“In this video, [author Elif] Batuman reviews scenes from the first episode of [the wildly popular prime-time series] Magnificent Century and explains why a show fascinated by the past is a problem for Turkey’s political present.”
Two Indian Authors Want Penguin to Pulp Their Books In Solidarity With Wendy Doniger
“Penguin authors Jyotirmaya Sharma and Siddharth Varadarajan have asked the publishing house to withdraw their books and pulp them. Both have emailed their demand to the under-fire publishing firm for agreeing to an out-of-court settlement with a [Hindu nationalist] group to do the same with Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History.”
The Song-and-Dance Revue That Remade British Theatre
Michael Billington considers Oh, What a Lovely War.
Lewis Carroll Hated Fame So Much He Regretted Writing His Books
“A letter, written to a friend in 1891, reveals how Carroll hated people finding out his real name as he felt he would be pointed out and attract the attention of strangers.”
Should We Keep Children Out Of Museums?
“At one time the answer was simple: keep them out. The pleasures of a museum and a gallery are beyond them, so they’re bound to be bored, or inappropriately excited by the joys of running up and down the polished floors.”
Today’s Hyper Art Market Is Changing The Definition Of What It Means To Be A “Collector”
in the 21st century’s increasingly financialized market — where art is treated as an investment and where paintings are tracked and traded instantaneously — one has to ask, what does the word “collector” mean nowadays?
What Happens In Netflix Offices When “House Of Cards” Goes Live
“Unlike traditional TV, we use hundreds of different devices to go online. And last night, the engineers were there to make sure that House of Cards would play on every one of them.”
Lorne Michaels, the Kingmaker of Comedy
“His name is barely known in households outside the media elites of New York and California. Yet Michaels has enjoyed a career so wildly successful as to see him named ‘comedy’s most important man ever’ by The Hollywood Reporter.”
Charges Dropped Against Collector After 2½-Year-Long Antiquities Smuggling Case
Joe Lewis had been accused of smuggling, money-laundering and conspiracy charges over his purchase of ancient Egyptian items “as part of what the government termed the ‘first ever’ dismantling of a cultural property smuggling network in the U.S.”
I Have Seen the Future of Theatre – And It Froze and Crashed
Simon Tait: “When a plea has to go out [to the audience] for someone who can do Windows 8 and the visual still won’t go, it really doesn’t work … I don’t want to sneer at that misfortune, but to ask where the creativity sits with the technology.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.17.14
The High Cost of Theater, and Defending Gatekeepers
Source: CultureCrash | Published on 2014-02-17
Still walking. Still talking
Source: Performance Monkey | Published on 2014-02-17
Rituals of Love and Regeneration
Source: Dancebeat | Published on 2014-02-17
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What Art Defines The Obama Era? Anyone?
“The Obama era, one that has coincided with greater-than-ever atomization of entertainment such that no one can be assured that anyone is watching the same stuff, has not lent itself very well to artwork that gets at the national mood.”
Man Smashes Ai Wei Wei Vase In Miami Museum As Protest
A South Florida artist is facing a criminal charge after police say he smashed a $1 million vase at Miami’s new art museum in what appears to be a form of protest.
The Singing Missouri Nuns And Their Top-Of-The-Charts Recordings
“Quite unexpectedly, this private, prayerful pursuit has made the Benedictines of Mary a chart-topping recording industry curiosity. After being named Billboard’s No. 1 Classical Traditional Artist of 2012 and 2013, the nuns released their third album, called “Lent At Ephesus,” Feb. 11 on the De Montfort Music/Decca/Universal Classics label.”
Watching The Olympics On NBC? Here Is How Many Commercials You’re Watching
“Olympic action accounted for 24.4% of NBC’s primetime and late-night broadcasts on Tuesday night, according to The Wall Street Journal’s trusty stopwatch, less than breaks in the Olympic action (26.8%) and almost 22 minutes less than commercials (33.1%).”
Report: British TV-Watching Fell By Nine Minutes/Day Last Year
“The average person last year spent over three hours each day watching television – nine minutes less than the previous year – the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (Barb) has reported. It also found that 98.5% of viewing still takes place via television sets.”
Revitalizing LA’s Downtown Through Music (It’s Working)
“While small clubs such as the Smell have long drawn adventurous young punks and Disney Hall gets an older classical crowd, these new spaces signal an audience of young residents for whom music is part of an urbane, walkable lifestyle.”
Note To Nicholas Kristof: Academia Is Deeply Engaged In Public Debate
“My advice to Kristof is to think again about what academia is, and what the goal of public thought is. Academia is more than research universities. And public thought can be far more inclusive, tentative, and humanistic than our current politics will allow.”
Is Amazon Bad for Books? Not Just Publishers, But Books Themselves?
George Packer: “Recently, Amazon even started creating its own ‘content’ … In the book business the prospect of a single owner of both the means of production and the modes of distribution is especially worrisome: it would give Amazon more control over the exchange of ideas than any company in U.S. history.”
Believers and Atheists Are Closer to Each Other Than They Realize
Adam Gopnik: “Surprisingly few people who have considered the alternatives … believe any longer in God. Believe, that is, in an omnipotent man in the sky making moral rules and watching human actions with paranoiac intensity. … But, just as surely, most noes believe in something like what the Super-Naturalists would call faith.”