Ron Oliver's joke tweets get calls from Hallmark executives, and his philosophy is omnipresent across streamers' and networks' Christmas fare: "Make it beautiful, make it nostalgic, make it romantic, and give ’em a little love at the end." - Los Angeles Times
Ivo van Hove's passion for movies has affected everything about his direction, from the use of video on stage to the themes he pursues. - The Guardian (UK)
No, according to Jeff Garlin, he was definitely not fired from The Goldbergs. He called the reporter to explain, well, everything "Okay. There has been an HR investigation on me the past three years. HR has come to me three years in a row for my behavior on set." - Vanity Fair
A middle-school class at NY's Special School discovered there was no Price biography aimed at children - so "this beautiful book emerged that they wrote together, 45 of them together." - NPR
The Volksbühne kept an East German spirit alive in a reunified Germany, until its longtime director was fired in 2017. Since then, there have been three other artistic directors, including one accused of sexual harassment. Can the newest AD change the trajectory? - The New York Times
Such are the questions that a global, murderous pandemic will make most of us ask. And we might wonder: "What work is actually valuable? It’s incredibly unclear." - The Atlantic
In the online iteration of 2020, no African American galleries were included. But "over the past year, Art Basel changed its admission requirements and made a concerted effort to invite previously marginalized galleries to apply." - The New York Times
"Sondheim is particularly remembered among connoisseurs of word puzzles for his role in introducing Americans to British-style cryptic crosswords. ... The crosswords that he created for New York Magazine in 1968 and 1969 were instrumental in popularizing the cryptic genre on this side of the Atlantic." - Slate
"Netflix’s Christmas rom-coms are not meant to be judged on a spectrum of 'good' to 'bad.' They are only to be understood on a spectrum from 'surreal approximation of human behavior' to 'perverting the physical rules of our known universe.”’ - Vulture
Before her death at 61, she had become one of Spain's most ambitious, and certainly most progressive and feminist, novelists. Spain's prime minister wrote, "We lost one of the most important writers of our time." - The New York Times
Gigantic surprise, right? On the other hand, a study found that in Britain, "Freelancers have also been networking and organising and built up a sense of solidarity as they felt the government and the public were not necessarily valuing what they do." - BBC
In terms of payment, it's a huge mess - thanks to the failure to win residuals from reruns in the 1960s, plus streamers' legendary anti-union stances: "A growing number of producers are not hiring union musicians in order to avoid any kind of future payments." - Variety
Maybe, but without kids onstage: "We would usually have four teams of 10 children under 12, and four teams of four teenagers rotating through the season, and ... we would be opening the cast up to too much risk." - Irish Times
At least, according to our collective emoji use. The "face with tears of joy" accounted for five percent of all emojis sent online last year. (A red heart was also right up there, but watch out, kissy face is moving up.) - The Verge
A church founder says hearing Coltrane turned him into "born-again believer in that anointed sound that leaped down from the tone of heaven out of the very mind of God, stepped from the very wall of creation.” - The New York Times
