When William Stanford Davis auditioned for Friends, he says, "I thought I knocked it out of the park. But when I called my agent … he told me that the casting department thought my audition was so terrible, I should go back to being a telemarketer." - Time
“The burgeoning gay rights movement in Britain was connected to wider late-Victorian movements for reform, part of a larger impulse to find new and better ways of living in the modern world. This was the intellectual nexus that was smashed by the Wilde trials.” - The Guardian (UK)
Or at least that’s the hope of duo Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, who met at the Moscow State Conservatory and who revived their piano duet career during the early days of the pandemic. - The New York Times
Romantic fiction, that is. With romances propping up the entire publishing industry, how hard could it be to write one? (Turns out writing a whole book simply isn’t that easy.) - Irish Times
In 2023, some DGA wins for Everything Everywhere All at Once seemed to set that film, and its directors, on a path to many wins at the Oscars. - The Hollywood Reporter
We’re almost a quarter of the way into the new century, after all, and painting didn’t die off as a great art form before Matisse, Picasso, Gwen John, Alice Neel, and David Hockney. - The Guardian (UK)
Instead, it’s the casting directors’ hard work that makes a great movie - and that will soon be recognized by the Academic of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In short, the Casting Oscar is coming. - MSN (The Atlantic)
For one thing, stop with the dire warnings about density. "Today’s housing debate may be couched in different terms, but Australia’s first apartment boom suggests that opponents of rapid change in housing stock should tread carefully before making doom-laden prophecies." - The Guardian (UK)
“It really just seems as if the studio’s leadership simply does not want [ streaming, or in theaters, or really even to be a topic of conversation at this point. … It’s hard to imagine this inspiring much confidence in the filmmakers still working with the studio." - The Verge
Alexei Ratmansky, “vocal in his condemnation of Russian aggression, has seen his name removed from the works he created for Russian companies. He and his Ukrainian wife, Tatiana, spend their evenings watching Ukrainian news … while life in New York goes on around them as usual." - The New York Times
"There are repercussions in the real world where people might not even realize—they just know, Oh, an old song is popular again. But if they don’t use TikTok, they don’t realize that’s because thousands and thousands of people are using the song.” And now many songs are gone. - Slate
People are increasingly turning to gossip forums like Tattle Life, Guru Gossip, GOMI (“Get Off My Internets”) and the Blogsnark subreddit to critique the influencers they follow. On these forums, users pick apart everything from the influencer’s social media content to their appearance. - The Conversation
Current debates about writing machines are not as fresh as they seem. As is quietly acknowledged in the footnotes of scientific papers, much of the intellectual infrastructure of today’s advances was laid decades ago. - Hedgehog Review
It's "what’s known as the default mode network, a collection of seemingly unrelated areas of the brain that activate when you’re not doing much at all. Its discovery has offered insights into how the brain functions outside of well-defined tasks and has also prompted research into the role of brain networks. - Quanta
