As the BAFTAs approach, they’ll be the “first to take place since the organisation introduced a new set of eligibility rules, designed to increase diversity in the films it honours” Will that change things? – The Guardian (UK)
Blog
The DNA Test That Led, Perhaps Inevitably, To A Book Contract
Dani Shapiro: “This is my 10th book. Writing it, I was confronted with all of my past writer selves, and all the books that writer wrote. … In my early novels, and as recently as in Still Writing (2013), I found passages about family secrets and lies, about snooping through my parents’ things.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
The Final Grammy Predictions?
Yes, the Los Angeles Times has some ideas about who will win, or who should win, and it’s all focused on the Classical Gramm … just kidding. Face-off: Cardi B and Kendrick Lamar. – Los Angeles Times
Netflix’s Sendup Of The Art World Is A Blast At Elites
Phil Kennicott: “This is a perfect film for the age of Donald Trump, a revenge fantasy perpetrated against elites, who are caricatured as venal, corrupt and beyond redemption. And despite a few attempts on the director’s part to distinguish authentic art from his parody of art as a vast con game, the film ends on a profoundly anti-art note.” – Washington Post
Pop Music Used To Be All About The Album. Now, That Model Has Been Blown Up
“While it does take longer for artists to get to their first album, once they are there, everything accelerates. Suddenly they reach a level that might have previously been reached by album two or three. Are they rising fast to then decline just as fast? Only time will tell.” – The Guardian
Actor Albert Finney, 82
Finney became the face of British cinema’s international explosion after being cast in the title role of Tom Jones, directed by The Entertainer’s Tony Richardson. Tom Jones, with its bawdy humour and rollicking atmosphere, was a sizeable hit in the US, and won four Oscars (including best picture); Finney received the first of his four best actor nominations, but lost to Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field. – The Guardian
Hollywood’s History Of Blackface
Most Americans today are so removed from the heyday of blackface, when an entertainer like Al Jolson could cement their iconic status with it, that, like the Confederate flag, it is embraced by some as a triumphant act of transgressive rebellion and/or willful ignorance, a thumb in the eye of the politically correct. – The Daily Beast
Use Your Creativity For… Evil?
Laypersons and academics alike have largely viewed creativity as a positive force, a notion challenged by the philosopher and educator Robert McLaren of California State University, Fullerton in 1993. McLaren proposed that creativity had a dark side, and that viewing it without a social or moral lens would lead to limited understanding. As time went on, newer concepts – negative and malevolent creativity – included conceiving original ways to cheat on tests or doing purposeful harm to others, for instance, innovating new ways to execute terrorist attacks. – Aeon
Bookseller Has Emergency Surgery, And His Competitors Get Together To Keep His Store Open
Seth Marko, co-owner of the Book Catapult in San Diego, came home from a winter convention with chest pains and went straight to the hospital; his wife/co-owner had to help with his recovery, and the only full-time staffer came home from the same convention with bird flu. So the owners of four other San Diego bookstores (plus a bookseller couple from Los Angeles) pitched in to staff the Catapult rather than allowing it to close. — Publishers Weekly
Despite Charges Of Fabrication, Dan Mallory’s Second Book Still On Track
Despite the opprobrium, a spokesperson for HarperCollins UK confirmed on Thursday that there was no change to its publishing plans. A second novel from AJ Finn has been slated for a January 2020 release. – The Guardian