Andrzej Lukowski, theatre editor at Time Out London: “I [now] realise the essential reason theatres are so full of old people is that they don’t have to support their offspring. … There are no theatre access schemes to help out nice middle-class people who happen to be temporarily skint because of childcare, and quite right too. But … anybody who says theatre is for everyone is living in a fantasy land.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Movie Industry Turns To The Patron Martyr Of The Black Lives Matter Movement
Sixty-one years after the night 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched, “the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the string of controversial killings of black men by the police have given new impetus to efforts to film the story of Till, with at least three screen adaptations in the works.”
What Is, And Isn’t, ‘Artificial Intelligence’? Not What The Marketers Tell Us It Is
Om Malik: “Much like ‘the cloud,’ ‘big data,’ and ‘machine learning’ before it, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ has been hijacked by marketers and advertising copywriters. A lot of what people are calling ‘artificial intelligence’ is really data analytics – in other words, business as usual. If the hype leaves you asking ‘What is A.I., really?,’ don’t worry, you’re not alone. I asked various experts to define the term and got different answers.”
The Pleasures Of Filming ‘Unfilmable’ Novels, By Someone Who’s Done It
Hossein Amini, who wrote the screenplays for The Wings of the Dove, and Drive: “The biggest advantage of adapting an impossible book is that no one expects you to be entirely slavish to the source material. They’re not expecting a filmic replica. … I flatter myself when I say they felt halfway between adaptations and original screenplays, but that’s really a testament to the greatness of the novels. They not only allow you to see something of yourself in them, they allow you to project.”
Photojournalist Marc Riboud Dead At 93
“The portrait became iconic overnight. Photographed in Washington D.C. in 1967, it showed a Vietnam War protester, Jan Rose Kasmir, holding a flower as she confronted a row of National Guard servicemen outside the Pentagon. The image became a symbol of the flower power movement and helped change public opinion against a war that had already lasted more than a decade.”
Yuja Wang And Her Dresses Get The Janet Malcolm Treatment
“As she performed, the thigh, splayed by the weight of the torso and the action of the toe working the pedal, looked startlingly large, almost fat, though Yuja is a very slender woman. Her back was bare, thin straps crossing it. She looked like a dominatrix or a lion tamer’s assistant. She had come to tame the beast of a piece, this half-naked woman in sadistic high heels. Take that, and that, Beethoven!”
Woody Allen, At 80, Says That What Didn’t Kill Him Did Not Make Him Stronger
“I don’t believe in the Nietzschean notion that what doesn’t destroy you makes you stronger. You see these soldiers come back with PTSD; they’ve been to war and seen death and experienced these existential crises one after the other. There are traumas in life that weaken us for the future. And that’s what’s happened to me. The various slings and arrows of life have not strengthened me. I think I’m weaker. I think there are things I couldn’t take now that I would have been able to take when I was younger.”
Thieves Steal 12 Tons Of Marble And 10-Ton Sculpture From Anselm Kiefer’s Studio
“Early in the morning on Sunday, 28 August, the German artist Anselm Kiefer’s 35,000sq. m studio and warehouse space in Croissy-Beaubourg, about 25km west of Paris, was burgled and robbed … The thieves are suspected of cutting through wire cages and making off with a ten-tonne lead sculpture of stacks of books – valued at €1.3m – and 12 tonnes of raw marble, worth around €1m.”
That Smudge On Munch’s ‘The Scream’ Is Not Bird Poop, Say Scientists
“Munch painted four versions of the artwork during the 1890s, but an 1893 iteration which resides in the Norwegian National Museum has long had a white smudge of unknown origin near the screaming subject’s shoulder. … After years of speculation, scientists from the University of Antwerp in Belgium have finally solved [the] mystery.”
Google Restores Dennis Cooper’s Blog, And Explains Why It Was Deleted Without Warning
“Artist and author Dennis Cooper re-launched his popular blog on Monday after months of legal disputes with Google, whom many accused of censorship. The artist posted a message on the blog’s Facebook account on Friday to explain Google’s reasoning for erasing his 14-year-old blog.” (It was a 10-year-old post.)