"The association has long been considered corrupt by critics and other members of the press, but that’s not what people are really mad about. The HFPA now faces the most serious crisis in its 77-year history because a bunch of separate Hollywood factions led by a lightning brigade of entertainment publicists finally decided to call out the organization they’ve...
"Dialing for dollars may be a skill that some sellers of products and services profitably employ. But when it comes to deepening a level of patron loyalty that would get a major cultural institution out of a pandemically induced shutdown, it’s done more harm than good." - David Rohde
After wresting control of IMG Artists in an internal power struggle, Russian-born tycoon Alexander Shustorovich has kept the agency alive through the pandemic to become the world’s largest manager of classical music talent. - Billboard
Christopher Marinello spends his life tracking stolen masterpieces. "I get a huge amount of tips, usually on WhatsApp. ... Sometimes they are from informants I work with, but I have to sift through a lot of garbage. I once had a guy tell me the original Mona Lisa in the Louvre was a fake, and that he had the...
"Spinning continuously at a speed of 60 revolutions per minute, or once per second, the drum measured 7 inches in diameter, and 11 inches in length. Its surface was etched with 5,400 Chinese characters, letters of the English alphabet, punctuation marks, numerals, and a handful of other symbols. How was the typist in the film able to pull off such a...
Brexit regulations are not great for the LSO, which had 99 tour dates booked in Europe before the pandemic canceled them all. "It’s all so obviously ludicrous, even in the area of haulage regulations. Touring concerts have to be planned in a different way – the truck has to return to England after two venues – we cannot go...
Raven Leilani for Luster, her debut novel (which was also awarded the admiration of former President Barack Obama, but that's a different kind of prize). - LitHub
The woman who entered "jambusters" in the (well, her) dictionary read popular novels and listened to parliamentary debates to find the most Canadian English in the country. "To hunt for Canadian entries and the distinct Canadian meanings of words, Ms. Barber partly relied on a technique long used by Oxford. She assembled a small army of freelance 'readers,' who...
That is, the '20s that were a century ago. Princess Mysteria's columns in The Defender "presented a stark contrast with other advice writing of the time, and not only because white advice columnists tended to toe a racist line when it came to matters of segregation and racial hierarchy, and rarely printed letters from Black correspondents. The columnist believed...
And that seems like something to celebrate, and take advantage of, to a lot of museum directors. "We know that all museums’ audiences will be more local, which offers a great opportunity for arts and culture to sit at the heart of their communities, especially where those communities have experienced such hardship over the past year." - The Observer...
You might this it's Nintendo - the soundtracks to Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong sure can linger in one's brain - but instead it's Roblox, and the music (which took off in popularity with the addition of, you guessed it, TikTok), created the genre robloxcore. "Mostly made by young teenagers, it’s a strain of chaotic, profanity-laden rap that’s...
It's rare - incredibly rare - for a Hollywood actor to turn down Marvel or DC. But Blunt said recently, "I don’t know if superheroes are for me. They’re not up my alley. I think it’s been exhausted. We are inundated. It’s not that it’s only the movies, it’s all the TV shows as well." It's possible that she...
As speculative fiction from African writers starts to gain mainstream press attention in the U.S. and U.K., readers might wonder where to start. Short story anthologies? A trilogy about an alien invasion of Lagos? (Yes, definitely.) But also, says writer Lavie Tidhar, "African literature is huge and diverse — from the Francophone works of West Africa to the Arabic...
They evaporated in the span of three years. One of those was an extremely weird year, to be sure, but three years. "AT&T found itself stretched financially as it simultaneously tried to build a nationwide 5G telephone network while ramping up spending for its year-old streaming service, HBO Max. The proposed deal with Discovery comes just three months after AT&T...
If you could see a dance performance inside the theatre (with other masked, socially distanced audience members), outside (same, but less distance), or via your Wi-Fi at home, which would you choose? And how would they stack up? (Hint: The outdoors might be the way to go, at least in the summer.) - The New York Times
