“Though [it] won the Nebula and Hugo awards, the two most prestigious science fiction prizes, it was not an overnight commercial success. … Fifty years later it is considered by many to be the greatest novel in the SF canon, and has sold in millions around the world.”
Italy’s Art Museums Get A Badly-Needed Shake-Up
“In January this year, the ministry of culture announced an international competition to find energetic new manager-directors for 20 of the country’s most important state museums … For the first time ever, foreign candidates have been invited to apply, and fluency in business management, rather than Italian, is the main requirement.”
An American Music Week That Shows The Strengths (And Weaknesses)
“On one hand, times are relatively good for American composers. Gifted, young contemporary ensembles are hungry for the music of gifted, young—and not so young—American composers, and they’re playing it in concert halls, churches, and cafés all over the world. But there’s a lost generation or two or three at the heart of 20th-century American classical music, and that loss feels particularly grievous as July 4, 2015, rolls around.”
Why Do We Mythologize Our 20s When Life Is Hard? Studies Show We’re Happier Later, But…
“By telling young people they should savour the best years of their lives, we are telling them that everything afterwards will be worse; and the real message is that they should not expect or demand very much from life itself.”
Dustin Hoffman: The Movie Business Right Now Is The Worst I’ve Seen
“Most films today, away from the comic strip or robot adaptations, are made in around 20 days. Part of the reason is that digital technology enables filmmakers to shoot more scenes in a day than they used to, but mostly it’s to do with the downsizing of budgets as more and more films get made. The films that have been squeezed the most by this development have been the quality dramas, a genre that has a habit of calling on Hoffman’s inimitable services.”
What Defines Our Cultural Literacy When Who We Are Is Changing Rapidly?
The question then arises: What? What is the story of “us” when “us” is no longer by default “white”? The answer, of course, will depend on how aware Americans are of what they are, of what their culture already (and always) has been. And that awareness demands a new kind of mirror.
Ridding ‘Kiss Me, Kate’ Of ‘Taming Of The Shrew’ Misogyny
Darko Tresnjak: “Taming of the Shrew is designed to give uproarious pleasure over the subjugation of a woman. In Kiss Me, Kate, she is an equal-opportunity offender. We made sure that she slugs him 10 times as much as he spanks her.”
The Most Quintessential American Fiction, According To The Rest Of The World
A Japanese translator and editor: “Moby-Dick, Herman Melville; The American hunger to comprehend all, and the impossibility of it, permeated half by cheerful melancholy and half by demonic rage.”
When Hippie Musicians Are The Most Tech-Savvy In The Biz
“The Grateful Dead remains one of the most innovative and tech-savvy bands in pop history. Long before it became necessary (or cool) to do so, the band embraced a DIY ethos in everything from manufacturing its own gear to publishing its own music to fostering a decentralized music distribution system. The Dead’s obsession with technology was almost inseparable from the band’s psychedelic ambition and artistic independence.”
The Church Of Scientology Allegedly Sent Threatening Letters To Distributors And Festivals
“Every step of the way, every distributor, every festival has received multiple threatening letters from the Church of Scientology. Some have come very close to buckling.”
Maybe It’s A Good Thing That Amy Winehouse’s Label Destroyed Her Demos After Her Death
“It’s understandable why Joseph might have called the destruction of the demos the moral choice. Posthumous releases are a thorny subject in the music business. They can be seen as one final, exploitative attempt to wean money from an artist no longer around to cash the check — the musical equivalent of a creepy Tupac hologram. And also, they can be terrible, so rough around the edges that they can serve to undo a legacy.”
What’s Going To Happen To Canadian Books?
“In reality, writers find that a belief in an author, as opposed to a particular book – an author as a long-term investment – tends to exist less and less. There is little loyalty. I know a half-dozen respected Canadian authors who have been breezily dumped in recent years by major publishers because their sales were just too low.”
London’s Antiquities Buyers Are Making ISIS A Cash-Rich Terror Group
“Buyers are not getting the message that the purchase of such antiquities is enabling war and terror in the Middle East. ‘These are blood antiquities,’ says Altaweel, adding that attempts to make the cultural-heritage case for more action to stop trade in looted goods have not yielded results. ‘What might work more is to say that this is funding death.'”
Is AirBnB A Threat To Urban Artist Spaces?
“The end result of an AirBnB’d neighborhood is not a profitable artist collective. Rather, it’s an international bedroom community of “post-tourist” upwardly mobile workers, an intermittently empty complex of condos for creatives who can parachute in, patronize local cafes, and then escape as quickly as they arrived.”
Five Things Classical Musicians Need To Do To Survive
“People can always tell when they are being patronised, and the only way classical music will manage to survive is to reach wider audiences by believing in what it has to offer, and not by trying to change what it is.”