“‘What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?’ reads the opening line of Erich Segal’s 1970 best-seller Love Story. Well, for starters, Jenny – or the real-life model for Segal’s fictional tragic heroine – didn’t die. Her name is Janet, she’s Jewish, and she’s alive and well and living in New York City.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Once-Famous Floating Hotel To Become Phnom Penh’s Center For Cambodian Arts
The Boat, long abandoned, will be renovated into a complex with art studios, rehearsal and performance spaces, office facilities, restaurants and galleries.
National LGBT Museum Abandons Plans For D.C., Sets Sights On New York
“Tim Gold, who co-chairs the board, said organizers looked north after learning the museum would not be eligible for tax breaks in D.C. and searching unsuccessfully for a location near the National Mall.”
The Epic Fail Of Hollywood’s Hottest Algorithm (Along With The Studio Of The Guy Who Touted It)
“Not yet 30 when he founded Relativity Media in 2004, [Ryan Kavanaugh] very quickly became not only a power player in Hollywood but the man who might just save it … having come up with a way to forecast a famously unpredictable business by replacing the vagaries of intuition with the certainties of math.”
The Invention Of Ambient Music
“In the sixties, pop music in West Germany was in a peculiar state. … But, as with the New German Cinema that emerged in that decade, new German sounds had begun to take shape. … The German press (and, for the most part, German audiences) ignored the ‘Krautrock’ bands entirely. But in advertisements and airports, on film soundtracks, and in concert halls, high and low, the music is still in the air, all around us.”
This Year’s Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition Is Cancelled; Event Will Be ‘Rethought’
The 2016 edition, for singers, is being postponed to 2017, as the organizers take “a period necessary to recast the competition … [a year] to rethink, rebuild, and offer a new form” adapted to new media. The annual event in Paris has awarded prizes to pianists and violinist, in alternating years, since 1943; singers were added to the rotation in 2011. (in French; Google Translate version here)
Ghiberti’s Bronze Doors On Baptistery In Florence Replaced By Replicas
“For nearly 600 years, Lorenzo Ghiberti’s panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ on the north doors of the Baptistery in Florence were exposed to the elements and other vicissitudes of time. Now, the gilded bronze doors with their 28 panels have been replaced with replicas made by a team of artisans using the materials and techniques mastered centuries ago by the Renaissance sculptor and his workshop.”
‘In Cold Blood’ At 50
Not only did Capote’s book inspire a feature film, at least one TV mini-series, and two biopics of the author, it’s had enormous influence, right down to today’s media phenomenons Serial and Making a Murderer.
Charlotte Rampling Walks Back Her Comment That #OscarsSoWhite Is ‘Racist To White People’
“I regret that my comments could have been misinterpreted. I simply meant to say that in an ideal world every performance will be given equal opportunities for consideration.”
Ian McKellen Says #OscarsSoStraight
“No openly gay man has ever won the Oscar; I wonder if that is prejudice or chance.” Observing that Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Sean Penn won best actor Oscars for playing gay men, he added, “What about giving me one for playing a straight man?”