There are now more than 12,000 cinemas in China, according to market research firm IBISWorld. This figure has more than doubled in the past decade as China has embraced movie-going. But four out of 10 said they “are very likely to close” in the near future, according to the China Film Association survey. This could mean nearly 5,000 cinemas going bust as a result of the pandemic. – BBC
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Lebrecht: Privatise The South Bank Centre
Save that? Better to take the South Bank apart, piece by piece, in a period when there is no performance, so that it can put it together again under entrepreneurial management over the next year, ready to serve the public interest once concerts resume. It was the public, after all, who paid from their LCC rates to have the place built in 1951. That public has been given no say in its destiny ever since. – The Spectator
Poor Old Machiavelli Had ‘A Talent For Ending Up On The Losing Side’
His tenure as a senior administrator in the Florentine Republic saw many more failures than successes; he was bounced into prison and then exile after the Medici returned to power; when he finally got back into their favor, he was commissioned to write a great history of the city, only to see the family booted once again and die himself a couple of months later. “That hallmark of his work, Fortune, shined upon him only posthumously.” – History Today
Study: Kids Now Spending Nearly As Much Time On TikTok As On YouTube
Kids are now watching twice as many videos per day as they did just four years ago. This is despite the fact that YouTube’s flagship app is meant for ages 13 and up — an age-gate that was never truly enforced, leading to the FTC’s historic $170 million fine for the online video platform in 2019 for its noncompliance with U.S. children’s privacy regulations. – TechCrunch
The Backstory Of The Bravest (And Sneakiest) Opening Number In Tony Awards History
Here’s how songwriters Adam Schlesinger and David Javerbaum and host/lead performer Neil Patrick Harris concocted, and got away with, the immortal intro to the 2011 Tony Awards telecast, “It’s Not Just for Gays Anymore.” – The New York Times
No Tonys This Year? How About The Charlies?
Instead of choosing the best from an incomplete list, I decided to play a different game. Looking back at the last 10 years of Tony winners, I came up with my own nominations and winners for the Charlie Awards, representing the crème de la crème of Broadway from 2010 through 2019. – Los Angeles Times
How Did Ancient Australians Make Their Cave Paintings So Precise? A Team Of Archaeologists May Have The Answer
At a site in Limmen National Park in the Northern Territory are 17 paintings, stenciled on rock, that are far smaller than usual for such art, featuring detailed renderings of humans, kangaroos, turtles, boomerangs, and geometric figures. Researchers, working with the Marra people native to the area, think the painters may have used the same beeswax figures they used to make toys. – Artnet
How Ornette Coleman Radically Reimagined Jazz
Conventional jazz harmony is religiously chord-based, with soloists improvising within each key like balls pinging through a pinball machine. Coleman, in contrast, imagined harmony, melody, and rhythm as equal constituents. He sometimes said that he played around a melody, in such a way that he could hear it was there, but some listeners could not. – The New Republic
Post-Plague Poetry In Medieval England Could Be Downright Reactionary
With the huge drop in population following the Black Death, peasants and laborers were able to take advantage of the labor shortage to demand higher pay and improve their lives. Those who had been at the top of 14th-century society weren’t happy about that — and since they were the ones who were literate, such works as Langland’s Piers Plowman, Gower’s Vox Clamantis, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales reflected and reinforced their readers’ wish that the social order stay the way it was. – The Conversation
Artist Response To Injustice? Seven Musicians Speak Out
“What’s really important is to take a step back and look at the macro picture, and think through, how did we get here? What are the underlying causes? There’s this phrase flying around a lot for coronavirus, that the disproportionate impact on black or minority communities is due to “underlying health conditions.” Well, what were the conditions that created the underlying health conditions, and what can we do to start picking away at that? And it’s so unsexy, but the census helps a lot.” – NewMusicBox