“The big surprise last week during the Berlin Film Festival was a disastrous premiere for a long-awaited feature film, Jud Süß – Rise and Fall … Another film that takes even more outrageous liberties with Nazi history, moreover – Inglourious Basterds, by Quentin Tarantino – has been praised far and wide by German critics. The main difference appears to be that one film has an American director, while the other is German.”
Tag: 02.24.10
Salman Rushdie Expects To Write Book About Life Under Fatwa
“It’s my story, and at some point, it does need to get told,” he said at the opening of an exhibition of his archives at Emory University. “My instinct is that point is getting closer.”
Does Higher IQ Correlate With Godless Liberalism?
“More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.”
Beijing Artists Protest Attack, Demolition Of Their Homes
Development “threatens at least 10 clusters of studios where artists live and work on the fringes of the city. … Many artists are furious because they were lured to the villages with long-term leases — some for nearly 20 years — and encouraged to invest their life savings in renovations.”
Today In Predictable News: Attendance Up At Free Venues
The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions reports rises last year “at free venues such as the National Gallery (up 9% with 4.78m visitors) and the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich (up 15% to 2.37m). Alva said the increases came as people sought good value days out during the economic downturn.”
Besieged By Flashes, National Archives Bans Photos
“In an effort to safeguard the original record copies of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the National Archives has decided to ban all photography in the Rotunda, where the historical documents are displayed.” The ink is looking pretty faded by now.
Italy’s Venice Pavilion, MaXXi Entrusted To Anti-Modernist
“The appointment of Vittorio Sgarbi, the celebrity art critic and polemicist, as curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale and supervisor of acquisitions at Rome’s new MaXXi museum of 21st-century art is dividing the Italian art world, thanks to his well known antipathy to contemporary art.”
Robert B. Parker, As Remembered By His ‘Dainty’ Son
“[W]hen I was a teenager and decided that I wanted to dance, I asked him if we could go, for the first time, to a ballet performance. … My father, at that moment in a cut-off sweatshirt covered with muffin crumbs, bacon grease, Flintstones Jelly and beer stains replied without dropping a beat–‘Yeah, I’d like to see something by Twyla Tharp, I understand she’s quite innovative’.”
Getty, Disney To Study Deterioration Of Animation Cels
“Among the recognizable Disney characters headed for the microscope are Snow White, Pinocchio and at least one character from the movie ‘Fantasia.’ Some of the cels already examined by the Getty show that paint is starting to come away from parts of the plastic, while others show signs of warping and yellowing….”
Vancouver Cultural Olympiad Will Exceed 1.5M Attendance Goal
“Vancouver Games organizers expect to exceed their prediction of 1.5 million in total attendance during the 60-day festival … Ticketed performances account for 496,000 people while the remainder is attendance at free events.” So far, 20 out of 40 shows have sold out completely.