Arlene Croce: “Astaire and the difference he made to the film musical add up to more than the story of one career. No other film genre provided as perfect a synchronization of sight and sound or an experience as exhilarating, and that was very largely Astaire’s doing.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Art-House Movies Are Not Dead – They’re Not Even Dying
Andrew O’Hehir: “Most people involved in marketing independent or foreign film will tell you that the audience is no bigger or smaller than it ever was – but that those people now have far more flexibility about how, when and where they can watch movies.”
D’Oyly-Carte To Return To Stage After Ten Years
“The company, famed for its Gilbert and Sullivan operas, stopped producing work in 2003 after it was unable to secure funding to enable it to continue. Since then it has operated a music hire library, which supplies the orchestral parts for Gilbert and Sullivan operas to professional and amateur societies. Next year, however, the company will return as co-producer of a new staging of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance.”
Watch A Day Backstage At The Royal Ballet, Live
“[On] Friday, the Royal Ballet are taking the concept of fly-on-the-wall to a new level: live-streaming an entire working day online, unedited and in real time.”
Choreographer Wayne McGregor On How The Internet Is Changing Dance
“When I went to the Bolshoi ballet company in Moscow recently, a lot of the dancers there had learned one of my pieces from YouTube: they were really inspired by being able to see something that they had no access to in their own country. I’ve also just made a little five-minute piece for young people for the Big Dance festival. Over 300,000 young people from all over the country are learning it through the internet.”
Did The Old Testament God Have A Wife?
“God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.”
When It Comes To Religion, Does It Matter Whether God Exists?
“Discussions of religion are typically about God. Atheists reject religion because they don’t believe in God; Jews, Christians and Muslims take belief in God as fundamental to their religious commitment. The philosopher John Gray, however, has recently been arguing that belief in God should have little or nothing to do with religion.”
Russian Artist’s ‘Orthodoxy Or Death’ T-Shirts Ruled Extremist By Judge
“The t-shirts, bearing the logo ‘Orthodoxy or Death’, are designed by Igor Miroshnichenko, a former underground artist and fashion designer who became a Russian Orthodox Christian monarchist. They feature a cross, skulls, crossbones and knives, and have been openly displayed by Orthodox activists.” A Moscow court has upheld a ruling that the logo is an extremist work and therefore illegal.
‘The Original Frenemies’ – An Oral History Of Siskel And Ebert
“Given the types of people they were, they never would have chosen each other as friends.” “They would literally argue about everything – from the lineup of movies to the graphics to who would talk first.” “Roger now says, ‘We fought like cats and dogs, but we always loved each other.’ I think the real story is that they grew to like each other, but they always fought like cats and dogs.”
Classical Music Will Help You Survive A Heart Transplant (If You’re A Mouse)
“Classical music is good for the soul and maybe the heart too. Mice with heart transplants survived twice as long if they listened to classical music rather than pop music after their operation. … Mice exposed to opera fared best.”