Chinese money has been buying up Hollywood movie companies with the intent of pursuing global business. So is this a problem? “When you control the movie experience, you can subtly influence public opinion. And the Chinese government has been transparent about that goal.”
Creating Online Rituals For Our Online Lives
“There is a reason that ritual is such a pervasive part of human experience that it appears in every culture, and dissected by a wide range of disciplines. … [They’re] ‘the symbolic codes for interpreting and negotiating events of everyday existence.’ In the absence of online rituals, we lack the signposts that can help us navigate difficult online experiences – or mark and appreciate the great ones. Rather than wait for rituals to gradually and organically emerge out of online life, it’s time for us to think about consciously creating [them].”
Lady Jane: Oscar Wilde Totally Took After His Mother
“Jane was a living, writing, talking paradox. She was an elitist who championed the undergo, a lover of ceremony and ritual who wanted to destroy the status quo, a republican who relished her peerage, a rebel at home in the realm, the barricades and the drawing-room were her natural habitats. … Oscar revered his mother and father, but his resemblance to his mother goes to the core of what made both of them remarkable, and prone to calamity.”
How The Insecurity Of Adjuncts Figures In To The University “Safe Spaces” Debates
“Insecurity, endemic to a profession heavily reliant on short-term labor, is usually omitted from discussions regarding safe spaces. But the instructor’s role in the construction of safe spaces is unquestioned: They hold the balance of power in the classroom, even if they know themselves to be nearly powerless in other areas of life. As a result, they need to concede a great deal of that power if a space is indeed to remain safe for their students.”
Canadian Architect Bing Thom, 75
“He was one of the people who was a key input into this thing we call the Vancouver model or ‘Vancouverism’… He was one of these people who challenged the idea that only Vancouver would be an urban place… and he was quite right about that.”
Ivan Hewitt: Is Greed Really The Cause Of American Orchestras’ Woes?
Given the precarious state of classical music in the market-place, you might think orchestras would exercise some caution in the matter of remuneration. But instead of asking “what can we afford?”, the instinct of players and management is to cast envious glances at their peers among the top-tier orchestras, and ask “are they richer than us?”
Fear Of BP: How I Dealt With Frightened Louisianans And Nervous Attorneys To Make ‘Deepwater Horizon’
The film’s director, Peter Berg: “After I came aboard [the project], I jumped into the script, went down to Louisiana – and very quickly realised this was different. We were dealing with a culture of litigation.”
Esperanto Didn’t Change The World, But It Has Changed Its Speakers
“It did not prevent a century of wars (many fought, notably, between people who spoke the same language). Instead, Esperanto’s speakers were persecuted throughout the 20th century.” (Stalinists thought they were spies; McCarthyists thought they were Commies.) “Esperanto may not have changed the world. But in both its ideals and its practice, it holds out the possibility of transforming the lives of the people who use it.”
$255 Million Worth Of Old Master Paintings May Be Fakes
“Experts now believe that there have been a recent spate of forgeries on the market, and that unwitting collectors may have spent up to £200 million ($255 million) on fakes masquerading as the work of Frans Hals, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Orazio Gentileschi, and other artists.”
Mysterious NSFW Murals Have Been Popping Up All Over Brussels
“Thanks to an anonymous street artist who specializes in explicit images, large sections of Central Brussels have essentially become NSFW. Since mid-September, unauthorized murals depicting various parts of the human anatomy started cropping upon the walls of the Belgian capital, causing both giggles and disapproval.”
End Of An Era: How Neville Marriner And Gordon Davidson Reshaped LA Culture
“The two men didn’t exactly collaborate. Yet both were instrumental in creating an ethos in the early era of the Music Center that’s worth revisiting as the institution, having recently entered into its second half-century, tries to become newly relevant.”
What Does It Take To Sell 10,000 Tickets For Three Days Of Dance In Toronto?
“Of course none of this adjusts for the impact of price or capacity or run length, but 10,000 tickets sure does suggest that dance has a ready-made audience in the city, that dance isn’t just a fringe interest, and that if you advertise well and offer affordable, high-quality material, the demand for dance is there.”
BBC Radio Chief Steps Down And Warns About What Journalism Has Become
“We are unconstrained in our speed of coverage, unmatched in our fleetness of foot but do we lack the depth that we might achieve if we took our foot off the accelerator, or put the handbrake on, and stopped to observe more closely the world on which we are reporting?”
Everyone Is Proclaiming That Hollywood Is Dead. No – It’s Just Adapting
“Cinema remains siloed into “studio” and “indie” efforts, with a good chunk of audiences largely ignoring the latter, while television (which essentially has to be made within a studio system) can offer the kind of adult dramas and politically aware works that are seemingly missing from multiplexes. But these aren’t the signs of a lifeless industry. Film is just doing what it’s always done—finding a way to adapt, survive, and serve new audiences.”
The New Music Coming Out Of Chicago Could Only Have Been Made There
What comes to mind when I describe the character of Chicago new music are words like “provisional” and “transient”and “conditional” and “contingent” and “fragmented.”
A Composer Loses His Hearing… And Fights To Adapt
Because he today relies on a hearing aid to bring his left ear to 70 percent capability and all sound “arrives from the left,” the inner voice and texture of his music has become simpler and more stationary. “It’s like mono-hearing and spatial effects don’t happen anymore.”
A Battle Over The Future Rages At A Historic African-American Theatre Company
As the New Freedom Theatre in North Philadelphia begins its 50th anniversary season, its debt has been reduced, it’s paying its actors, its productions are getting great reviews – and three longtime staffers have been abruptly fired, several attendees at a post-forum reception were forcibly removed and arrested, and protestors are demanding the replacement of the executive director.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.04.16
ABCD and Community Engagement
For those who have been fostering connections between art and communities for years, the term Arts-Based Community Development is well known and, while not a perfect expression of the work, one that is immediately recognizable and understood in the field. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-10-04
The perpetual now
Mrs. T and I opted last Monday to watch a William Powell comedy, My Man Godfrey, instead of subjecting ourselves to the first presidential debate. When I tweeted about our decision, these responses were immediately forthcoming from two of my followers: … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-10-04
Twelve years after: on adapting the classics
From 2004: If you’re going to make a stage or screen adaptation of a familiar work of art, you really only have two viable alternatives: try to reproduce the original as closely as possible, or go your own way. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-10-04
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Top Nigerian Actress Banned From Nigerian Movies After Hug
Nigeria’s movie industry is booming. But cultural taboos won’t be tolerated. “This is not the first time that she has been doing these wayward things. We have been warning her, but she still went ahead to dent our image.”
Two Brothers Play The Same August Wilson Role At The Same Time On Opposite Coasts
“The work of August Wilson has for years sustained Brandon and Jason Dirden, actor brothers who have found themselves turning again and again to his plays for meaning and inspiration. Now, for the first time, the two are playing the same role, at the same time, on opposite coasts: Levee, the angrily ambitious trumpeter in one of Wilson’s best-known plays, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. … The two spoke in a joint telephone interview about their relationship with Wilson and with each other.”
Gloria Naylor, 66, Author Of ‘The Women Of Brewster Place’
“The Women of Brewster Place won both the American Book Award and the National Book Award for first novel in 1983 … It gained further attention when Oprah Winfrey adapted it for ABC in 1989 as a two-part television movie, in which Ms. Winfrey starred with Robin Givens, Mary Alice and Cicely Tyson.”
Pittsburgh Symphony Cancels Three Weeks Of Concerts As Strike Continues
“The PSO announced Monday that it has canceled concerts scheduled between now through Oct. 27 in response to the strike.”