“Netflix, set to spend upwards of $8 billion on content in 2018, will have in the neighborhood of 700 original TV shows on the service worldwide this year, according to CFO David Wells. … In addition to original series, Netflix is planning to release 80 original films in 2018, chief content officer Ted Sarandos said last fall.”
Man Stabs His Neighbor Because The Guy Wouldn’t Stop Reciting Poetry
“John Paul Mulready (40) burst into his neighbour’s flat brandishing a serrated peeling knife after hammering at the door shouting … The injured party, Dermot Byrne, told [police] that there was a brief standoff after he picked up a frying pan to defend himself, but then Mulready tackled him to the ground, stabbed him in the leg and bit him on the face. Mr Byrne, who composes poetry, eventually got rid of the attacker by swinging a large bottle of vodka at him after another neighbour intervened.” (This really should have happened in Florida.)
How Screen Star Mary Pickford Became The Most Powerful Woman In Hollywood
In 1919, she co-founded United Artists with movie pioneers Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks (whom she married the next year). The goal was to make and distribute their own films, and then rake in the profits. They built a big office building in Los Angeles (today it’s an Ace Hotel), and the adjacent theater — ornate, Spanish Gothic, with murals, sculptures and lobby fountains — was for showing their films.
Setting ‘The Crucible’ In An Orthodox Jewish Settlement In The West Bank
An Israeli critic reviewing the production at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater “wrote that he went into ‘aesthetic shock’ when he realized that he was not watching Puritans in colonial New England, but a far more familiar group, one that Miller himself, disillusioned and ailing, had called ‘an armed and rather desperate society at odds with its neighbors but also the world.'”
Judge In Brazil Lifts Ban On Play About Transgender Jesus
“In a unanimous decision, the São Paulo [State] Court of Justice said an injunction to block the performance of The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven – in which the trans artist Renata Carvalho plays a transgender Jesus Christ – was unconstitutional.”
BBC Takes On Kenneth Clark’s Classic “Civilisation” Series With An Update By Simon Schama
At the start of his series, Clark asked: “What is civilisation? I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms, yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it.” Turning to Notre Dame, he added: “And I’m looking at it now.” Schama, shaken by Isis brutality, is certain: “We can spend a lot of time debating what civilisation is or isn’t,” he says, “but when its opposite shows up, in all its brutality and cruelty and intolerance and lust for destruction, we know what civilisation is, we know it from the shock of its imminent loss, as a mutilation on the body of humanity.”
Met Museum Turns Away Visitor In Period Costume
Eliza Vincz, a historian specializing in 18th-century fashion and politics, had arrived at the museum to participate in a “Fashion and Beauty Tour” led by Shady Ladies Tours founder Andrew Lear, an art historian and scholar. She was wearing a gown of blue silk taffeta and silk organza in the style of dresses worn around 1765–1775, as found in portraits from that era (and somewhat similar to a dress from that period in the Met’s permanent collection). But as the group entered the museum, a security guard took exception to Vincz’s conspicuous couture.
North Korea’s Capital Isn’t Gray At All. And It Wants To Be A Tourist Mecca
“I have to say [Pyongyang] is honestly one of the most colorful cities I’ve ever been to. You expect a gray, crumbling, 1950s dystopia of decaying concrete, but they’ve made a real conscious effort to try and cheer the place up.” The spit shine is part of North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s campaign to make his country the next big tourist destination. The Eternal Chairman hopes to draw 2 million tourists annually by 2020.
Ten Foundation Presidents Release Open Letter About How The NEA Leverages Arts To Strengthen Communities
“Some seven years ago, it was the then Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts who was able to bring us together as foundation leaders because his agency had a strong history of investing in each of our communities. He was also able to bring together senior officials from agencies like the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency because he was their peer in federal government. Together, we have worked more effectively than we could have done alone exactly because the public sector and philanthropy are not meant to do the same thing.”
Native American Community Warns Of Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Sherman Alexie
Earlier in February, at least five anonymous commenters alleged sexual misconduct against Alexie in the comments of a School Library Journal articleabout sexual harassment in children’s publishing. While the article didn’t name Alexie, in the Pacific Standard, writer David Perry linked to the article and wrote that Alexie “has been accused of sexual abuse by at least five women.”
‘There Is No Better Actress Working In New York Right Now,’ Says Director Bartlett Sher – And You May Not Have Heard Of Her (Yet)
Reporter Alexis Soloski meets Lauren Ambrose, whom Sher cast (over many more famous performers) as Eliza Doolittle in the upcoming Broadway My Fair Lady – and who, quite deliberately, “has always skirted celebrity.”
Facebook’s Censoring Of Famous Art As ‘Pornographic’ Reaches New Low With 30,000-Year-Old Statue
An image of the Venus of Willendorf was posted on the page of “artivist” Laura Ghianda, and Facebook removed it – and then stuck to that decision through four appeals.
Harper Lee’s Will Is Unsealed, And Clarifies Very Little
“The will, signed on February 11, 2016, eight days before her death, directed that the bulk of her assets, including her literary properties, be transferred into a trust she formed in 2011. Trust documents are private.” (Indeed, the Times had to sue just to get the will unsealed.) The executor of the will is also the head of the trust and the late author’s final attorney: the controversial, mysterious, secretive Tonja P. Carter.
A Website Where You Can Watch Choreographers In The Process Of Creating Dances
Experimental dancemakers “often imply that the process, not the product, is the most valuable part of their work – at least to them. Performances, by these lights, are more like peepholes. Is there a way to widen the aperture? This appears to be the goal of the ‘The Making Room,’ a project led by the veteran choreographer Bebe Miller.”
China Bans Letter ‘N’ (Briefly) From Internet
“The contravening consonant was perhaps the most unusual victim of a crackdown targeting words, phrases and even solitary letters censors feared might be used to attack Beijing’s controversial decision to abolish constitutional term limits for China’s president. … Experts say [the move] paves the way for Xi [Jinping] to become a dictator for life.”
West End Attendance Breaks 15 Million Mark For First Time
“Figures released today by the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) showed 2017 was a record year for the capital’s theatre business with box office revenues topping the £700 million mark.” The reasons: Hamilton and Harry Potter.
Lewis Gilbert, Who Directed ‘Alfie’ And Three James Bond Films, Dead At 97
Among the 40 films he helmed were several World War II epics; Alfie, which earned five Oscar nominations and made a star of Michael Caine; the Bond titles You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker; and Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.27.18
One Wo/Man Band
I am frequently asked whether an arts organization can successfully engage communities with just one person assigned the responsibility for “engaging.” One answer, given with considerable trepidation is, “It depends.” … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2018-02-27
The Adjacent Possible
So much of leadership, management, and change narrative is about “gap analysis.” The thinking goes that we achieve a desired future by describing a bold vision, defining our current location, mapping the gap between here and there, … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2018-02-27
Far Out! Psychedelia at Metropolitan Museum’s “Golden Kingdoms” (with video)
In a tweet today, Joanne Pillsbury, the Metropolitan Museum’s curator of the Arts of the Ancient Americas, called attention to one of two miniature objects that caught my eye (perhaps for the wrong reasons) at … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-02-27
How Bands Are Starting To Keep More Of The Money Their Music Makes
“We never used to make any money because we were always paying off our advances. We’d get about a 20% share of revenues and the label would keep the rest. Now we get to keep about 90% of what we earn …it’s such a difference, it just made sense.”
Kevin Spacey Foundation Shuts Down; “No Longer Viable”
The foundation said on its website Tuesday that its trustees have concluded the work of the foundation “is no longer viable.” The foundation helped identify young artists and provide them with training and resources as they developed careers.
Inside Teaching The Movie Star To Look Like A Credible Ballerina
“I wanted her to understand what muscle groups were involved, and how most people walking on the street are internally rotated with their shoulders — their palms are facing back. With ballet dancers, you have to spin that back so it looks more like their arms are an extension of their back, and that whole alignment lengthens your neck. It widens your shoulder line.”
Tamara Rojo Says Her Boyfriend Dancing In The Company She Runs Isn’t Nepotism (He’s Too Good For That)
The former Royal Ballet star and current artistic director of English National Ballet has been catching some flack for her romance with principal dancer Isaac Hernández (who’s 16 years younger). SDhe insists there is “not even a possibility” of conflict of interest: “He has won all the awards you can possibly win, so there was nowhere I could promote him.”
Distracted? We Need A “Slow Thought” Movement. And Here’s A Manifesto
Slow Thought is a porous way of thinking that is non-categorical, open to contingency, allowing people to adapt spontaneously to the exigencies and vicissitudes of life. Italians have a name for this: arrangiarsi – more than ‘making do’ or ‘getting by’, it is the art of improvisation, a way of using the resources at hand to forge solutions. The porosity of Slow Thought opens the way for potential responses to human predicaments.
New Lead In 50-Year-Old Case Of Stolen Caravaggio
The 1609 painting Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence was stolen from a Palermo church in 1969, and since then many mafia informants have told authorities tales about it ranging “from the unlikely to the absurd.” But now someone has offered an account of the work’s fate that may be credible.