Michael Moynihan, the journalist who uncovered Jonah Lehrer’s inventions and copyings, lays out the case against Roberto Saviano’s ZeroZeroZero.
Will They Or Won’t They? The Epistolary Not-Quite-Romance Of Eudora Welty And Ross MacDonald
“By the time they became acquainted, in 1970, both were well established in their fields – Welty in that nebulous genre called Southern literature, and Macdonald in hard-boiled detective fiction. … With the ice broken, Welty and Millar struck up an epistolary friendship that endured until his death in 1983, exchanging some 345 letters. … Can it come as any surprise, then, that these letters occasionally read like the prelude to a courtship?”
That Football TV Theme Music That’s So Recognizable Has Classical Origins
“These composers are using the same tricks classical music composers have used for centuries — combinations of pitch, tempo, rhythm, dynamics, and melody — that resonate in the human subconscious to evoke emotion. Today, football fans will sit rapt in concert halls, listening to the Green Bay Civic Symphony or the Philadelphia Orchestra play the soundtrack of their favorite sport.
LA Philharmonic Takes Its Virtual Reality Machine To The Streets Of LA County
“The Los Angeles Philharmonic has launched a virtual reality project in which people don VR goggles and Samsung headsets that give them a 3-D, 360-degree experience of four minutes of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, performed by the orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The VR goggles and other equipment were put aboard a bus, dubbed Van Beethoven, and sent out to tour the county through October.”
The Banned Iranian Filmmaker Who Keeps Making Films Anyway
“After Mr. Panahi’s release, he was barred for 20 years from making films, writing screenplays, speaking to the media or leaving the country. Today, he lives in a legal limbo and would face six years in prison if authorities decided to charge him with violating the ban.”
How To Fix The BBC? Put More Artists In Charge
“It’s notable in theatre… at the National Theatre a brilliant director like Nick Hytner is also capable of running the organisation. And I would like to see more creatives as part of the decision making going forward at the BBC.”
Steve Martin, Art Curator
“Yes, this multifaceted actor, comedian, New Yorker writer, novelist, semiprofessional magician and Grammy-winning banjo player, who has long been a serious collector of modern American painting, is adding a new role to his repertoire: art curator.”
British National Museum Set To Appoint New Director
“Hartwig Fischer, whose appointment has yet to be officially confirmed, would be the first non-British head of the institution since the 1860s. Dr Fischer is currently director general of the Dresden State Art Collections and was formerly director of the Folkwang Museum in Essen.”
USA Today, Times-Picayune And New York Daily News Get Rid Of The Music Critics
“These cuts mark the latest acknowledgment that readers have shifted online (and, more recently) to the mobile space as ad revenue has fallen. And the new landscape affects not only those soon-to-be-out-of-work journalists, but also touring bands that rely on local coverage to boost ticket sales.”
‘Stonewall’ Isn’t Just A Bad Movie, It’s A Rorschach Test
With Roland Emmerich’s new film, as with the 1969 protest/uprising/riots that sparked the modern gay rights movement, “we see in it what we need to see.” J. Bryan Lowder looks at what the (very) many different criticisms of the movie say about the people making them and about the queer community in America today.
Your Teenage Self Lives On Online – How Serious A Problem Is That?
“‘The internet is forever’ has long been the refrain of neurotics who wring their hands over privacy. But, back in the earliest days of online interaction, we couldn’t conceptualise what forever meant for digital experiences. They seemed ephemeral, intimate. … But what we thought were whispers that disappeared into the wind were footprints left behind in soil. That soil was fossilising, preserving a partial archive, hidden until it is not.”
How Do You Direct A Standup Gig?
“On stage there’s just a comedian and a mic. But behind the scenes, directors such as John Gordillo and Phil Nichol can make or break the show. What exactly do they do?”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.24.15
The suspension of belief
A favorite line from a favorite poem is dogging me these days. It’s from Wallace Stevens’ “Man Carrying Thing“, … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2015-09-24
Seeking wellness in the workplace? Have an impromptu Taylor Swift jam session.
You know how it plays out. You’re watching Wolf of Wall Street and the office run by Jordan Belfore is filled to capacity with drugs, prostitutes and other fun illegal shenanigans … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-09-24
So you want to see a show?
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. …read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-09-24
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Netflix Says Its Data Can Pinpoint When You Get Hooked On A Show
“Netflix has no plans to use Big Data to rejigger the way TV shows get made, in order to put the strongest emotional hooks earlier in a season (which would result in more viewing by subscribers). Instead, the company sees the metrics as validation of its binge-release strategy of delivering all episodes of a season at once.”
Video Game Actors Union Considers Strike For “Stunt Pay”
“It wants actors to get stunt pay for vocally stressful recording sessions and for such sessions to be restricted to two hours. It is also calling for performance bonuses each time a game sells two million copies.”
Showy Return Of Picasso Paintings Makes An Art World Fight Visible
“For the past year, Mr. Rybolovlev has been battling Mr. Bouvier in courtrooms in Paris, Monaco, Singapore and Hong Kong in a dispute that has shed light on some of the murkier corners of the international art market. He has accused Mr. Bouvier, who helped him amass his collection, of fraud by overcharging him as much as $1 billion for multiple pieces of art.”
Look, No Tutus! Paris’s Ballerinas Cut Loose At The Opera House
“Dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet leave the stage behind and perform in the public space of the Palais Garnier for 20 Dancers for the 20th Century, conceived by choreographer Boris Charmatz as part of his project Musée de la Danse.” (slide show)
Oliver Sacks’s Final Article
“Walter, previously a moderate eater, developed a ravenous appetite. ‘He started to gain weight,’ his wife later told me, ‘and his pants changed three sizes in six months.’ … He was also prone to getting ‘stuck’ in various activities – playing the piano, for example, for eight or nine hours at a time. Even more disquieting was the development of an insatiable sexual appetite.”