“That essay Langston [Hughes] wrote, ‘The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain’ — I’m thinking of both sides of his argument in that. One is that obviously you’re always a black writer, but also you have to work with your gifts first and shut that out when you’re actually composing. What do you guys think? That’s how I approach it, but it might be naïve.”
Archives for October 2014
A Living Wage Comes To The UK’s Curzon Cinema Workers
“The decision puts pressure on its rival chain Picturehouse, which is embroiled in a dispute over pay at its Ritzy cinema in Brixton. Picturehouse, owned by multiplex group Cineworld, agreed to the demands for the living wage, but then said 20 redundancies would have to be made to accommodate the rise.”
How New York Subway Dancing Became An Art – And A Crime
“It’s hard to say how many people dance on the subway today, but the dancers generally put the number in the low hundreds — a spike that some older performers attribute to the sharp decline of arts and physical education funding since the recession.”
Will A Former Courthouse Become An Arts Center In L.A.’s Culver City?
“The specific uses haven’t been determined yet, she said, but ‘we’re working with LACMA and Sony and other arts organizations to come up with a final program’ before starting design work on renovations.”
Australian Playwright Says It’s Time For The Return Of Radio Plays
“The internet means a lot of people can listen to the [BBC] World Service online. No writer is going to turn up their nose at a potential 40 million listeners.”
Neil Patrick Harris – Star Of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ And ‘Gone Girl’ – To Bring A Variety Show To Television
“Peacock alternative TV head Paul Telegdy told Vulture that he’s been looking to get a variety series on the network for a long time, and that Harris has always been at the top of his list of potential hosts.”
Sorry, Neil Patrick Harris, Your Variety Show Can’t Compete With YouTube
“Variety shows are like the soccer of American television. It is the most popular sport in the world but, no matter how hard anyone has tried in recent years, it just won’t catch on here like it does internationally.”
We Think Quantum Mechanics Is About Schrödinger’s Cat, But All Of Life Depends On It
“A quantum theory of smell sounds outlandish, perhaps, but evidence has recently emerged to support it: it was found that fruit flies can distinguish odorants with exactly the same shape but different isotopes of the same elements, something that is hard to explain without quantum mechanics.”
Will Orson Welles’ Last Movie Finally Get Rescued From A Gritty Paris Warehouse, And Finished?
“It is the latest event in a saga marked by legal squabbles, clashing egos, the spiriting away of a working print and, briefly, the disappearance and recovery of the reels last summer after a storage company went bankrupt.”
This 83-Year-Old Dancer Is Still Onstage
“‘Eat your heart out, Beyonce,’ she says watching herself do moves that are strikingly similar to the pop diva’s.”
The Broad Museum Is Really Going To Open, After A Dispute And Delay
“The museum is claiming that the problems have driven up costs by at least $19.8 million and caused the museum to delay its opening by at least 15 months.”
Last Ditch Efforts To Prevent Strikes In London’s West End
“The union is seeking London living wage – £8.80 – for workers on three pay grades below that rate, and a 6% rise for all other members.”
Met’s “Death Of Klinghoffer” Is Selling Tickets
Despite protests, weak advance sales, interruptions, and all the other mishegas, the John Adams opera “has sold more tickets than any other opera currently at the Met. General manager Peter Gelb “expects the opera ultimately to earn 70 to 75 percent of its potential ticket revenue, about average for recent seasons.”
This Pianist Is About To Turn 90, And She Still Does Concert Tours – Alone
She still learns new music, too, and she rides the New York subway, and she carries her own luggage. “I walk around with my 60-year-old friends and they tell me to slow down.” Meet Ruth Slenczynska.
Philadelphia’s Prince Music Theater Calls It Quits
“Having received no offers for a takeover, the organization that occupies the Prince Music Theater on Friday terminated its lease with the owners of the building on Chestnut Street just west of Broad Street. American Music Theater Festival, founded in 1984, also intends to dissolve. The future of the building is uncertain.”
The 100 Most Valuable Movie Stars Of 2014
“Vulture has collected data (including domestic and foreign box-office numbers, social-media buzz, critical respect, Twitter mentions, Oscar nominations/wins, and E-Score Celebrity rankings by E-Poll) in every important metric that measures modern movie stardom, inputting those numbers into a formula crafted with our guest statistician, FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten.”
It’s The World’s First-Ever Iranian Feminist Vampire Western
Oh yes, it’s real. It was quite a hit at Sundance last winter, and it’s already been nominated for a Gotham Award. (includes trailer)
Why Would Harvey Fierstein, Of All People, Write A Show About The 1899 Newsboys’ Strike?
“Kids love it” – his brother’s kids, specifically, loved the Disney movie – “so I had that affinity. I got stuck with the story, and there was little I could change, but, as the strike happened during the time of the women’s struggle to vote, I began thinking about my own recent turn of the century.”
Maya Angelou Describes Her Stepfather’s Greatest Con, And The Racist Who Fell For It
“Suffice to say the scam includes one racist Southerner, three persuasive actors, a tract of land, and $50,000 in cash.” (video)
75 Years Of Live Literature At The 92nd Street Y
“Seventy-five years ago on Sunday, writer William Carlos Williams helped inaugurate what would become this country’s most famous literary reading series, at New York’s 92nd Street Y Poetry Center.” (includes audio clips)
HBO Expected To Lay Off More Than 150 People This Week
The cuts, amounting to about 7% of HBO’s workforce, are part of company-wide layoffs at Time Warner.
Positive Thinking Isn’t Always So Powerful – It Might Even Hold You Back
“As a German citizen who came to the United States relatively late in life, I was initially struck by how much more positive thinking was valued in the United States than back in Europe.” Research psychologist Gabriele Oettingen had presumed this was a good thing – until she started doing some studies. It seems that some kinds of positive thinking are a lot less helpful than others.
Dancing About Peptides: Science PhD Students Choreograph Their Theses
“Why would you want to write a PhD abstract when you could make it truly abstract – through the medium of interpretive dance? For the seventh year running, Science magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have challenged PhD students to do just that.” (includes video)
Roombas Dance To The “Blue Danube” Waltz
An interaction designer and a choreographer worked together to program a dozen of the little robot vacuum cleaners (yes, six as boys and six as girls) to dance as if they were in a Vienna ballroom. The only problem: Roombas get distracted by dust. (includes video)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.28.14
Time to join the rest of the world
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2014-10-28
Do you need the matrix?
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2014-10-28
When Music Sounds Like a Cash Register: Taylor Swift
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2014-10-28
Ten moments of pure musical joy
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2014-10-28
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