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At A Quasi-Secret Film Festival In Belarus, Trying To Stay Ahead Of The KGB

The organizers of the festival, almost all women, had to come up with Plans C and D after the Belarus KGB said no to showing films in the theatres or bank buildings. “The confidence to cover the screen in black, to ask such serious questions about liberty and cinema. Compared with this, most film festivals look meagre and transient.” – The Guardian (UK)

A Trove Of Family Recipes Reveals A Centuries-Long Secret

If you know the recipes date back to Portugal and Spain during the Inquisition, does that tell you what the secret is? “One of the most unusual recipes … uncovered [was] a sugary dessert called ‘chuletas,’ the Spanish word for pork chops. ‘It’s designed to look like a pork chop,’ Milgrom explains, ‘but it’s really made from bread and milk.’ Basically, it’s French toast that’s fried in the shape of a pork chop and dressed up with tomato jam and pimentos.” – NPR

Sure, The New Cats’ ‘Memory’ Is A Popera Furball, But Whose Fault Is That?

Let’s talk more about what Andrew Lloyd Weber did with this music, and what’s been done to it since it premiered. Erm, the LAT‘s pop music critic isn’t a fan: “To hear the song’s dreary opening arpeggios now is to reflexively brush off the possibility of encountering something that might move you; the tune, a happily trashy bit of ersatz Puccini, has become a kind of showbiz parody of the emotion it once sought genuinely to embody.” – Los Angeles Times

The Banksy Of Las Vegas?

Wait, if you let yourself be photographed for a feature story, aren’t you already out of the running for being the “Banksy of” anything? Well, it’s Vegas, y’all. Frankie Aguilar says that on his canvas, he creates “Neon, colorful, dinosaurs, giant robots and fun stuff. It’s a big playground for your eyes.” – Las Vegas Weekly

To This Headline, We Say ‘Please’

The headline: “Was this decade the beginning of the end of the great male white writer?” (#NotAllGreatMaleWhiteWriters, of course.) “Though few publications have reached parity, the overall trend has been a shift in that direction. Even the dismal New York Review of Books stats (27.1% women in 2018) have shown an almost twofold improvement over 2010 (16.2%).” Well, uh, wow? Let the 2020s double that kind of not really twofold improvement, at least, maybe. – HuffPost

Hallmark Christmas Movies Are Big Business In British Columbia

Basically, it’s always Christmas in July in British Columbia, complete with fake snow, fake characters, fake love stories, fake Christmas and … er … yes, the whole schlockfest (BELOVED schlockfest, we note) that is the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas movie production factory. “Picking out the locations has become a favourite pastime for locals. [One said,] ‘You get to see the locations on the movie and know exactly where that was and have attachment to it now, you feel like you were part of the movie in a way, which is pretty awesome.'” – CBC

The Creator Of A Joyful Game About Golden Poop Says Yes, We Can Be Happy

Keita Takahashi, an artist and an “unconventional” game developer, is beloved for his game “Katamari Decency,” and now he’s got a new game out – ostensibly about golden poop. The game “was inspired by watching his two younger children play. He wanted to create something that presented a more hopeful view of the world.” – Los Angeles Times