Despite the lack of a “turbocharged” Christmas offering from the studios, it looks as though cinemas in the UK are about to reach numbers they haven’t seen for 47 years. (And Moviepass might have something to do with that.) – The Guardian (UK)
Author: ArtsJournal2
Who Gets To Claim Verdi?
What happened to Verdi? He used to be on Italian money (back when the lira existed), and now there’s a festival – but there’s also a huge argument between dozens of Verdi fans. Which political party and movement can claim the composer? – Los Angeles Review of Books
Barry Jenkins Says He Specifically Made ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ For A Black Audience
And what about white audiences? He isn’t worried about cultural tourism. “If the film was engineered expressly for white people to experience black pain, then I would feel a certain kind of way. … Being the creator of the piece, I know that’s not my intent. Having read the novel, I feel like that wasn’t Mr. Baldwin’s intent. I think because of that, I don’t feel any kind of way about the experience of a shared audience experiencing the work.” – HuffPost
What’s It Like To Direct A Historic Black Theatre Company In The 21st Century?
Just after Jamil Jude was announced as the incoming artistic director of the True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta, he talks with Sarah Bellamy, who is the artistic director of St. Paul’s historic Penumbra Theatre. Jude: “When speaking about the work or having the work evaluated, do you feel like you need people in certain cultural contexts in order to better understand it? I feel like whenever I’m talking about True Colors, there’s an immediate lane some people want to put the work into.” – HowlRound
Bestselling British Author Says He Wants To ‘Safeguard’ Libraries
Even as hundreds of libraries have closed and thousands of professional library staff been laid off, there are still libraries in Britain left to safeguard. And comedian turned bestselling children’s author David Walliams wants to save them. – The Guardian (UK)
Inside The Obsessive, Weird Fandom Of A Murder Podcast
The podcast “My Favorite Murder” started two years ago, and “unleashed the Murderino fandom community onto the internet. Facebook is the space where the murder-minded come out to play; take any hobby, profession or pop culture touchstone and add ‘erino’ to find the niche, murder-minded community you never knew you needed. There are Teacherinos and Bakerinos, Weight Watcherinos and Brooklyn 99erinos. I typed ‘Pooperino’ into my Facebook search bar just to see if it would yield a result. It did.” – HuffPost
If The World Is On Fire, Is It OK To Talk About Books?
Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers, has some questions – and some answers. “No one I know is unaware that this is a particularly weird time to make art, rather than to spend every moment calling your senators. But art has always had to exist alongside history.” – Electric Literature
Uh, CNBC? It’s 2018 And Maybe Your Game Show Model Posse Needs To Go
Sooooo, CNBC brought back the game show Deal or No Deal?, and along with it, “26 female models in matching high heels and short, skintight dresses.” Game shows might just need a bit of a rethink. – The New York Times
Is A Culture’s Music A Human Right?
When refugees flee, or when groups migrate en masse, they (at least try to) take their music with them. But the modern world isn’t kind to public performances of music. Some musicians say that “music, song and dance are vital areas of empowerment, they are part of the foundation of personhood, and should be included among internationally recognised human rights.” – Le Monde
Making Art, And Aesthetically Pleasing Satellites, Out Of Government Surveillance
MacArthur Fellow Trevor Paglen’s work shows the gaps “between what we can see and what is actively being hidden from us. Often by governments or military forces. And that edge is where we as citizens can try to investigate what governments want to hide from us.” – NPR