Yearly Archives: 2021
The Calculations Behind A Successful Christmas Movie
Welcome to element philosophy. Scriptwriters use them to tell their story, composers sprinkle scores full of sleighbells and producers use them to influence us to...
The Formula For A Good Christmas Song
Plenty of explicitly Christmas-themed songs will have certain musical characteristics, even though they’re always optional. These include a major key, an accessible pitch range and...
All The Books That Won Big Prizes This Year
From the Pulitzer to the Booker, the Nebula to the Edgar, here are the winners of the biggest book prizes of 2021. - Bookmarks
Why Our Ideological Fights Descend Into Fights About What Words Mean
The well-rehearsed rhetorical drama over this kind of conceptual terminology is only one of the ways in which arguments over definitions and usage have...
In The Middle Of The Night, Hong Kong Authorities Remove Tiananmen Memorial
The 26-foot-tall artwork, known as the “Pillar of Shame,” had stood at the University of Hong Kong for nearly a quarter-century and honored the hundreds, if...
American Contemporary Theatre Closes Its Acclaimed MFA Program
The program consistently ranked as one of the top five graduate acting schools in the country, after more than five decades educating such distinguished...
Man Buys $30 Drawing. Now It Could Be Worth Millions
“It was either a masterpiece or the greatest forgery I had ever seen,” he said. - The New York Times
Christkindlmärkte: A Brief History Of Germany’s Christmas Markets
The mercantile/community gatherings date back to at least the 14th century, and though they've since spread through much of the world, they're especially dear...
An Iconic Chicago Building Is Saved
Chicago has a forest of imposing skyscrapers, and nothing else like this squat concoction of glass and steel that looks from the outside like...
How Jewish People Eating Chinese Food Became A Standard Part Of American Christmas
It's not only because Chinese restaurants were the only places open on Christmas back in the day … - Mental Floss
Is The Golden Age Of Travel Over?
The old way it was practised, at vast scale, and across increasingly porous borders, has begun to look like it might be a terminal...
A Small Ballet Company Bounces Back From Hurricane Ida
Flooding caused by the storm wrecked the studios of Roxey Ballet in Lambertville, NJ; said director Mark Roxey, "The building was submerged in water....
Is Paris’ Grand Palais Throwing Out Its Big Art Fair?
RX France is challenging the validity of the process, claiming that it has received two written commitments to the fairs from RMN-Grand Palais, the...
“Dirty Harry” At 50: Portrait Of A Seminal ’70s Antihero
"Partisans on either side looking for affirmation of their stance will be disappointed. … Neither condemning nor condoning his actions, the film offers what...
Omicron Shutdown Comes At A Bad Time For Broadway
This selective information release does little to quell anxieties, and resentment toward the Broadway establishment is often triggered. - Washington Post
Do Egyptians Think Verdi’s “Aïda” Is Cultural Appropriation? Merely Silly? Actually, They Don’t
to Cairo and asked people there about it — and she found that people, even those who've never seen it themselves, seem generally proud...
Brigitte Lefèvre Helped Transform France’s Entire Dance Scene Into What It Is Today
She led the way in introducing the country to contemporary dance, not least at the Paris Opera Ballet, which she ran for two decades,...
Even The Color Blue Is Having Supply-Chain Problems
Two factories in France produce much of the world's synthetic ultramarine pigment; one stopped making it, and the other couldn't meet the extra demand...
Conservatives Trying To Ban Certain Books From Schools Forget About The Streisand Effect
In Virginia, Texas, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, whether the topic is race, sexuality, history, or something else, grownups trying to keep particular books from teens...
Enormous Changes At The Last Minute At The Philadelphia Orchestra’s “Messiah”
The scheduled conductor and all four soloists, who'd been rehearsing together, tested positive the day before Wednesday's concert — and, rather than canceling, the...
Fifteen Minutes Before Curtain Time, Broadway Playwright Steps In To Save Performance From Cancellation
With three cast members testing positive for COVID and only two understudies available, Keenan Scott II grabbed his script for Thoughts of a Colored...
England Doubles The COVID Arts Relief Funding It Announced Just Days Ago
On Monday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that £30 million ($40 million) was being added to Arts Council England's Culture Recovery Fund. On...
How The Internet Changed Music This Year
The geeks among you will recognize that the words “decentralization” and “distributed network” invoke a nearly 10-year-old model of equitable Web-based information flow, one that’s currently...
I Think, Therefore I Have Language
So how does language and thought relate, then? And what is “thought”, anyway? Perhaps one way of answering both questions is to determine whether...
British Film Classification Board Rethinks Some Of Its Previous Ratings
Recent rereleases of films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Jaws have led the board to reconsider...