“Everything we now know as ‘Hollywood,’ ... the global ‘dream machine’ with all its enduring art, complicated mythology and current anxieties, began under a cedar-shingled roof where DeMille set up in a tiny corner office and actors changed costumes in horse stalls.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
“The pamphlet changed the way Americans viewed government. Beginning with an origin story that echoed John Locke’s ‘Second Treatise of Government,’ Paine depicted people originally created free and equal in nature and subsequently forming representative governments to better secure their liberty and happiness.” - Salon
It’s a new lawsuit in a long, long battle, with opponents that are not exactly beloved. “X and the publishers have been in a legal battle for years, with the NMPA first suing the platform back in 2023 over allegations of mass copyright infringement.” - The Hollywood Reporter
“After his breakout role as Pablo Escobar 10 years ago on Netflix’s Narcos, Moura frustrated his agents by turning down many of the high-profile, lucrative projects that came his way.” Then? The Secret Agent came along. - The New York Times
“As my will to blindly obey crumbled, I began to secretly tune in to the American armed forces radio station that broadcast in Japan. … One day, ‘Losing My Religion’ came on, and I remember hearing it for the first time and freezing. I physically stopped walking.” - The Guardian (UK)
For one thing, “Warner Bros. will swear there was absolutely no calculation involved in running One Battle After Another as a Comedy at the Globes. If so, the field just happened to shake out awfully nice for the presumed Oscar front-runner.” - Vulture
No doubt we should believe that leadership just as much as we’d believe any questionable partner. “Opera leaders had said that it was an amicable split, and made no mention of the political turmoil causing many artists to cancel their Kennedy Center engagements." - Variety
The resolution calls for the opera to move its performances out of the Kennedy Center’s 2,364-seat Opera House as soon as possible and to reduce the number of performances as a cost-saving measure. Opera officials said that new sites in Washington have been lined up but that no leases have been signed. - The New York Times
The professor is Justin McDaniel, chair of the religious studies department at Penn. The class meets once a week for seven-to-eight hours, reading one book cover-to-cover in complete silence, then discuss it. No phones, of course. - New York Magazine
In the movie Kokuho, a epic covering five decades in the life of a fictional kabuki actor, we see the traditional theater slowly fade from Japanese popular culture. In real life, interest in kabuki has fallen, especially since COVID. Now there’s hope that the film’s success could attract new fans to the genre. - CNN
On Monday, San Diego Opera announced that Jacobs has committed $4.5 million to establish The Joan and Irwin Jacobs San Diego Symphony and San Diego Opera Collaboration Fund. - San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)
There is no longer a crisis in the humanities. Our field’s long-running narrative of continuous crisis is over. The bad news: The crisis of the humanities has been revealed by the events of the last year to be a crisis of civil society writ large. - Chronicle of Higher Education
Value capture occurs when you get your values from some external source and let them rule you without adapting them.” Because we live in a world in which nearly everything is quantified and ranked, value capture is everywhere. - The New Yorker
