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- FCC Chair Brendan Carr Threatens To Revoke Licenses If Iran War Coverage Isn’t To The President’s Liking
Uh … how’s that First Amendment doing? Carr “accused the news media of wanting the United States to lose the war.” – The New York Times
- Security For The Oscars Since The Iran War Began Has Been Extended, Intensified
“Security at the ceremony has always been formidable. But this year, in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s event, federal authorities issued a memo warning of a possible retaliatory threat against the West Coast — particularly California — tied to escalating U.S.-Israel-Iran tensions.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Huge Anti-Merger Billboard To Circle Oscars Ceremony Today
“An anti-monopoly mobile billboard, meant to caution against the impending merger between Paramount and Warner Bros., will circle Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony. The billboard’s message is plain: ‘Call Your Agent. Speak Out. The Deal Is Not Done.’” – The Wrap
- The Studio System That Backed This Year’s Likeliest Best Movie Is About To Fade Away
After missteps, Warner Bros’ new “strategy was a roaring success that evoked the studio’s prior glories and served as a reminder that if you let smart directors make great movies, even in a streaming world, audiences will go out to the theater to see them.” – Washington Post (Archive Today)
- Grappling With AI’s Presence In Hollywood As The Oscars Take Place
A recent report “forecasts more adoption of AI throughout the industry. But it also points to ways that the technology could lead to different kinds of work and open up new possibilities.” – The Conversation
- What If Chalamet Was Just Using The Wrong Metrics?
One soprano: “Some things are made primarily for consumption, while others help form us as human beings” Ouch. – HuffPost
- This Los Angeles Project Brings Veterans In Long, Close Contact With Shakespeare
A new venture in Los Angeles brings the Shakespeare Center and local veterans together for a year-long learning and writing experience. They perform today, and the program is billed as “written by the Ensemble of Veterans In Art & US Vets in collaboration with William Shakespeare.” – LAist
- New Job For Actors Is, As They Say, A Trap
“If you’ve got strong creative instincts, the ability to authentically portray emotion, and are capable of staying true to a character’s voice throughout a scene, there’s a job listing calling for your experience.The catch: … You’d be using your talents to train an AI model.” – The Verge
- The Musician Actors Of Hades And Other Broadway Shows
“Putting bands and musicians at the center of theatrical storytelling can give it a special immediacy and urgency, not least by reconnecting a form that can have a tendency to be stultified and overly formalized to its original music-making impulses.” – American Theatre
- What A Classic Zombie Movie Teaches About Film, And Life
“I’ve seen Night [of the Living Dead] three hundred times. It’s a film that, no matter how many times I watch it, yields new information, especially once I began scrutinizing it frame-by-frame.” – LitHub
- What The Screenwriter Of Blue Moon Actually Thinks Of The Musical Oklahoma
Or, to give it its proper name, Oklahoma!: “It’s one beautiful song after another. They really are beautiful melodies. I think the show is corny and embarrassing, actually. … I like the songs when I go see Oklahoma! — I trance out at the story.” – Vulture
- The Women Of Color Lifting Up Others Behind The Scenes Of Sinners
“Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s journey to become part of Coogler’s Sinners crew began with a recommendation from her friend, Rachel Morrison, the cinematographer on Coogler’s Black Panther.” – CBC
- This Filmmaker Has Two Documentaries In Oscars Contention Today
Geeta Gandbhir says she slept through the phone calls that told her she was nominated for best documentary feature for The Perfect Neighbor and best documentary short for The Devil is Busy. Has she written two speeches? Maybe. – BBC
- The Book World Seems To Have Fallen Back In Affection With Barnes And Noble
“Like all big chains, when you shop there, more of your money leaves the community than when you shop at something locally owned. … [But] anything that takes market share from Amazon is positive.” – The Atlantic
- Meet The Renderings Of The New Kennedy Center
Which — for the moment? — looks a lot like the old one. – Washington Post (MSN)
- Inside The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Power Struggle That Led To Andris Nelson’s Ouster
“The maestro’s fall is the bare-knuckled endgame of a years-long power struggle over the soul of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble renowned for its musical excellence, but which has struggled to keep pace with the times.” – Boston Globe
- BuzzFeed’s Pivot To AI Is About To Lead To Bankruptcy
“Three years after its AI pivot, the writing is on the wall. The company reported a net loss of $57.3 million in 2025 in an earnings report released on Thursday. In an official statement, the company glumly hinted at the possibility of going under sooner rather than later.” – Futurism
- Is The Met In A Death Spiral?
“Without serious remedial action, the institution known as the Metropolitan Opera could well go dark.” – David McKee
- AJ Chronicles: The Biggest Fights about Culture
These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. This week we collected 118 stories. Here’s what I learned: - Richard Grenell Out At The Kennedy Center
He leaves behind an institution that is drastically changed, and in many ways diminished, from a year ago, when Mr. Trump installed himself as chairman and filled the board with loyalists as he moved to put his imprint on the center, including what appeared on its stages. – The New York Times
- The First-Ever Film About Robots Has Been Rediscovered. It Was Made In 1897.
“A copy of Gugusse and the Automaton, an 1897 short made by legendary film pioneer George Méliès, was discovered by a man in Grand Rapids, Mich., in a box of films that had been owned by his great-grandfather. The Library of Congress revealed the find on its blog (last month).” – San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
- Eight Projects By This Year’s Pritzker Prize Winning Architect
Following the news that Smiljan Radić has won this year’s delayed Pritzker Architecture Prize, we round up eight projects from the Chilean architect’s experimental career. – Dezeen
- World Café Live In Philadelphia Files For Bankruptcy, Changes Name
The venue, named after popular a public radio music show, has been in turmoil for a year, since a new management team led by CEO Joe Callahan took over from founder Hal Real. What’s now called World Stage still faces a pile of unpaid rent, tax and utility bills. – The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
- Why Aren’t Frank Lloyd Wright Houses Selling?
The architect’s passion for combining design and nature meant that many of his residences were built in rural areas. Because of their pedigree, they now tend to be among—if not the most—expensive property available in the communities in which they’re located. – Architectural Digest
- Classical Music Magazine Is Shutting Down
The magazine was sold to Mark Allen by Rhinegold Publishing in December 2018, together with other titles such as Music Teacher, Choir & Organ and International Piano. It had been flourishing since the late 1970s but was facing declining interest and online competition. – Slipped Disc
- Those Who Resist Super-Popular Culture
I’ve come to call it “hype aversion”: an avoidance of the pop-culture products that seemingly everyone insists I would like. It’s not that I’m somehow above it all or too cool (I don’t consider myself cool at all). Some people are early adopters; others are late adopters. I’m simply a weirdly resistant one. – The Atlantic
- 70 Years Into Their Partnership, Maltby And Shire Are Still Writing Revues
Lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. and composer David Shire met as Yale freshmen and have collaborated ever since, creating the musicals Baby and Big and the revues Starting Here, Starting Now and Closer Than Ever. Their new show, About Time, grew out of a performance they gave at their 65th Yale reunion. – TheaterMania
- What Entertainment Might Look Like Years From Now
What kinds of disruptive changes will the next two decades bring? We asked five entertainment experts to predict one big change we’ll see in their field. – The Wall Street Journal
- Calgary Is Making Enormous Investments In Arts And Culture. It Shows
“As we make our way to two million, there’s the 35,000-foot level where the role for artists to play is quite significant and very much needed. That’s more on the philosophical side: Why arts are a must-have, not a nice-to-have, in my opinion.” – Calgary Herald
- Why Competitive High School Scrabble Has Become A Mess
It’s not just because of the intensity of the competitors, though that counts for a lot. Stefan Fatsis recounts a contested play at last year’s North American championship and the confusion arising from — let’s call it a breakdown of lexical authority. – Unabridged
- Atlanta, Once The “Hollywood Of The South,” Sees Its Film/TV Industry Shrink
After hitting a peak of $4.4 billion in 2022, spending on film and TV production in Georgia has tumbled, reaching just $2.3 billion in the last fiscal year, as total productions dropped from 412 in 2022 to 245 last year. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
- Kosman: The Disappearing Music Critic
The time when every musical event, every world premiere, every opera opening, was the spark for a lively public discussion is gone. In its place we have, or soon will have, silence. – On a Pacific Aisle
- Big Loss: One Of LA’s Best Dance Companies, Bodytraffic, Will Close
The company’s end wasn’t planned, but it became necessary when its artistic director and co-founder, Tina Finkelman Berkett, decided to step back from her role, citing fundraising fatigue and a desire for change. – Los Angeles Times
- Tony- And Olivier-Winning Actress Jane Lapotaire Dead At 81
She won an Olivier in 1979 and a Tony in 1981 for the title role in Piaf; alongside film and television roles — including a starmaking performance as Marie Curie in a BBC miniseries — she had a long career as an admired classical stage actor, in particular with the Royal Shakespeare Co. – The Guardian
- Conductor Juanjo Mena, 60, Will Retire Due To Alzheimer’s
Early last year, the Basque maestro — former chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic and the Cincinnati May Festival and a very busy guest conductor — revealed his diagnosis. He has now announced that the disease has progressed and that, following final concerts this month, he is ending his career. – IMG Artists
