“Researchers at the Czech national film archives said Tuesday they had found a film by early cinema pioneer Georges Méliès that was thought to have been lost forever. The silent two-minute Match de prestidigitation (‘Conjuring contest’), dating from 1904, was found on a reel given to the archives by an anonymous donor, labelled as another film.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Stepping Into Fred Astaire’s Tap Shoes
Corbin Bleu, who started out as a star in Disney’s High School Musical and went on to star on Broadway in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights and the 2012 revival of Godspell, talks about his role – one originated by Astaire – in the revival of the Irving Berlin musical Holiday Inn.
Meet The First Woman Head Carpenter Of New York’s Backstage Workers’ Union
Jennifer Diaz, 34, “has made history, becoming the first female head carpenter of Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The local’s 3,351 members work in spaces from the Met to Carnegie Hall, at Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden, and in every Broadway theater – including the Walter Kerr, which is where she was one morning in September, overseeing the load-in for the musical Falsettos.”
Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize For Literature
“He is the first American to win since the novelist Toni Morrison, in 1993. The announcement, in Stockholm, came as something of a surprise. Although Mr. Dylan, 75, has been mentioned often as having an outside shot at the prize, his work does not fit into the traditional literary canons of novels, poetry and short stories that the prize has traditionally recognized.”
Dario Fo, Nobel-Winning Playwright, Dead At 90
“He was best known for Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970), a play based on the case of an Italian railroad worker who was either thrown or fell from the upper story of a Milan police station while being questioned on suspicion of terrorism, and for his one-man show Mistero Buffo (‘Comic Mystery’), written in 1969 and frequently revised and updated over the next 30 years, taking wild comic aim at politics and, especially, religion.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.12.16
Monday Recommendation: Cecil Payne & Duke Jordan
Cecil Payne & Duke Jordan, Brooklyn Brothers (Elemental Music) This classic pairing is an essential repertoire item in Elemental Music’s series reissuing Xanadu albums from the 1970s. Payne (1922-2007) was among the great baritone saxophonists … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-10-12
Dr. Richard Wang, enabler of AACM experimentalists, RIP
In his first college teaching job at Wilson Junior College during the early 1960s, trumpeter Dick Wang encountered a cadre of exploratory young Chicago musicians who would soon form the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2016-10-12
Snapshot: Paul Draper improvises a jazz tap dance
Paul Draper improvises a jazz dance on Rainbow Quest, a TV series hosted by Pete Seeger. This episode was taped in 1965. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-10-12
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Time Keeps On Slippin’ Into The Future – Here’s Why
Even astronomer Phil Plait finds the physics a bit confounding, but here – complete with animated cartoons – is the explanation he’s gotten from his buddy Sean Carroll, a cosmologist. (Basically, it’s all about entropy.)
So What Are Dreams, Really? Five Theories
“If you’ve ever been befuddled by a dream, take heart: You’re following a 4,000-year tradition of confusion. Over that time, humanity – in the form of religion, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience – has actually come to somewhat understand what exactly the mind is doing in its slumbering states. To that end, here are five of the leading theories for what dreams are and what they do to us.”
The Twilight Of Leonard Cohen
“As I approach the end of my life,” says the songwriter/poet/mystic, “I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now.” But David Remnick, somehow, manages to get him to do it.
Reading ‘Don Quixote’ With Fugitives From Pinochet’s Coup
Ariel Dorfman: “Of the myriad times since adolescence that I have returned to the story of Don Quixote de la Mancha, there is one I choose to remember – that I cannot help but remember – as we commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes. That reading, in October 1973, took place among a distraught group of captive men and women who, like me, had sought asylum in the Argentine Embassy in Santiago, Chile, after the coup that overthrew the democratic government of Salvador Allende.”