“Studio executives often protest that there simply aren’t enough talented female filmmakers to choose from. They are wrong. … Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, it wasn’t hard to assemble such an enormous list of smart, eminently hireable female directors. The only difficult part was culling it down to just 100.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Does Fiction Based On Fact Have A Responsibility To The Truth?
Thomas Mallon: “If I had been unwilling to deviate from what Gore Vidal used to call the ‘agreed-upon facts,’ there wouldn’t have been much point to writing a novel instead of a history.” Ayana Mathis: “At the risk of stating the obvious, truth and fact are not the same things. Our belief in the truthfulness of facts is mutable.”
Stop Hating On Puns: They’re Useful, They’re Ubiquitous, They’re More Complex Than You Think, And They Deserve Respect (As Long As They’re Clever)
“The fact is, quite a lot of ordinary people enjoy puns. So why is the pun looked down upon? Is its reputation as an inferior form of wordplay really deserved? … It turns out puns are pretty weird, linguistically speaking, given what we think we know about words and what they signify.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.03.15
What is Audience Engagement? (Part 1)
It’s commonplace to talk about the need for “audience engagement” – but what does the term actually mean? And how does an arts/cultural organization know if its succeeding? Perhaps it’s an intentionally amorphous concept … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2015-11-03
American Music — An Alternative Narrative
The Standard Narrative for American concert music starts with Aaron Copland after World War I. It presumes that Copland and others of his generation were the first to create an “American style” based on American songs, American rhythms, American energies. … I propose that in fact there are multiple American musical narratives, none of which takes precedence over the others. I call these “musical streams, all of which achieved substantial results and none of which reached fruition.” … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2015-11-03
Dancing with Bach
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Brussels-based company, Rosas, last performed in New York in 2013, when the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-11-03
Frishberg Retromania
Bassist and author Bill Crow sent a note: Following some of your links, I ran across Dave Frishberg’s article on the Half Note, and saw a comment after it by someone looking for … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-03
Auction High-Wire Act Without a Net: Sotheby’s Daredevil Taubman Guarantee
This is a watershed moment for Sotheby’s and its new CEO, Tad Smith. When I heard the astonishing news in September that Sotheby’s had provided the Taubman Collection‘s consignors with a guarantee of approximately $500 million for some 500 works, … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-03
Compatible Quotes: The Piano
“What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano.” — Bill Evans … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-02
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Local TV Host Molests Female Co-Host On Camera, Sparking Firestorm In Mexico
Last week, during the broadcast of A Toda Máquina on the Televísa network’s station in Ciudad Juárez, Enrique Tovar rubbed against his colleague Tania Reza, fondled her breasts, tried to lift her skirt, and made numerous lewd comments. When Reza finally walked off the set in disgust, Tovar said right into the camera, “I apologize. I think my partner is a little hormonal.” (includes video)
Yundi Li Has Onstage Memory Lapse; East Asian Internet Explodes
The 33-year-old pianist – who, along with rival Lang Lang, has megastar status in their native China – was performing Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony in Seoul when he took a wrong turn in the music and got lost; he and the orchestra had to stop briefly and start again. So far, so human. Then Li suffered one of the downsides of megastardom …
Psy-chology 101: Academics Put Spotlight On Korean Pop Culture
“Academic minds around the world are tackling some tough new questions about South Korea: Why do Korean soap opera plotlines seem to defy the basic principles of microeconomic theory? What can we learn about the reinterpretation of locality in Korean rapper Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ music video?”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Half Of A Yellow Sun’ Named Best Women’s Prize For Fiction Winner Of The Decade
“Pitted against nine other titles – from Zadie Smith’s On Beauty to Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing – Adichie’s novel of the Biafran war … has been named the best winner of the [Baileys] women’s prize for fiction of the last decade – by both the public and a 10-strong judging panel.”
Star Clarinetist Martin Fröst Stricken With Inner-Ear Disorder, Cancels All Remaining 2015 Concerts
Those dates included Fröst’s debut as artistic partner of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, in Minnesota and on an Asian tour. He has been diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease, “a disorder of the inner ear which causes severe vertigo, sickness, and tinnitus.”
Invaders in Our Living Room: Why We Love The Myth That Most Americans Believed The 1938 ‘War of the Worlds’ Broadcast
“The way we think about media to this day is heavily indebted to the very ideas behind the broadcast and its reception – that radio, and media, can constitute a kind of invasive psychological experiment. War of the Worlds and the panic about its panic are products of the moment when the young fields of social psychology and radio used one another to legitimize themselves. Its significance to American history, panic or not, is bigger than even popular myth allows.”