Those voters can never quite decide how much heed to pay to a movie’s popularity or accessibility. That’s how you wind up with absurd best picture races like the one in 2010 between “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar.” (“The Hurt Locker” won.) - The New York Times
"For many in the indie film world, the drama surrounding Jihad Rehab (now titled The UnRedacted) marks a new status quo. ... (There's) a new, unspoken modus operandi in which festivals — once the bastion of provocative, button-pushing fare — are desperate to avoid controversy and the wrath of any identity-focused Twitter mob." - Variety
"He is mathematical like Balanchine, but there's more of a lightness, an everyday quality that feels playful, even when the steps are technically arduous. … In honor of this peak Peck moment, we asked Peck and his collaborators to decode his artistic tics." - New York Magazine
"(The venue) has told the Philly Pops that unless it immediately comes up with rent from its just-finished holiday run, as well as advance payments for upcoming concerts in February, the Pops will have to vacate the Kimmel and will no longer be allowed to perform there." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
In another win for workplace dignity, one of the nation’s highest courts recently suggested that businesses cannot force their employees to participate in office parties and other supposedly enjoyable activities. - The New Yorker
By the first decades of the twentieth century, national organizations had established standards for the credentialling of lawyers, doctors, and nurses. The professionalization of criticism was a less coherent affair, because criticism did not belong to a single trade or discipline. - The New Yorker
Natalie Murray Beale says, "We looked a lot at the physical aspects, ensuring she would not be too reverent of the conductor’s podium, because after all it’s just her workplace." - The Observer (UK)
Bad news for writers and artists: As AI improves, the plagiarism will become less apparent. "There’s no quick technological fix to these issues. As has been the case for nearly all instances of bad information spreading online, readers and editors will again have to figure this out themselves." - Slate
The experience had clued him in to something: In elite circles, not all opportunities were advertised. There were rooms that the rest of us didn’t know existed, and those rooms came with possibilities never advertised by the career-services office. - The Atlantic
Across broad landscapes of science and technology, the past is eating the present, progress is plunging, and truly disruptive work is hard to come by. Despite an enormous increase in scientists and papers since the middle of the 20th century, the number of highly disruptive studies each year hasn’t increased. - The Atlantic
Observing the company's worrisome slump in ticket sales and Peter Gelb's announced plans to focus more on contemporary works and reduce the number of performances (especially of revivals), Parterre Box contributor Dawn Fatale suggests further ways to get the FOMO factor working in the Met's favor again. - Parterre Box
Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker's emotional tone. - Ars Technica
Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with the mid-twentieth century, research done in the 2000s was much more likely to incrementally push science forward than to veer off in a new direction and render previous work obsolete. Analysis of patents from 1976 to 2010 showed the same trend. - Nature
The novelist and screenwriter (My Beautiful Laundrette) fell in Rome the day after Christmas. He wrote in a series of tweets that he can't move his arms or legs after the fall and a surgery on his spine. - The Guardian (UK)
"(Michael Langlois's) approach, which combines the close linguistic and paleographical analysis of ancient writings with advanced scientific tools … can sometimes make long-gone inscriptions come back to life. Or it can bury them for good — as in his exposé involving (forged Dead Sea Scroll fragments)." - Smithsonian Magazine
Nadine Dorries tweeted that she's been "blamed for lazy, politically motivated decision making at (Arts Council England), who … pulled this as a stunt to try (to) reverse levelling up and funding being transferred to poorer communities in the north of England." - The Stage
Rosemary Tonks was suceessful critically, commercially, and socially. Then a series of life crises in the 1970s led her to convert to fundamentalist Christianity, destroy her manuscripts, forbid further publication of her work, and even check out her books from libraries and burn them in her backyard. - The New Yorker
Leonard Whiting, who was 16 when the film was made in 1968, and Olivia Hussey, who was 15, are seeking damages from Paramount reported to be more than $500 million, claiming that they suffered decades of emotional distress and lost career opportunities. - Variety
Neither a cult reputation as a pioneer of bebop nor American canonization quite does justice to Monk, who was simply one of the most imaginative composers of the twentieth century, a judgment that in my view does not require the qualifiers “jazz” or “American.” - The Baffler
Mail mattered then, as it had from the beginnings of the republic through the 1970s, more or less, when the falling price of long-distance phone calls and the fax machine devastated written correspondence. - New Criterion
