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  • AUDIENCE

How Sacha Baron Cohen Tricked Dick Cheney Into Signing A Waterboarding Kit On-Camera

MEDIA Posted: June 11, 2019 10:01 am

On pretending to be a bogus Israeli anti-terrorism expert for his film Who Is America?: “The character creation is a reverse character creation. You have to think, Okay, we got Dick Cheney, he’s agreed to do this. How am I going to convince one of the most cynical, suspicious, brilliant minds that I’m real? How am I going to get him to say things he’s ultimately going to regret? That becomes the process of fully learning your character and making sure there are no holes in your character.” – Vulture

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MEDIA Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in Vulture Published: 06.09.19

Can The CEO Who Saved Waterstones Save Barnes & Noble, Too?

WORDS Posted: June 11, 2019 5:46 am

The hedge fund that bought the beleaguered Barnes & Noble last week also owns Waterstones, the UK’s leading bookstore chain, which had been suffering from similar troubles. So the new owners are sending over to B&N the man who led Waterstones back to profitability, James Daunt. Can he revive the U.S. chain? “I have done it before,” he says, “the scale is a lot bigger, but so are the resources available.” – Publishers Weekly

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WORDS Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in Publishers Weekly Published: 06.09.19

How iTunes Saved The Music Business

MUSIC Posted: June 10, 2019 12:34 pm

Music played an outsize role in the evolution of the internet. As Larry Lessig put in Free Culture: “Filesharing music was the crack cocaine of the internet’s growth. It drove demand for access to the internet more powerfully than any other single application.” Jobs became the first licensed dealer in that drug and iTunes provided the saddle that enabled Apple to ride the tiger. – The Guardian

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MUSIC Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in The Guardian Published: 06.09.19

The Iraq Museum, Once Looted And Then Partly Restored, Has Antiquities And Art That Can’t Be Found Elsewhere

VISUAL Posted: June 10, 2019 7:00 am

The museum lost about 15,000 items – but its collection is huge, luminous, and important. “Art historians and archaeologists know how exceptional the collection is. But despite Baghdad’s relative safety today, neither the city nor the museum have yet to become a major destination for Iraqis, much less foreign tourists.” – The New York Times

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VISUAL Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in The New York Times Published: 06.09.19

Can Britain’s National Portrait Gallery Cut Its Ties To British Petroleum?

VISUAL Posted: June 10, 2019 6:45 am

It doesn’t seem entirely likely, but artists, activists, and even a judge have asked the museum to try. “They accuse the central London gallery of helping to launder the oil industry’s image through its BP sponsorship deal and say the oil company is aggravating the climate crisis by extracting fossil fuels.” – The Guardian (UK)

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VISUAL Published: 06.09.19, sj

Read the story in The Guardian (UK) Published: 06.09.19, sj

Doublethink, And Doublespeak, Are Stronger Than Orwell Believed

WORDS Posted: June 10, 2019 6:30 am

Returning to the book itself is something of a tonic against despair, but: “We are living with a new kind of regime that didn’t exist in Orwell’s time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment.” And we chose it ourselves. – The Atlantic

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WORDS Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in The Atlantic Published: 06.09.19

Learning About What Theatre Artists Can Offer To Veterans – And, Of Course, What Vets Offer Artists

THEATRE Posted: June 10, 2019 5:45 am

The Telling Project works with veterans and their families to create devised work all over the country. How does that work, really? “We are using our decades of training as artists to translate the experiences of veterans and their families into narratives, and then to translate the narratives into performances. Another way to put it is that we are helping these folks with meaning,” says founder and director Jonathan Wei. – HowlRound

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THEATRE Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in HowlRound Published: 06.09.19

The Director Of ‘Hadestown’ Won A Tony And Ripped Into The Reasons She’s The Only Woman Directing On Broadway This Year

THEATRE Posted: June 10, 2019 4:45 am

It has nothing to do with who is ready to direct, Rachel Chavkin said. “There are so many women who are ready to go. There are so many artists of color who are ready to go. … This is not a pipeline issue. It is a failure of imagination by a field whose job is to imagine the way the world could be.” – The New York Times

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THEATRE Published: 06.09.19, sj

Read the story in The New York Times Published: 06.09.19, sj

Who Cleaned Up At The Tonys? The Complete List

THEATRE Posted: June 9, 2019 8:35 pm

Basically, Hadestown. Sure, it didn’t win all 14 awards it was nominated for, but eight’s not bad. – The New York Times

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THEATRE Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in The New York Times Published: 06.09.19

Dear iTunes, Thanks For Saving The Music Industry From Itself

MUSIC Posted: June 9, 2019 12:00 pm

In 2001, the music industry “faced an existential threat” because its “vanquishing of Napster turned out to be a pyrrhic victory: the genie had escaped from the bottle. Dozens of filesharing systems had come into being.” iTunes (even though it’s now bloated and terrible and leaving) “was a revelation,” and made paying for music online a norm. – The Guardian (UK)

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MUSIC Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in The Guardian (UK) Published: 06.09.19

The Only Good TV Shows Now Understand Restraint, Not Endless Streaming Expansion

MEDIA Posted: June 9, 2019 11:00 am

Just take a look at Shrill or Fleabag versus, oh, Game of Thrones, or Chernobyl. “Over time, length came to be correlated with quality, and with TV auteurs who declined to have their genius constrained by such arbitrary forces as ‘formats’ or ‘editors.'” Now the backlash has begun. – The Atlantic

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MEDIA Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in The Atlantic Published: 06.09.19

YouTube Spends A Week Bungling Announcements, Making Harassment Worse

ISSUES Posted: June 9, 2019 9:00 am

Reading the history of this week of YouTube announcements, discussions, demonetizing of right-wing accounts, and the subsequent high-profile, high-volume, high-intensity harassment campaign against Vox journalist Carlos Maza, well … “In short, YouTube’s big policy announcement ended up acting as incitement to harassment against one of its own creators.” – Vice

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ISSUES Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in Vice Published: 06.09.19

The Comedians Confronting Darkness And Mortality

MEDIA Posted: June 9, 2019 8:30 am

Natasha Lyonne and Maya Rudolph are two of the funniest stars out there, but on Russian Doll and Forever, they’re forced to put that humor to use in the middle of some pretty intense situations. Lyonne has a serious theory about Rudolph’s ability to move back and forth: “Because of SNL and, first, The Groundlings, that there’s a deep training ground in there that’s very real. You give them what’s really a very formal education: Under all conditions, the highest of stakes, at the most pressure in the world, deliver.” – Variety

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MEDIA Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in Variety Published: 06.09.19

A Preference For Part-Time

ISSUES Posted: June 6, 2019 11:28 am

“A survey from the Pew Research Center in 2016 found that, among US workers employed part-time, 64 per cent prefer it that way. Meanwhile, 20 per cent of full-time workers – that’s almost 26 million Americans – would rather work part-time.” – Aeon

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ISSUES Published: 06.09.19

Read the story in Aeon Published: 06.09.19

  • Snapshot: Nat Cole plays “Just One of Those Things”
    Nat Cole plays Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things” on The Ed Sullivan Show. This episode was originally telecast live by CBS on April 13, 1958: (This is the latest in a... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-14
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on literary productivity
    “His fertility was of course amazing and fertility is a quality to be praised in an author. It denotes physical energy, a gift a writer can as little do without as a... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-14
  • Benchmarking? Maybe Not
    Benchmarking equity may not be effective. If it is attempted, it must be approached cautiously so as not to cause more harm than good.... Read more
    AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published on: 2021-04-13
  • Lookback: the thirty-day song challenge
    From 2017: In the wake of the thirty-day movie challenge comes a new meme that I find—perhaps not surprisingly—irresistible. As before, I’ve opted to do it in a single sitting, so here goes: 1.... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-13
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on posterity
    “There is one very good thing to be said of posterity, and this is that it turns a blind eye on the defects of greatness.” Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando Continue reading Almanac: Somerset... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-13
  • A Gripping New Version of The Rite of Spring
    Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring might at first glance seem an unlikely candidate for keyboard transcription. It calls for a huge orchestra, colorfully deployed. But the percussive ferocity of the writing, its sheer... Read more
    AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published on: 2021-04-12
  • Taking a Break
    Back soon.... Read more
    AJBlog: Straight|Up Published on: 2021-04-12
  • This Blogger Needs to Take a Break
    We weep to leave behind the sun lightly pencilled in, nothing left of the eternal. ... We are still only little animals.... Read more
    AJBlog: Straight|Up Published on: 2021-04-12
  • Filtered
    As I hear my student playing the piano through Zoom, just for a moment, I think I am hearing Paderewski in 1912. The sound is imperfect. At moments it drops out. There... Read more
    AJBlog: PianoMorphosis Published on: 2021-04-12
  • Raising the flag
    The Teachout Museum, my collection of midcentury-modern American art and its forerunners here and in Europe, contains two prints by American impressionists who were active around the turn of the twentieth century,... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-12
  • Just because: Somerset Maugham is interviewed in 1965
    Somerset Maugham is interviewed by Alan Pryce-Jones in 1965 for Wisdom, an occasional series of TV profiles of older “cultural icons” that aired on NBC from 1952 to 1965: (This is the latest in... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-12
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on simplicity in literary style
    “To write simply is as difficult as to be good.” Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando Continue reading Almanac: Somerset Maugham on simplicity in literary style at About Last Night.... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-12
  • Marshall Marcus Talks the UN and Arts Organizations
    Marshall Marcus, Secretary General of the European Union Youth Orchestra, shares about the connection between the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the mission of arts organizations.... Read more
    AJBlog: Aaron Dworkin Published on: 2021-04-10
  • Doubting Thomas: Greenville County Museum Sells “Alma’s Flower Garden” in a Non-Transparent Transaction
    Taking a page from the problematic playbooks of the Berkshire, Everson and Baltimore museums, the Greenville County Museum of Art (GCMA), South Carolina, has become the latest poster child for deplorable deaccessions.... Read more
    AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published on: 2021-04-09
  • Rich Allen’s Film Dances to the Music
    'Lost in Lydia City': Four minutes of pure sad funny nostalgic joy.... Read more
    AJBlog: Straight|Up Published on: 2021-04-09
  • Underground: To a Remaindered Poet
    An ancient shadow led the exiled Dante through the hell of his neurotic soul. Yet you, oh poet, are silent about your escape and slipped into the brown hide of a bookseller... Read more
    AJBlog: Straight|Up Published on: 2021-04-09
  • Three’s company
    In today’s Wall Street Journal I review webcasts of Yours Unfaithfully (by the Mint Theater Company) and Trying (by North Coast Repertory Theatre). Here’s an excerpt. *  *  * Miles Malleson is one of... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-09
  • Replay: Steely Dan appears on The Late Show
    Steely Dan’s two appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, performing “Josie” in 1995 and “Cousin Dupree” in 2000: (This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-09
  • Almanac: Edward G. Robinson on screen acting
    “You know, I’ve always figured the waiting is what they pay me for. The acting I do free.” Edward G. Robinson (quoted in Charlton Heston, In the Arena) Continue reading Almanac: Edward G.... Read more
    AJBlog: About Last Night Published on: 2021-04-09
  • Gone But Not Forgotten The Pyramid Club on the Lower East Side
    Gone, finished, closed, shut forever. Though less well known than CBGB, Webster Hall, The Palladium, the Continental, it gave birth to much LES culture. Over the last few years, the Pyramid Club... Read more
    AJBlog: Straight|Up Published on: 2021-04-07
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