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“Soylent Green”, Made 50 Years Ago, Is Set In 2022.  Here’s Why It Got Things So Wrong — And Changed So Few Minds Back...

" Movies like Soylent Green abandon such messiness in favor of predictive certainty as they set out to shock people into action. ... And as predictions fail to materialize, shock and concern risk turning to cynicism and doubt." - Slate

Seattle’s Arts After The Pandemic: Reckoning Or Opportunity?

In the ’80s and ’90s the arts were ascendant here, and Seattle was well regarded nationally as an up and coming arts town. Then poof, much of that energy melted away. Why? - Post Alley

Public Radio’s Efforts To Diversify Its Interviewees Are Working

"Journalists at NPR and Minnesota Public Radio say they are seeing the payoff from a heightened focus on tracking the diversity of their sources, with reporters more keenly aware of the need to expand their pools of interviewees." - Current

Performers Were Among The Hardest Hit In The Pandemic. Recovery Is Slow

During the worst days of lockdown, some artists who couldn’t afford rent squatted in empty theaters to save money. Others left the art world entirely, unable to justify creating artworks that no longer had an audience. - Artnet

Taking Standup Comedy Between Countries And Languages

Edinburgh Fringe comedians from Japan, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, Argentina, and Denmark talk to a reporter about establishing connections with a foreign audience, differing styles and subjects of comedy in different countries, and carrying jokes conceived in one language into another. - The Guardian

Carl Sagan’s Warning On The Dumbing Down Of America

“The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.” - MediaPost

What Salman Rushdie Has Meant For The South Asian Diaspora

"Rushdie helped change how ... Europe and North America saw desis. He defied stereotypes and resisted all assumptions. He became, through no choice of his own, a hero for free expression and courage in the face of oppression. That role opened up possibilities" for other desis in the West. - The New Republic

Architectural Digest Airbrushed Cambodian Antiquities Out Of One Of Their Fabulous-Home Photo-Spreads — And Why?

The feature on the San Francisco mansion of Roger and Sloan Lindemann Barnett includes an image of an interior courtyard with empty pedestals.  Those pedestals aren't actually empty: they hold Khmer statuary that the Cambodian government says was looted in the 1990s. Here's how they identified it. - The Washington Post

Ten Of The World’s Most Ingenious Repurposings Of Buildings

The list ranges from a small watertower in England converted into a home to a steel mill in Shanghai transformed into an eco-park to the enormous grain silo at Cape Town's old port remade into the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. - BBC

Gina Lollobrigida, 1950s And ’60s Movie Star, Is Running For The Italian Senate At Age 95

"(She) is endeavouring to become a senator with the Sovereign and Popular Italy party (ISP), a new Eurosceptic, anti-Mario-Draghi political alliance that opposes sending arms to Ukraine and 'warmongering Atlanticism'." - The Guardian

Are Audiences Really Behaving Worse Than Before COVID?  Sure Seems Like It

It especially seems like behavior's gotten worse in Britain, where complaints have soared and one hears and reads stories about groups chatting with each other loudly, drinking too much, and even bringing takeout food to eat ("pass me a fork") during the performance. - the i (UK)

Joffrey Ballet Launches The First U.S. Training Program Dedicated To Contemporary Ballet

The new two-year, ten-dancer program will run parallel to the Joffrey’s longstanding Trainee Program in classical ballet, with the primary difference being in the movement styles included in the curriculum and the goal being to expand ideas of who can work as a professional ballet dancer. - Chicago Tribune

More Repairs At Philadelphia’s Grand Old Academy Of Music

The exterior balconies overlooking the main entrance to North America's oldest purpose-built opera house — "still the city's formal parlor for everything from Broadway shows and The Nutcracker to college graduations," writes Peter Dobrin — have been gradually crumbling and are being rebuilt. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Can Theatre Make Any Impact In The Abortion Debate?

When faced with a loss of human rights—with accounts of real women being forced to bleed out because they cannot get an abortion for their miscarriages, or of preteen girls being forced to give birth—what any piece of theatre might do to counter such injustice naturally feels pitiful and small. - American Theatre

A Warhol Copyright Case With Potential Big Implications For Artists

On Oct. 12, the justices will consider whether he violated the federal Copyright Act by basing a portrait of the musician Prince on a prominent photographer’s work. In the process, they will have to decide whether Warhol’s alterations of the photograph transformed it into something different. - The New York Times

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