Month: February 2018

A Bolivian Artist Who Created An Image Of The Virgin Mary Wearing A Thong Is Getting Massive Threats

While Bolivia’s cultural minister says “”A criminal proceeding will be initiated to obtain the sanction that corresponds to those who have dared to discredit our most holy virgin of the Socavon and to whom intends to destroy the patrimonialism and intangibility of the Oruro Carnival,” the artist is quick to point out that she created the image exactly because of the drinking, carousing, and disrespect of women at the carnical.

How Is New York City Ballet Doing Without Peter Martins – And What’s Next?

As City Ballet is run by a team of four (three ballet masters and a choreographer), Alistair Macauley sums up a few recent changes: “Whoever takes over City Ballet long-term must address not just the legacy of Mr. Martins but also the achievements of this interregnum, too. A controversial slap in Mr. Martins’s Romeo + Juliet has been deleted; the ballerina Patricia McBride has coached a role she created. There have been impressive debuts in individual roles.”

How Did Stephen Rubin Climb Back Atop The Publishing Industry?

Two words: Michael Wolff. “Roughly nine years ago, when [Rubin] left Random House — where over the years he had made the authors Dan Brown and John Grisham into household names — for the less-glamorous perch of Henry Holt, some in the industry speculated that his once-powerful career was all but over. But Mr. Rubin now finds himself with a book that has arguably matched the heights of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and ‘The Firm.'”

Turns Out Abstract Cave Art Was Made By Neanderthals, So Maybe We Should Stop Using That As An Insult

This is big. “The reason it is so eerie to think of a Neanderthal making a hand-image is that the painted hands – not to mention bison, horses and mammoths – found in European caves have come to be seen as the moment when the modern human mind itself is born: the first evidence not just of the intelligence of Homo sapiens but our capacity to imagine and dream, to reflect, in short to possess consciousness. What does it mean if another kind of human species shared those traits? Is there nothing special about us at all?”

The 2002 Movie ‘Real Women Have Curves’ Was A Lot (Some Say Too Much) Like ‘Lady Bird,’ But Never Got Its Cultural Moment – Why?

Critic Monica Castillo notes that it’s not the fault of the 2017 movie that the Academy didn’t recognize the 2002 movie. “Real Women didn’t receive a single nod from the academy, though it won a handful of awards in the run-up to the Oscars. That might look as if the industry were praising the movie with the white protagonist when it ignored the movie with a Latino one — that Real Women Have Curves lacked the familiarity the traditionally white, older Oscar voters would reward. … This should be a time to re-evaluate how the entertainment industry missed a remarkable movie.”

A Stolen Degas Painting Is Found, Nine Years Later, On A Bus

The painting, stolen in December, 2009, from a museum in Marseille, was (randomly, it appears) found in a suitcase on a bus outside of Paris during a customs check. “France Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen called the find a ‘happy rediscovery of a precious work belonging to the national collections, whose disappearance represented a heavy loss for French impressionist heritage.'”

Emma Chambers, Actress From Vicar of Dibley And Notting Hill, Has Died At 53

Her daffy, loopy Alice on the long-running “Vicar of Dibley” came from very hard work. “Chambers would go over every line to make sure she got the rhythm and the tone of the lunatic she was playing, says Paul Mayhew-Archer, co-writer of the Vicar of Dibley. He told BBC Radio 5 live that despite most comedy series having an idiot, ‘she made Alice a completely unique, very special idiot.'”