“Serial and Dirty John and The Jinx and Wild, Wild Country are all conspicuously well made, with lovely visuals and strong reporting. … But for these so-called prestige true-crime offerings, the question of ethics — of the potential to interfere in real criminal cases and real people’s lives — is even more important, precisely because they are taken seriously.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
How Should Critics Write About Actors’ Bodies? Or Should They Do It At All?
Natasha Tripney: “It’s part of a critic’s remit after all to look at what’s before them actively and analytically. But if this discussion is to take place, it needs to be with the awareness that while an actor’s body is their art, their tool, it is also not something they slip off at the end of a performance like a dress.”
William Hobbs, 79, Pathbreaking Fight Choreographer
His great innovation was to move beyond elegant, swashbuckling swordplay to show real bodies showing the sweat and blood of combat and real, fallible people making missteps.
What Do Younger Gay Men Make Of ‘The Boys In The Band’? The Times Sent A Couple Of Them To See It
“I truly didn’t know Boys in the Band from The Boys From Brazil.” Zachary Woolfe (33, classical music editor/opera critic), Matthew Schneier (34, reporter/critic for Styles), and Wesley Morris (42, critic-at-large) talk about the play and movie (which only Morris had ever seen or read before) with Stuart Emmrich (63, editor, seen it all).
The Reasoning Behind The Cranach-Norton Simon Court Decision? Respecting National Sovereignty
The crux of the case, brought by the heir of the art dealer who owned the Adam and Eve paintings before World War II, was whether the Dutch government had the right to sell the works on when it recovered them post-1945. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided, basically, that it would not second-guess the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
A New Wave Of Dance Films Made On, And For, Smartphones
“It’s a testament to the sophistication of mobile devices that the strengths and weaknesses of the films have little to do with technical issues. Several of the movies look amateurish or are just plain bad, but none because of image quality or outdated effects. The flaws are artistic.” Brian Seibert reports from the first Mobile Dance Film Festival.
First-Ever Museum Of Comedy Opens In Lucille Ball’s Hometown
“Spanning nearly 40,000 square feet, … the [National Comedy Center] took seven years and around $50m to bring to fruition. … It features over 50 interactive exhibits divvied up by style of humor as well as artifacts and ephemera that, in sum, tell the story of comedy from Charlie Chaplin to Dave Chappelle and beyond.”
BookTubers: The YouTube Figures Who Get Thousands Of Followers For Videos About Books
Christine Riccio, the most popular of the bunch: “I was reading a lot of books, and I had no one to discuss them with. I was like, ‘I’ll be lucky if I ever get 500 subscribers over here.'” She now has more than 400,000. Reporter Concepción de León meets Riccio and several of her fellows at VidCon (yes, it’s sort of like ComicCon, but for videomakers).
After Outcry, Philadelphia Orchestra Adds Two Women Composers To Upcoming Season
“Partially in response to national criticism for assembling a 2018-19 season without a single work by a female composer, the orchestra Wednesday issued a revised season schedule … In November, the orchestra will give the U.S. premiere of Perspectives by Canadian composer Stacey Brown, and then in June perform the overture-like Masquerade by London-born Anna Clyne.”
The Nation Magazine Apologizes For Publishing Widely-Criticized Poem
“The 14-line poem, by a young poet named Anders Carlson-Wee, was posted on the magazine’s website on July 5. Called ‘How-To,’ and seemingly written in the voice of a homeless person begging for handouts, it offered advice on how to play on the moral self-regard of passers-by by playing up, or even inventing, hardship. But after a firestorm of criticism on social media over a white poet’s attempt at black vernacular, … the magazine said it had made a ‘serious mistake’ in publishing it.”