The discussion of modernist poet Lola Ridge spurs a call to arms, or rather to pens: “Gender is part of who gets remembered. In 2015, 71.7 percent of biographies were about men and 31 per cent of those were written by women. Only 6 percent of male biographers chose to document a woman’s life. Hence there are far fewer biographies written about or by women than men.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Restoring A Landmark In Los Angeles (And Heading Toward A Museum’s Future)
The details of the Academy of Motion Pictures’ restoration of the old May Company building, now the Saban building, are pretty cool: “Taking apart the steel windows uncovered a bit of architectural archeology. The original depression-era workers dumped plaster, wood, and construction debris inside the walls, and the windows were made watertight with sisal rope, a technique Fidler recognized from ships and buildings of the 18th century.”
When You’re A Woman Starting To Direct, Go Big (So You Don’t Go Home)
Constance Zimmer, who just directed an episode of UnReal: “I saw Greta Gerwig [an Oscar nominee for her directorial debut of Lady Bird] on a panel recently and she said, ‘When it’s your first time, that’s when you can fail.’ That was my approach. If you don’t go big, you don’t know if you could have done better.”
Helen Molesworth, Who Was Abruptly Fired As MOCA’s Chief Curator, Will Give A UCLA Commencement Address
The dean of the school said, “It is in the times that are most challenging that we, as artists, must engage the world with our greatest passion, clarity and forward-thinking vision. … To be an artist in an uncertain future, you must be brave, you must be bold, and you must strive for excellence.”
Wes Anderson’s Aesthetic Has Taken Over Our World
The director of (most recently) Isle of Dogs has affected not only other movies but also everything about our visual world, including Instagram and much more: “He has had a boggling influence over the rest of pop culture, too, on fashion, design, pop and social media. It ranges from Gucci’s billion-dollar renaissance, trading on various elements of Tenenbaum-chic, to the recent video for SZA’s Broken Clocks, where the singer and friends cavort in a very Anderson-like US holiday camp. And where there isn’t homage, there is downright parody.”
Molly Ringwald, Now An Adult Who Deeply Understands The Me Too Movement, Revisits The Problematic Teen Movies That Made Her A Star
This is a fine, nuanced, complex piece of writing. For example: “How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose? What if we are in the unusual position of having helped create it?”
Ursula K. Le Guin Explained Why Dictators Aren’t Usually Into Poetry (And Definitely Not Poets)
From an interview published this year: “Dictators are always afraid of poets. This seems kind of weird to a lot of Americans to whom poets are not political beings, but it doesn’t seem a bit weird in South America or in any dictatorship, really.”
What’s Up With The Casual Colonialism Of Major Movies?
Are Indiana Jones and Lara Croft really meant to inspire kids to go into archaeology? “Although the character of Indiana Jones arguably raised the profile of archaeology as a whole, and Lara Croft could inspire young women to go into the field, both figures have little regard for the cultures whose histories they collect.”
Will London’s ‘Hamilton’ Set Records In The Olivier Awards Today?
The London version of the smash hit already raked in a record-breaking 13 nominations. Can it beat last year’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which broke records with nine wins last year?
What In The World Is Hollywood Doing With A Star Like Sandra Oh?
The lead of this piece sums up the issues, really: “For four years after she left Grey’s Anatomy, Sandra Oh waited. She waited for offers to come in, juicy scripts that could come alive in the hands of her Golden Globe–winning talent. Sure, she did acting work here and there, … but there was nothing on the scale of Cristina Yang, the sarcastic surgeon she played on Grey’s for nearly a decade – a standout performance that turned the Korean-Canadian actress into a household name, and earned her five Emmy nominations in a row.”