This development reflects broader trends in the retail industry, where high-street shops are disappearing as more and more sales take place online. According to figures from Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, the ranks of e-shoppers are constantly swelling—about 80% of consumers in the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden purchase goods online. – The Art Newspaper
Blog
Gigantor Devours The Movies: Disney Buys Fox And Extends Its Dominance
It is estimated that the merger gives Disney control of 40% of all theatrical box office and puts it in a position to take on the digital streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple. – The Guardian
Big Gods, Little Gods – Do Cultures Get The Gods They Need?
Anthropologists say small societies generally worship Gods who only need to be worshipped. Larger societies’ Gods have many more rules for how followers behave… – The Economist [registration]
How This Dancer With Cerebral Palsy Stays Performance-Ready
As a dancer with hemiplegia cerebral palsy, Jerron Herman has never been far from the physical therapy room — or an occupational therapist or some kind of medical interventionist. ‘I’m almost always in deep conversation with that kind of practitioner,’ says Herman, who performs with Heidi Latsky Dance. It’s part of keeping his body ready to dance — and to move throughout his daily life. Herman shared his routine with [Rachel Rizzuto].” – Dance Magazine
‘King Lear’ with Glenda Jackson and everything else that’s happening now
Great Shakespeare plays take the color of their surroundings – if the production is doing its job – and Broadway’ new King Lear is accomplishing that. But how could any alert, modern Lear production avoid the current parallels with lines such as “‘Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind” and “Get thee glass eyes and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.” – David Patrick Stearns
Gaillard With Parker, Gillespie, Marmarosa, et al
A Rifftides reader recently confessed to never having heard Slim Gaillard’s “Poppity Pop,”a 1945 recording with Charlie Parker as a sideman. The record might be dismissed as a period piece, a novelty, if it did not also include a ineup of mid-1940s Los Angeles all-stars. – Doug Ramsey
Just What Exactly Makes Bernard-Henri Lévy A Public Intellectual?
While Lévy’s ideas are unremarkable, his ability to claim public attention is striking. His lengthy career is a reminder that cultivating a controversial persona to build fame and fortune is hardly a technique invented by reality TV or social media. – Quartz
When Gustav Mahler Rode The New York Subways
Oh yes, he traveled by subway during his years (1908-11) as director of the New York Philharmonic. (He’d have taken one of the BMT lines to conduct at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the now-gone Ninth Avenue El to get home on the Upper West Side.) “Yet claiming Mahler as a New Yorker … is complicated,” writes David Patrick Stearns. “Connect the dots one way, New York was Mahler’s nightmare and possibly his undoing. Connect the dots another way, and Mahler himself was a nightmare no matter where he was.” – WQXR (New York City)
Seattle Opera Gets A New General Director
Christina Scheppelmann, who’s currently the artistic head of one of the top opera houses in Europe, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, will become general director of Seattle Opera in August, succeeding Aidan Lang, who announced last fall that he would be leaving at the end of this season to become general director of the Welsh National Opera. – Seattle Times
She Wasn’t Just A Pioneering Silent Film Director, She Was An Auteur — And Her Material Would Be Considered Sensitive Even Today
Caryn James: “A nude scene! Abortion; birth control; prostitution! In the silent-movie era, Lois Weber’s films were shockingly ahead of their time – and also immensely popular. She wrote, directed, produced and sometimes starred in her films, and in 1916 was the highest paid studio director in the US, man or woman. She pioneered techniques including split screen and double exposure, for a time ran her own studio, and along with Alice Guy-Blaché was one of the two women who contributed the most to cinema at its start. But she died alone, broke and nearly forgotten in 1939. What happened?” – BBC