Author: Matthew Westphal

Antitrust Rules Against Studios Owning Movie Theaters Struck Down (Will That Save The Theaters?)

Known as the Paramount Consent Degrees, the regulations followed from a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering Hollywood studios to sell off their national cinema chains; a US District Court judge has ruled that the current distribution landscape, including streaming, means those rules are no longer necessary. With chains reeling from the coronavirus lockdown (and AMC in particular facing bankruptcy), maybe Amazon and Netflix should just buy themselves chains? (Disney, no doubt, will.) – Wired

Tribune Company Closing Newsrooms At Five Papers, Including New York And Orlando

Not to worry (yet): the papers will continue to publish. But since most newsroom employees have been working from home for months and the timeline for safely returning to offices isn’t clear, Tribune Co. execs have decided to stop paying for the real estate. The papers are the New York Daily News, Orlando Sentinel, The Morning Call of Allentown (Pa.), the Carroll County Times (Maryland), and the Capital Gazette in Annapolis (Md.), site of the 2018 newsroom shooting. – Yahoo! (AP)

How Do You Work To Preserve Indigenous Languages When You And Your Native Speakers Are All In Lockdown?

“It’s a transition that has taken on particular urgency given the fact that the speaker pool for the world’s threatened and endangered languages skews older — precisely the population most at risk from the pandemic. This problem is compounded by the fact that indigenous communities not just in the United States but around the world are disproportionately affected both by the virus and by the economic toll of the shutdown. Against this backdrop, the push to keep language revitalization going under lockdown is a symbol of cultural resilience — and, for many, an opportunity to build national and international solidarity among indigenous peoples around the world.” – Slate

WPA Murals Slated For Demolition Saved, Thanks To Black Nurse Born In 1818

History of Medicine in California, a 1938 ten-panel fresco by Bernard Zakheim, is in a building at UCal-San Francisco that the school is going to tear down and replace. UCSF gave Zakheim’s family 90 days this summer to find a way to get the 2,000-pound paintings removed (at Zakheim expense) or they would be destroyed. Then a young scholar discovered that one fresco features Biddy Mason, a formerly enslaved woman who became an admired nurse, midwife, and philanthropist — and a cause was born. – The New York Times

Goethe Was Wrong About Art (At Least Abstract Art): Study

“In Goethe’s 1810 treatise on color he wrote, ‘red-yellow gives an impression of warmth and gladness.’ He added that ‘the feelings they excite are quick, lively, aspiring.’ His idea that visual attributes, like color and form, cause universal responses in viewers has influenced art theory ever since. But a study published earlier this year in the PLOS ONE journal contested the idea that everyone experiences the same emotions when viewing abstractions.” – ARTnews

Second City Tries To Give Itself An Anti-Racist Makeover — Will It Work This Time?

“In interviews with more than 20 past and present performers, staff members and others, as well as with the leadership, the challenge of making these enormous changes becomes clear. This is at least the fifth time Second City has tried to reconcile the concerns of employees of color. … Yet the culture that many found deeply offensive was ingrained for decades.” – The New York Times