The Power Of Negativity

Being in a bad mood can improve your memory. Aspirin helps not just for headache, but for heartbreak. (Hmm.) Indulging nostalgia in a cold room can actually warm you up. ‘List your blessings.’ (Thus avoiding the corny phrase ‘count your blessings’.) Being a ‘good-enough’ parent or teacher is all you need. Just don’t be bad. – The Spectator

Why We Love Leonardo The Artist

Only 15 paintings are attributed to Leonardo. He lived off and on in Florence but for long periods was cosseted by potentates such as the Duke of Milan and the French King Francis I who considered him their pet genius. He took forever to finish paintings, if he finished them at all. He was born out of wedlock, his father a small-town lawyer and his mother a peasant. He had little formal education. When he tried to steal papal work from the young Raphael and Michelangelo, he failed. By 1510 in Rome, however esteemed Leonardo was, they were more fashionable, and reliable. Why, then, is Leonardo the genius for all seasons, the original Renaissance man? – National Review

Revise Those Biographies: Beethoven Could Still Hear Until Just Before He Died

Theodore Albrecht, professor of musicology at Kent State and Beethoven expert, claims, “Not only was Beethoven not completely deaf at the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in May 1824, he could hear, although increasingly faintly, for at least two years afterwards, probably through the last premiere that he would supervise, his String Quartet in B-flat, Op 130, in March 1826.” – The Observer (UK)

Being A Musician Doesn’t Have To Depend On Feats Of Physical Strength

Indeed, composer and performer Molly Joyce says, that idea may be offputting to potential new audiences, and new performers. “Although she eschewed pyrotechnics in her own music long before she publicly identified as disabled, … Joyce has found many alternatives to virtuosity since embarking on exploring disability aesthetics as an artistic pursuit. For her, vulnerability is the new virtuosity.” – New Music Box

Korean Cinema Didn’t Become The Best In The World By Accident

Several of the directors, including Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, “emerged from the period of 1980s civic turmoil that ended the military dictatorship. They were all members of the university cine-clubs that showed films banned under censorship laws, on campuses boiling over with pro-democracy fervour. Hence the taste for exploring off-limits parts of the national psyche.” Also, well, it’s structural: South Korean used to require its movie theatres to show homegrown cinema for 147 days per year. – The Guardian (UK)

The Joys Of Listening To Elena Ferrante’s New Novel, In Italian

The book isn’t due to be published until June in English translation. The writer Martha Cooley asks her husband to read the novel – a first-person account by a woman – to her. “Low in pitch and volume, his voice is distinctly male. He doesn’t have a Neapolitan accent but a northern Italian one. Sometimes I have to ask him to speak up, or to slow down; it’s easy for him to gain speed without realizing it. Now and then he’ll stop reading, realizing he’s just botched a sentence’s syntax. Returning to the start, he’ll reread the sentence slowly, and I can hear where he went wrong.” – Los Angeles Review of Books

So, How Exactly Would BAFTA Voting Need To Change To Better Encourage Diversity?

There were 269 films that were eligible for awards nominations this year, and voters had watched, on average, about a quarter of them. “The current system leaves Bafta voters free to decide which of the eligible films they fancy seeing and which ones they will give a miss. At this point, Bafta nominations become entirely arbitrary and it maybe explains why some critically-acclaimed films without a massive promotional budget – such as The Farewell, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Last Black Man in San Francisco, and Us – missed out.” – BBC

Minari Wins Grand Prize, Women Sweep Directing Awards At Sundance

Minari, which is an autobiographical feature based on Lee Isaac Chung’s childhood in rural Arkansas, won both Audience and Grand Prize. “All four of the jury directing prizes went to female filmmakers: Garrett Bradley’s Time in U.S. Documentary, Radha Blank’s Netflix acquisition The 40-Year-Old Version in U.S. Dramatic, Iryna Tsilyk’s The Earth is Blue as an Orange from Ukraine/Lithuania in World Documentary and Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties (another Netflix title) from France in World Dramatic.” – Los Angeles Times