It’s time – during the celebrations of a century since his birth – to reevaluate the women who anchored Bergman’s films (and, often, his romantic and sexual life as well).
Blog
The Recent Rise Of The Fembot
Thanks, big tech companies. “Digital helpmeets like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are fitted with nonthreatening feminine voices and programmed to respond to sexist comments with cutesy repartee. … With the help of machine learning, a community of Redditors are creating highly realistic fake porn that melds famous actresses’ faces onto porn performers’ bodies.”
How Did English Choral Music Find Its Way Into ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’?
Yes to this: “The Anglican choral tradition is one of the great successes of English cultural diffusion, to rank with Association Football (soccer), cricket, and the works of William Shakespeare. It has a cultural heft way beyond its parochial and very specific origins, and it turns up in the oddest places.”
How To Pack, And Unpack, A Library
Alberto Manguel: “The unpacking of books, perhaps because it is essentially chaotic, is a creative act, and as in every creative act, the materials employed lose in the process their individual nature: they become part of something different, something that encompasses and at the same time transforms them.”
How Is It That ‘The Simpsons’ Has Predicted Everything From The Current President To Disney’s Takeover Of Fox?
Basically, you put a bunch of very smart people in a writers’ room and let them loose: “The result is a show packed with references to art, literature, pop culture, politics and science.” (Alternative theory: The Simpsons has so many episodes that it’s bound to get a few things right.)
Can You Tell If A Singer, Say Perhaps At The Super Bowl, Is Lip-Syncing? [VIDEO]
Slate’s Aisha Harris explains how to know – and why we’re so satisfied when we can “expose music fakery.”
Directors Guild Rewards Jordan Peele And Guillermo Del Toro
Del Toro took the top honor for The Shape of Water while Peele won best first-time director for Get Out. Peele said it was the best year of his life, and added, “For everyone in this room, what we do is important, what we do is powerful. … Keep doing the only thing we know how to. Keep using your voice. It’s the most powerful weapon we have against evil.”
Here’s How You Get Millennials To The Symphony
You hire them as musicians. But for real, even though they’re not in the marketing department, four Millennial musicians in Milwaukee “were willing to share their ideas on how to attract more people their age to performances. Their thoughts boil down to ‘accessible repertoire,’ to use McCullough-Benner’s phrase, and friendly concert experiences.”
The Field Museum Is Moving, And Replacing, Sue The T-Rex
The process is intense – and lengthy. “Sue is making way for a replica skeleton of a new dinosaur, the largest-ever-found Patagotitan mayorum, to take occupancy of the central hall. Over the course of February, the tyrannosaur will be deconstructed, spirited upstairs to its new home in the museum’s former 3-D theater on the second floor and then remounted in place for an unveiling in early 2019.”
CBS And Lionsgate Cable Station Pop Sued For Gender And Age Discrimination
The lawsuit is from a current vice-president at the basic cable station. The woman suing the station, Leslie Isaacs, “contends she was unfairly passed over for a promotion and a raise. The suit alleges that other female employees also faced repeated crude and demeaning comments from their superiors.”