Best Director winner Sean Baker "spoke passionately about the difficulty of making independent films in an industry that is no longer able to fund riskier projects. He said indies are in danger of becoming calling card films — movies made only as a means to get hired for bigger projects.” - CBC
Turns out, pretty far. This is for the economy, the government claims - though "the proposed film studio is not crucial infrastructure or needed housing, unlike much of the other development the government has vowed to speed up.” - The New York Times
But - unsurprisingly! - the accuracy leaves a lot to be desired. For instance, a Pompeii “reconstruction” ignores the actual eyewitness account of Pliny the Younger. - BBC
New principal Angelo Greco, who came from San Francisco: "People are approachable here. We stay in the theater all day long, so once I’m done, I like to have my glass of Chardonnay. There are so many different restaurants and a lot of museums.” - Houston Chronicle (MSN)
“We should see Spotify rapidly expand its market presence not just in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, but shortly in Sweden and across Europe” - and, it’s predicted, using AI to expand in India as well. - The New Publishing Standard
The director, Dag Johan Haugerud, “said the film was about the act of ‘writing and reading.’ He added that people should ‘write more and read more, it expands your mind.’” - The New York Times
In Brazil, for instance, “museum director Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt hid artworks and advised artists on how to leave the country after officials from the country’s military regime entered her museum and demanded the removal of ‘dangerous’ images.” - The Guardian (UK)
“When I called one to ask how the season had gone, she responded with seven uninterrupted seconds of laughter. Thankfully, this week was the pencils-down moment” - Oscars voting is over, and there’s nothing more to be done. - Vulture
“This is a grim cautionary tale about complying with authoritarianism in advance, and it's not going to be pretty, but at the end I'll share with you some of the things that can still be done.” - 8th House with Claire Willett
In the open letter to Creative Australia, the artists write, “To strip the chosen artistic team of this opportunity is unacceptable. Indeed it signals a fundamental disregard for the role of artists in our society – especially by the very institution meant to defend them.” - The Guardian (UK)
“I just read and reread the book, which I hadn’t done since high school—and back then I probably skipped some chapters. I was also reading criticism about it,” says librettist Gene Scheer. "There’s so much about Moby-Dick that is operatic.” - The Paris Review
“The uncensored literature flooding the country wasn’t reaching Poles by chance. It was sent as part of a decades-long US intelligence operation ... designed, in the words of the programme’s leader, George Minden, to assault the eastern bloc with an ‘offensive of free, honest thinking.’” - The Guardian (UK)
