“One of the central victims of the clash was the Berninis’ Fontana della Barcaccia, a fountain of a half-sunken ship that sits at the foot of the famous steps in piazza di Spagna. In addition to being left looking like it had a hangover, filled with beer bottles, balloons, and trash, at least 100 scratches were made to the travertine sculpture, damage that one Italian official called ‘permanent and irreparable’.”
Early Music Leader Philip Pickett Gets 11 Years’ Prison For Rape
The founder and director of the New London Consort and Musicians of the Globe (the resident ensemble at Shakespeare’s Globe), with a discography of 48 titles, Pickett was convicted of assaulting several of his students at the Guildhall School.
How Mexican Filmmakers Reached Hollywood’s Top Tier
It’s not just Alejandro González Iñárritu’s wins for Birdman. Alfonso Cuarón won last year for Gravity, and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki won Oscars two years running for those movies. Then there’s Guillermo del Toro, Rodrigo Prieto, and others. “So who is this band of Mexican artists and how did it fight to the top of one America’s most competitive industries?”
Henry Segerstrom, 91, Philanthropist Who Transformed Orange County, California’s Cultural Life
The scion of a lima-bean-farming family, Segerstrom turned some empty fields into South Coast Plaza, one of America’s high-end shopping meccas. He went on to donate the land and much of the money to build the venues at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, renamed after him in 2011.
Second Stage Gets Extra Time To Find Money To Purchase Helen Hayes Theatre
“A roughly $21 million balance exists on the total purchase price of $24.75 million.”
Los Angeles Mayor Now Begging Studios To Shoot In Hollywood (And Not Georgia)
“Our entertainment industry is essential to our city’s identity and economy, and this campaign represents the next step in a strategic agenda to ensure Los Angeles remains the entertainment capital of the world.”
Grand Budapest Hotel Is The Rarest Of Things: A Thoughtful Comedy About The Holocaust
“To be sure, the period also needs to continue to be addressed head on. But hundreds of thousands of people who might otherwise shy away saw this movie, and took away its important lessons about tolerance, governance, and the rule of law. That matters.”
Why Do People Relate To Characters Who Aren’t Real?
“Fiction offers many pleasures – we may enjoy its capacity to make the world anew for us through its descriptions, or to advance our understanding of science or philosophy through its application of ideas to examples of human behaviour, but although it does – on examination – seem so faint as to be numinous, nonetheless it’s our conviction that fictional characters’ hopes, fears and desires matter that allows fictions to become facts on the ground – a ground we sympathetically traverse alongside them.”
Yes, The 3D Printer Will Initiate A Revolution – In Counterfeiting
“The potential impact of 3D printers for counterfeiting just keeps on growing: A recent report by Gartner Group speculates that intellectual property loss due to 3D printer counterfeiting could total $100 billion by 2018.”
The Tug Of War Over A 1711 Stradivarius That May Leave A Soloist Without His Instrument
“Zimmermann doesn’t own the violin. He rents it through an arrangement, struck with a now-defunct German bank, WestLB AG. That contract is set to expire Sunday night.”
The Barnes Museum Says It Has Discovered Two New Works By Cézanne
“Hidden beneath brown paper backing, the newly discovered pieces are unfinished, but they have sent tremors through the world of Cézanne scholarship, where additions to his body of work are exceedingly rare and where even the resurfacing of long-unseen pieces can be huge news.”
Right Actor, Wrong Movie, Or, Why Julianne Moore Will Win An Oscar For The Maudlin ‘Still Alice’
“In other words, you are not winning just for your performance. You are winning because a butterfly flapped its wings on Oscar night years earlier. And so now here we are, trapped in this uncomfortable loop.”
Read The New (Lost) Sherlock Holmes Story That Was Found In An Attic
“‘We’ve had enough of old romancists and the men of travel’, said the Editor, as he blue-pencilled his copy, and made arrangements for the great Saturday edition of the Bazaar Book. ‘We want something up-to-date. Why not have a word from “Sherlock Holmes”?'”
The New York Times Tells You How To Use Big Data To Win Your Oscars Predictions Pool
“If people are going by what they enjoyed, they’re likely to be unwittingly picking more underdogs than makes sense.”
Writing Is Nothing Like A Dream Job, But It *Is* Like A Horror Film
“It plays havoc on relationships – because most writers are extreme introverts, who, when in the middle of a work, barely notice the rest of the world exists. When you are successful, you can quickly become vain and narcissistic. When you are not, depressed and despairing.”
The Crackdown On Little Free Libraries
“Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they’ve taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things.”
Hollywood’s Got All Kinds Of Problems With Diversity
“Minorities are underrepresented compared to their numbers in the overall population by a factor of about 3-1 among lead roles in film and among film directors. That ratio is nearly 5-1 when it comes to screenwriters. On TV, minorities do best on cable, where they’re only underrepresented 2-1 among lead actors in dramas and comedies. Among show creators, the discrepancy is nearly 9-1 in broadcast, nearly 5-1 in cable. All this when ratings and box office tend to rise when casts match the nation’s racial and ethnic diversity.”
Theatre Artists Decamping From London’s Skyrocketing Expenses
“The days when all roads led to London for young artists are over, and there appears to be an exodus of artists looking south to Bristol and Cardiff and north to Manchester, Leeds and further afield to Glasgow, places which all have a creative buzz around them. Why barely survive in London when you can live far better elsewhere, find opportunities, and put down roots?”
The Writer Of ‘Selma’ Tells His Side Of The Controversy Over The Script
“Ava DuVernay became attached as director. She has been blunt in the States in saying she rewrote much of the screenplay. How do you react to that?
“Those claims are highly exaggerated. … She has told the story very well though it’s not quite the story she was given.”
London Will Get A New Concert Hall, If Sir Simon Rattle Has Anything To Say About It (And He Does)
London’s mayor: “We have heard the clarion call from Sir Simon Rattle and many others who wish to see a brand-new and world-class centre for music in London.”
The Guy Keeping Celluloid Alive In East London [VIDEO]
“Sometimes it ends up on DVD and remastered Blu-Ray, and what have you, and sometimes I think they make too big of an effort with the cleaning process.”
Carnegie Hall’s New Chairman Of The Board Would Like More Pop Music There
Ronald O. Perelman, billionaire business titan and a self-described ‘frustrated musician,’ … [has] succeeded Sanford I. Weill, who has served as chairman for nearly a quarter-century. … Mr. Perelman, 72, said that he was not much of a classical music enthusiast and would push for the hall to stage more of the pop performances it was known for decades ago.