“We have people we admire, like Einstein, saying mystery is the most beautiful thing a human being can experience. Yet everywhere in our culture everything that is truly mysterious is immediately dismissed. In a way I think science is the modern religion and at times I despise it as much as I despise other religions, because it really will only accept stuff that fits its masculine ability to define the world.”
Tag: 01.09.15
Why Oscar Has Never Much Cared For Wes Anderson Movies
“Critics love them and audiences, represented by tickets sold, like them pretty well. But the Academy almost completely ignores them. Anderson’s eight feature films have received just four Oscar nominations total … [and] have lost every one. … Whether or not you like Wes Anderson movies, their failure with the Academy highlights several shortcomings of the Oscars.”
Painting The Town Of Johannesburg – Pink (Yes, Literally)
“Led by the Colombian-American artist Yazmany Arboleda, the group [Beware of Colour] wanted to draw attention to the neglect of the city’s downtown buildings. A good number of them sit empty, even while many South Africans live in shacks. … Which is why he and roughly 30 other artists marked them with about 264 gallons of hot-pink, water-soluble paint.”
The Percentage Of Children Reading For Pleasure Has Plummeted In The Last Few Years
“Sixty per cent of the children who enjoyed reading more when they were younger put this down to the fact there are ‘so many other things that I now enjoy more than reading,’ and 47% blamed the fact that ‘I have to read so much for school that I just don’t feel like reading for fun,’ with others citing the fact they now have to read on their own, rather than being read to.”
Hollywood Is Deeply Whitewashed, And Producers Don’t Have An Incentive To Change That
“The absence of color is egregiously noticeable in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, where characters can be any ethnicity.”
Theatre Needs Excellent Regional Critics If Plays And Directors Are To Improve
“Newspapers barely cover those theatres now – so building a career regionally is becoming harder than ever. Even with greater funding, until we can resource bloggers and journalists to make those trips and build the national profile for regional work, directors will continue to scrape by in London.”
The Cartoons Of Charlie Hebdo Were Firmly In The Long French Tradition Of Lampooning Religion
“Anticlerical French thought traces its origins to rambunctious early Catholic practices such as Carnival, in which Christian morality was temporarily and gleefully suspended, as well as to Renaissance literary representations of priests as importunate louts.”
The Man Who Secretly Filmed A Shakespeare Play Right After Directing The Avengers On How To Be Prolific
“This comes from Kai, my wife, who produced the film. She [quotes from] Rio Grande: ‘Get it done, Johnny Reb.’ It’s like, don’t make excuses. There aren’t any anymore. If you’re talking about it, you should be doing it and she doesn’t like to see talent go fallow. She doesn’t like to see people repeat themselves. She likes people to get it done, purely out of love of the person and then joy for the product itself.”
If You Want To Be Fair, Get Enough Sleep
“Selfishness may be the default, automatic response — and the one that takes energy and self control to overcome.”
What Makes ‘Selma’ Director Ava DuVernay Different
“Selma could have been a run of the mill biopic—following a tremendous man who made tremendous changes. But DuVernay makes Martin Luther King Jr. more than the myth—she makes him human. … DuVernay looks at Selma as a story of the community and all the people who were integral to making change happen, showing the quiet moments in between the escalating tension.”