Author Valeria Luiselli just won the Dublin literary award. She says that she, her daughter, and her niece have been reading out loud to each other since the pandemic began. "I can say, without a hint of doubt, that without books – without sharing in the company of other writers’s human experiences – we would not have made it...
Yes, that's a weird confluence, but Cruella still makes it happen. "Cruella signposts something essential about punk: the power of reinvention. For the original punks, clothes weren’t just clothes but a ticket to a whole new you, cut to your own design." - The Guardian (UK)
The history of the New York Times Book Review is pretty interesting for word nerds. "Although photos already appeared in other parts of the paper, these came only later to the Book Review. The publication turned instead to typography — some of it quite fanciful — to set its distinctive-looking pages apart." - The New York Times
With barriers at every turn, from an anxious director who didn't want to work with the leading actors to disastrous early scripts, no one expected Midnight Cowboy to get completed - or be a hit. Jerome Hellman "helped steer the project through crisis after crisis, fudging on cost estimates, fighting with recalcitrant collaborators and surreptitiously shooting scenes on the...
Both on Master of None and Solos, even when the pandemic isn't in the script, it affects everything. New seasons feel "intriguingly defined by current events, and yet similarly handicapped by them." It's not easy to make TV during a global pandemic, but, says a critic, "All I want now, watching shows after 14 months of social withdrawal, is...
MacLeod had been a working, but struggling, actor for many years when he read for The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. He had been asked to audition for the role of Lou Grant - the role that eventually went to Ed Asner - but asked to read for Murray instead. "As Murray, the balding, humble head writer and...
Celebration Theatre's longtime AD Michael Shepperd was accused of sexual misconduct over more than a decade - and the accusers say that the theatre mishandled those complaints until last week, when an internal investigation prompted the theatre to let him go. When there's a power differential, can a small theatre be a "safe, sex-positive" space? - Los Angeles Times
The problem is a new variant: "After delays caused by Covid, the festival confirmed it would take place in early July, but France has announced a seven-day isolation period for visitors from the UK in response to rising concerns over the Covid variant B.1.617.2, first detected in India. The move is likely to affect thousands, both among the press corps and...
Her rifle was important during the war; her camera became more important after: "As one of the only known Jewish partisan photographers, Mrs. Schulman, thanks to her own graphic record-keeping, debunked the common narrative that most Eastern European Jews had gone quietly to their deaths." - The New York Times
Yes, that's right, the long-running sitcom (still massively popular with Millennials and Gen-Zers thanks to streaming) is useful for English language-learners around the world. "The dad jeans and cordless telephones may look dated, but the plot twists — falling in love, starting a career and other seminal moments in a young person’s life — are still highly relatable." -...
There's a bad review of Paddington 2? Yes" "The new Paddington 2 review slammed the warm-hearted adventure film for having deviated from the spirit of Michael Bond’s children’s books, being 'contrived and ridiculous,' with Paddington being 'over-confident, snide and sullen,' claimed 'considerations of race and identity, key to the Paddington character, are not addressed,' and added that voice actor Ben Whishaw...
And that goal is to decolonize itself. Museum director Bethany Montagano: "We felt a sense of urgency to do this because colonial systems of oppression were really rearing their ugly head in the wake of COVID ... especially as it relates to Asian Americans and the colonial brand of poison projected onto Asian Americans." - Los Angeles Times
On the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, President Biden proposed a 20 percent increase in funding for an agency the previous president always threatened to cut entirely. "According to the endowment’s analysis, the Biden spending plan would be the largest single-year increase in its funding since the jump between 2009 and 2010 when its budget rose from $155 million to...
It's not common for Italian shows to have mostly Black casts, but the new show Zero does - and makes the invisibility of Black Italians a superpower. - NPR
And, as his five-year run writing for the comic series comes to an end, what it did for him. "Coates decided early on he wanted to see how Wakanda truly became the technologically unmatched African ideal, which meant looking in the closet for skeletons." - Washington Post
