Today’s Stories
Film About Gay Romance In Georgia Pulled From Tbilisi Film Festival After Violent Protests
“Ana Subeliani arrived at the film premiere for And Then We Danced by foot, but left in an ambulance, blood running down her face. … Before screenings in November, far-right protesters and members of the Georgian Orthodox Church, some holding religious icons aloft, tried to stop moviegoers entering theaters” screening the film, which depicts a romance between two male members of the country’s national dance troupe. – The New York Times
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Demands Correction On Clint Eastwood Film
The Clint Eastwood film looks at the media circus that broke out around Jewell, a security guard who came under suspicion for orchestrating the Centennial Olympic Park bombing before being exonerated. Scruggs, an employee at the paper, broke the story that Jewell was under investigation by the FBI. The film shows Scruggs, portrayed by Olivia Wilde, sleeping with an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) to get the story. Scruggs died in 2001 at the age of 42. The paper has maintained that there is no evidence that Scruggs slept with anyone involved in the Jewell investigation. – Variety
In The Footsteps Of Peter Handke In Bosnia, Seeing What He Did, And Didn’t, See
Controversy has raged over the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature to the Austrian writer, acknowledged as an accomplished author but accused by many observers of denying or defending Serbian war crimes in Bosnia in the 1990s. So John Erik Riley decided to reread the Handke essays at the heart of the dispute and visit Sarajevo, Goražde, Višegrad, and the site of the massacre at Srebrenica. – Literary Hub
The Seattle Symphony’s Miraculous Reinvention (And Now New Challenges)
Ten years ago the Seattle Symphony was badly broken. Miraculously, a new leadership team emerged, the orchestra chased reinvention and its fortunes soared. Now that leadership has departed and there are big questions about what’s next. – Post Alley
A Real-Time Election Night Play, Ready For This Week’s UK Vote
The Vote, originally staged at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2015, will return in an updated form this Thursday. The 90-minute play depicts the final 90 minutes of voting at a polling place in a swing district. – The Observer (UK)
William Luce, Playwright Of ‘Belle Of Amherst’ And ‘Barrymore’, Dead At 88
“Over a 40-year career, Luce … worked with the likes of Zoe Caldwell, George C. Scott and Claire Bloom as he wrote about the private lives of Charlotte Brontë, Lillian Hellman, Isak Dinesen, Zelda Fitzgerald and others. The Belle of Amherst, his portrait of the reclusive Massachusetts poet Emily Dickinson, won [Julie] Harris the fifth of her six Tony Awards … Barrymore, about the gifted and self-destructive actor John Barrymore, earned [Christopher] Plummer his second Tony and was filmed for television.” – The Hollywood Reporter
St. Petersburg Museums Struggle With Surge Of Chinese Tourists
Visits by Chinese citizens to Russia have been growing by 20% a year, and that rate will likely increase in 2020, when electronic visas become available. The extra crowds have caused particular problems at the Hermitage and, especially, at the Catherine Palace in nearby Tsarskoe Selo, where there are wait times of up to four hours as Chinese groups flock to see the famous Amber Room. – The Art Newspaper
Anne Midgette: The Exit Interview
“I felt like it was really time to move on. I could see myself doing the same thing for the next 20 years and I don’t want that. … Music has never been my only interest and it’s always bemused me a little bit that I ended up as a classical music critic.” – Perfect Sound Forever
How MBA Programs And Big Corporations Are Using The Arts To Train Executives
The business school at Oxford has students try to conduct a choir. Carnegie Mellon uses a book club and art installations. The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts offers courses to business types. And what lessons get learned in all this? – The Economist
Actor René Auberjonois, Known For ‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Benson’, ‘Deep Space Nine’, And Robert Altman Films, Dead At 79
“Mr. Auberjonois worked constantly as a character actor through several periods and forms, from the dynamic theater of the 1960s to the cinema renaissance of the 1970s to the prime period of network television in the 1980s and ’90s — and each generation knew him for something different.” – The Washington Post
Teenager Who Threw Six-Year-Old From Tate Modern Balcony Pleads Guilty To Attempted Murder
“Jonty Bravery, who turned 18 in October, … told the police he had to prove a point ‘to every idiot’ who said he had no mental health problems … As well as having an autistic spectrum disorder, Bravery has an obsessive compulsive disorder and is likely to have a personality disorder.” – The Guardian
Why Are Ireland’s Archeological Sites Disappearing?
About 15,000 new archaeological sites have been discovered over the past two decades. But where are they? The truth is that most have been physically removed. Are we to believe, therefore, that they were not worth keeping? That thousands of sites deserved nothing more than a dusty report on a shelf? – Irish Times
When Shakespeare Stands Up To Sing
Giuseppe Verdi’s last two operas, the Shakespearean diptych of Otello and Falstaff, together constitute my favorite case study in what happens when a play is made to stand up and sing. Both the source material and the musical adaptations are works of singular beauty and power. To study these operas alongside their sources is to see what is gained and what is lost, what remains intact and what is transformed, when a complex human drama is adapted from speech into song. – New York Review of Books
After 150 Years, Vienna State Opera Presents Its First Opera By A Woman
“One hundred and fifty years is a long time. But I’ve always said it’s never too late. So it’s good that they finally have thought about it. And at least if you’re the first, there has to be a second and a third and so on. So it’s always good to have a starting point.” – BBC
Prince Was A Meticulous Documenter And A Perfectionist. Is It Fair To Reveal His Incomplete Work?
Would Prince have agreed to the release of this material in this form? Does the potential public good, and the contribution to the historical record, outweigh whatever uncertainties Prince might have had about the revealing of his rough drafts? – The New York Times
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Vijay Iyer: Artist As Ally Of Adjacent Cultures
“This can’t just be about me sounding cool or looking awesome. It has to be in service of something larger. You want to actually open a conversation and activate people’s imaginations, and allow them to imagine a different world than the one we’re in. And that’s the kind of work that an artist can do, because we’re not there to answer questions exactly. We’re there to stir something up, and also to offer an alternative to the reality that we’re inhabiting.” – Boston Review
Elena Ferrante’s Literary Success Has Changed The Role Of Women Writers In Italy
Her ascent, and the rediscovery of some of the last century’s great Italian female writers, has encouraged a new wave of women and shaken the country’s literary establishment. Women writers here are winning prestigious prizes, getting translated and selling copies. Their achievements have set off a wider debate in Italy about what constitutes literature in a country where self-referential virtuosity is often valued over storytelling, emotional resonance and issues like sexism or gender roles. – The New York Times
Ailey’s First Resident Choreographer Talks Disruption
Ailey formed his company, in part, to give people of color a place to dance, Jamar Roberts said. It was also a place for him to to tell their stories. Mr. Roberts wants to continue that, but times have changed. “Are we just saying, ‘Yay, we have a place to dance’ and is that a responsible conversation?” he said. “Is that relevant considering all that’s still going on? I feel wrong for asking these questions. I have a problem when I feel like I’m being disruptive.” – The New York Times
Maggie Smith: Acting In Harry Potter And Downton Abbey Weren’t Satisfying
“I am deeply grateful for the work in Potter and indeed Downton, but it wasn’t what you’d call satisfying. I didn’t really feel I was acting in those things.” – The Guardian
La Scala Gala Opens With 15 Minutes Of Applause For Italy’s President
For the second year, the performance opened with long applause for Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, sitting in the royal box with four government ministers. As last year, the Italian government is struggling, and the long applause was seen as a show of support for Italian institutions, which Mattarella represents in a non-partisan role. – Washington Post (AP)
A First: Netflix Edges HBO In Golden Globe Nominations. Broadcast Networks Shut Out
It was a crowning moment for Netflix, and not just for the jeweled one on Queen Elizabeth’s head. The streaming service, which dominated the Globe nominations overall, edged out HBO to win the most TV nods on Monday. Netflix got 17 TV nods, to go with its 17 on the movie side. HBO was a close successor at 15. – Washington Post
This Year’s Golden Globe Nominations – Some Surprises
Sacha Baron Cohen, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Killing Eve received nominations this chilly L.A. morning, as did the apparent final season of Amazon’s Emmy-winning Fleabag and the first season of the star-studded The Morning Show on AppleTV+. – Deadline
How Dance Therapy Works On Parkinson’s
Unlike mainstream talk therapies, Dance Movement Therapy uses the entire body to approach the client primarily on a non-verbal and creative level. The body in motion is both the medium and the message. DMT recognizes the moving body as the centre of the human experience, and that body and mind are in constant reciprocal interaction. – The Conversation
Who Was Thomas Edison? A Genius, Of Course, But Beyond That…
“On a single day, when he was 40 and full of innovative fire, he had jotted down 112 ideas for ‘new things,’ among them a mechanical cotton picker, a snow compressor, an electrical piano, artificial silk, a platinum-wire ice slicer, a system of penetrative photography (presaging radiology by 12 years), and a product unlikely to occur to anyone else, except perhaps Lewis Carroll: ‘Ink for the Blind.’ ” – Washington Post
The Impossible Body Standards Of The Modern Superhero
Superman was “too chubby” to play James Bond, Kevin Hart (The Rock’s “non-ripped” co-star) starts at the gym at 5 every morning, and movie men are partnering, i.e. getting sweet but addicting brand money from, a variety of “fitness” products, companies, and routines. “It is a worrying state of affairs when the measure of an actor is how hard they work on their bodies rather than how good they are at, you know, acting.” (Uh, yes, the women in these movies probably have a thing or two to say about that as well.) – The Guardian (UK)