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- Does The California Gold Rush Teach Us Anything About The Rush To AI?
In 1849 alone, more than forty thousand people travelled overland to California, while roughly the same number headed there by sea. – The New Yorker
- Why The Broadway Musical Survives
Yet the Broadway musical persists, in its wholly impossible format, imposing eight big singing shows a week on its stars, which is, as any veteran will tell you, one of the most brutal workloads possible for a performer—and, when it occurs in long-running shows, mostly invisible as a personal triumph. – The New Yorker
- Has Substack “Fixed” Writing On The Internet?
The company is, in essence, a crowdfunding e-commerce site, belonging to the same category as Kickstarter, Patreon, Gumroad, and OnlyFans. But it has out-evolved its ancestors and bested its competitors in its relevance to public discourse and in its direct commodification of online parasocial relationships. – The New Yorker
- Wu-Tang Clan’s Historic Blunder Selling A Single Recording
- As The National Ballet Of Canada Turns 75, It Demonstrates Both Artistry And Guts
But “is it a Canadian ballet company or just a first-rate ballet company based in Canada?” – The New York Times
- Eric Bauza, Emmy-Winning Voice Actor And Heir To Mel Blanc At Looney Tunes, Has Died Suddenly At 46
Recently, “the Canadian actor outdid himself with Coyote vs. Acme, voicing everything from Bugs Bunny to Foghorn Leghorn and Tweety Bird.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Can An Immigrant From Scotland Really Be ‘An Irish Writer’?
The writer herself has questions.”Writers are, often, to generalise, outsiders, observers, given to the long view, odd if not downright awkward. … How do these propensities relate to the construction of literature as an international sport?” – Irish Times
- The Top Movie Soundtracks Of The 21st Century
From Jóhann Jóhannson’s score for Sicario to the many joys of Shrek 2 to Howard Shore’s scores for The Lord of the Rings, music makes these movies – not just better, but essentially makes them what they are. – The Atlantic
- When The Mystery Author Is So Caustic She Ends Up A Character In A Murder Movie
Patricia Highsmith’s “politics are horrendous. She is homophobic despite being gay, antisemitic, anti-everything. Yet she is one of the most psychologically astute writers of the 20th century, particularly brilliant at allowing us into the dark parts of the human psyche.” – The New York Times
- Stephen Fry On Sherlock Holmes
“Even as the stories were still being written and published, tens of thousands around the world behaved as if Holmes and Watson truly lived and breathed.” Why? – The Guardian (UK)
- The Predecessors To The Possibly Partly Fake Documentary You Can See Everything
For instance, Shirley Clarke’s 1967 movie Portrait of Jason. – The New York Times
- Anthony LaPaglia Didn’t Get To Be Tony Soprano, But That’s Not A Problem
The best piece of advice the actor says he’s ever received: “‘Know your lines and don’t hit the furniture.’ That is Spencer Tracy’s acting advice. I’ve always thought, dead on.’” – The Guardian (UK)
- Why Millennials Are So Into This Movie Star’s Turn On Dancing With The Stars
“It’s rare for Dancing With the Stars to attract a star of [Julia] Stiles’s wattage. The show is hard, humbling work.” – The New York Times
- How To Write About People, And Place, Beyond War
“Turning to fiction allowed for stories that would otherwise have disappeared into the chest of time, to live on, and slowly but surely they are educating, bringing forth that we all share this place together. The 24-hour news cycle leaves little room for reflection or deeper understanding.” – LitHub
- Bristol Is Booming With New Spaces For Black Music
“We don’t need to pretend to be nobody else, we’re just us. It just took a while to get there.” – BBC
- Helping ‘Benjamin Button’ Grow Up, Into A Musical
“In rehearsals, they tightened the structure, fine-tuned the music and lyrics, tamping down the sentimentality. Still, the show is plenty sentimental.” – The New York Times
- What Makes For A Good Scary Story?
The end, says Stephen Graham Jones.”The story is running along the top of a flat mesa, and it’s nighttime and 95% of it is even-footing. But then at the very end, you jump off into the night, into the darkness, and you trust.” – NPR
- The Owners Of Elvis’s Music Catalogue Are Suing Anthropic
“The Elvis plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before,” according to the lawsuit. – The New York Times
- It’s Spooky Season, And Time To Acknowledge The Most Influential American Writer Ever
Edgar Allan Poe “seems in deliberate, even flagrant, contrast with what were once regarded as the great themes of American literature: the freedom of self-reinvention promised by a new society and its frontier, exploration, rugged individualism, and the struggle to conquer nature.” – Slate
- Our Playlists Are Filled With ‘Old’ Music
Is nostalgia – and not just A.I. – ruining popular music right now, when more than 100,000 songs are released to streamers every single day? – BBC
- Noise Laws, Drugs, And Cellphones Are Harming Dance Clubs In Britain
Or so lovers of (ridiculously) loud dance music claim. “At Gaffe, a DIY space in northeast London, a sign shows two arrows pointing in different directions. One says ‘Dancing,’ the other ‘Yapping.’” – The Guardian (UK)
- The Queer, Tattooed Colombian Author Who’s A National Book Award Finalist
Júlian Delgado Lopera: “‘Most of the catastrophic violence in our history can be traced back to a man who hasn’t allowed himself to feel tenderness,’ he affirms. … He’s referring to a kind of violence that goes beyond the long-running armed conflict.” – El País English
- The Film Director Whose Impossible Class Struggle Movie Won At Venice
Lee Chang-Dong: “I constantly asked myself: am I worthy of telling this story? And if I am, how do I tell it? Do I stand close to the workers, or keep my distance?” – The Guardian (UK)
- How Netflix Went From Zeitgeist To, Well, Zeitghost
“The main problem with 2020s Netflix: It gets eyeballs watching far more than it gets tongues wagging. If a Super Bowl-size event takes place and nobody talks about it, does it even matter?” – Fast Company
- Authors Are Angry And In Mourning As A Koch Scion Sells Off Catapult Books After Workers Unionize
Author Gina Frangello: “Catapult is intrinsic to L.A. culture and L.A. literature. So many of their writers are in this area. … It’s a huge loss for L.A. It’s a huge loss for the West Coast.” – Los Angeles Times
- Amy Poehler Goes To Ancient Greece
Poehler, and Hugh Laurie, star in a fictional show about realistic archaeologists. “Getting the objects right was important for the production because an appreciation of artifacts is central to archaeology.” – The New York Times
- San Francisco’s SFMoMA Gets A Big Boost From A K-Pop Star
Want to sell tickets? Get a K-pop star’s art collection up. “The show has been a blockbuster success, with over 66,000 tickets sold and advance sales that were six times higher than any previous exhibition at the museum.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Sofia Coppola On Finishing What Her Mother Eleanor Started
“‘It’s like the opposite of Hearts of Darkness,’ Sofia said. ‘In a way it’s sort of a nice counterpoint because that movie’s so macho and masculine and this is so feminine.’ And it’s also true to what really happened.” – Seattle Times (AP)
- J Todd Anderson, The Coen Brothers’ Longtime Storyboard Artist, Has Died
“For more than 40 years, Mr. Anderson was the hidden hand in nearly every movie the Coen brothers made. It was a close-knit but unheralded working relationship that aesthetically defined one of the greatest runs in moviemaking history.” – The New York Times
- The Women Who Are Under Attack Everywhere, But Thriving In Dance Clubs
And not as dancers, but as DJs, promoters, and business owners. “Trans women aren’t just more visible in dance music—they’re ‘taking the reins over the modes of production.’” – Slate
- Four Objects That Measure The Thirty Years Of Rent
“In an alternate universe, might ‘Seasons of Love’ have opened with the lyric: ‘31,536,000 seconds?’” – The New York Times
- Some Questions For And About The Suddenly Shuttered Phoenix Symphony
For instance: “Why it hired a new music director … amid much fanfare last March; whether any employees other than CEO Peter Kjome will be paid during the suspension; or what, specifically, is being done to help the musicians and staff whose pay has been cut off.” – Phoenix New Times
- Short-Story Collections May Be Hard To Sell, But A Single Short Story Can Sell To Netflix For A Million Dollars
Why? The “bite-size format appeals to busy studio executives facing mountains of scripts. Buying unpublished stories also allows producers to avoid the hassle of optioning novels, whose fans often expect a faithful adaptation.” – The New York Times
- The Global Rise Of Album Listening Bars
In Seattle’s Shibuya, for instance, “Once the listening room doors open, all drinks, distractions and shoes must be left at the door.” – Salon
- AI Could Never Have Made The Stop-Motion Wildwood
“Every single thing you see onscreen is an artistic choice. You start with a blank canvas, nothing exists. Everything has to be thought through, designed and manipulated by an artist’s hands.” – The New York Times