Jason Bailey works over some of the bad ideas that Silicon Valley types have been coming up with to mess up “hack” the viewing experience.
The Invention That Revolutionized Music In The 1920s
The lathe democratized music production and distribution, just as mixtapes, file-sharing, streaming services, and platforms like Bandcamp did. And musicians have rediscovered it.
As Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre Diversifies, Smaller African-American Theatres Worry
“The Guthrie has become more inclusive than it’s ever been, with game-changing shows like “The Bluest Eye.” That goes into territory once claimed by, say, Penumbra, which still has the deepest expertise in doing African-American fare in the Twin Cities. Inclusiveness means that actors and artists can make a greater living even as it leaves theaters like Mu feeling that they are becoming “feeder companies” for bigger institutions. It’s a complicated issue.”
The Problem With Beautiful Bookstores Is That Everyone Wants Photos, All Of The Time
At The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, “Some see it as a special place, one made magical through the presence of books. Some view it as a photo opportunity first, everything else second. We get people blocking thoroughfares to take photos, making access to shelves difficult for both staff and visitors. We should have known that would happen when we created unusual design fixtures for the store, from the tunnel of books on the mezzanine level to the cash wrap made of books.”
Canada Reduces Canadian Content Minimum Spends For Broadcasters (Producers Fear Reduction In Canadian Shows)
“The CRTC got it right when they said that, in the digital world, broadcasters need to invest in innovative content that stands out in a global marketplace. So why let broadcasters slash their investments in distinctive, original content by $200 million over five years?” Directors Guild of Canada national president Tim Southam said in a statement.
Ben Franklin Didn’t Write Most Of The Aphorisms In ‘Poor Richard’s Almanack’ – He Stole Them
What’s more, most of them weren’t even American. (We’re crushed.) Daniel Crown explains – and basically exonerates the dear old fellow.
David Lynch, Mark Frost, And The Cast On How ‘Twin Peaks’ Lost Its Way – And Found It Again
Finn Cohen talks to the showrunners and actors about how the second season of the original went so bad and what led to the decision by all the parties to revive the show after 25 years.
Laura Linney And Cynthia Nixon Talk About Exchanging Roles Every Night On Broadway
“In the revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, the actors alternate between playing the lead role (the cunning, assertive Regina Giddens) and a supporting one (Regina’s timid, abused sister-in-law, Birdie). … In a free-flowing conversation at BuzzFeed‘s New York headquarters, the actors talked about taking on this unique challenge, as well as their thoughts on the theater at large, aging, and roles for women over 40.”
How Did Jean-Michel Basquiat Go From Some Haitian Graffiti Guy To An Artist Whose Paintings Command Picasso-Like Prices?
As Robin Pogrebin and Scott Reyburn report, “the answer to this remarkable trajectory … lies in the art market’s unpredictable but powerful alchemy: a combination of raw talent, compelling biography and limited supply.”
Why It’s Difficult For Women Composers To Get Ahead
“It’s a circular problem: classical music is a field strongly defined by role models and mentor relationships, and with few broadly visible women at the top, only so many young women feel compelled to enter and ascend the ranks. And due to concerns about optics and impropriety, the close mentoring of female students by male teachers can be fraught and complicated. But grim statistics and interpersonal dynamics aren’t the only factors that reinforce this imbalance: it’s also the subtle currents of problematic gender messaging—in academia, the media, and the culture at large—that can toxify the soil in which young female musicians hope to grow their careers.”
The Latest Back-To-Analog Movement: A Return To SHooting Movies On Film
Over the last couple of years, one of the biggest obstacles and financial burdens of shooting on film has been there is no place to develop and process dailies. For most U.S. productions the answer became a nerve-wracking leap of faith of shipping undeveloped negative to Fotokem in Los Angeles, while for small productions the cost of expensive courier services alone was often to large a hurdle to shooting film.
New Director Reimagines How Berlin’s Volksbühne Theater Works
“Chris Dercon’s plans for the theater — which mark a distinct shift toward interdisciplinary work and international artists — have garnered criticism since his appointment. A Belgian-born curator, he most recently ran the Tate Modern, where he helped oversee a major expansion into a new building. Mr. Dercon’s close ties to the market-driven British art world have raised eyebrows among those who see his background as a strange fit for a theater that relies largely on public funding and has a long, anti-establishment political tradition.”
How A Small Collective Has Powered A Literary Revolution Across Africa
“As the library has grown from a roomful of young Nairobians to an ongoing conversation that spans the continent—with email, Skype, and social media allowing members in a half-dozen countries to stay in touch—it’s become clear that Jalada is where the future of African literature is being written.”
UK Culture Minister: Increasing Arts Funding Is The Worst Thing We Could Do For The Arts
“The worst thing that we can do is to incentivise local authorities to reduce further their arts funding by saying that we will replace it with central government money. To solve one problem, that at the moment is only in some local authority areas, we would incentivise other local authorities to do the wrong thing.”
The $1,300 Boomerang: Chanel Is Pilloried For Cultural Deafness
The item — part of the Chanel spring-summer 2017 collection and priced at $1,325 for US buyers — sparked a heated debate on social media. “Cultural appropriation hits a new low – I sincerely hope that @Chanel is donating all the profits to underprivileged aboriginal communities,” wrote one Twitter user.
The Delusion Of Competence (How Dunning And Kruger Discovered Their Effect)
Recognize the name but can’t quite place it? The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the cognitive phenomenon wherein many people (especially on the lower end) overestimate their abilities, such as 80% of drivers rating themselves above average. (We’ve been seeing the effect in action quite a lot lately.) The incident that inspired psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger to investigate the phenomenon was a doozy.
Australia’s ‘King Kong’ Musical Is Finally Coming To Broadway
“The show is the brainchild of an Australian animatronics company, and its only previous production was in Melbourne. Its arrival on Broadway has been long delayed: In 2010, the producers said they were aiming for a 2013 Broadway bow; in 2013, they talked of a possible 2014 Broadway opening, as well as international productions of the show; and by 2014, they had stopped attaching a timeline to their project. But now, for the first time, they are announcing a theater as well as a time frame.”
Booing, The Cannes Film Festival’s Favorite Sport
“Cannes selections of all stripes have met with boos for decades, from Michelangelo Antonioni’s groundbreaking L’Avventura in 1960 to Sean Penn’s not-groundbreaking The Last Face last year.” (Even Taxi Driver got booed.) There’s even been a “Booed at Cannes” film series and a streaming service category. Nicolas Rapold offers “a mini-anthropology” of the phenomenon.
Laura Kipnis Sued By Student Over Portrayal In Book ‘Unwanted Advances’
“A Northwestern University graduate student is suing a professor at the campus for defamation, the latest twist in a long-running controversy that already has involved discrimination and sexual harassment investigations, multiple lawsuits and the exit of a prominent philosophy professor.”
Britain’s NHS Prescribes Music And Dance For The Elderly
A National Health Service regional planning group has issued a manifesto that “says it aims to reinvent health services by encouraging people to engage with cultural activities instead of focusing solely on medicine. … ‘Too many of life’s problems are seen as only amenable to medical treatment. We all too readily turn people into patients. … There are no pills for loneliness and poverty but a rich cultural context can help ensure residents are better connected to each other and feel more able to cope.”
Curtis Institute’s Brilliant Student Orchestra Is About To Discover The Rigors Of International Touring
Just now they’re in Helsinki, the start of a nine-city European tour under the baton of Osmo Vänskä. As Curtis president and former Philadelphia Orchestra principal violist Roberto Díaz tells David Patrick Stearns, “It looks great on paper, but actually doing it is really, really hard work. Preparing for events like this is a huge part of their educations.”
Jean Fritz, Author Of Popular History Books For Children, Dead At 101
“Hallmarks of her work, critics agreed, included her fleet, engaging prose and prodigious archival research. … What was more, where children’s biographies of an earlier age inclined toward unalloyed veneration, Mrs. Fritz’s were warts-and-all portraits of the often flawed men and women who left their impress on the world – and the resulting books were deemed far more humanizing as a result.”
France’s New Culture Minister Is One Of The Country’s Top Publishers
“[Françoise] Nyssen is the CEO of Éditions Actes Sud, based in the southern city of Arles, which has published the work of Nobel laureates Imre Kertész and Svetlana Alexievitch, as well as Prix Goncourt winners Laurent Gaudé, Jérôme Ferrari, and Mathias Ernard.”
Bangladesh To Get Its First Major Contemporary Art Museum
And it won’t be in Dhaka, the country’s capital. The Srihatta-Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park is due to open in late 2018 in Sylhet, a relatively affluent city in Bangladesh’s tea-growing northeast. Though the museum will be privately funded by the couple who are the country’s most prominent art collectors, admission will be free.
A Playwright And Director Who Somehow Fought Through Mutual Dislike To Become Artistic BFFs
How Qui Nguyen started Vampire Cowboys, realized he would never be “mature,” wrote the play Vietgone, and found director May Adrales for a partnership made in theatre paradise.