“Mr. Frere-Jones will use his contacts in the music industry to bring artists and writers into Genius, seeking a critical mass of influential names for ‘that Twitter moment when suddenly the smart kids stop holding their noses up in the air and they take part, and it just improves.'”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Hollywood Is Deeply Whitewashed, And Producers Don’t Have An Incentive To Change That
“The absence of color is egregiously noticeable in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, where characters can be any ethnicity.”
Writing A Singable English Version Of The World’s First Good Opera Wasn’t As Easy As It Sounded
“The technical problems of making a singable version of an Italian opera can be stated very simply: you have to make English sentences fit music written for Italian ones. However, this is like trying to fit a set of spanners into a velvet box made for a dinner-service. It also means you have to flip the polarity of the whole language.”
Theatre Needs Excellent Regional Critics If Plays And Directors Are To Improve
“Newspapers barely cover those theatres now – so building a career regionally is becoming harder than ever. Even with greater funding, until we can resource bloggers and journalists to make those trips and build the national profile for regional work, directors will continue to scrape by in London.”
The Art World Has To Ditch The Rich Russians
“The great myth about the art world is that it is loaded with money. It is, of course, but only at the top end. Collectors, successful dealers and some artists are rich. Yet around this elite, and servicing it, is a constellation of magazines, books, critics and websites, curators and exhibitions that is not so profitable.”
Modern Architecture Continues To Implode
“Modernist architecture, like Modern art, has tended to be a revolt against bourgeois taste (and values): If granny, abuelita, or bubbe is for it, they’re against it. But if bourgeois taste is bad—all that chintz and those lace curtains, those cushy sofas, that flag flown from the front porch—just imagine what architects think of the working class and poor.”
Ballet On The Beach In Paradise
“‘There are many people who have come with their wives who wouldn’t go to the (Sydney) Opera House or the State Theatre in Melbourne,’ says Artistic Director David McAllister. ‘Interestingly this is something that can change people’s minds, and it’s a great relationship-building exercise”
From Hollywood Star To Hollywood Power Broker (And Star)
“Witherspoon has certainly emerged, somewhat unexpectedly, as one of the flagwavers of Hollywood feminism.”
The Cartoons Of Charlie Hebdo Were Firmly In The Long French Tradition Of Lampooning Religion
“Anticlerical French thought traces its origins to rambunctious early Catholic practices such as Carnival, in which Christian morality was temporarily and gleefully suspended, as well as to Renaissance literary representations of priests as importunate louts.”
The Man Who Secretly Filmed A Shakespeare Play Right After Directing The Avengers On How To Be Prolific
“This comes from Kai, my wife, who produced the film. She [quotes from] Rio Grande: ‘Get it done, Johnny Reb.’ It’s like, don’t make excuses. There aren’t any anymore. If you’re talking about it, you should be doing it and she doesn’t like to see talent go fallow. She doesn’t like to see people repeat themselves. She likes people to get it done, purely out of love of the person and then joy for the product itself.”