Hollywood keeps trying to make one, but time after time, it seems, they’re critical disasters and U.S. box-office bombs (though some do wery well overseas). Top directors tend to either avoid the genre or try it once, get burned, and then avoid it. Is a truly good big-screen adaptation of a video game even possible? Yes, argues David Sims, and, arguably, it’s happened already.
Author: Matthew Westphal
So, Like, Where Did Everybody Saying ‘Like’ Come From?
Yes, the usage exploded in the 1970s and ’80s, but it didn’t originate with Valley Girls or even hippies – it goes back at least to the 1770s. In this Lexicon Valley podcast, John McWhorter and sociolinguist Alexandra D’Arcy talk about the history and (yes) grammar of “like.”
When Gerhard Richter Drew Cartoons
J. Hoberman writes about the newly-rediscovered “comic strip” drawings, featuring a lead character called the Biped, that Richter drew in 1962, shortly after escaping from East to West Germany.
Why This Man Was The Most Photographed American Of The 19th Century
You’ve heard of him (even if Donald Trump hadn’t). His pose and his outfit were almost always the same, and he had specific reasons for seeking out the camera as much as he did – reasons that went well beyond self-regard.
‘Nevertheless, She Persisted’ And The Age Of The Weaponized Meme
“You couldn’t have designed better fodder for a meme had you tried.” Megan Garber writes about how and why Mitch McConnell’s now-notorious mansplain about Elizabeth Warren became the feminist slogan tweeted ’round the world.
‘Recruit Rosie’ – ‘Saturday Night Live’ Has Now Joined, Or Been Memed Into, The Resistance
It took one news report that Donald Trump was upset that SNL cast a woman as Sean Spicer for Twitter to erupt with calls for the show to cast Trump’s number one bête noire, Rosie O’Donnell, as Steve Bannon. Megan Garber points out that this is no longer just a joke: “It operated on the premise that jokes can effect significant changes in the daily operations of the White House.” (We want Steve Buscemi as Kellyanne Conway!)
Nicolai Gedda, 91, Revered Tenor Whose Career Spanned Five Decades
A scrupulous musician, Gedda was admired for his fantastic versatility: he was convincing and stylish in Mozart, bel canto, Italian, French, German, and Russian repertoire, capable in opera, art song, and even operetta.
Could A New Box Set Redeem 20th-Century Opera’s Grandest Flop?
Critics the world over flocked to New York in 1966 for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center – and they hated the piece composed for the occasion, Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra. The work’s reputation never recovered (and neither, in truth, did Barber himself). But after listening to a radio broadcast of the original production, recently released by the Met as part of a box set, David Patrick Stearns says that “Barber’s fall from grace is confounding” and that, 50 years on, Antony and Cleopatra deserves a reassessment.
Rajiv Joseph Wins $25K Horton Foote Playwriting Award
The author of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and Guards at the Taj will receive the prize at the end of this month. The award from the Dramatists Guild of America was launched just last year, with Stephen Karam (The Humans) the winner.
Painting Languishing In A Storeroom Turns Out To Be A Genuine Brueghel
“The unsigned and undated work, Wedding Dance in the Open Air (1607-15), had been in store for several years when the [Holburne Museum in Bath’s] director, Jennifer Scott, decided to pull it out for a closer look.”