"For more than a century, filmmakers have been using the 'green screen' technique. ... So where did it come from? And why is it so popular? And most importantly: why is it green? It's time, for once, to let the green screen occupy the foreground instead of the background." - Quartz
If, in fact, book reviews are on the whole too positive, as some suggest, does this mean that the purpose of book reviewing is to sniff out what’s rotten? Or, if book reviews are too negative, does this mean that public-facing literary criticism’s purpose is to highlight what’s worth reading? - LA Review of Books
It's a "miracle," he says, that a ballet in 1900 was notated at all, let alone that the notation survives. As for teaching the movement to performers in 2022, he says, "I very much disagree with the idea that the technique of the dancers is so much better now. I think it's just different." - The Age (Melbourne)
Even a hardened civil liberties advocate would have to down a stiff drink and say a prayer or two before defending someone’s right to publically mock murder victims and their families. - The Critic
"This week, archaeologists from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the recovery of more than 250 sarcophagi, 150 bronze statues and a variety of other antiquities from the site. The remarkably well-preserved objects in the necropolis are still in good — and sometimes colorful — condition." - Smithsonian Magazine
The growth of British literary festivals over the past few decades has been an exponential development. It has also changed the idea of what people expect from authors. - The Critic
"Weinstein had proved his skill at storytelling in the movie business. But trials are not movies, shot under controlled conditions and revised in the editing room." An excerpt from Ken Auletta's Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence. - The New Yorker
That this should be considered news says something about the state of things in Australia after years of rule by the conservative Coalition. Declared Tony Burke, the arts minister for the newly elected Labor government, "The nine-year political attack on the arts and entertainment sector is now over." - ArtsHub (Australia)
"The 600-year-old Orloj, ... one of Prague's most famous landmarks, is at the centre of an embarrassing row amid claims that an artist endowed it with likenesses of his friends and acquaintances in an expensive restoration project, possibly as a joke." - The Guardian
Built on a Charleston waterfront wharf where more than 100,000 enslaved Africans were brought ashore after the Middle Passage, will officially open the weekend of January 21, 2023. More than $100 million has been raised for its construction and operation. - Hyperallergic
Ali Viterbi's multi-award-winning In Every Generation was to be the centerpiece of this year's JFest (officially, the Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival). Previews, scheduled to start last Thursday, simply didn't happen, and this week the theater officially cancelled "due to personal and financial reasons." - The San Diego Union-Tribune
On Wednesday night, 21-year-old Brian Hernandez broke into the museum, went up to display cases and started smashing. He told the guard who intercepted him that he did it because "he was mad at his girl"; the guard told him to sit down until the police came, and he did. - NBC News
"The good news is that the public broadcast group has been operating without much help from the state or its Board of Regents for years, … with more than 75% of its funding coming from individuals, businesses, and corporations." - Inside Radio
The Italian conductor, who became music director in 2017, has extended his term through the 2026-27 season. (As of last September, he is also music director of Zurich's well-funded opera house.) Says NSO principal flutist Aaron Goldman, "However long we can keep him, we want to." - MSN (The Washington Post)
