“I wanted my script to be as factually accurate as possible. But I also wanted to tell a rocking good story and to express a theme that matters to me a great deal: that the pen is mightier than the sword. … The truth is, there is no truth in film–in any film. Even the films that we think are true, about real people in real places, actually aren’t.”
Tag: 10.29.11
Iranian Actress Released From Prison, Spared 90 Lashes
“Marzieh Vafamehr, who appeared with her head uncovered in the film My Tehran for Sale, was released from prison after her sentence of one year in prison and 90 lashes was overturned on appeal.”
21st-Century Treehouses (Of A Sort) Rise In Milan
“Plans for ‘vertical forests’ – 25-floor buildings, flecked with balconies full of bushes and small trees – are sprouting up in several European countries. Fittingly, Milan, the continent’s design capital but also one of western Europe’s most polluted cities, is leading the way with the construction of two green towers.”
Soprano Gets Shot And Robbed, Shows Up To Sing Opera Anyway
Stafford Hartman, a 24-year-old member of Opera Memphis’s young artists’ program, performed the role of the Shepherd Boy in the company’s production of Tosca this weekend – despite the fact that she had been shot twice by a robber three days earlier.
Satan In Scripture – He’s Much Less Scary Than He Is In The Exorcist
“Historians discover that the devil in the ancient texts is not nearly as frightening as the one who gives us the shakes in movies.”
Canadian Arts Funding Is Changing (And There Are Risks)
“Can Canadian arts groups court enough new donors to copy the American model, where donations can cover up to half an institution’s costs? And, if they succeed, how will that dependency on wealthy patrons affect the art they create?”
Why Aren’t Canadian Books More Canadian?
“Canadian content has only become rarer in Canadian literature. While many U.S. and British writers turn inward – a trend exemplified by Julian Barnes’s Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending – Canadian literature is more than ever characterized by free-floating cosmopolitanism.”
Then Again, Arts Students Are Our Future. Shouldn’t We Support That?
“If universities have a primary purpose it is as forums of open curiosity and rigorous criticism, as microcosms of democracy and free inquiry,” says British commenter Tim Adams. “Students should be totally immersed in the here and now of what they might be capable of, and making money from it should not only be the very least of their concerns, but all the more likely the less thought they give to it.”
Some Writers Blank Out Of History. Why?
“Sometimes the public wrongly chooses what to venerate, and publishers are forced to decide if an author will be promoted, and who will die of oxygen starvation.” Will new publishing platforms save the once venerated who are now long forgotten? Maybe.
An Artist Gives The FBI Everything They Ask, And A Whole Lot More
In 2002, the FBI detained artist Hasan Elahi at the airport after a false report about his storage locker. Elahi started emailing the FBI his whereabouts and plans. Then things got more complex – and he reports everything about his life to anyone who wants to know. (And apparently the FBI, CIA and Department of Homeland Security have an interest.)