What was new here was that formerly fringe filmmakers were now getting big crossover deals and gushy reviews, redefining indie cinema in the public consciousness. This began a snowball effect with other newer and younger would-be writers and directors. Sundance and Cannes 1989 were the first major “Yes We Can!” moments for those who had had studio and network gates slammed in their faces in the past or who’d never had the confidence or connections to go that far in the first place. – The American Conservative
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Organ Pipes And Pizza Pies (Yes, This Was A Thing, And It Still Is In A Few Places)
“Believe it or not, this used to be a fairly common dining experience, offered by more than 100 such establishments in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.” There are still three left in the U.S., and CityLab visits the one in Mesa, Arizona, which has a Wurlitzer bigger than the organ at Radio City Music Hall. — CityLab
An Argument: Why Cultural Appropriation Is A Good Idea
Graham Daseler: “The good news is that cultural appropriation is here to stay, no matter how many angry Twitter mobs come to kill it. Critics of the practice can’t even state their grievances without stealing the artifacts of at least half a dozen cultures. The expression itself is a prime example. The word “culture” comes to us by way of French, while “appropriate,” meaning “to take,” was plundered from Latin by Middle English. This, if nothing else, demonstrates how futile it is to try to stop the tsunami of culture or to build fences around it. There is nothing more human—or, one might equally argue, humane—than the desire to copy, emulate, and learn from people who are different from ourselves. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” – The American Conservative
Why Michael Chabon Loves Forewords And Prefaces
“Some forewords are transitive: acts of seduction that are at the same time documents of earlier seductions. … Other forewords are parasitical; like cuckoos’ eggs laid in crows’ nests they hatch and flourish at the expense of their hosts. … As for prefaces (and afterwords), these may be explanatory, apologetic, triumphal, tendentious, rueful, score-settling, spiteful, bibliographic, theoretical (as is the case with Chandler’s), or gently embarrassed (as is the case with Cheever’s) but the best of them — like Cheever’s — are also what I would call restorative.” — The Paris Review
Leonardo Fingerprint Discovered On A Drawing
The sheet with the thumbprint is entitled The Cardiovascular System and Principal Organs of a Woman (around 1509-10). Although fingerprints have been found on other Leonardo drawings, the one on the medical sheet as “the most convincing candidate for an authentic Leonardo fingerprint” among the Queen’s 550 or so Leonardos. – The Art Newspaper
Why Joel Grey Decided To Direct Yiddish ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ Without Speaking A Word Of Yiddish
“I was having lunch in a restaurant above the theatre at the Museum of Jewish Heritage and I saw the Statue of Liberty in the harbor, and I thought, O.K., there’s a Yiddish word I do know — beshert [destiny]. And I said yes, I’m going to do this. … I listened to a couple of the songs from the recording of the Yiddish version that was done more than 50 years ago in Israel, and I liked the sound of it. It seemed to me to be exactly right.” — Playbill
Chicago Journalist Jim DeRogaitis Tried For Years To Get The World To Listen About R Kelly. Why Was He Ignored?
Mr. DeRogatis veers from expletive-laden indignation to choked-back tears when describing the effects of Mr. Kelly’s alleged behavior with what he estimates to be at least 48 women. But he has a special frustration with the rest of the news media, which, he says, failed to follow The Sun-Times’s investigative lead, and for years made light of the charges or ignored them altogether. – The New York Times
At Age 98, This Artist Is Getting Her Big Break
She was friends with Frida Kahlo and Isamu Noguchi, posed for Man Ray, and married Mexican surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, yet she made her own work for decades without promoting it. But she was a standout of last summer’s “Made in L.A.” at the Hammer; this year she has huge shows at Hauser & Wirth and the Serpentine Gallery; for her 100th birthday in 2020, she’ll get a retrospective in Mexico City that will later tour the U.S. Meet Luchita Hurtado. — T — The New York Times Style Magazine
‘Born 30 Years Too Early And 100 Years Too Late’: Edward Gorey, Granddaddy Of Kiddie Gothic
“[Consider] the debt owed him by the graphic-novel author Neil Gaiman, the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, the filmmaker Tim Burton, and any other fantasist who loiters in the dark gardens of childhood. ‘When I was first writing A Series of Unfortunate Events,’ remembers Daniel Handler, the author of the Lemony Snicket series, ‘I was wandering around everywhere saying, ‘I am a complete rip-off of Edward Gorey,’ and everyone said, ‘Who’s that?’ Now everyone says, ‘That’s right; you are a complete rip-off of Edward Gorey!”” — The Atlantic
Frida Kahlo Wasn’t Just An Artist, She Was A Brilliant Self-Marketer
“The painter meticulously crafted her own image on a par with Cleopatra. If she were alive today, she’d probably be teaching a branding class at Harvard. Now it’s America’s turn to see how, and, more important, why she did it.” — The New York Times