“Despite having co-written some of the most popular tales in the French language, Auguste Maquet has been forgotten by all but the most erudite of scholars. Now, however, the quietly creative ghostwriter whose crucial role in the production of some of Alexandre Dumas’s most famous novels has gone unacknowledged for more than 150 years is finally having his moment in the limelight.”
Tag: 02.09.10
Finding The Part Of The Brain That Makes Us Take Risks
“[P]eople with damage to the amygdala – an almond-shaped part of the brain involved in emotion and decision-making – are more likely to take bigger risks with smaller potential gains, [a new] study found.”
Musee Picasso’s Holdings Go On Tour, Not Into Storage
“When the Musée National Picasso, Paris, closed its doors in August for a $28 million renovation, the scoop was that its 5,000 artworks … would be locked away for more than two years. … Well, someone somewhere along the line changed his or her mind. And the Seattle Art Museum is the first American beneficiary of that change of heart.”
Cambodian Classical Dance Meets Postmodern Sound Installation
Tim Etchells reports from a workshop in Phnom Penh where members of a company trying to save traditional Khmer dance interact in movement with “sounds collected by the dancers played out from a laptop and a complex array of homemade sensors, motion triggers and pressure pads.”
Time To Puncture A Few Myths About British Theatre
“The first is that, because Lucy Prebble’s Enron and Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem have transferred to the West End, we are witnessing a golden age for new writing. … Delighted though I am by the commercial success of Enron and Jerusalem, two swallows don’t make a theatrical summer.”
Suddenly, Woman-Driven Movies Are Box-Office Gold
Since mid-November, “every No. 1 film at the domestic box office not called ‘Avatar’ has been [a] chick movie. … And it’s not that there is some big new trend of more women going to the movies.” It’s that “studios are making more movies now that accurately reflect women’s experiences and interests.”
Roberto Rossellini’s Cinema Of Ruin
“No director in film history has made more of rubble than Roberto Rossellini. There are few buildings that aren’t collapsed, or at least structurally unsound, in the three films of his War Trilogy – Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero … Rossellini’s broken buildings come to stand for broken political theories, a broken social order, broken morality, broken people.”
Dallas Opera Lands $10M Challenge Grant
“An anonymous donor has issued a $10 million challenge grant to jump-start a $20 million fund to increase the Dallas Opera’s artistic quality and help recruit a first-rate general director.”
Fidelity Donates $500,000 In Instruments For Students
“In a simulcast with similar events in Boston, Chicago and Houston, [Los Angeles] students heard about a musical competition that will give them the chance to perform alongside their city’s orchestra in concert, as well as a chance to receive instruction from professional musicians in their schools.”
When Songwriters Were Bitten With The Space-Travel Bug
“The Industrial Revolution had a significant impact on allusions to space in music, says Sally Childs-Helton, an ethnomusicologist at Butler University. … ‘We have heard songs that date back to Tin Pan Alley and earlier, back to the turn of the 19th century.'”