Creatives Rebuild New York is a new initiative that will provide monthly, no-strings-attached payments for up to 2,400 artists with financial need. A second component of the program will fund and facilitate employment for 300 artists at dozens of small-to-mid-size community arts organizations statewide. - Albany Times-Union
“The relation of Amazon to fiction, to story, is more than one of convenience, going to the core of its corporate identity,” Mark McGurl writes: “the company sees itself in terms of an unfolding epic narrative of astounding achievement it can’t find enough ways to narrate.” n+1
Worldwide box office is $1.05B which makes Sony’s No. 2 film of all time, behind only Spider-Man: Far From Home ($1.13B). No Way Home is also the No. 1 title of the year worldwide — and one of the only movies of the modern era to ever reach $1B without China. - Deadline
To Thomas Mann, the ironist was always serious in play. But does playing seriously mean playing unapologetically, letting oneself be nothing but a player? Or does it mean taking play seriously, as an activity with its own conditions of possibility, among which are both an appreciative audience and a certain pathos of distance? - The Point
What’s become clear is that the skill set that led to big-tent triumph on the app in 2019 and 2020 is, by and large, sized to the medium. Given more room to breathe in other formats, most of TikTok’s superstars are still figuring out how to create beyond the phone. - The New York Times
The U.S. has an incredibly rich heritage of Indigenous languages ranging from Anishinaabe to Cherokee, Navajo to Tewa. But they are almost all endangered, in part because the U.S. spent two hundred years and $2.81 billion trying to destroy them. - The Hill
A band of booksellers moved into the empty barns and transformed the place into a literary lodestone. The village of about 400 became home to more than two dozen bookstores — more shops than cows, its boosters liked to say — and thousands of tourists thronged the winsome streets. - Washington Post
Decades ago, she was already pointing to the startling disconnect between much of the American public and the political and media elites who “invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life” — a disconnect that today is fueling populist politics and partisan divides. - The New York Times
“I feel like I was hired with one clear mandate from the board which, they like to say, is to put the ‘national’ back in the National Gallery and think about how we serve the American people, because our funding in large part comes from the American taxpayers.” - The Guardian
Jackman told the audience "Kathy, when she turned up at work at 12 o'clock could have played any of 8 roles. It happened to be the leading lady. She found out at 12 noon today and at 1 o'clock she had her very first rehearsal as Marion Paroo. This is unprecedented. - Broadway World
Truth be told, Mr. Thiebaud was not really a Pop painter. Detractors sometimes tried to pigeonhole him as one or as an illustrator. In fact, like many of the historical artists he admired, he was a virtuoso of the everyday and its deep, subtle symbolism. - The New York Times
Welcome to element philosophy. Scriptwriters use them to tell their story, composers sprinkle scores full of sleighbells and producers use them to influence us to buy a ticket. “Element placement” dictates our emotional rollercoaster journey... - The Conversation
Plenty of explicitly Christmas-themed songs will have certain musical characteristics, even though they’re always optional. These include a major key, an accessible pitch range and a moderate tempo, making them both easier to sing and easier on the ear. - The Conversation
