"Shot in half the time the Lugosi vehicle was allotted, and on a much smaller budget, Drácula" — yes, it's the Spanish version — "contains revealing differences. It's 29 minutes longer than the Browning film, with more dialogue – we see more of Dracula's castle; and the framing of shots are arguably superior – thanks to Melford's...
“At the start of the pandemic, no one had any work, so it wasn’t so much of a problem. At times it was even nice not to be working. But when you’re freelance, you wonder whose doing what and doubt yourself, and when shoots opened up again, it was difficult not being out and about and having a purpose.”...
"Recent case histories are alternately breakthroughs and models of artistic self-defeat. Which was which?" asks David Patrick Stearns. "The reverse of what I expected." The key: the message and the material have to fit each other. - Classical Voice North America
The idea that the world is corrupt and unfair was the subject of medieval morality plays and sermons. They taught a vast population to reconcile itself to misery and subjugation by promising rewards in the afterlife. But in a democracy, everyone is moderately free and potentially subject to rewards in this life, though few receive the rewards they think...
It's not usually after a disaster: in those cases, great cities tend to rebuild and often become grander. (Think of London and Chicago after great fires, Lisbon and San Francisco after earthquakes, Berlin and Tokyo after bombing.) "Mismanagement and inertia are more formidable foes than cataclysm, though they administer less dramatic death." - Curbed
In a recent study of 217 Border collies that ranged in age from 6 months to 15, the team, together with the Clever Dog Lab in Austria, found similarities with humans in the dogs’ personality traits as they age. - Nautilus
"Making stories was how Nichols coped with the world. The biographical question is: why was there a need to cope? The answer is not mysterious. Nichols was unusually self-aware, and he liked to talk about his life. To some extent, the Mike Nichols story is a story by Mike Nichols." - The New Yorker
Performances for kids in schools are the only ones allowed under current COVID restrictions, so puppet shows are the only live theatre happening in France now. "The situation for French puppeteers is bittersweet. While it constitutes a return to their roots, as children remain their most faithful fans, many of them have worked hard to position the form as...
"'My hunch is that, for some women, having me present means they have to examine their past experiences on set without an intimacy coordinator,' said Mia Schachter, intimacy coordinator on ABC's Grey's Anatomy and HBO shows such as Insecure and Euphoria." - The Guardian
Two different studies — one by the Louvre, the other by an independent art historian and her AI researcher husband — find that the Christ figure's hand raised in blessing was added to the otherwise finished painting after the fact. The image recognition algorithm developed by the couple indicates that the hand was not by Leonardo (probably by an...
Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell dropped out of Juilliard at age 19 to join the company, where she danced for three years before moving on to 13 years with Ailey. After retiring from the stage in 2005, she got a graduate degree and went home to Baltimore to teach. Now, as HSDC's artistic director, "she is tasked with culling an artistic identity...
"The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was privately warned in 2002 that a Gauguin sculpture it had just bought for around $4m was a fake. A few months later the museum sent a researcher from Los Angeles to Paris to investigate, but she failed to resolve the question — so the matter remained unpursued with the Wildenstein...
Britain's relief package for businesses closed by COVID provides 80% of a furloughed employee's salary, even if that salary is only minimum wage. Workers at the country's most popular bookstore chain, most of whom only make minimum wage or a bit more in normal times, are publicly begging the company to top up the government aid. Management says they'd...
The reality is that many questions surround composer pay. Some people wonder why they’re not being paid more. Some people are surprised by the amounts they have been paid. Some people worry they should have gotten more, but weren’t bold enough to ask for it. Some composers get asked to name their number. Others are told, “this is the...
It was with no small amount of happiness that Center Theatre Group this week said it had generated more than $700,000 through a single fundraising event: a boisterous Zoom party featuring an impressive list of theater makers and celebrities. The event was part of the RWQuarantunes program, launched last year by WME partner Richard Weitz and his teenage daughter,...
