“Of course the heightened visibility of plays written by women is welcome. But all over the country, even at venues which are attempting to make female playwrights’ voices heard, there is often a gendering of theatre spaces when it comes to writers and directors.”
Why British Political Satire On TV Stops Being Satirical When It’s Adapted By Americans
“Failure is a wellspring of British comedy, but its American counterpart rewards ‘optimism [and] a refusal to see oneself in a bad light’.” Christopher Orr looks at how Game of Thrones changed from savage political parody to dramatic thriller as it crossed the Atlantic, and how The Thick of It morphed into the farce of Veep.
Louis Jourdan, 93, Suave French Film Star
“Lithe, debonair and exceedingly handsome, with a tide of dark, wavy hair, Louis Jourdan became Hollywood’s ideal of Gallic charm and seduction in the late 1940s and 1950s. His peak came in the Oscar-winning musical Gigi (1958), which cemented him in the popular imagination as a debonair playboy.”
The Genius And Excess Of John Berryman
“Centennial celebrations, meant to re¬suscitate a reputation, run the risk of burying it instead. Consider the case of John Berryman … Not so long ago he was a commanding figure in what had come to be known as confessional poetry, for its seemingly raw autobiographical excavation of alcohol and drugs, adultery and divorce, madness and hospitalization.”
Can Ugly Amsterdam Resist Gentrification?
“Deemed most ‘authentic’ and ‘Amsterdam-style’, apartments in historic buildings (anything pre-war) are being sold first, leaving the ‘ugly’ 70s and 80s urban renewal flats largely untouched.”
If Too Many Arts Professionals Come From “The Elites”, Well, Whose Fault Is That?
“Judi Dench, David Morrissey and Julie Walters have all lamented [working-class folks’] absence. But, interestingly, they each talk about the opportunities for working-class kids that existed 20, 30, even 40 years ago, when they were establishing their careers. What has changed between then and now has nothing to do with the socially and ethically conscious people that largely make up our arts sector.”
Hermitage Museum Staffer Arrested For Cutting Illustrations From Books And Selling Them
“An employee of the State Hermitage Museum’s research library has been arrested in connection to the suspected theft of historic illustrations, engravings and photographs from its collection. The images were allegedly cut out from from books in the library and offered for sale at antiquarian bookshops.”
Mexico’s Modern-Day Diego Riveras
“In the 1920s and ’30s, Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco painted murals that powerfully illustrated the issues of their day. Today, street artists rule the nation’s walls, addressing its problems with an arsenal of wit and aerosol cans.”
Top Chinese Director And Top Communist Party Newspaper Duke It Out Over Reality TV
“The spat began earlier this month, when director Feng Xiaogang lambasted the popularity of a spate of recent Chinese movies based on popular reality television shows. … That hurts genuine filmmaking, he argued, because it draws investor money away from more serious movies.” Arguing back was no less than the People’s Daily (sounding not unlike The Wall Street Journal, actually).
Motivational Posters From Your Favorite Depressing Philosophers
Why stop at Werner Herzog? Here are more photos of adorable critters accompanying existential despair from the likes of Nietzche, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Foucault, and Camus. (At left: Sisyphus.)
Shakespeare’s Globe Faces Strike By Tour Guides
“Union BECTU is demanding a rise in the hourly rate that tour guides working at the venue receive, claiming that collectively the employees help make the Globe thousands of pounds. According to the Globe, tours generate a turnover of £3 million a year, and a net profit of £200,000 annually.”
When A Pack Of Puppets United The TV Viewers Of America
“In 1951, NBC trimmed the show from a half hour to 15 minutes, and a national storm of protest erupted, a story that dominated headlines for days, even weeks. … When ABC canceled the show in 1957, viewers again responded passionately. Many threatened to throw their television sets out the windows.”
50 Essential African-American Independent Films
Now here’s a good way to celebrate Black History Month: four dozen-and-change movies to revisit or to discover, from all the way back in 1920 (Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates), through the landmarks (Nothing But a Man, Sweet Sweetback, New Jack City, She’s Gotta Have It, Daughters of the Dust) to this decade (Fruitvale Station).
Sure Our Alphabet Is Our Alphabet (But All That Could Be Changing)
The power to spread and transform the alphabet — once concentrated among medieval scribes, British and French printers, or Christian missionaries spreading words to spread the Word — has been democratized. Now with tablets and smartphones, “the smallest building blocks of the shared written language (i.e. print) are more in your hands . . . than they have ever been.”
UK Report Warns: Our Lack Of Audience Diversity Is Unsustainable In The Arts
“We are particularly concerned that publicly funded arts… are predominantly accessed by an unnecessarily narrow social, economic, ethnic and educated demographic that is not fully representative of the UK’s population”.
What Happened To Our Public Intellectuals? (And Where Did We Go Wrong?)
“If you ask the conditions that allowed Partisan Review to reach greatness—broaching an inquiry into what is necessary for the creation of “public intellect” in general, in the mid-20th century past—you face some unruly historical particulars.”
Austin Radio Station Doubles Down On Classical And Becomes More Local
Now the station features 22 hours of locally hosted or produced programs on weekdays. And while it kept popular national shows such as “From the Top,” “Concierto” and the live Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, KMFA has dropped Classical 24 entirely, even from the convenient overnight slot.
Princeton Gets $300 Million Donation Of Rare Books
“Highlights of the collection include a Gutenberg Bible, a first printing of the Declaration of Independence, a run of Shakespeare folio editions, and important autograph manuscripts by Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.”
What Made Philip Levine’s Poetry Extraordinary
“Della and Tatum, Sweet Pea and Packy, Ida and Cal. You met a lot of unpretentious people in Philip Levine’s spare, ironic poems of the industrial heartland. … Mr. Levine’s death is a serious blow for American poetry, in part because he so vividly evoked the drudgery and hardships of working-class life in America, and in part because this didn’t pull his poetry down into brackishness.”
The Creative Class, “Culture Crash”, And Cinema
Richard Brody praises Scott Timberg’s recent book – and then argues that its points don’t quite apply to movies or narrative video and the people who make them.
Exploring The Metaphysics Of Love
“Is love an emotion? An experience? Is it a kind of desire? Is it possible to love a fictional person? To love more than one person? Is romantic love fundamentally different from other kinds of love?” A Vancouver philosopher is investigating these questions.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.16.15
Arts Entrepreneurship vs. the Sum of Its Parts
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2015-02-16
The Window
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2015-02-16
David Carr Wanted to Get Stuff Right, Large or Small
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2015-02-16
“Love Songs: A Hidden History”
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2015-02-16
Monday Recommendation: Pullman On Powell
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-02-16
Nothing To Be Ashamed Of
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-02-16
Pedrito Martinez’s Cuba-in-Cold-Midwest tour
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2015-02-16
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Who Will Save PBS, And Therefore Indie Documentaries?
“It’s a vicious cycle: the confusing scheduling prevents people from finding the shows, so they don’t tune in, so PBS sees no reason to support them.”
How Should Composers Act (And What Should They Wear) In Rehearsal?
“Following these guidelines is how you will avoid glimpsing voodoo dolls of yourself with pins in them on the musicians’ stands.”