Yearly Archives: 2023
The Actors Concerned About Generative AI Are All Too Correct To Be Worried
"It’s not hard to imagine a future in which a wide-eyed actor signs up for one season of a vampire TV show, and then...
Will This Year’s Emmys Finally Show Some Love To Latina And Latino Actors?
I mean, we're talking about Pedro Pascal, here, people. And Selena Gomez, Diego Luna, and Jenna Ortega. Before this year, the only - only!...
Production Design For The Barbie Movie Wiped Out A Global Supply Of Pink Paint
Not a joke. To be fair, the pandemic's supply chain issues, plus the 2021 Texas deep freeze, created a shortage on their own -...
Ghanaian Author And Playwright Ama Ata Aidoo, 81
Ata Aidoo, "as well as being a writer and university professor, also served as Ghana’s education minister in the early 1980s; she resigned when...
Old-School Romanian Pottery Has Suddenly Become A Hot Commodity
A Romanian-born owner of a London design store says "the décor industry is fond of artisanal work right now, adding that if it’s 'obscure'...
The Hollywood Writers’ Strike Is Going Strong, One Month In
There was a K-Pop themed strike day, and the writers have also held "singles events, Greta Gerwig appreciation day, Pride and drag queen day,...
Don’t Learn To Code
"Computers that we can all 'program,' computers that don’t require specialized training to adjust and improve their functionality and that don’t speak in code:...
In The UK, A Statue Of A Black Woman Was Painted White By A...
But the artist invited the entire seaside community of Bexhill to help fix the damage and restore the statue. "More than 300 volunteers ......
The Best Time To See A Movie Is Before Lunch
"If the life wisdom espoused by self-improvement columns and my grizzled colleagues was 'Do the hardest thing first,' I was taking the opposite approach....
Life After The Master: A Steven Sondheim Protege
“We did this workshop,” Foley told me. “And he came to see it, and . . . he did not like it. It was a really awful...
Composer Kaija Saariaho, 70
She first came to notice in contemporary classical circles in the 1980s with atmospheric modernist music which frequently incorporated electronics; she achieved stardom with...
The Pseudoscience Of Extending Our Lives
Most of us want to live as long as possible but would like to avoid the deterioration of aging. So it’s only natural that...
In India Chatbots Are Answering Questions As Gods
At least five GitaGPTs have sprung up between January and March this year, with more on the way. Experts have warned that chatbots being allowed...
The Difference Between Novels And Short Stories? More Than Just Length
The short story has, from the beginning, been a thoroughly modern form: Originally published in newspapers and magazines and consumed on railroads and omnibuses,...
Watching A Master Craftswoman Make A Mask For Noh Theater
"The artisan Nakamura Mitsue employs her four decades of experience as she cuts, carves and paints, gradually forging an eerily lifelike human face from...
Why Was “Succession” So Good? Theatre Pros
Succession comes by its theater DNA honestly. A number of its writers are working playwrights, with impressive produced work under their belts, and executive producer Frank...
The Architect Of Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center Designed A Curved-Keyboard Piano
Rafael Viñoly was at a dinner party with Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim, who complained about the challenges of a standard keyboard for someone...
David Brooks: The “Merit” System We Built For Universities Is Working Against Us
It’s ridiculous that we’ve built a system that overvalues the sort of technocratic skills these universities cultivate and undervalues the social and moral skills...
A 15th-Century English Manuscript Gives A Rare Glimpse Of A Real-Life Traveling Minstrel’s Routine
"The manuscripts were copied by cleric Richard Heege, a tutor to the Sherbrooke family, part of the Derbyshire gentry. … Dr. Wade concluded that...
Book Banning Comes To Newtown, CT… And Fails
Republicans on the Newtown Board of Education sought to have Flamer by Mike Curato and Blankets by Craig Thompson removed from the local high school library as if...
Warning The National Art Museum of China, Xi Jinping Uses The Phrase “Politically Correct”...
In a letter last month on the institution's 60th anniversary, the Chinese president said NAMOC should "be persistent in upholding a politically correct direction,...
Oregon Shakespeare Festival In Crisis: Appoints New Leader, Says It Needs To Raise $7.3...
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced Thursday that former tech executive Tyler Hokama has been appointed the company’s interim executive director, and at the same...
Collaboration Gone Wrong, Vicious Feud, Or Performance-Art Prank? The Drama Between Author Michel Houellebecq...
It certainly started as a collaboration, with the collective KIRAC making a documentary about France's reigning literary provocateur (age 67 and married, as if...
Controversies Over Research Into One Cambridge College’s Ties To Slavery Turn Ugly
"What happened at (Gonville & Caius) demonstrates the collision between two different worldviews: one that sees research into the history of slavery as a...
Hollywood’s Commercial Choreographers Have Formed A Union of Their Own
"After forming in 2022, the Choreographers Guild started accepting members this spring. The labor organization plans to tackle a host of issues: It aims...
