Why stop at Werner Herzog? Here are more photos of adorable critters accompanying existential despair from the likes of Nietzche, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Foucault, and Camus. (At left: Sisyphus.)
Author: Matthew Westphal
Wonder Woman Wins A History Book Prize
“America’s favorite female superhero has a new medal to pin on her Stars-and-Stripes bustier, thanks to the New-York Historical Society, which has awarded its annual American History Book Prize to Jill Lepore’s best-selling The Secret History of Wonder Woman.”
Even The Cheap Seats On Broadway And The West End Aren’t Cheap Anymore, And That’s A Serious Problem
Mark Shenton: “Every single seat, regardless of where in the house it is, is becoming an investment. And if you have to pause before you even book a ticket in the balcony, why bother? … It’s the poorer, younger theatregoers – and the theatregoing habit we hope they will gain, as I did, in the upper circle and balcony – that I hope aren’t priced out of the equation.”
Shakespeare’s Globe Faces Strike By Tour Guides
“Union BECTU is demanding a rise in the hourly rate that tour guides working at the venue receive, claiming that collectively the employees help make the Globe thousands of pounds. According to the Globe, tours generate a turnover of £3 million a year, and a net profit of £200,000 annually.”
Being Guillaume Côté
The 33-year-old Quebecker is a principal and the National Ballet of Canada and arguably the nation’s biggest male ballet star. He also makes high-profile guest appearances, composes and performs music, runs a summer arts festival in the countryside north of Montreal, and is choreographing a full-length ballet based on one of the most beloved works in all of French literature (Le Petit Prince). And he’s a dad.
Here’s Why Patricia Arquette Is Going To Win An Oscar
“Slate film critic Dana Stevens takes a closer look at Arquette’s remarkable performance as Olivia, the doughty single mother in [Boyhood,] Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making coming-of-age story.” (video)
Prison Design And Architects’ Professional Ethics
“The American Institute of Architects [has] rejected a petition to censure members who design solitary-confinement cells and death chambers.” Michael Kimmelman argues that AIA should reverse that decision.
When A Pack Of Puppets United The TV Viewers Of America
“In 1951, NBC trimmed the show from a half hour to 15 minutes, and a national storm of protest erupted, a story that dominated headlines for days, even weeks. … When ABC canceled the show in 1957, viewers again responded passionately. Many threatened to throw their television sets out the windows.”
Looking For The Langston Hughes He Himself Worked Hard To Conceal
Hilton Als: “One of the architects of black political correctness, he saw as threatening any attempt to expose black difference or weakness in front of a white audience. … Hughes’s reluctance to reveal the cracks in the black world – which is to say, his own world – curtailed not only what he was able to achieve as an artist but what he was able to express as a man.”
50 Essential African-American Independent Films
Now here’s a good way to celebrate Black History Month: four dozen-and-change movies to revisit or to discover, from all the way back in 1920 (Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates), through the landmarks (Nothing But a Man, Sweet Sweetback, New Jack City, She’s Gotta Have It, Daughters of the Dust) to this decade (Fruitvale Station).