“The British film-maker has apparently bought the film rights to Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, a 2004 book by Suketu Mehta, the Indian-born, New York-based journalist and author, for an undisclosed sum. Mehta’s first book, a searing account of Mumbai – part personal essay, part travelogue – received global acclaim and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.”
Tag: 05.30.09
Abbas Kiarostami On Having His Films Banned In His Homeland
“I only feel grateful that [the authorities’] power is limited to not releasing the films. The good thing is that their power doesn’t go any further than that. The people who really want to see them can do it illegally. The fruit is blown away. But others can catch it, and eat it. The wind knows where to take it.”
How Is This Tutu Different From All Other Tutus? It’s A Custom-Made Chanel
“The torso is entirely covered with feathers: slender ostrich plumes reaching upwards to tickle the neck, while downy turkey, hen and cock feathers are layered at the waist in a muted mix of pale pink, pale grey and white.” In honor of the Ballets Russes centennial, Karl Lagerfeld, creative director at the House of Chanel, has designed a special costume for Fokine’s The Dying Swan.
David Ireland, 78, Who Made A This Old House Idea Into Conceptual Art
“After buying [a dilapidated San Francisco Victorian] building in 1975, he embarked on a renovation that became a sort of excavation of the structure’s history. As he peeled back layers of materials, he exposed information about former inhabitants and made collections of remnants, sometimes turning old woodwork and scraps of wallpaper into artworks.”
Of Poets And Universities – Irreconcilable Differences?
“Behind much of the frothy speculation and accusation was an older, subtler and more intractable conflict between the myths of poetry and the realities of the modern university. What we may be willing to put up with from a poet — in Mr. Walcott’s case, and perhaps Ms. Padel’s as well — is different from what we’re willing to put up with from a professor, which can be quite a problem when the poet is expected to profess.”
Lit Festivals = Educated Porn?
“I suppose you could describe literary festivals as a sort of live porn show for the educated classes. Authors turn up and perform in front of an audience gratified by their wit, erudition and insight into their own books and those of anyone else who happens to be on the platform at the time.”
In Praise Of The Lowly Cassette Tape
“Cassettes are not without their flaws. They hiss. You have to flip them over. Sometimes ghettoblasters chew them up and regurgitate your music as brown ticker tape. But it’s also a fundamentally democratic technology: dirt cheap, simple and proudly DIY.”
Kate Atkinson: Writing Is Great, But I Wish I Didn’t Have To Be Published
She doesn’t, she told Guardian Review editor Lisa Allardice, like reviews or critics. “It’s a very uncomfortable thing for a writer, we’re very tender,” she said. Writing is the thing she does best, how she earns her money, but “not being published would be great”, Atkinson continued. “When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I’m totally insane.”
Our Latest Art Star? Barack Obama
“Perhaps not since John F. Kennedy, whose dusty portraits can still be seen in kitchens and barbershops and alongside the antique beer cans at bars like Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta, has a presidency so fanned the flames of painterly ardor among hobbyist and professional artists.”
One Artist’s Road To Venice Biennale: Has To Sell His Work To Get There
The curator for Canada’s representative “realized she would have less than a year to raise more than $600,000, a figure that soon swelled by more than a third thanks to a weakening Canadian dollar, leaving [artist Mark] Lewis to sell artworks in order to help fund the Venice project. To make matters worse, the global recession was sapping many donors of their philanthropic impulses.”