Mohamad Eskandar’s recent song “Ded El Enf” and its associated video denounce male homosexuals and appear to encourage fathers to beat their gay sons. When Eskandar’s plans for a three-city Canadian tour became public, a Montreal human rights group began a protest campaign that eventually led Immigration Canada to deny the singer entry to the country.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Venice Film Fest Awards Golden Lion To Film That Wasn’t Jury’s Top Choice
The event’s top award went to Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s Pieta, even though the jury’s favorite film among the entries was Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. What happened? Well, there’s a quirk in the rules. Jury president Michael Mann explains.
Nothing But Debt (And Uncertainty) At San Antonio Symphony
“With the start of its new season less than a month away, the San Antonio Symphony has no approved budget, no contract with its musicians and no date set to come up with a new plan. But despite mounting debt” – about $850,000, with the potential to top $1 million soon – “it does have a season planned – at least on paper.”
Norman Bel Geddes, The Man Who Designed All Of America
“If anything, it would be difficult to overstate the trajectory of this prolific polymath, whose bold futuristic imaginings, coupled with a belief in the transformative power of art, architecture and design, drove him to rethink everything from Broadway theater sets and department-store window displays to the look of vacuum cleaners, cocktail shakers, the automobile, the circus tent and an interstate highway system.”
How Balanchine And Stravinsky Are Like Gin And Tonic
They’re both classic combinations that not everyone likes. “Some Balanchine ballets strike newcomers as being cold – without sets, costumes or stories, it’s hard to know what to focus on. And Stravinsky’s music can be complicated – the tempos change quickly and melodies can be sparse. But when the two are combined, the result is intricately complicated yet crisply spare. They fit together in a clean fusion, like a gin and tonic. If it doesn’t take the first time, it pays to keep on drinking.”
When Penny Marshall Faced Down The Ninja Robbers
The director of Big and A League of Their Own (and, way back when, Shirley’s pal Laverne) recounts one of the stranger break-ins we’ve heard of.
Facing Cash Crisis, America’s Largest Black Theater Company Suspends Programming
“Penumbra Theatre, the nation’s largest and most esteemed African-American theater, is suspending its programming and will offer no plays this year. Citing what it called ‘an immediate cash-flow challenge,’ the St. Paul-based company said it has laid off six of its 16 full-time employees, including associate artistic director Dominic Taylor, to help trim $800,000 from its $2.7 million budget.”
Actresses In Kabul Are Knifed, Imprisoned
Three performers, feeling pressured to move out of their neighborhood, were packing their possessions into a van when six men attacked them with knives. One died; the other two were taken from hospital to prison. And these are far from the only actresses in Afghanistan to be attacked.
Holocaust Museums In Israel Evolve
“It isn’t only the history of the Holocaust that you see on display in Israel’s Holocaust museums. It’s also the history of the history of the Holocaust. There is an archaeology of trauma to be found if you look closely, and in its layers and transmutations you see how a nation has wrestled with the burden of one of history’s immense horrors.”
Film Is Dead, Long Live Movies! How Digital Is Changing Cinema
“Right before our eyes, motion pictures are undergoing a revolution that may have more far reaching, fundamental impact than the introduction of sound, color or television. Whether these changes are scarcely visible or overwhelmingly obvious, digital technology is transforming how we look at movies and what movies look like.” A conversation between A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis.