Best known for Something Wild, Field of Dreams, and Goodfellas, "in a decades-long, genre-spanning career, Liotta played criminals, cops, a baseball star, a preacher and even Frank Sinatra." - MSN (Los Angeles Times)
Lawmakers in Denmark have agreed global TV streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Disney, must pay a levy of 6% of their revenue in the country to support local TV production. - Reuters
Robert Ainsley succeeds Francesca Zambello, who led Glimmerglass, a summer festival of opera and theater, for more than a decade. In an interview, Ainsley said he was committed to building on Zambello’s efforts to “make this an art form for everyone.” - The New York Times
Perched in a helicopter some 650 feet up, scientists used light-based remote sensing technology (lidar) to digitally deforest the canopy and identify the ancient ruins of a vast urban settlement around Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon that was abandoned some 600 years ago. - Smithsonian
John McWhorter: For example, the pathway from “crippled” to “handicapped” to “disabled” to “differently abled.” New words ultimately don’t leave freighted ideas behind; they merely take them on. - The New York Times
Pre-COVID, Boston’s arts organizations had a pragmatic approach—they prioritized ticket sales over experimentation. As a result, Boston’s arts sector produces fewer new works than its peer cities. Without new sources of funding, this innovation disparity will likely increase. - Commonwealth
The record is an unusual proposition: A rare fusion of pow wow—an Indigenous culture of music and dance—and experimental electronic production. Holding it all together are sampled live recordings of pow wow singing and drumming stretching back decades. - Pitchfork
Composer Tobias Picker and librettist Dr. Aryeh Lev Stollman have written Awakenings, based on the late neurologist Oliver Sacks's memoir/case study about treating encephalitis lethargica patients and about to premiere in St. Louis. (And this isn't even the first opera based on an Oliver Sacks case study.) - The New York Times
How low has Putin driven Russian culture? Here are two indications. Thousands of scientists and other intellectuals along with hundreds of ballet dancers and other artists are leaving or trying to leave Russia, ashamed of Putin’s wars and immobilized by his repression. - Hedgehog Review
He had knowledge, taste, charm; two high-profile galleries; a beautiful partner and baby daughter. Now he's in prison for fraud, internationally reviled, and owes $86 million. As one friend-turned-victim puts it, through "a toxic mix of arrogance and alcohol, ... he's sabotaged his entire life for short-term greed. It's just stupidity." - The Guardian
The scientific revolutions of the last four centuries took place not just at the same time as political and religious conflict, invasion and enslavement, but because of these things. - New Statesman
Robbie Praw, who spent 12 years as programmer at Just for Laughs in Montreal before joining Netflix in 2016, talks about how he chooses which comedians to present, whether Netflix is focusing too much on "politically incorrect" material, and mounting the company's, and Los Angeles's, first-ever major comedy festival. - Vulture
Sanitized and caricatured by corporate marketing schemes, Basquiat’s work has been defanged. Today, Basquiat the artist has become Basquiat the brand. - Jacobin
Volt, an annual project whose first featured writer is Karen Hartman, is meant to spotlight, as founder Val Day put it, "somebody who (is) more widely produced in the regions, who (has) a fairly large canon of work which deserved to have eyes on it in New York." - The New York Times
