“Featuring parodies of The Flintstones, The Music Man and several disaster movies, as well as a family of possums and some memorable lines from guest star Leonard Nimoy, ‘Marge vs. the Monorail’ helped to chart a new course for The Simpsons. … Twenty-seven years on from when it first aired, five key figures involved in making the episode shared their memories of creating a classic.” – Vice
Alec Baldwin Pulls His Podcast From WNYC, Alleging Interference With Woody Allen Interview
Baldwin launched his popular interview show, Here’s the Thing, at New York Public Radio (WNYC) in 2011 and is moving it to iHeartRadio as of January. He says that station management insisted that, for an interview with Allen that aired in June, Baldwin ask the director about Dylan Farrow’s accusation of child sexual abuse. “Once WNYC said, ‘We won’t air the interview unless you ask these questions’ and forced that editorial content on me like that, I knew I was out of there.” – Billboard
Vienna Philharmonic Is Giving Normal Concerts At Full Strength — In Japan
In what is the orchestra’s first trip abroad since March and possibly the first overseas tour by any European orchestra since the pandemic began, the Philharmoniker, 100-odd-strong, are performing in four Japanese cities under Valery Gergiev’s baton, traveling in their own segregated buses and train cars. – Kyodo News (Japan)
Netflix Files Copyright Notices Against Negative Tweets That Included Its Movie Trailer
Some of the dozens of tweets Netflix issued DMCA claims against used clips from the actual movie, TorrentFreak reports, in which case Netflix’s claims are understandable. However, many of the tweets in question shared the film’s trailer, which is widely and publicly available on YouTube for anyone to view or share. – Ars Technica
Set Designing For Zoom Theatre Requires Something A Little Different
Kelly Lin Hayes: “For virtual theater I would say it is so different then set design. It taught me a lot about design, and storytelling, technology and the creativity of multimedia production, which is its strength.” – Token Theatre Friends
How A Black Art Library Grew From Idea To Reality
Asmaa Walton had the idea at the end of 2019, and shared it during Black History Month of this year. “I was just like, I’m just going to start collecting the books to see what happens. I started collecting books and I made an Instagram account for it. Over time, people actually got really interested in it. I started to shift my view that maybe this needs to be a physical location. I started to formulate a plan to make this a real space that people can come and enjoy.” – Hyperallergic
Elsa Raven, Character Actress Extraordinaire, Has Died At 91
Though she played hundreds of roles on stage and screen, “none of those performances made a bigger impression than her role as ‘Clocktower Lady’ in Back to the Future, the top-grossing movie of 1985. Early in the film her character interrupts the young lovers played by Michael J. Fox and Claudia Wells in mid-kiss, urging them to ‘save the clock tower.’ The mayor, she tells them, holding out a donation can, wants to replace the clock.” – The New York Times
Shooting A Pivotal Plot Moment, Changed By The Pandemic, During The Pandemic
One of the actors on Superstore: “I 100% feel that the lack of convenience throughout this entire process has created a far more nuanced and realistic story, both on a narrative level and on an emotional level. … I feel so guilty having a reason to be excited about a deadly pandemic, but in this one little tiny corner of the giant hellscape that is coronavirus, it just became so much fuller and richer and more interesting.” – Los Angeles Times
Sure, Yes, Why Not Open A New Indie Bookstore In The Fall Of 2020?
Well … there are a lot of reasons why not, but if you’re Anne Marie Kessler in Klamath Falls, Oregon, you’re doing it to give back to your community – who also helped renovate the 1906 hotel that had been vacant before she and her husband decided to move in. “We’ve had 106 people who have volunteered labor to renovate this building. … I (could) just put out a group text and say, ‘Hey, I could use as many people as could come down this weekend,’ and we’ve had 15 people here hammering away.”- The Oregonian
Dutch Museums Launch Comprehensive Van Gogh Database
A new database called Van Gogh Worldwide allows users to access provenances, technical information, archival materials, and more related to 1,000 works on paper and paintings by the famed Post-Impressionist. Launched on Thursday, the database is a collaboration between the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, and the RKD–Netherlands Institute for Art History, along with the Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. – ARTnews
The Viral Video That Captures America Just Now Is A Snowball Fight In 1897 France
“The footage was captured in Lyon, in 1897, by the Lumière brothers, who were among the world’s first filmmakers. It was originally black and white, of course, and herky-jerky because of the low frame rate. But this snowball fight has recently been colorized and smoothed, and the result is shockingly modern. The video shows 52 seconds of joyful carnage: a gaggle of antiquated French people hucking compacted snow at one another’s faces with terrifying ferocity.” – The New York Times Magazine
The First Mughal Emperor Wrote One Of History’s Great Autobiographies
“Profoundly honest and unusually articulate, at once emotionally compelling and profoundly revealing, the Babur Nama is in many ways an oddly modern text, almost Proustian in its self-awareness. It presents the uncensored fullness of the man, a human life perfectly pinned to the page in simple, direct and unpretentious prose.” – Literary Hub
Could VR Help Save Theatre?
Having long been one of the digital technologies heralded as being a game changer for theatre, we think VR has an important part to play now in engaging audiences during the coronavirus pandemic. This will be a vital test of how theatre might be delivered safely and innovatively in the short- to medium-term, and a taste of how theatre, and its audiences, may embrace digital in the long-term. – Arts Professional
Choreographers Now Making Dance With A.I. And Robotics
“At the forefront of this growing field is Sydney Skybetter, a former dancer and a professor of what he calls choreographics at Brown University, where his students approach dance in a way that is heavily computational. … By the end of the 20th century, motion capture, wearable tech and virtual reality had arrived on the scene. Then came A.I.” – The New York Times
What The American Election Means For The Art Market
“What’s the difference between the government bond that pays 0% and a Rothko painting that pays 0%? They’re both things that have some kind of value and they can go up in value over time or down in value over time. And you’re not going to be able to live off either of them, but at least the Rothko makes you feel cultured.” – The Art Newspaper
Where Was Commercial Radio In Britain Born? In Biscuit Factories
Back in 1970, the United Biscuits Network was created for workers mass-producing Jaffa Cakes and McVitie’s Digestives who had gotten fed up with the Muzak bosses piped to the factory floor. With daring programming inspired by the pirate radio stations that used to broadcast from ships offshore, UBN was the first legal non-BBC radio in the UK and the first to operate 24 hours a day. – The Guardian
For Arts Workers In Europe, This Second COVID Lockdown Feels Different
“To understand how people are feeling about the situation, we spoke to six cultural figures, including an Italian opera star, a renowned Parisian bookseller and the head of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Here are edited excerpts from those conversations.” – The New York Times
French Senate Approves Return Of Artworks To Benin And Senegal
The legislation, required for museums to release the items and ratified unanimously by the senators, concerns 26 statues in the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris that were taken from Benin by French soldiers in 1892 as well as a ceremonial sword that came from Senegal and is currently on loan to a museum there. – ARTnews
Sinkholes Threaten To Swallow Historic Churches In Naples
No, not the city in Florida, America’s sinkhole hub. “Many of the historic cathedrals, churches and chapels of Naples, Italy are at risk of vanishing into the earth, according to new research published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage. … Nine [churches] are built over subterranean cavities, on ground affected by ‘ongoing deformation’, making these areas highly susceptible to sudden collapse … [while] a further 57 places of worship lie above ‘potential future cavity collapses’.” – The Art Newspaper
Of Racism And What’s Left Of Institutions
“In a hasty effort to be on the right side of history, I fear this industry is neglecting the historically precedented and exceedingly unspoken costs of forcing this kind of assimilation to white institutional power in this country. Doors are swinging open and white institutional leaders are ushering tokenized theatremakers into their broken homes. And in exchange for closer proximity to once tightly held resources, in a cavalier and unblinking gesture, our white leaders have laid at their feet long legacies of institutional harm and oppression. Do with this what you will.” – HowlRound
Using Found Language Is An Avant-Garde Literary Technique That’s Centuries Old
Tom Comitta: “Even though these forms have existed for over a millennium, few connections have been made between the many novels and short stories that either contain a significant amount of quotations or are made up entirely of them. Considering the wide reach of literary criticism, … it’s particularly surprising that we don’t have a detailed and complex understanding of this kind of fiction. In order to start building one, I’d like to detail some of the important works and trends and to offer a possible vocabulary with which to understand them.” – Literary Hub
Photographers Play Key Role In Nigerian Protests Against Police Violence And Extortion
“Local artists are working tirelessly to keep the demonstrations in the headlines by producing indelible images that seek to combat misinformation and capture the unprecedented protest movement in real time.” – Artnet
The Case Against Pierre Boulez
When conductors manage to continue performing into their eighties, their colleagues tend to soften their views, even of maestros who were once feared and despised. A shock of white hair and a newly tremulous tone of voice in rehearsals has helped many former tyrants come to be seen as benevolent fountains of wisdom. I can think of no other artist for whom this transformation was as complete, or improbable, as Pierre Boulez. When he was a young composer and polemicist in Paris in the 1940s and 1950s (he did not seriously take up conducting until later), he seemed intent on burning down the entire music world. – New York Review of Books