Seven months after the death of Joan, his wife of almost 70 years, beset with pneumonia, the apparent victim of gross financial malfeasance and surrounded by a panoply of Hollywood charlatans and mountebanks, he may be facing his greatest challenge, every bit the equal of any of the psychologically flawed superheroes he helped shepherd into being. According to one insider with working knowledge of Lee’s current situation, “It’s a real fucking mess over there. I think his money will be gone in a few weeks… Stan and [his daughter] JC are literally being picked apart by vultures.”
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Netflix Says 70 Percent Of Its Viewers Watch On Old-Fashioned TVs
That number isn’t a shock — Netflix has been clear about the importance of TVs for a long time, and it’s why the company has spent a lot of energy working out integration deals with pay TV distributors like Comcast and Sky — but it’s a good reminder that not everything is moving to the phone.
Movie Criticism Is Better Than Ever, But Good Movies Still Fall Through The Cracks
“In the past decade, film criticism has become better than ever, by which I don’t mean that every critic writing is better than those of the past but that criticism is better over all—more critics than ever have actually seen many classic movies and a wide range of current ones, because cinephilia, an ardor for wide-ranging moviegoing, is now a core premise for even attempting criticism. (The gap between aesthetically advanced young critics and op-ed think-piecers is even more conspicuous than ever.) Above all, there’s a wider and stronger strain of curiosity, a deeper variety of interests that goes together with a younger set of critics who possess a wider variety of backgrounds and experiences, which makes it altogether less likely that a great movie will meet a solid tsunami of critical dismissal—and the sharing of views far and wide on social media, especially on Twitter, helps to get word around among critics as well as viewers.”
Public Art For Common Good
Nonprofits generally don’t create their own elaborate art to rally more community support. Most have limited budgets, which necessitates putting time, money, and effort into programming first, in order to impact the communities they’re serving. Still, more funders are thinking up creative ways to use the medium.
How Fake News Spreads Online
For all categories of information — politics, entertainment, business and so on — we found that false stories spread significantly farther, faster and more broadly than did true ones. Falsehoods were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted, even when controlling for the age of the original tweeter’s account, its activity level, the number of its followers and followees, and whether Twitter had verified the account as genuine.
Skyscrapers In Paris? Mais Oui! (Cue The Protests)
Shaped like an enormous, flattened pyramid, it will challenge the Eiffel Tower for dominance of the skyline. Neighborhood residents violently oppose it. The project’s Swiss architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, are thrilled.
This Nobel-Winning Doctor Was A Draftsman Up There With Michelangelo, Says Jerry Saltz
“Santiago Ramón y Cajal …, whose work in his field can be compared to Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur in theirs, is also among the best draftsmen of the 20th century. If his penciled linear, fractalizing networks and abstract webs were inserted into any art museum’s early-20th-century permanent collection they would stop people in their tracks and vie with the best the museum has to offer.”
West Virginia Legislators Vote To Eliminate Arts & Education Secretrary
Among other provisions, the bill would eliminate the position of state secretary for Education and the Arts, which is currently held by Gayle Manchin, wife of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). The bill passed the state House by a vote of 60-36, with Democrats opposing the plan that they say will destroy public funding for the arts in the state. “This is going to destroy arts in West Virginia,” Del. Larry Rowe (D) said. “Always, always the first thing to be cut is the arts.”
When An Artist Gets A Big Prize, What To Do With The Money?
“Should they fund a current art project or pay down debt? Should they rent a studio or buy one? Should they sit on a beach and think of great ideas or get health insurance?” Ted Loos looks at the programs several foundations offer to help grantees figure all this out.
The Internet Has Failed Us As Public Space
Not long ago, the scientists and software developers who pioneered the World Wide Web thought it would democratize publishing and usher in a more open, educated and thoughtful chapter of history. But while the Internet and its offshoot technologies have improved society and daily life in many ways, they have been an unmitigated disaster for the way we communicate and learn.