The director, Sarmad Khoosat, is (or was) a popular member of one of the country's most beloved entertainment families; the film itself, Zindagi Tamasha (in English, Circus of Life), has been approved by three different boards of censors and a committee of senators, and it won a big prize at one of Asia's most important film festivals. But, based...
On New Year's Day, Munawar Faruqui, a rising talent in India's relatively new comedy circuit, was starting off a two-week tour with a gig in Indore when the leader of a Hindu extremist group accused Faruqui, who is Muslim, of "insulting religious sentiments" (a crime in India) and had him arrested. He had not yet even started his routine....
"There are some in the industry who believe houses have a responsibility to publish a wide range of viewpoints, seeing it as a First Amendment issue." (And conservative books have tended to sell well.) "But a burgeoning group of mostly younger industry members argue" — especially in the wake of the Capitol riot and Simon & Schuster's subsequent cancellation...
"Leading stock photography company Shutterstock announced today that it has acquired TurboSquid, a digital media company that sells 3D assets, for $75 million. The move is both a talent and an IP acquisition, and it will give Shutterstock's two million customers … access to raw materials for making images from scratch." - Fast Company
The charge by actress Sand Van Roy was first made in May 2018; it was dismissed for lack of evidence nine months later, and subsequently reopened following a civil complaint by Van Roy. After a five-hour hearing in Paris this week, the judge declared Besson an "assisted witness," a status under French law which means there is currently not...
"The Antiquarium, a museum located on the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii, fully reopened this week for the first time in more than 40 years. Home to some of the razed settlement's best-preserved artifacts, including protective amulets and plaster casts of Mount Vesuvius's victims, the museum will host a permanent display narrating Pompeii's history. - Smithsonian Magazine
After reporting in the Kansas City Star turned up evidence that William Rockhill Nelson, the Nelson in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was a segregationist, the museum is reassessing being named after the real estate and newspaper magnate who helped found the museum. - Artnet
"Digital performance has only exacerbated the definitional crises during this year of hard and soft quarantine. At a recent UCLA roundtable on the subject of the future of theater, I came to the conclusion that, even in this pioneering moment in which artists from different time zones can collaborate without ever coming into direct contact, place still matters." -...
"On closer inspection, there is an asymmetric battle between a grassroots struggle to redistribute power, and those who place institutional preservation at the center. Ironically, Trump, by dint of his very nastiness, gave the upper hand to institutional preservationists, and not just by threats to defund sanctuary cities, which cast institutions as victims." - Hyperallergic
"A leisure class of the newly vaccinated will mean that hotels, catering services and other businesses will be scrambling to employ bartenders, servers and other staff who are also vaccinated, the better to ensure the safety of all. A vaccination will begin to represent not only safety from the virus but also, for some, a leg up in the...
" became part of the New York art scene during the late 1960s and went on to be associated with the Process art and Post-Minimalist movements. Unlike the best known adherents of those movements, including Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Morris, Le Va has remained a somewhat obscure figure, no doubt in part because his work is so...
Even as the studio insists that its streaming strategy is a one-off response to the pandemic, it might not be able to rebuild those bridges. Seeing the backlash is just another reason the rest of the industry’s major players continue to hold off from anything so drastic. Patience is hard, but it’s Hollywood’s surest path to profitability. - The...
Jodi Archambault: "As COVID-19 takes a fearsome toll on our people, it also threatens the progress we have made to save our languages. The average age of our speakers — our treasured elders who have the greatest knowledge and depth of the language — is 70. They are also those who are at most risk of dying from COVID-19."...
This expanding cornucopia of tech and entertainment has served as a compensatory narrative of progress and advancement for an empire in decline. The future seems more and more constrained, materially, but, on the flip side, you are freer and freer to build your own virtual worlds and get lost in them. - Artnet
The 61-year-old conductor spent a dozen years as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony (1997-2009). "Once reportedly accustomed to a few sellout audiences a year, the orchestra reportedly sold out 30 shows within a year of his arrival." - WXXI (Rochester, NY)
