Wicked Is A Blockbuster Movie, Sure, But The Real Story Arrived In Front Of...
“Grande and Erivo have been praised for their performances onscreen, but they have also been performing in a parallel show, making viral magic on...
The History Behind Denmark’s Oscar Entry Shows The Pressures Of 20th Century Life
“The co-writers were also interested in details about the world that produced someone like Dagmar. Copenhagen in the post-WWI years was crowded and people...
Good Thing Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers Were Recovered, So They Could Be Sold At...
Wow, OK, these slippers better work as claimed: “The final bid of $28 million was the largest sum spent at an auction for a...
Google Really, Really Doesn’t Want To Be Regulated Like A Bank
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found a lot of issues around Google Pay - but "says its finding that Google should be supervised doesn’t...
The ChatGPT Era Is Already Ending
Why? Because the reasoning era is here. The basic difference: “Language models learn a grammar, perhaps even something about the world, while reasoning models...
Notre Dame Reopens, Five And A Half Years After It Burned
“Notre Dame was a monumental achievement in the 12th and 13th centuries. Its resurrection after the devastating fire that threatened to bring the entire...
Internet Fandom Ruled Culture This Year
Consider The Amazing Digital Circus, which used to be a satirical indie web series - and is now, thanks to legions of fans churning...
Science Fiction Writer Ted Chiang Wins Major Short Story Award
Chiang, author of the short story that was turned into the movie Arrival, is only the second SF writer to win the PEN/Malamud Award,...
Miho Nakayama, J-Pop Teen Star Who Became A Serious Actor, Has Died At 54
Nakayama was “a reigning J-pop star of the 1980s who broke through to become a critically acclaimed dramatic actress and gained international attention.” -...
How Tastemaker Week Tilts The Oscars
"The main beneficiaries this week are smaller films in dire need of the attention the tastemakers provide” - for instance, Drive My Car a...
What’s Going To Happen To TikTok Now That An Appeals Court Has Supported A...
A lot depends on the incoming administration. “The TikTok ban could take effect as soon as one day before Trump is inaugurated next month....
Why Is A Ten-Year-Old Movie Suddenly Hot Again?
It’s because Interstellar was super good, right? Maybe, or maybe it’s because Christopher Nolan sure knows how to train his audiences to find, watch,...
How We Got To Brain Rot
Brain rot is marked by a “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material...
Americans Aren’t Reading Memoirs. Why?
This paucity of first-person storytelling is striking. Among the best writing of our current century, have so few people written well enough about their...
Deal Close On Return Of Parthenon Marbles To Greece?
It came as Sir Keir Starmer and his Greek counterpart met for talks in Downing Street on Tuesday - though it is unclear whether...
The Life Of Simone Weil — And How It’s Put To Use In America
In the late 20th century she was seen as an exemplar of well-meaning but extreme ascetic mysticism. Now she's either a prophet of, and...
The Amazon Review Artist
Kevin Killian published over a million words on Amazon, across almost twenty-four hundred reviews, before his death, in 2019. The products he evaluated included...
How Games Are Shaping Our World
Play is something that predates humans. It’s fundamental to how animals engage in and understand the world. It’s how we test and figure out the...
A Theatre Troupe Struggles On Amid The Murderous Chaos Of Port-au-Prince
"'Every day (there’s shooting),' sighed the director, Eliezer Guérismé, as his company took a break from their read-through to the all-too familiar sound of...
Writers Demand Giller Prize Funder Divest From Arms Company
Some Giller winners state that “the only way to remedy what has been a deeply divisive period in Canadian arts is for the chief funders...
How Did We Lose Our Excitement For The Future?
As a child, I felt lucky to be born in 1960. I’d be only 40 in the year 2000 and might live half my...
Is The Era Of AI, Is There A Future Teaching Writing?
It turns out that there is some benefit to working in an industry that is clearly contracting but has not yet died. It forces...
Italian Police Present An Exhibition Of Artworks Seized From The Mafia
"Eighty works, confiscated by the Italian authorities, went on show at Milan‘s Palazzo Reale this week. The exhibition, 'Save Arts: From Confiscations to Public...
U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Law Requiring Sale Or Ban of TikTok
"A three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday that a law designed to force...
If You Can’t Tell If The Music Is Created By AI, It Doesn’t Matter
Background music for commercials, once the domain of human composers, can now be generated by AI in minutes, meeting technical and emotional requirements at...
