Author: ArtsJournal2

What If Stephen King Were Treated Like A Latinx Writer?

Combining recent controversies – a statement King made about the Oscars and the reaction to American Dirt – author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez explains what publishing is like for many Latinx writers. “MODERATOR: Hello, ladies and gentleman! Thank you for coming to the event today. As you can see, we have here with us today one of the nation’s leading white voices, the white male ‘writer,’ Stephen – hold on. I’m not sure how to pronounce your last name. Do you say it with a British accent? (Purses lips like the Queen’s arsehole, LAUGHS.) ‘King.'” – Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

What Is Going On In Gwyneth Paltrow’s Netflix Show?

Just capitalism and sheer wackiness, or what? (Paltrow’s “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle costs $75 and sold out almost immediately, for one thing.) But there’s more. “The Goop Lab is streaming into a moment in America that finds Medicare for All under discussion and the Affordable Care Act under attack. It presents itself as airy infotainment even as many Americans are unable to access even the most basic forms of medical care. That makes the show deeply uncomfortable to watch.” – The Atlantic

How Did The Grammys Go From ‘Step Up’ To This CEO Implosion?

After a male CEO told women in music to “step up” if they wanted to win Grammys, the Recording Academy formed a blue-ribbon task force to reform the organization, hired a woman CEO last August … and then asked her to step down 10 days before this year’s ceremony. There were rumors of bullying, but there’s so much more going on. “Dugan is said to have filed a memo weeks ago with the academy’s human resources department outlining concerns she’d developed over voting irregularities, financial mismanagement, ‘exorbitant and unnecessary’ legal fees and ‘conflicts of interest involving members of the academy’s board, executive committee and outside lawyers.'” Ah. Surely this will end well for the Recording Academy. – Los Angeles Times

At Sundance This Year, One-Fourth Of The Documentaries Come From A New Company

Concordia Studio was founded two years ago by the multibillionaire widow of Steve Jobs and an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, and this is the year that money and expertise come onto the national (and international) documentary scene. Laurene Powell Jobs: “We are at a moment when cynicism and division are abundant, but we have seen that stories can bring people together. … Concordia is a belief that film has the power to shine a spotlight on the important narratives of life that too often are overlooked.” – The New York Times

Wait, ‘1917,’ It Might Be The Year Of ‘Parasite’

If the SAG Awards are any guide – and they can be – Parasite may win best picture; it won best ensemble at the ceremony on Sunday night. “When the Parasite cast, none of whom received individual nominations, earned a warm standing ovation early in the night from the audience of actors at the Shrine Auditorium, while introducing the film, it was clear where the crowd’s affections resided.” – Los Angeles Times

When The Washington Post Talked About The Top Book Trends Of The Last Decade, They Went Kinda Easy On A Big (Sometimes Bad) Player

Normally terrific, WaPo book critic Ron Charles goes lightly on Amazon, whose CEO owns the paper. So it’s time to consider some issues he missed. “E-books and audiobooks have greatly improved the reading experience over the past decade for those who can afford to pay Amazon for Kindle and Audible digital books. We have yet to figure out what the cost of Amazon’s dominance of e-books and audiobooks will be to the broader digital book ecosystem.” – Inside Higher Ed

Not Telling The Same Old Story Again And Again And Again And Again And Again

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon created the movie The Big Sick, lightly based on their own lives and romance, and had such success that now they’ve won an Apple TV+ series, Little America, that tells the lightly fictionalized stories of immigrants in unusual situations (or perhaps they’re quite usual – without these stories, how would the public know?). Nanjiani says, “American pop culture is the most widespread in the world, and [pop culture was] selling that second side of America, and we wanted to buy it. You can do what you want to do, be what you want to be. Not everyone in the series believes that, but that’s a key idea.” – The Guardian (UK)

The European Union Is Considering Banning Facial Recognition Technology For Five Years

Facial recognition tech is advanced and is everywhere from our phones to sports arenas to public spaces to, in China, everywhere. But it’s far from perfect. “One such risk of the technology is that current facial recognition methods are far from perfect, and many times the systems powering facial recognition are racially biased. Given that, the European Commission’s recommendation seems like the logical, reasonable thing to do.” – Fast Company

Singer-Songwriter David Olney Says ‘I’m Sorry,’ Closes His Eyes, Drops His Head, And Dies Onstage

Olney, 71 and regarded as “the founding father of Americana,” was performing at a songwriters’ festival in Florida when he suffered a fatal heart attack. “‘He was very still, sitting upright with his guitar on, wearing the coolest hat and a beautiful rust suede jacket we laughed about because it was raining … outside the boathouse where we were playing,’ singer Amy Rigby, who said she was sitting next to him onstage, wrote on Facebook.” – The Washington Post