Rees, whose Pariah hit the indie scene hard in 2011 and whose 2017 Mudbound earned four Oscar nominations, “is placing a thick spread of bets, in the hope that she will soon be able to play as boldly as she wants” in Hollywood. “Rees said her strategy is to work on ‘five things at once and see which one sticks.’ Each time we talked, she was working on a new project. Once it was a television show about a black police officer in the South, set in the 1970s. Another time it was a potential collaboration with a black playwright. This is both a survival tactic designed to navigate the ever-changing tides of a mercurial entertainment industry and perhaps also a defense mechanism.” – The New York Times
Author: ArtsJournal2
Did Streaming Kill The Oscar ‘Box Office Bounce’?
Five of the nine Best Picture nominees are already available on Netflix or Amazon – and the others won’t be far behind, meaning that theatres don’t necessarily see much more money per screen after the awards ceremony. What about the four that aren’t streaming? Well: “For the record, the box-office Oscar bounce still exists for films that manage to hang on at the multiplex. Jojo Rabbit, Little Women and Ford v Ferrari have each made additional millions since the nominations were announced. And the war movie 1917 is doing so well, it feels almost like another Slumdog, exploding at the box office.” In short, longer theatrical runs mean more people see movies on the big screen. (But isn’t it nice to have The Irishman available at home?) – NPR
Orson Bean, 91, Actor Of Stage And Screen, Is Killed In L.A. While Crossing The Street To The Theatre
Bean was on his way to meet his wife, who was ushering the show at the Pacific Resident Theatre in LA, when he was hit by two cars while crossing the street. The theatre canceled its performance. Bean, a veteran actor-comedian, had just written a new play and was beginning rehearsals at the Ruskin Theatre Group in Santa Monica. “‘He was so full of life at 91,’ [producer Sara] Newman said, adding that he often greeted colleagues with a new joke — ‘usually raunchy’ — and always had kind words for them.” – Los Angeles Times
Revise Those Biographies: Beethoven Could Still Hear Until Just Before He Died
Theodore Albrecht, professor of musicology at Kent State and Beethoven expert, claims, “Not only was Beethoven not completely deaf at the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in May 1824, he could hear, although increasingly faintly, for at least two years afterwards, probably through the last premiere that he would supervise, his String Quartet in B-flat, Op 130, in March 1826.” – The Observer (UK)
The Freelance Theatre Designer Life Isn’t For The Faint Of Heart
Joanna Scotcher trained as a sculptor, but when she started trying to sculpt doorways between spaces and the human interactions in those spaces, one of her professors hinted that she might consider the theatre. But, she notes, “a career in design ‘isn’t financially viable’ for most people, and the opportunities on offer – unpaid work, training schemes, assistant designing – ‘remain the preserve of the privileged few.’ It’s something she is passionate about changing.” – The Stage (UK)
How Can Canadian Broadcasting Get Its Groove Back?
Easy: Require Canadian content from networks – including Netflix and other streamers. First Nations advocates say it’s also time for their equal inclusion in Canada’s Broadcasting Act. But can a minority government put the recommendations into place before it’s too late? – CBC
Short Story Collections, The Record Albums Of Fiction
Author Naomi Ishiguro: “I’ve always enjoyed the idea of total mundanity, and the struggles and the happinesses of ordinary life, and then contrasting it with something a bit strange; the possibility of magic in the everyday.” – The Guardian (UK)
Being A Musician Doesn’t Have To Depend On Feats Of Physical Strength
Indeed, composer and performer Molly Joyce says, that idea may be offputting to potential new audiences, and new performers. “Although she eschewed pyrotechnics in her own music long before she publicly identified as disabled, … Joyce has found many alternatives to virtuosity since embarking on exploring disability aesthetics as an artistic pursuit. For her, vulnerability is the new virtuosity.” – New Music Box
Korean Cinema Didn’t Become The Best In The World By Accident
Several of the directors, including Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, “emerged from the period of 1980s civic turmoil that ended the military dictatorship. They were all members of the university cine-clubs that showed films banned under censorship laws, on campuses boiling over with pro-democracy fervour. Hence the taste for exploring off-limits parts of the national psyche.” Also, well, it’s structural: South Korean used to require its movie theatres to show homegrown cinema for 147 days per year. – The Guardian (UK)
The Joys Of Listening To Elena Ferrante’s New Novel, In Italian
The book isn’t due to be published until June in English translation. The writer Martha Cooley asks her husband to read the novel – a first-person account by a woman – to her. “Low in pitch and volume, his voice is distinctly male. He doesn’t have a Neapolitan accent but a northern Italian one. Sometimes I have to ask him to speak up, or to slow down; it’s easy for him to gain speed without realizing it. Now and then he’ll stop reading, realizing he’s just botched a sentence’s syntax. Returning to the start, he’ll reread the sentence slowly, and I can hear where he went wrong.” – Los Angeles Review of Books