Stories

The poor performance of “Strange World” highlights one of the issues facing Mr. Iger. He returns to a theatrical environment far harsher to animated releases than the one he left. - The Wall Street Journal

The mystique of the too-quiet room, if construed by outsiders, has perhaps been bolstered by the company’s website, which advertises an experience called “The Orfield Challenge,” whereby, for $600 an hour, a person can attempt to set a new “record” for time spent in the chamber. - The New York Times

Since AIDS was identified in the early 1980s, the World Health Organization estimates that over 40 million people have died of HIV or AIDS-related illness and that today there are an estimated 38 million people carrying the virus. - Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus

“The main problem is that fees for artists have not gone up despite the growing costs of inflation, gas prices, increased flight prices, hotels, etc. So there’s even less money to go round now, when, let’s face it, there was not very much to begin with, but now the pie is even smaller.” - The Daily Beast

Now, when so many of our needs are unified and algorithm-prompted by online retail, independent bookstores offer person-to-person customization. Something, it turns out, that we are craving despite the ease of online shopping. - The Globe & Mail

As more video-production studios embrace advanced audio formats for at-home content, not every device can keep up. Plenty of viewers can’t keep up, either. - The Wall Street Journal

The confrontation is intriguing and raises many issues of which the most basic is the simple question: why has the story of Atlantis – compared with other ancient myths – maintained its popularity for so long? What is the essential attraction of the tale? - The Observer

The company says it plans to invest $1 billion a year in movies to be released in theatres - that's 12-15 theatrical releases a year, far outstripping Netflix's plans for cinemas. - Seattle Times (Bloomberg)

January was bad, very bad, timing for British company Breakthru Films to open an painting animation studio in Kyiv. - The Observer (UK)

"It might be easy to assume that anyone still paying to receive DVDs through the mail is a technophobe. ... But subscribers say they stick with the service so they can rent movies that are otherwise difficult to find on streaming services." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch (AP)

Poet tatiana de la tierra produced one-of-a-kind chapbooks scrounged from cardboard and recycled paper, and her "writing itself was just as singular — unassimilated and unafraid even by today’s standards." - Los Angeles Times

Theatre history dreams: "The Broadway timeline itself is two floors filled with pictures and artifacts –costumes, props, documents – illustrating the history of New York theater from minstrelsy and vaudeville up to the present day." - NPR

There was reason to think the gold coins weren't Roman: "A fraudster in Vienna frequently duped collectors in the 18th century, when the coins were found in Transylvania, or modern-day Romania, the researchers said." - The New York Times

As the museum prepares to move, the City of London would really like to demolish the old building. But "this is a test case for the argument that old buildings should be kept for the sake of the carbon embodied in their fabric." - The Observer (UK)

"Frustrated by the lack of airtime for reggae music in the UK, Lepke setup a mast in his back garden and began to broadcast to a small area of West London every Sunday afternoon. DBC soon expanded to cover all styles of black music." - BBC