"Watching Tár, you’re likely to be spectacularly divided about what happens to Lydia. We experience it all through her eyes, and it’s the nature of that to feel pity and terror." But should we? - Variety
Artist Pao Houa Her draws parallels "between the heyday of Hmong opium cultivation in Laos in the decades before the Vietnam War and the current Hmong cultivation of cannabis in the United States, particularly in California." - The New York Times
Zar Amir Ebrahimi was a young actor when a leaked sex tape forced her to flee her country. Now, she says, "This Islamic Republic has to end. Women today know their rights. ... There is no other way." - The New York Times
His agent: "He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack." - The Guardian (UK)
Memoirist Mary Karr (The Liars Club, Cherry, Lit) says, "Memory is a pinball in a machine—it messily ricochets around between image, idea, fragments of scenes, stories you’ve heard. Then the machine goes tilt and snaps off." - LitHub
Shehan Karunatilaka, who won for his book The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, wrote on Instagram and Facebook, "The book took seven years to write, with countless hours of research, craft and hard work poured into it." - The Guardian (UK)
Melville had just performed at the Nottingham Playhouse in the play Nine Night. She also played a recurring character on the British soap EastEnders and was a director as well as actor. - The Hollywood Reporter
They've never been romantically linked, but they're good buddies - and it's obvious. "The genuine tenderness between them, undergirding even their tensest interactions, is ultimately what makes their co-starring turns so memorable." - The New York Times
In 2017, the Spoleto Festival asked musician Rhiannon Giddens if she wanted to write an opera about Muslim scholar Omar ibn Said. She'd never even heard of him - and she certainly hadn't written an opera. - Los Angeles Times
And will it ever, ever be fair to musicians? In August, Congress member Rashida Tlaib's office calculated that "it would take more than 800,000 streams a month to equal a wage of $15 an hour." - USA Today
Kent, an international ballet star, led the Washington Ballet for six years. In her statement about leaving for the Houston Ballet, she said, "It is where I found my voice as an artistic director." - Washington Post
The manuscripts tell a newly rediscovered story of Mount Athos: "The new rulers took the community under their wing, preserved its autonomy and protected it from external interference." - NPR
The hall "seems to have achieved a rare distinction in its engineering for sound: consistency. No seat in the hall ... is appreciably better or worse than any other." And the sound, which is cool, has a "lack of sonic plumpness." - The New York Times
