Matthew Westphal – Page 2033 – ArtsJournal Wayback

Restoring The Diaghilev/Fokine Ballets

A century after the Ballets Russes took Paris, London and Berlin by storm, choreographer Andris Liepa talks about recreating Mikhail Fokine’s Russian Seasons repertoire for 21st-century audiences.

How Far Will Human Beings Go To Keep Themselves Distracted? (Zap!)

“Considering the many challenges life has to offer, entertaining yourself with your own thoughts for a few minutes seems like one of the easier hurdles to overcome. … But it turns out that people find this assignment incredibly hard. And, according to new research, they’ll even resort to giving themselves electric shocks to keep themselves entertained.”

What The Arab-Israeli Conflict Looks Like To Martians (As Channeled By Margaret Atwood)

“The Martians make a visit to Earth. When they get there, everyone on the planet is in a huge meeting. ‘What are they doing’ say the Martians. ‘They’re discussing Peace in the Middle East,’ says one of the Three Wise Persons. … ‘How can it be,’ say the Martians to the Three Wise Persons, ‘that nobody can figure out how to accomplish a thing that everyone seems to want?'”

Comic Books Are Taking On The Debt Ceiling, Environmental Disaster, And The Global Financial Crisis

The DC title Injustice depicts a Superman who has become a global dictator. (He sends the Green Lantern to Congress to break the debt ceiling deadlock.) And the Godzilla spin-off Monstrous looks at what happens after one giant radioactive monster defeats and kills another: the corpse is now toxic waste.

The Radio Show They Call ‘This Latin American Life’

On the Media‘s Bob Garfield talks with Daniel Alarcón (whom you might as well think of, for now, as the Latino Ira Glass) about his Spanish-language series, Radio Ambulante. (audio)

‘Star Wars’ Becomes A Malay Shadow Play

The art of shadow puppetry may be thriving in Bali and Java, but the Malaysian version has been steadily losing ground to films and video games. So a video game creator and an old master puppeteer decided that George Lucas’s sci-fi saga is as epic a myth as the Ramayana – and that Luke, Leia and Darth Vader are more audience-friendly than Rama, Sita and Ravana. (includes video)

The CIA Has A Style Manual (And It’s Ruthless)

The darnedest things turn up from Freedom of Information Act requests: the Directorate of Intelligence’s Style Manual & Writers Guide for Intelligence Publications (eighth edition, 2011). “As revealed in the manual, the CIA is a prescriptivist scold, a believer in the serial comma, and a champion of ‘crisp and pungent’ language ‘devoid of jargon’.”

New York City Opera Has A Buyer – And He Wants The Board To Stop Diddling Around

“Businessman Gene Kaufman made an undisclosed offer six months ago to buy ‘the people’s opera’ and salvage the venerable cultural institution. He now says the opera’s board is ‘stuck in neutral’ nine months after filing for bankruptcy and canceling the season, and should relinquish control of the process.”

Ivor Novello And Noël Coward’s Flirtation With Fascism

Philip Hoare asks, “Can we excuse these flighty young men their fling with the far right?”

Author: Matthew Westphal