Macdonald was a producer for the BBC in 1973 when she "was given what she thought would be a one-off journalistic assignment: to accompany a group of World War I veterans from a British rifle brigade on a final pilgrimage to the battlefields of France." She interviewed more than 600 veterans and wrote seven books about their experiences, popularizing...
Those who read the book or saw the movie may not quite believe it, but the real-life case from which the author drew her inspiration was far worse. Then there were her own kids. "I had three and a half years’ worth of things to say. About what a huge gap separates an adult and a small child, with...
Yes, it's a bit early to start placing bets, but still: "There are many nervous insiders hoping the post-pandemic pendulum will swing back toward those big mainstream movies. So here’s an early look at the presumptive awards field, starting with the very movies the Academy is surely hoping will save the Oscars." - Vulture
Bookspan realized young that he probably wouldn't make it as a solo violinist, but he brought music to anyone with a radio or TV. "After an early career behind the scenes at radio stations in Boston and New York, he established himself as a stalwart of Live From Lincoln Center, the PBS program that became America’s premier source of...
Art house films in particular bear the marks of their specific directors and writers - and that often doesn't translate (sorry, Another Round and Leo DeCaprio). "This may explain why so many international films optioned for remakes never get made. Paramount’s version of German Oscar nominee Toni Erdmann (2016), DreamWorks’ planned adaptation of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son (2013), or Tom Hanks’...
No matter what you've got in your house, there's nothing like watching a movie in the theatre with scores of other people. Then there are the prices: "The fact that I know I’m being ripped off is, somehow, part of the charm. Have you got a statistic about the ludicrous mark-up on popcorn for me? Have you got a...
Someone even asked, "Are we going to pretend nothing happened?" But no, not at the fair itself: "To gain admittance at the Shed at Hudson Yards, visitors had to fill out an online questionnaire and upload their proof of vaccination or negative Covid test results before receiving a QR code. There were no exceptions. Even Michael R. Bloomberg, whose...
"People become more prone to misinformation when three things happen. First, and perhaps most important, is when conditions in society make people feel a greater need for what social scientists call ingrouping — a belief that their social identity is a source of strength and superiority, and that other groups can be blamed for their problems." - The New...
"My own favoured explanation, in The Decadent Society, is adapted from the American sociologist Robert Nisbet’s arguments about how cultural golden ages hold traditional and novel forces in creative tension: the problem for the Western world is that this tension snapped during the revolutions of the 1960s, when the baby boomers (and the pre-boomer innovators they followed) were too...
The Sala Paganiniana, where Il Cannone resides inside the Palazzo Tursi, is monitored by scientists, experts, and bodyguards. The instrument is played monthly by curator Bruce Carlson and each year by the winner of the Premio Paganini contest for young violinists. - Strings
Kwame Kwei-Armah told the Guardian the pandemic had changed theatre forever, with the livestreaming of plays becoming “hard baked” into how the industry operates. - The Guardian
“An impassioned letter from Tennessee Williams to Eugene O’Neill is an astonishing find in the world of American drama studies. Just when it seems that the archival well has been drunk dry for these exhaustively studied artists, something truly wonderful appears and changes things. - UKNOW
"For centuries, the tradition was passed down from one man to another. But sisters Irfana and Rihana Yousuf began to play with support from their father, Mohammad Yousuf. A musician himself, he sometimes had to sell household items to afford the costly instruments so they could keep their dream alive – and his. … In Sufism, a form of...
"We're going to hire artists, musicians, performers, and they're going to be out in communities doing public art, public performances, pop-up shows…creating murals, you name it," said Mayor Bill de Blasio. "We want to give artists opportunities, and we want this city to feel the power of our cultural community again." - Gothamist
Cygnet School, based in Canterbury, "is designed to bridge a gap that Bourne had noticed between young people who excel in dance at a grassroots level and those who are able to proceed with vocational training. 'A lot of the young people who were coming to us for auditions were quite raw – the talent was there but they...
