“A last gasp of the old west duly became the first movie western. But from there, the task quickly became mythmaking. The western turned inexorably towards the past – or a version of it. Soon came the movies that defined the genre, tales of heroes in stetsons and dastardly “injuns” somewhere between propaganda and mass hypnosis. The west had to be won, most westerns said, to save innocence from savagery. There were exceptions, and some of those were fantastic films – but the racism stuck. Eventually, there was a reckoning – an apology even.”
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Charge: Sexual Abuse Of Bolshoi Dancers Is Rampant
“For as long as anyone can remember, theater and movie directors, rich sponsors of art, dancing masters and acting coaches here in Russia have demanded sex from young actresses, ballerinas, and students in exchange for a part in a movie, a role in a play, or promotion in the ballet.”
The Filmmaker Who Put Korean Cinema On The World’s Screens
“Park Chan-wook … combines dark humor, a painterly sense of composition and lots of gore. But beneath the violence lies a deep humanity – and a love of the absurd.”
Netflix Won’t Say How Many People Watch Its Shows. So Nielsen Figured Out How To Count Them
“Nielsen announced the initiative on Wednesday morning, but it has been collecting Netflix viewership data over the last two months in a kind of test run. The company said it was able to determine how many viewers were streaming Netflix content through audio recognition software in the 44,000 Nielsen-rated homes across the United States.”
What Is The Science Behind How We Experience Architecture?
Paul Goldberger: “If, until now, we – architects, critics, building dwellers – have had to guess what makes certain places attractive or comfortable or exciting or awe-inspiring, we now have some scientific basis for our reactions: what [Sarah Williams] Goldhagen calls a new paradigm, which ‘holds that much of what and how people think is a function of our living in the kinds of bodies we do.'”
Google Says Its AI Machines Are Now Better At Design Than Its Human Engineers
Google has announced that AutoML has beaten the human AI engineers at their own game by building machine-learning software that’s more efficient and powerful than the best human-designed systems.
Vann Molyvann, Cambodia’s Great Modern Architect, Dead At 90
“In the 1960s he transformed Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, from a colonial backwater into one of the most beautiful and innovative of south-east Asian cities. Drawing inspiration from the ancient bas-reliefs and designs of the Angkor Wat temple complex, Vann’s style, which came to be known as New Khmer architecture, blended Khmer tradition with the modernist principles he had mastered during studies in Paris.”
Why Novels Matter Now More Than Ever
“The novel matters because and so on. By which I mean that I’ve come to believe that all the arts are about time, but that the novel in particular is about the and-so-on of things, continuance and continuity, the continuum. It’s a form, too, very interested in the workings of society, so it tells us about how we’re living, who we’re living with, and where we are in the endless social structural cycle that eventually gets called history.”
Ancient Papyrus Reveals How Egyptians Built Great Pyramid Of Giza
“Historians have long been stumped at how people with relatively primitive tools managed to transport the estimated 800 tonnes of material every day from Aswan, 500 miles to the south. Now ancient papyrus, a ceremonial boat and a system of waterworks have revealed the complex infrastructure created by builders to complete the structure.”
Public Art In Hollywood Removed After Harvey Weinstein Scandal
The piece is a fiberglass sculpture of a daybed, the pinnacle of “The Road to Hollywood,” a large and complex installation by artist Erika Rothenberg. It was removed Thursday from its perch at Hollywood & Highland, the shopping mall adjacent to the theater where the Academy Awards are handed out. In the eyes of some, an innocuous daybed became a casting couch.