"The wildly popular dystopian drama pits the heavily indebted against each other … for an unimaginably large cash prize. But (the) desperate situation is real – (there's) a large and growing number of ordinary South Koreans who find themselves choked by debt." - The Guardian
"Fittingly, the artist (Wolfgang Beltracchi) — infamous for his uncanny ability to mimic the work of others — is making 4,608 versions of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, in a variety of different artistic styles." Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art … - Artnet
Move over, Scott Rudin. As one former staffer put it, "I don't say this lightly. Sharon Waxman is one of the most awful people that I have known in my life." - The Daily Beast
"How is it that a quintessentially democratic cultural activity — buying a ticket and some popcorn and finding a seat in the dark — has been reclassified as a snobbish, specialized fetish?" A.O. Scott has an answer to that question. - The New York Times
"Research has found that 56% of publicly subsidised theatres that had at least one online performance during the first 18 months of the pandemic have none scheduled for the autumn season." - The Guardian
"After months of struggling with an income from 50% houses the Council of Ministers has decided that theatres, cinemas, and cultural venues in the white zones (and currently all of Italy is in that category), can augment their capacity to 100%." - Gramilano (Milan)
The platform’s erasure of certain kinds of work has the net effect of discouraging the making and exhibiting of that work. It erases art that is confrontational, that expresses points of view outside of the mainstream, while promoting art that is decorative and/or unchallenging. - ARTnews
The campaigns can buy licensing packages from music rights organisations like BMI and ASCAP, that give them legal access to millions of songs. Some, including The Rolling Stones, have opted out of those deals - but many artists are taken by surprise when their music becomes a politician's theme song. - BBC
It’s not that social-media platforms aren’t newsworthy—Facebook consistently dominates headlines. But TikTok is all too often regarded as an unserious thing to write or read about. That’s a mistake, and it’s one that Congress is making as well. - The Atlantic
Pauline Kael would be appalled at the spectacle of film writing nowadays. Journalists meet actors and gasp in awe. The wise editor has given up on demanding hacks ask good questions, and just invites actors to interview other actors. - The Spectator
The researchers found that the most popular songs had a high level of harmonic surprise, including the use of relatively rare chords in verses, for example, instead of just sticking with, say, a standard C major chord progression (C, G, F). The best songs follow up that harmonic surprise with a catchy common chorus. - Ars Technica
It happens every few months, somewhere or other, with a reliability approaching a new genre. Someone, usually working for a large media company, devotes considerable resources to excavating an obscure story of relatively low public interest. - The Guardian
This is the puzzle of Princeton: How can an institution designed to serve the aspirations of an elite few authentically wrestle with issues of inequality and racism in society? - The Atlantic
What Trump is soothed by, perhaps, is not the sentimentality of the song alone but a tensile line of steel to which, Betty Buckley thinks, conceivably with undue generosity, he may even be unconsciously sensitive. - The New Yorker
