Between Madrid and Barcelona, there’s now little but empty space where towns used to be – except for the 700-person town of Medinaceli, where “in August, [the town] becomes a stage for high art, due to one man’s eccentric vision of bringing elite opera to the slumbering central town in Soria, the least populated of Spain’s 50 provinces.” – BBC
Author: ArtsJournal2
Writing About Theatre In St. Louis
The critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The way I look at it, there are people who just wanna see a show, and there are theatre people. There’s some overlap between those two groups, but not a lot. Some people want to see a big, bombastic play, an Aladdin, and they’re not looking to see No Exit.” – American Theatre
Bob Ross Was A Famous (Infamous?) Painter, So Where Are All Of His Paintings? [VIDEO]
The mystery lasted a long time, and criss-crossed the internet – partly because everyone wanted to buy a Bob Ross original. Good luck with that. (Also, come for the mystery, but stay for the tongue-in-cheek score to this short video.) – The New York Times
Producers Of ‘Big Little Lies’ Promised A Woman Director Complete Creative Control – And Then Yanked It Back
Showrunner David E. Kelley had a plan, but he didn’t share it with British filmmaker Andrea Arnold before shooting began … or finished. “There was a dramatic shift in late 2018 as the show was yanked away from Arnold, and creative control was handed over to executive producer and Season 1 director Jean-Marc Vallée. The goal was to unify the visual style of Season 1 and 2. In other words, after all the episodes had been shot, take Arnold’s work and make it look and feel like the familiar style Vallée brought to the hit first season.” – IndieWire
The Author Of ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ Says Books Are Better For The Brain Than Movies
Cressida Cowell, laureate for children’s literature and a writer whose fame has greatly benefitted from film and TV, says, “Books are a kind of transformative magic that offer magical things that films aren’t as good at creating in children: empathy, creativity and intelligence.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Mystery Mural At L.A.’s Coliseum – And The Teen Who Solve It
The kid who solved the mystery was simply obsessed – and lucky, thanks to a tweet, to find the right timeline. “‘The entire time I was trying to figure out who painted it, I thought it was from 1932,’ said Gordon, now 19 and a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts. ‘All my research was in that time period.'” Understandable … but wrong, as research showed. – Los Angeles Times
Why YouTube’s Feedback Loop Is So Toxic
It COULD get fixed, but it probably won’t. Why? Engagement. “As the AI improves, it will be able to more precisely predict who is interested in this content; thus, it’s also less likely to recommend such content to those who aren’t. At that stage, problems with the algorithm become exponentially harder to notice, as content is unlikely to be flagged or reported.” – Wired
The Life Cycle Of A Beach Read
Ouch, why did you have to zing all of us who have ever been on vacation, NYT? – The New York Times
Evaluating Iris Murdoch At 100
Her work, much of which is being reissued, is still incredibly relevant. “A crucial idea in Murdoch’s fiction is the reality of others, a material fact that we are confronted with daily but, in our innermost selves, seem hardly able to grasp. We glimpse them in continually evolving contexts inflected with our own agendas, which may also remain mysterious to us.” – The Guardian (UK)
Scarlett Johansson Says She Should Be Allowed To Play Anything, Including ‘A Tree,’ Because That’s Her Job
Oh boy. This is going to end well. “‘As an actor I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job,’ Johansson explained. ‘I feel like it’s a trend in my business and it needs to happen for various social reasons, yet there are times it does get uncomfortable when it affects the art because I feel art should be free of restrictions.'” – Vulture