On Body and Soul, a movie about strangers sharing dreams, won the Golden Frog (yes, frog) at the Camerimage Fest. But “before announcing the top prize winners, juror Stephen Goldblatt said the body felt they had to make a statement decrying what he called the ‘high degree of gratuitous, misogynistic and voyeuristic’ violence seen in many of this year’s Camerimage films.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Is The Simpsons’ Apu A Problem?
Comedian and political commentator Hari Kondabolu thinks the 30-year-old series definitely needs to clean up its act with its only South Asian character. His documentary goes on a quest to find out why. “What really emerges — as Kondabolu sits down with former Simpsons producer Dana Gould, and culls comments [Apu voice actor Hank] Azaria has made about the character in other, less critical spaces — is an essential truth about Hollywood. Success justifies everything.”
Finally It’s Time To Acknowledge And Celebrate Alice Coltrane
Why hasn’t her music been appreciated before? Well, it’s kind of like John Lennon and Yoko Ono: “Her talents weren’t hugely appreciated in the 1960s. This was partly due to the man with whom she fell in love in 1963. John Coltrane became her husband two years later and asked her to step into his band – which coincided with the saxophonist’s move into freer, more atonal music.”
Inception: A Novel Written By A Character On A TV Show, With A Blurb By The Actual Writer, Is Out Now
Follow this: “In the very first episode of Jane the Virgin — the hit show about a young woman who is accidentally artificially inseminated during a routine visit to her gynecologist — viewers learn that Jane wants to be a writer. Over the course of the show, she attends graduate school, obtaining her Master’s degree in creative writing and working with an adviser to hone her manuscript. She gets a job at a publishing company, eventually getting discovered at a reading for emerging writers. In the episode airing on Friday, her book is finally published.”
Ojai Music Festival’s Artistic Director Will Step Down In 2019
Thomas Morris, who has been artistic director of the California festival since 2004, has changed and – The New York Times adds – broadened the reach of Ojai, which has a different music director every year.
Louise Erdrich, Who Just Published Her 16th Novel, Is The ‘Great American Novelist’
Ann Patchett thinks she’ll win the Nobel Prize someday. She’s published 30 books – nonfiction, children’s novels, and more. Sherman Alexie says she writes entertaining hyperrealistic literary fiction. And she owns a bookstore. “In a strange way, Louise Erdrich is perhaps our least famous great American writer; she is not reclusive, but she is reticent, and her public appearances give the impression of a carefully controlled performance. But Erdrich has also shared many of her most intimate emotions and experiences, in some form, in her novels.”
Is Spike Lee Solving His ‘Woman Problem’ With A Reimagined Heroine?
Lee’s movie She’s Gotta Have It is now a Netflix series, which, in 30-minute episodes, has changed the main character and given her many more facets. Also … “with television came a writer’s room, one that Mr. Lee filled with African-American female artists and writers.” That didn’t hurt.
The Creator Of Brazil’s Outdoor Museum Has Been Sentenced To Nine Years In Jail
Contemporary art museum creator Bernardo Paz, “an eccentric and celebrated figure in Brazil’s art scene, was accused of using money raised abroad for Inhotim for expenses related to a conglomerate of mining and steel companies he ran. Mr. Paz’s sister, Virgínia de Mello Paz, was also convicted in the scheme and sentenced to five years in prison.”
Cate Blanchett And The Artistic Manifesto
The director of Blanchett’s Manifesto (an art installation … or a movie?): “The political landscape has shifted towards populism and against ‘elitism.’ … ‘Every populist wants to cut down cultural budgets and educational budgets for a good reason: because they need stupid minds to be manipulated and to become sheep of consumerism.'”
The Nightmare Future Of Filmmaking, Courtesy Of Amazon
The pieces are all in place: “Amazon has built a stable of services touching just about every part of the entertainment industry, from film and game development to ebook publishing and video streaming. It’s also built a retail empire on cheap piecemeal labor, free material generated by users, and an arcane system designed to connect people with things they want at the absolute maximum level of efficiency. So it’s not hard to imagine it — or a similarly large competitor — building a miniature film industry that looks a lot like an automated marketplace.”