spy.
Rare Hamlet goes on the block
BOSTON - A rare, almost 400-year-old edition of William Shakespeare's Hamlet will be auctioned at Christie's in New York Wednesday.
One of only 19 copies of the printing known to exist, the edition is the only one remaining in private hands -- those of renowned book collector and literary scholar Mary Hyde, Viscountess Eccles.
While other works from Lady Eccles's collection -- including early editions of King Lear, Richard II and Macbeth -- are also going to auction, the condition and rarity of the Hamlet manuscript is expected to attract the most attention. It is a second edition of the play and the last edition printed during Shakespeare's lifetime.
Presale estimates have the play fetching up to $2 million US. However, according to auction officials, passionate buyers could inflate that number.
Francis Wahlgren, a senior vice-president of printed books and manuscripts at Christie's, noted that in 2001, a collection of plays published soon after Shakespeare's death fetched $6.2 million US -- almost $4 million more than the estimate -- because of passionate bidders.
"This is much rarer," he told The Associated Press. "People realize they're not going to see this at auction again. This is a unique opportunity."
Lady Eccles, best known for her extensive Samuel Johnson collection, died last August at the age of 91. Her Johnson collection and many other books were pledged to institutions, including Harvard University. The rest is being auctioned Wednesday, with a portion of the proceeds intended for her many charitable interests.
Lincoln Center to get "architectural striptease"
NEW YORK - Officials at New York's largest performing arts mecca unveiled plans to strip away its "opaque walls" and "amplify" its best features.
At a news conference Tuesday, architect Elizabeth Diller used computer animation to give a virtual tour of what the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will look like following a $325-million US renovation and "architectural striptease," set to begin in 2006.
Now that the centre has gentrified its once-rough neighborhood -- which served as the actual setting for the musical West Side Story -- it no longer needs the original fortress-like façades along West 65th Street, officials said. The block will instead become a glassed-in "front door" for the famed Julliard School of Music and other performance facilities.
The objective is to "amplify" the centre's best features and "fulfill its unrealized potential," said Diller, an architectural professor and a partner in Diller Scofidio and Renfro, the firm chosen to lead the project.
"We wanted to make Lincoln Center more Lincoln Center than Lincoln Center," she said of the complex, also home to the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet.
The design will also include a new film centre with two theatres, a number of new façades, a redesign of an open-air plaza and an overall transformation of the West 65th Street block into a "Street of the Arts" with wider sidewalks and a sleek, glass-walled footbridge.
"Behind the opaque walls of 65th Street we have 5,000 artists, students, workers toiling every day on 13 stages, 81 rehearsal rooms, 80 practice rooms, 13 dance studios, offering 3,500 programs a year for 1.2 million people," said Rebecca Robertson, executive director of the Lincoln Center.
"For pedestrians during the day it's uncomfortable. At night, it's chaos, as 4,000 pedestrians want to cross the street, darting in and out between cars, trying to get to the curtains on time," Robertson said.
Officials said the Lincoln Center contributes $1 billion US annually to New York's economy.
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