“[His] best-known creation has fostered blissful sloth, caused decades of domestic discord and forever altered the way consumers watch television.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
This Cyrano Has A Normal-Sized Nose; The Problem Is His Ears
Deaf West Theatre, the company that in 2003 brought its spoken-and-signed production of the musical Big River to Broadway, has created an Internet-age adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac in which the hero, who is deaf, must court his beloved on behalf of his brother, an aging rocker.
Spoilers Just Make You Enjoy The Story More (According To Research)
“[In] a controlled experiment, ‘subjects significantly preferred spoiled over unspoiled stories in the case of both … ironic twist stories and … mysteries.’ In fact, it seems ‘that giving away … surprises makes readers like stories better.’ perhaps because of the ‘pleasurable tension caused by the disparity in knowledge between the omniscient reader and the character’.”
Ken Loach On UK Film Rating Body: ‘British Middle-Class Is Obsessed By Bad Language’
The director, attacking the British Board of Film Classification over its restrictions on a certain term in Loach’s The Angels’ Share (set in working-class Glasgow): “We were allowed seven c**ts … but only two of them could be aggressive c**ts.”
Philip K. Dick, Gnostic Philosopher
“[His] vision is not quite Christian in the traditional sense; it is Gnostical: it is the mystical intellection, at its highest moment a fusion with a transmundane or alien God who is identified with logos and who can communicate with human beings in the form of a ray of light or, in Dick’s case, hallucinatory visions.” (All this from a dose of sodium pentothal …)
Philip K. Dick’s Gnostic Philosophy Explains The Modern World
New School philosophy professor Simon Critchley argues that Dick’s worldview not only “gives us what has arguably become the dominant mode of understanding of fiction in our time” (i.e., “the idea that reality is a pernicious illusion”), it also elucidates the doctrine of original sin, the movies of Lars von Trier, the paranoid style in American politics, and the roots of the modern culture wars.
Artist Does Guerrilla ‘I ♥ NY’ Installation, Gets Arrested For Planting Fake Bombs
“Perhaps proving that nothing incites suspicion among New Yorkers quite like a public display of affection, artist and furniture designer Takeshi Miyakawa was placed under arrest this weekend for setting up illuminated ‘I Love New York’ displays in a Brooklyn neighborhood.”
Peter Gelb Backs Down After One Day: Opera News Will Continue Reviewing Met Performances
“The Met said an ‘outpouring of reaction’ from opera fans on the Internet caused it to change course a day after The New York Times reported that Met officials and the publishers of Opera News had decided to stop reviewing Met shows. ‘I think I made a mistake,’ said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager.”
Philadelphia Orchestra And Kimmel Center Agree On Reduced Rent
“In further progress toward a new lease agreement, leaders of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association and Kimmel Center Inc. have signed an amendment to their existing lease that reduces the base rent … the orchestra pays to the Kimmel, from about $2.5 million to $1.5 million annually. The rent will increase each year through 2017, to $1.74 million.”
UK’s Sky Arts Is The Real Thing – A Serious Arts Channel
Over the past 16 months or so, the satellite channel has revived The South Bank Show and aired live performances from English National Opera and the Royal Albert Hall as well as Simon Callow’s one-man show Being Shakespeare. “Coming up are Shakespeare plays from The Globe, without fear of getting rained on.” The channel has even engaged the likes of Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm to do literary adaptations.