Pandemonium At San Diego Opera Board Meeting, Followed By New Chairman And Rescue Plan
Karen Cohn, the board chairman who presided over the sudden plan to dissolve the company, stormed out of the meeting, as did several other members as well as general director Ian Campbell and his deputy and ex-wife, Ann. Carol Lazier, who gave $1 million toward saving the company, is now acting board chair, and she declined to say if Campbell is still affiliated with the Opera.
Oliver Stone Tells The Chinese – To Their Faces – To Make Critical Films About Mao
At the Beijing International Film Festival: “It’s about time. You got to make a movie about Mao, about the Cultural Revolution. You do that, you open up, you stir the waters and you allow true creativity to emerge in this country. That would be the basis of real co-production.”
‘Fecund Imagination And Exuberant Sleight-Of-Hand’: Michiko Kakutani On Gabriel García Márquez
“[In his novels, he] mythologized the history of an entire continent, while at the same time creating a Rabelaisian portrait of the human condition as a febrile dream in which love and suffering and redemption endlessly cycle back on themselves on a Möbius strip in time.”
The Life Cycle Of A Pop Song
The Awl charts the entire course, from the Conception Phase and Underground Phase, through the Indie and Hipster Phases, into and out of the Top 40, to the Shame Phase and beyond. (Not to forget the karaoke afterlife.)
French Court Swaps Bob Dylan Out Of Hate Speech Case
The case stems from a 2012 Rolling Stone interview in which, to some eyes, Dylan appeared to equate Croatians with Nazis. The judge ruled that, since Dylan gave the interview in the U.S., he couldn’t be liable – but the publisher of the French edition of Rolling Stone could.
Cast of ‘Fun Home’ Wades Into South Carolina’s Legislators-Against-Lesbians War
A group of state lawmakers threatened the College of Charleston with a budget cut after a reading list for incoming freshmen included Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir. So the cast and creators of the musical based on the book are going to Charleston next week for concert performances and discussions.
‘The Best Documentary Ever Made On The Basis Of A Dubious Premise’
“The filmmakers follow the narrow limits of a self-imposed rule, and their obstinacy courts cinematic disaster. They set the movie entirely within the capsules of a cable-car line in Nepal that connects the ancient mountaintop temple of the title with a neighboring village. The film’s two-hour duration is filled solely with a dozen ten-minute trips.”
Random House Wins Bidding To Publish New Shirley Jackson Collection
“The new collection, called Garlic in Fiction, is edited by two of Ms. Jackson’s children … and includes her fiction (like the short story ‘Paranoia,’ which was published for the first time in The New Yorker last summer), as well as drawings, lectures and works of nonfiction that previously appeared in women’s magazines of the 1940s and ’50s.”
So You Think You Can Be An Actor, Tough Guy?
Alex Andreou: “I have worked 14-hour shifts in a travel agency, seven days a week, for six months during the Greek tourist season, with no day off. I have handled multi-billion industry investigations as a competition expert, with days and weeks which I thought would never end. None of it compares – not even close – to the self-imposed temporary obsession that preparing for a part demands.”
What We Mean When We Talk About Happiness
“‘Are you satisfied with your life?’ ‘How are you feeling?’ Does either question tell us what we really want to know?”
Gary Shteyngart Resigns From Blurbing Books (Here’s His Resignation Letter)
“It is with deep sadness that I announce that the volume of requests has exceeded my abilities, and I will be throwing my ‘blurbing pen’ into the Hudson River during a future ceremony, time and place to be determined.” (He is making exceptions, though, including all owners of long-haired dachshunds.)
Resetting ‘Three Sisters’ Among Expats In Yemen
The isolated Arab country “presents a conflict zone, but not one that gets international attention; far-flung but not exotic; visitors who hope to do good with varying degrees of conviction;” and the “claustrophobia” of life in an expatriate community.
E. L. Doctorow Wins Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction
Called “our very own Charles Dickens” by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, “the 83-year-old editor, professor and novelist has won almost every literary honor an American writer can receive.”
Gabriel García Márquez Dies At 87
“Mr. García Márquez, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, wrote fiction rooted in a mythical Latin American landscape of his own creation, but his appeal was universal. His books were translated into dozens of languages. He was among a select roster of canonical writers — Dickens, Tolstoy and Hemingway among them — who were embraced both by critics and by a mass audience.”
Legal Landscape Still Murky For Detroit Institute Of Art Collection
“Like every aspect of the Detroit bankruptcy, the legal issues surrounding the DIA and its multibillion-dollar collection remain a landscape of uncharted territory and foggy complexities.”
Can Loud Music Really Make Your Ears Bleed?
“If you are close to a sound source – such as a speaker – you are close to a lot of pressure waves. Direct sound exposure often doesn’t cause capillaries to burst, it’s the pressure.
Research: Artists’ Brain Structure Is Different
“Participants’ brain scans revealed that artists had increased neural matter in areas relating to fine motor movements and visual imagery.”
Survey: Most Dancers Have Been Criticized For How Their Bodies Look
A group of 74 female dancers, training primarily in ballet and from six vocational dance training colleges across the UK, were asked if they could recall someone ever making a “critical comment” that their body “should be a certain shape, weight, or that there was a need to diet to lose weight or increase food intake to gain weight”.
Why Museum Directors Still Want To Curate Shows
“If I didn’t continue to curate—even now that I have a job that oversees six museums—I would stop breathing. The strong relationship with artists gives me the energy to take on all the business that I have to do.”
Jimmy Wales Talks About Information, Human Rights And Things You Don’t Want To Know
“The Onion is my favourite humour site, a parody of news. And one of my favourite headlines in the Onion was “World death rate holding steady at 100 per cent”. So yes, in that sense, we’re all doomed.”
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The Science Behind The Beats That Make You Wanna Dance
“The results revealed that beat preference, when graphed, looks like an upside-down U on the scale of rhythmic intricacy. Overly simplistic beats are boring, it seems; overly complicated ones are befuddling. A mix of both, however, makes a sound that’s just off-kilter enough to be exciting.”
Change Of Venue – Now THIS Is How To See Opera
“Live opera is as physical as art gets, though you would never know that from sitting in any major opera house. In the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, you can feel singers’ breath on your face; you can hear their inhalations as well as their sung exhalations, the scratch as well as the sustained tone of the violins. Some illusions are lost but with them goes a certain artifice that holds you at arm’s length.”
You Can’t “Habit” Your Way Into Making Good Art
“There is no secret ingredient to artistic success; no magic routine for producing art. Copying Joan Didion’s routine won’t make you write like Joan Didion. Writing on index cards won’t turn you into Vladimir Nabokov. We are all more than the pattern of our days and the materials of our work.”
Two Ballerinas Take On The Mythology Of Dance
“Providing a behind-the-scenes look at the glory and gore of ballet, both books, in their own way, uncover unjust practices in ballet which for decades have tended to be tolerated, if not excused, in the name of art.”
Study: Creative Leisure Activities Build Better Workers
“If you’re looking for workers who are unusually innovative and/or team players who enjoy helping their colleagues, check out those who spend their free time painting, playing music, or engaging in some other form of creativity.”