During a crackdown over general protests about food prices, the government has arrested or threatened many documentary filmmakers. The government take credit for filmmakers' success abroad - but wants to control them at home. - The New York Times
All that glitters is not pepperoni. It's not just advertisers competing with each other on Instagram, it's TikTok competing with Netflix competing with YouTube competing with LEGO Star Wars competing with ... a new Stranger Things pizza app? - Fast Company
Sure, ABBA are doing it now, but what's next - recreated Liszt concerts? (We'd probably need video for that - but who knows what the future may hold?) - The Observer (UK)
"Let’s start with his Italian (or non-Italian) identity, an Italianness always tilting toward the Other. These are some biographical facts (with which he loved to play): he was born in Cuba, raised in San Remo—an extremely cosmopolitan city at the time—and married an Argentine translator." - LitHub
The boom is for high-end streamers, really, and "has created a scarcity of resources, from crew and soundstages to generators and actors (one agent even told Variety productions were struggling to find Winnebagos to accommodate their clients on set)." - Variety
The problem with the cutesy Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks Nora and Delia Ephron-penned You've Got Mail has always been that the person warning about the Internet is the boring old boyfriend (sorry, Greg Kinnear) instead of new, sexy gazillionaire Tom Hanks - LitHub
His band Aphrodite's Child created "1972’s astonishing double concept album 666, which delivered 77 minutes of wildly experimental music that touched on jazz, proto-metal, prog and stuff that still defies explication." - The Guardian (UK)
True, Woman - Ochre has been recovered and restored. But that's not the issue. "The artwork’s return to view raises the question of to what extent visitors will see the painting, with its grotesque — some say sexist — depiction of the female form, in a different light." - The New York Times
This seems almost hopelessly idealistic. But given a country that seems to be nearing some forms of civil war, "it’s tragic that no politician or party has made either conscription or national service the heart of their agenda." - LitHub
Everybody Dance LA! is "an almost-too-good-to-be-true program founded more than 20 years ago by a grieving mother who believed that things should not remain unequal — and that you can’t be scared when you’re dancing." - Los Angeles Times
Orchestra director Iolanta Pryshlyak, who also coordinates a flow of medical and humanitarian supplies, said, "War makes your heart like a stone. ... But music can soften it again." - The New York Times
A Russian artist now based in London says using clotheslines and clothing - and deliberately framing them in landscapes - may help us "slow down and look at what’s around us." - The Guardian (UK)
"Even at the height of the Cold War, ballet tours were seen as a bridge between the USSR and the West. But after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its foreign tours were cancelled, its stars are no longer invited abroad and choreographers ... have disavowed the company." - Euronews (AFP)
And not just of any town, but of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, where the movie was filmed. "Decades ago, a young Searle played one of the pranksters with a cardboard fin." - NPR
