“Adapted from a posthumously published EM Forster novel that is likewise overshadowed in reputation by other works in his canon – like, well, Howards End and A Room With a View – Merchant Ivory’s film opened hot on the heels of their broadly beloved, Oscar-garlanded adaptation of the latter. Almost immediately, it was filed away as, if not a disappointment, a lesser diversion.” But now, in the post-Brokeback, post-Moonlightera and with a new high-def restoration, Guy Lodge argues that the time for this soft-spoken romance may finally have arrived.
Merchant And Ivory’s Own 45-Year Love Story
As James Ivory, now 89 and still traveling and writing, tells Sarah Larson, “[Ismail] was my life’s partner. From the beginning right on down to his final day. I lived openly with him for forty-five years, in New York and wherever else we were. That says what it says.”
Mass MoCA Is Using Its Big, New Expansion For Big, New, Long-Term Projects
“Building 6, is a three-story, 130,000 sq. ft. structure now outfitted with long-term shows and installations by five artists. They include a 15-year installation by Jenny Holzer, whose art will be projected on the building and surrounding landscape, and a 25-year James Turrell retrospective with nine of the artist’s light works.”
How Much Control Should Artist Estates Have Over Their Work?
“It’s legal. But is it ethical? Is it fair that contemporary directors should be chained by the views of a writer who died a year ago, especially if those views demand active and explicit racial discrimination?”
Why It’s So Difficult For Humans To Live In The Moment
“What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society. It usually lifts our spirits, but it’s also the source of most depression and anxiety, whether we’re evaluating our own lives or worrying about the nation. Other animals have springtime rituals for educating the young, but only we subject them to ‘commencement’ speeches grandly informing them that today is the first day of the rest of their lives.”
Director Peter Brook At 92: The Meaning Of Theatre
Although Brook has the aura of a sage, he rejects the kind of theater in which artists condescend to their audience by assuming superior knowledge. Such “pretension” offends him. It’s the problem he has with Brecht, whose “tremendous scenic talent” has been eclipsed by his theoretical writings. As for the influence of Artaud, Brook classified him with the modernist English theater artist Edward Gordon Craig “as visionaries who gave their life to try to say what meaningful theater could be,” even if they weren’t able to achieve it themselves in performance.
The Houston Symphony Lays Off Three People In Administration
In addition, there was a “restructuring,” but it didn’t affect any musicians.
What Will Happen Now To Canada’s Premiere English-Language Magazine, The Walrus?
It’s a big question, especially because “The magazine’s high-profile editor-in-chief, Jonathan Kay – under social-media fire after coming to the defence of another magazine editor who had lost his job over an editorial advocating cultural appropriation – resigned .”
Imagine What Will Happen When Your Car Gets Hacked
Uh oh. “We’re going to see ransomware against our cars. Our digital video recorders and web cameras will be taken over by botnets. The data that these devices collect about us will be stolen and used to commit fraud. And we’re not going to be able to secure these devices.”
Stephen Fry Says Theatre Needs To Understand Actors’ Mental Health Is As Important As Their Physical Health
Fry, who left a production in 1995 to figure out his own mental health, said, “Swings and dance captains are there in order, every single day, to work out if there’s an injury who will be replacing who in the chorus, who is coming in to double for this part and so on. The day may come when someone says: ‘I’ve broken my ankle’, and [someone else says]: ‘I’ve got the day off because I have had a depressive episode’, and it will sound the same.”
What’s The Point Of Ballet’s Frivolity Right Now, Or Really Ever?
“Ballet abounds in self-contradictions. It continually shows mere mortals becoming works of ideal geometry, and helps us see music in terms of three-dimensional space. It can turn silliness into enchantment, make myth real, or — even in a work of pure dance — make us feel how the sublime coexists with the comic.”
Architect Kulapat Yantrasast Brings ‘A Bold Openness’ To Design Of Marciano Art Foundation
But he’s no starchitect, despite his stylish glasses. “Yantrasast is funny and warm, as intrigued by vernacular culture as he is by high art. During the course of an afternoon interview, he expresses admiration for the choreographies of Pina Bausch and the sculptures of artist Gabriel Orozco. He also stops to admire homegrown modifications on a jalopy Toyota.”
William Brohn, Who Orchestrated Wicked, Miss Saigon, Ragtime And More On Broadway, Has Died At 84
“In ‘Wicked,’ for instance, Mr. Brohn selected woodwinds and harps to convey ‘the swirling girly fantasy’ of the good witch Glinda’s entrance inside a bubble, he told a website dedicated to the musical’s composer, Stephen Schwartz. For ‘I’m Not That Girl,’ which is sung by Elphaba, the green-skinned wicked witch of the West, Mr. Brohn used muted strings, a harp and acoustic guitars to stress its melancholy mood.”
The Ringmaster’s Last Day
Ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson is Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’ first African-American ringmaster, and as the circus runs its last performance on May 20, he’s the circus’ final ringmaster as well. “Ironically enough, I will be the very last voice in the 146-year history of this show, so I will be the last person you hear to speak of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ — which is a wild little paradox, to be a first and a last at the same time.”
Putting The Rainbow Into Reading With Drag Queen Story Hour At The Library
The kids love the story hour, which started in San Francisco and spread via social media to New York. “As is the case with all readers, library staff members taught Ms. Sunbeam how to engage the children, with questions (‘Who likes rainbows?’) and to manage crowds of often restless youngsters. However, the differences between a rowdy drag show audience and a group of kindergartners are not as pronounced as one might imagine. ‘Little kids can be crazy,’ Ms. Shapiro said. ‘We like to joke that they’re kind of like drunk adults.’ When asked to pinpoint the main difference between story hour and an evening drag show, Ms. Sunbeam said jokingly, ‘I’m sober.'”
When They Asked An Artificial Intelligence To Name Paint Colors, Things Went Bad Quickly
Why yes, I’d like to use “Bank Butt” for the living room, while “Snowbonk” is nice for the kitchen. In short: “1. The neural network really likes brown, beige, and grey; 2. The neural network has really, really bad ideas for paint names.”
Can ‘Madame Butterfly’ Be Saved With A Radical Re-Write?
Maybe? Heartbeat Opera is trying. Co-writer Jacob Ashworth “said he expected many audience members to be relieved to see an adaptation that confronts the opera’s biggest issues. ‘No more trying to enjoy the beauty while quietly bearing the racism,’ he said.”
Striving To Revive The Ghostly Sounds Of Electronic Music Composer Maryanne Amacher
The composer created experiences that are hard to recreate: “A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen and a collaborator with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Amacher had some of her greatest successes with huge sound-design installations tailored for specific spaces. These ‘linked room’ works exploited psychoacoustic effects that she pioneered: A foyer might hit the spectator with high-pitched tones meant to excite strange inner-ear responses. An adjoining space could feature quiet, slowly fading bass frequencies, lingering at the edge of auditory perception.”
How A Seattle Production Of Seagull Turned Into A Troupe Devoted To Chekhov
The artistic director of the group’s patron and incubator, ACT: “When they called me in 2011 and said, ‘We want to do the Ring Cycle of Chekhov and take it around the world,’ I was terrified, and told them so. … They loved it. ‘That’s the response we want,’ they said. Eventually, I fell deeply in love with the author—and the company too.”
The Night Solange Knowles Took Over The Guggenheim (And Got A Young, Racially Diverse Audience Into The Museum)
It was performance art with an extremely cool audience (and an extremely cool performance group): “At times, the event took on a mystical cast, Ms. Knowles and her troupe extending their arms toward the crowd in a kind of benediction. The effect was moving, the show itself museum-worthy. As Nat Trotman, the Guggenheim curator of performance and media, noted, it was part of a tradition that dates from the late 1960s, when Meredith Monk first performed in the rotunda.”
When New Media Goes Wrong, And Thousands Of Second Life Bunnies Starve To Death Online
These bunnies “kicked off the breedable boom in earnest.” (Breedables are digital pets that can, well, interbreed.) But they need to be fed. And the company that runs the databases that provided bunny “food” was served a cease & desist order …
At Cannes And Amid Controversy, Netflix Defends Its Strategy
Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer: “Why would we want to hold back a movie for an enormous number of people to enjoy throughout the entire country that a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people could see the film in Paris? … It seemed to me like the right thing to do was to give the people, our subscribers, who pay to make these movies, access to them immediately all over the world.”
What The Basquiat Sale Says About Today’s Art Market
“The high price reflects the fact that 20th-century art increasingly dominates the list of the world’s most expensive paintings, partly because such works are more likely to be available for sale – with classics such as the Mona Lisa unlikely to come on to the market. Only three of the top 10 most expensive paintings are pre-19th century, with most of the highest prices attached to works by Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Gustav Klimt.”