In September the EU launched "an ambitious and historic initiative to fund innovative scientific and artistic endeavours to abate climate change and allow Europe to meet its goal of zero net carbon emissions by 2050. The Commission intends to bring the European Green Deal to life by creating ‘a collaborative design and creative space, where architects, artists, students, scientists, engineers...
The documentary will feature interviews alongside select footage of Tharp’s more than 160 choreographed works, “including 129 dances, 12 television specials, six major Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows and two figure skating routines.” - IndieWire
Booksellers often distrusted Voltaire, because by modifying his texts and multiplying the editions, he alienated their customers. No one wanted to pay good money for a slightly new version of a book that one had already bought. And some booksellers had become disenchanted with his endless variations on the same themes. - Lapham's Quarterly
There are the endless literary takes. There are Anthony Horowitz’s sequels, or Andrew Lane’s tales of a teenage Holmes. Star basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has written novels about Holmes’s older brother Mycroft; Nancy Springer wrote the Enola Holmes books, giving Holmes and Mycroft a younger sibling. James Lovegrove has combined the worlds of Holmes and HP Lovecraft in the...
Back in 2009, the NFL itself was wondering about that very question. So they asked Ben Zimmer, America's most famous lexicographer, to look into it. Turns out that "hut" in particular is very practical, and it has a pedigree that seems obvious once you think about it. - Mental Floss
Guido Frackers is the guy. "So I’ve seen the environment at least one year before. And we have a “bulldozer” who goes in 24 hours before the orchestra arrives to pave the way, to line every hotel up, so when the musicians arrive at the hotel, checking in is basically as quick as it takes them to pick up...
"Shot in half the time the Lugosi vehicle was allotted, and on a much smaller budget, Drácula" — yes, it's the Spanish version — "contains revealing differences. It's 29 minutes longer than the Browning film, with more dialogue – we see more of Dracula's castle; and the framing of shots are arguably superior – thanks to Melford's...
“At the start of the pandemic, no one had any work, so it wasn’t so much of a problem. At times it was even nice not to be working. But when you’re freelance, you wonder whose doing what and doubt yourself, and when shoots opened up again, it was difficult not being out and about and having a purpose.”...
"Recent case histories are alternately breakthroughs and models of artistic self-defeat. Which was which?" asks David Patrick Stearns. "The reverse of what I expected." The key: the message and the material have to fit each other. - Classical Voice North America
The idea that the world is corrupt and unfair was the subject of medieval morality plays and sermons. They taught a vast population to reconcile itself to misery and subjugation by promising rewards in the afterlife. But in a democracy, everyone is moderately free and potentially subject to rewards in this life, though few receive the rewards they think...
It's not usually after a disaster: in those cases, great cities tend to rebuild and often become grander. (Think of London and Chicago after great fires, Lisbon and San Francisco after earthquakes, Berlin and Tokyo after bombing.) "Mismanagement and inertia are more formidable foes than cataclysm, though they administer less dramatic death." - Curbed
In a recent study of 217 Border collies that ranged in age from 6 months to 15, the team, together with the Clever Dog Lab in Austria, found similarities with humans in the dogs’ personality traits as they age. - Nautilus
"Making stories was how Nichols coped with the world. The biographical question is: why was there a need to cope? The answer is not mysterious. Nichols was unusually self-aware, and he liked to talk about his life. To some extent, the Mike Nichols story is a story by Mike Nichols." - The New Yorker
Performances for kids in schools are the only ones allowed under current COVID restrictions, so puppet shows are the only live theatre happening in France now. "The situation for French puppeteers is bittersweet. While it constitutes a return to their roots, as children remain their most faithful fans, many of them have worked hard to position the form as...
"'My hunch is that, for some women, having me present means they have to examine their past experiences on set without an intimacy coordinator,' said Mia Schachter, intimacy coordinator on ABC's Grey's Anatomy and HBO shows such as Insecure and Euphoria." - The Guardian
