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COVID Shutdown Has Wiped Out Entry-Level Hollywood

"While the pandemic overturned the lives of workers industrywide, those just beginning to establish their careers in an industry that is notoriously difficult to break into were disproportionately impacted. The production shutdowns in L.A. and New York eradicated on-set gigs that PAs and extras rely upon, while furloughs and layoffs at agencies decimated entry-level office jobs." - The Hollywood...

Advertisers: If We Can’t Put Commercials On Netflix And Amazon Prime, We’ll Just Have To Make Our Own Movies

"With more people home and glued to their streaming services, many of which don't allow advertising, companies are finding they need to be creative about the ways they get in front of audiences no longer seeing 30-second commercials. More are turning to traditional Hollywood production companies like Imagine to partner on feature films like The Day Sports Stood Still,...

How Our Stories Frame Our Issues

"Why should storytelling matter so much? Because it conditions us to respond to society. Artists teach us what to take notice of and what to turn away from, whom to empathize with and whom to tune out. Plato thought this power too consequential to be entrusted to poets, whom he would ban from his ideal republic, leaving the politics...

The Best Character Actors In The Business (Well, Most Of Them)

" the results of an industrywide survey we conducted to answer one simple question: who are the most memorable character actors working today? To find out, we polled nearly 60 directors, showrunners, casting directors, and critics — and when we tallied the results, 32 names had emerged from a field of more than 300 suggestions." (The only problem: anyone...

Actors’ Equity Faces Rebellion Of Its Own Members Over COVID Restrictions

"Quietly simmering frustrations erupted publicly last week, when more than 2,500 union members signed a letter, circulated by a Broadway performer and signed by Tony winners and Tony nominees, plaintively asking, 'When are we going to talk about the details of getting back to work?'" - The New York Times

Paris Review Names New Editor (The Second Emily In A Row)

The magazine, co-founded and long run by the late George Plimpton, "has a new editor, only the sixth since being founded in 1953, but its third since 2017. Emily Stokes, currently a senior editor at The New Yorker, succeeds Emily Nemens, who announced earlier this month that she was leaving to work on a new book." - AP

Mills College Will Shut Itself Down

The 169-year-old liberal arts college in Oakland, which has left an extraordinary legacy in American arts (especially contemporary classical music), is one of the few all-female undergraduate schools left in the U.S. But the pandemic has only intensified longstanding declines in Mills's enrollment and financial health, and administrators say that the school will accept no more new students, stop...

Soprano Christine Goerke Named Associate Artistic Director Of Michigan Opera Theatre

"The move brings a singer at the peak of her international career to Detroit. She will perform locally at least once a season, take the lead in casting MOT productions and complement Sharon's experimental streak with a sensibility forged within the core of the operatic tradition." - Detroit Free Press

Actor George Segal, 87

" long career began in serious drama but who became one of America's most reliable and familiar comic actors, first in the movies and later on television. … Sandy-haired, conventionally if imperfectly handsome, with a grin that could be charming or smug and a brow that could knit with sincerity or a lack of it, Mr. Segal walked a...

After National Backlash, Australian Festival Cancels Artwork That Was A Very Bad Idea

"On Tuesday afternoon organisers of the festival, which is run by the Museum of Old and New Art , announced that the work by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra – in which he planned to immerse a Union Jack flag into the donated blood of Indigenous people, as a statement 'against colonialism' – would no longer go ahead." -...

How “Dance Marketing” Helped An Indian Clothing Company Flourish

Telling us how the team came up with the idea of dance marketing, Lekhinee shared, “We were going to launch our Saris. We were known for our Kurtas and our fabrics before then. We wondered, how can we really break the clutter…My friends would come for the photoshoot because we always believed in showcasing real women (not models). So...

How To Understand NFTs And What It Means For The Art World

"Imagine digital Beanie Babies, but with only one existing copy of each. For art works, the N.F.T. format functions a little like a museum label noting the piece’s provenance—a proprietary stamp, attached to digital pieces that can still circulate freely across the Internet. In new online marketplaces such as Nifty Gateway, SuperRare, and Foundation, artists can upload, or “mint,”...

Blurb-Off

Book blurbs are ridiculous. And competitive, as it turns out. - The New Yorker

The Genius Of Natural Selection. Will AI Wreck It?

"On the face of it, many of the familiar characteristics of animals and plants that we see around us would simply disappear if the organisms in an ecosystem were all super artificial intelligences. Oxford professor Nick Bostrom, for instance, suggests that a community of artificial intelligences will be sharing information in such an effective and rigid way that many...

Imagination Is A Superpower

Aristotle called this imaginative power phantasia. We might mistakenly think that phantasia is just for artists and entertainers, a rare and special talent, but it’s actually a cognitive faculty that functions in all human beings. The actor might guide us, but it’s our own imagination that enables us to immerse fully into the story. If we activate our power...

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