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
“For better or for worse, film is an incentivized industry. Around 38 states have programs to incentivize film production. We are always at the bottom of that list.” - Seattle Times
Sure, some of that was people searching for news about Facebook's outage. However: "For a whopping five-hours-plus, people read news, according to data Chartbeat gave us this week from its thousands of publisher clients across 60 countries." - Nieman Lab
It helps if you're also the writer-director of the documentary, or the sister or parents of said writer-director. But the intense focus is far from easy. - Los Angeles Times
Australia Ballet conductor-in-training Alexander Rodrigues says conducting an orchestra for ballet is a true challenge, thinking about the music's past, present, and future - "And you’re balancing the music with the dance, the tempos of that." - Sydney Morning Herald
She was reluctant to do Lion King. "I was interested in the avant-garde. I didn’t have any interest in commercial theatre. I hadn’t even seen the animated cartoon, which surprised Tom Schumacher." But then ... the animals called. - Irish Times
Gurnah, who is from Tanzania and lives in Britain, said, "People don't come with nothing, they come with their youth, their energy, their potential. ... Just to stay on the idea 'they are there, they are coming to steal something of our prosperity' is inhumane." - Le Figaro
The Harder They Fall is "righteous and rowdy" - and has a Black British musician director who says that his music and films come from the same place: "When I’m writing and these words are coming out, so are melodies and song and score." - The Guardian (UK)
Claire Lilley, who placed 18 sculptures for the London Frieze Sculpture show this year: "I love how we as humans occupy the same space as sculpture. I’ve seen people press their entire bodies against sculptures and hug them." - The New York Times
That seems wild, since this year's version was recent - and grim. "The Oscars’ class of 2020 included plenty of good films ... seen only on small screens, unleashed upon an isolated and atomized populace, in the middle of a brutal pandemic winter." - Vulture
The activist artist says she accepted a position at Harvard after telling the regime, "Look, you want me to leave, well now you have an opportunity. ... But I’ll leave on the condition that you release , and I handed a list of several people." - Hyperallergic
