One might say that they’re conflicted. Barnes & Noble says that The Room Where It Happened is already at the top of its bestsellers list. “In contrast, a survey of participants in PW‘s Bxsellers Facebook group indicated that a slight majority of the approximately 30 respondents intend to stock the book, although many of them expressed caveats. Almost half of the indie booksellers responding to PW‘s query are opting to fulfill special orders only, while three booksellers disclosed that they flatly refuse to sell the book at all.” – Publishers Weekly
Author: Matthew Westphal
Appeals Court Revives Copyright Lawsuit Over ‘The Shape of Water’
“The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals … says that additional evidence, including expert testimony, is needed to weigh similarities between the Academy Award-winning film and a play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Zindel.” – The Hollywood Reporter
See Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’ Online Far More Clearly Than It Looks In Person
“When he painted it, Leonardo used an experimental technique using egg tempera and oil paint on plaster, so it began to fade soon after it was completed. Luckily, Leonardo’s pupils created a copy using oil paint on canvas that has better stood the test of time. Now, that oil painting is available online after a partnership between England’s Royal Academy of Arts and Google Arts & Culture.” – Smithsonian Magazine
Glyndebourne Festival Opera Will Do An Outdoor Season This Summer
“Offenbach’s 1858 Mesdames de la Halle is the first opera to be announced. It will be staged with 12 singers but no chorus, with 13 orchestral musicians instead of the usual 40, and with a limited audience of 200 people [spaced apart outdoors]. … Taking place throughout July and August, the series will include concerts from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and London Philharmonic Orchestra.” – Classic FM
BBC Pledges To Spend £100m To Increase Diversity In Front Of And Behind The Camera
“The U.K. public broadcaster is also putting into place a mandatory 20-percent diverse-talent target for all new commissions as it plans ‘bold steps that will help make the BBC an instrument of real change.'” – The Hollywood Reporter
In This Pandemic Summer, Dance Companies Reconceive Their Work For The Outdoors
“We all know it’s safer to be outside and socially distanced, but that doesn’t mean we are confined to an outdoor stage with chairs placed six feet apart.” Here’s a look at what companies in Tampa Bay, Houston, Seattle, and rural Connecticut (yes, Pilobolus) are coming up with. – Dance Magazine
‘Drive-Thru Drama’: Another Solution To The Theatre-In-The-Age-Of-COVID Problem?
“With the usual model of theatregoing currently out of the question most everywhere, a handful of theatres have taken a cue from an old concept: medieval pageant wagons. Only this time, instead of the artists driving from audience to audience, the audience drives from artist to artist.” – American Theatre
Joel Schumacher, Who Directed A Series Of Hollywood Hits, Dead At 80
“A journeyman director who shepherded a new generation of young stars to the big screen in St. Elmo’s Fire and steered the Batman franchise into its most baroque territory in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, … he established himself as a filmmaker of great flair, if not often good reviews, in a string of mainstream films in the 1980s and ’90s. To the frequent frustration of critics but the delight of audiences, Mr. Schumacher favored entertainment over tastefulness — including those infamous Batman and Robin suits with visible nipples — and he did so proudly.” – The Washington Post
Philadelphia City Council Partly Reverses Zeroing-Out Of Arts Funding
“City Council has put money for the arts back into the administration’s revised COVID-19-ravaged 2021 budget, including full restoration of the subsidy for the African American Museum in Philadelphia. But the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the city’s key funding apparatus for arts support, has been restored to only about one-third its pre-COVID-19 level of $3 million.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Another Bungled Art Restoration In Spain
First there was the world-famous fiasco “Beast Jesus,” then there was St. George painted to look like a toy. Now an early copy of Murillo’s Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables has been wrecked because a collector tried to have it fixed up for only €1,200 by a furniture restorer, and there are calls in Spain for the entire field of art restoration to be regulated. – The Guardian