For one thing, there’s a limit to what you can portray on screen (who knew?): “The film depicts only a fraction of the staff required for similar occasions, as they would simply not fit on the screen, said Alastair Bruce, the historical adviser on both Downton Abbey the movie and the show.” – The New York Times
Month: September 2019
Study Shows That Gendered Discrimination, And A Lack Of Parental Support, Create Massive Barriers For Women Theatre Designers
Sometimes you just need a study to back up what seemingly everyone (at least the women) already knows: “The fields of design, production, and technical theatre are the most male-dominated,” and the reasons? Er: Ninety percent of respondents “reported having experienced a negative work environment, gender-based harassment, and/or pay disparity,” especially in lighting and sound design. – American Theatre
A Knife-Wielding Attacker Has Severely Damaged A Painting At The Pompidou
The painting, by Daniel Buren, is described as “a cotton canvas with white and red vertical stripes,” and the attacker was being held for psychiatric evaluation. – BBC
Should You Really Go To A Book-Adapted Movie Before You Read The Book?
It’s an important question as The Goldfinch, based on a rather lengthy novel, hits theatres. And then … what about movies based on Stephen King books? “The more sophisticated the source material, the stronger the obligation felt: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl were mere airport novels, I told myself, so no pressure there.” – Los Angeles Times
Anne Rivers Siddons, Author Of ‘Peachtree Road’ And Other Books Whose Subject Was The New South
Siddons was an advertising copywriter before her buddy Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, urged her to write about Atlanta – which she did. But that wasn’t her only topic. “‘The South is hard on women,’ she told People, ‘partly because of the emphasis on looks and charm. No matter what I did, I always ended up with this hollow feeling. … That’s why I wrote: I am writing about the journey we take to find out what lives in that hole.” – The New York Times
A Short History Of TV’s “Golden Ages”
Golden Age evangelists love to wax rhapsodic on the artistic triumphs of their preferred series, but those same critics are quick to pull the “mass appeal” card to defend those series’ failings, reminding naysayers that, unlike the snooty purveyors of fine art and literary fiction, showrunners, both valiantly and by necessity, take a populist approach. – Harper’s
YouTube Steps Up Removal Of Hate Videos
YouTube is doing something about the proliferation of hate on its video site. According to a blog post published on Tuesday (September 3), it took down five times more channels and videos promoting hate in the second quarter of the year than it did in the previous quarter. The equates to more than 100,000 individual videos, more than 17,000 channels and more than 500 million comments removed in the second quarter of the year. – ColorLines
Should Ghost Writers Speak Out Against Their Subjects?
“It’s like a lawyer: if you find that the person you’re representing is a murderer you can’t then go around bewailing the fact you defended them – that was your job.” – The Guardian
YouTube Says It Will Crack Down On Manipulation Of Music Charts
This form of advertising lets the advertiser, like the artist or the label, play a shortened version of a music video as an advertisement in front of other videos. Under some conditions — like if a YouTube user interacts with the video or watches it for a certain amount of time — it would count toward the video’s overall view count. – TechCrunch
Historian Presenting Lecture On Controversial Musician Gets Shut Down And Banned
“Recently I was asked to present a lecture on composer Julius Eastman and his work at the OBEY Convention, a music and sound festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But rather than a fruitful discussion of Eastman’s probing, piercing minimalist music and legacy as an overlooked composer only now getting his due, the situation turned into a referendum on complicated questions: who gets to hold forth on artists of different identities, and on whose terms?” – ARTnews