Journalist and novelist Hanan Al-Shaykh explains why she was moved to write new adaptations of favorite stories from the massive collection – and she explores how Scheherazade is even more resourceful, compassionate and compelling than we’d thought.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Japan’s Hottest New Video Game Is About Mushrooms
“In the culinary pecking order for Japanese mushrooms, the nameko, a gelatinous, light-brown, tack-size variety for the ordinary Joe, doesn’t carry” the prestige of a shiitake or matsutake. “But in the world of smartphones, this slimy mushroom – found in miso soups and soba noodles – is an unlikely videogame star.”
Los Angeles Argues Over Ending Its Ban On New Murals
The city council is debating an “ordinance that could lift Los Angeles’ decade-old ban on virtually all original murals on private property and launch a permitting and registration system for creating new ones. … [Yet there are] concerns among some elected officials and neighborhood councils that [the law] could lead to a slew of new murals in residential neighborhoods that don’t want them.”
Gertrude Stein’s Prose Is ‘A Bedrock Of Modern American Writing’
Adam Gopnik: “It isn’t the least of Stein’s virtues, or importance, that Hemingway was in many ways the popularizer of a style that she had invented. One could even say, to borrow Picasso’s famous disparaging remark about his imitators, that Stein did it first and Hemingway did it pretty. But, prettified or not, Hemingway’s style was the most influential in American prose for more than fifty years.”
A ‘Magic Box’ For Choreography To Inhabit
The French software company Dassault Systèmes, working with the dance company Le Théâtre du Corps, has developed a stage environment of screens (including the floor), all equipped with motion sensors, on which a vast array of 3D imagery can be projected for dancers to interact with.
Richard Matheson, Science Fiction Author And Father Of The Zombie Apocalypse, Dead At 87
“In addition to publishing twenty-eight novels and well over a hundred short stories, Matheson enjoyed a successful career as a screenwriter, and many of his literary works were adapted for the screen, inspiring such diverse motion pictures as I Am Legend, Real Steel, Somewhere In Time, Stir Of Echoes, and The Incredible Shrinking Man.”
Why Hollywood Loved Richard Matheson
“Matheson’s writing lends itself particularly well to contemporary Hollywood because it’s ‘high concept’ – which translates, in screenwriting parlance, to ‘easy to pitch’. At the heart of Matheson’s best tales you’ll find a simple, compelling question.”
Why The Zombie Apocalypse Has Us In Its Power
“How the hell did the Zombie Apocalypse become a ubiquitous all-consuming (no pun intended) meme? What is it about the story of hungry undead that keeps it from ever dying? … Here, at the dawn of a new age of planetary limits, zombies are our greatest teachers.”
Newest Major Piano Competition Winner Denounces Competitions
“I’m a bit angry at the world for not having come up with another way of discovering talent other than competitions,” says Boris Giltburg, who recently won Belgium’s Queen Elisabeth Competition. He insists that he’d never serve on a jury himself, even as he’s grateful to the jurors who just boosted his career.
Russell Brand’s Messiah Complex Middle East Tour Canceled
“The 38-year-old had been due to perform his new show The Messiah Complex in Abu Dhabi and Lebanon as part of a world tour. However, organisers raised concerns regarding the possibility of negative reactions to material that will cover figures including Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus.” (Meaning Brand’s safety could not be guaranteed.)