“12 Years a Slave and American Hustle emerged as movie awards front-runners on Thursday, as each picked up seven Golden Globe nominations, including best picture nods in their respective categories, just a day after being nominated for top prizes from Hollywood’s acting guild.”
“The Golden Globes have a long and often amusing reputation for nomination-morning howlers. But [this year], there was no Tourist, no Burlesque, no Salmon Fishing in the Yemen … Yet that didn’t mean the snubs and surprises, the jaw-droppers and the head-scratchers, weren’t there. Here are six of the biggest.”
In an unusually good year for African-descended actors, 12 Years, “based on the real-life story of Solomon Northup, garnered nominations in four of SAG’s five film categories, including the organization’s top award, best ensemble cast.” Lee Daniels’ The Butler earned a further three nods.
They’ve each been nominated in the Spoken Word category three times before – and they’re competing against a couple of living legends (whom people under 35 may not even remember).
There are three nominees. Did we give enough hints for you to guess them?
Salonen (or his work) is nominated in three different categories. Other nominees include the familiar (Rattle, DiDonato, Bartoli; Wagner, Beethoven, Pärt), those we should know better (Lutoslawski, Palestrina; Maria João Pires, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir), the up-and-coming (2013 Pulitzer winner Caroline Shaw; New York Polyphony), the little-known (Leonardo Vinci, not to be confused with that mirror-writing Mona Lisa guy), and the beleaguered (Osmo and the Minnesotans).
“A winner of 20 Grammys, including two last year, Corea, with his latest album The Vigil, was shut out Friday night in this year’s list of nominees, which again offered a welcome blend of relative newcomers and familiar faces.”
“If the best experience we can have with technology requires an American-designed platform, we’ll get an American experience: Buy an Apple iPhone, and in a thousand quiet ways, we interact with it the way Cupertino wants us to.”
Some 90% of Americans ages 16 and older said that the closing of their local public library would have an impact on their community, with 63% saying it would have a “major” impact.
Retailers are fine-tuning their stores’ playlists as they wake up to the power of music to communicate a brand message and put shoppers in the mood to spend. One shopper’s favorite song can make another shopper cringe.
Funny thing about the word “global”: It looks the same in Spanish and English. But it sounds different, and brings different connotations.
“There’s the Lenny problem: Is he for real or is he an act? Do we love him or do we want to kick him in the ass? Is his heart only on his sleeve, or is there another one inside him? And do those of us who grew up with him in all his avatars respond to him the same way as those coming to him for the first time, with no history and perhaps no expectations?”
“The Detroit Institute of Arts embraced publicly, for the first time, the broad outline of a federally mediated deal that would protect its art from sale and spin off the museum from city ownership into an independent nonprofit. The deal would raise roughly $500 million from a consortium of national and local charitable foundations and funnel the money into retiree pensions on behalf of the value of the art at the DIA.”
“For decades, New York University has waged architectural war on Greenwich Village and even the announced departure of President John Sexton in 2016 seems unlikely to stop its overweening expansion plan.”
“My job requires me to check tickets and usher people to their seats—a manageable task, but after checking hundreds of Ticketmaster tickets, it’s very clear that these tickets were designed more than three decades ago without a serious look into how people interact with it.”
The Minnesota Orchestral Association gives a dumbfounding report of its financial situation.
“It’s not that she’s a woman, though it was certainly high time for the Kennedy Center to be led by one. It’s that she comes from the classical music world.”
Board chairman Jon Campbell believes this says something about the “business model”.
(Slate‘s always-lively commenters are not all convinced, however.)
“Federal Judge Jed Rakoff has dismissed a lawsuit filed by independent booksellers against Amazon and the big six publishers that alleged a murky conspiracy to restrain trade.”
In the 21st century, can a language survive for long if no one uses it on the Internet?
“Ríkisútvarpið (RÚV) announced the departure of 60 staff on Thursday – 20 per cent of its already-trimmed workforce – and unveiled severe cuts to programming.”
Why? Because it’s unnatural, basically. (Not to mention sleep inertia and social jetlag.)
While he had an operatic repertoire of over 50 roles in eight languages, he was known even more for lieder and concert music, and he made more than 100 recordings.
“Richard Nelson’s critically acclaimed Apple Family plays, which are running in repertory at the Public Theater through Sunday, will be recorded for television by WNET, the PBS station on Channel 13 in New York, for broadcast at a future date, the Public announced on Wednesday.”
“Many of Rudolf Nureyev’s belongings are now on display at a costume museum in Moulins, France, offering a sense of that ballet dancer’s exuberant personality and passion for all that was rare and beautiful.”
“YouTube does deliver – here with some rare shots of Margot Fonteyn. Could it be the earliest dance footage the BBC ever recorded?”