Can Los Angeles Bring Back Its Own Broadway?

“Nowhere in the world can visitors walk by so many historic theaters and movie palaces. Block after block, stunning Beaux Arts, Art Deco, and revival-style buildings attract the eyes upward, teasing out its many intricate details. Famed acts such as the Marx Brothers, Houdini, and Duke Ellington once walked here, but it seems that time has dimmed the street’s glamour.”

Kazuo Ishiguro’s New Novel Is About A Knight Slaying A Dragon (Wait, What?)

Yes, the author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go has written a book in which Sir Gawain, “now an old man responding – just like John Wayne in The Searchers or James Coburn in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid – to one last call to arms. ‘Dressed in rusted chainmail and mounted on a weary steed’, Gawain’s ‘sacred mission’ is to slay the she-dragon Querig.”

There Ought To Be An Oscar For Best Dramatic Research

“Imagine a category that rewards excellence in blending fact and fiction in in an original manner (this is distinct from Best Adapted Screenplay, which celebrates the adaptation of a previous, distinct work.) … This is a category that doesn’t nitpick the details, but appreciates a film’s attempt to bring together the realms of fiction and nonfiction.” And it might shut the nitpickers up (but probably not).

Valery Gergiev: I Just Wanna Play Music, So Why Does Everybody Keep Bothering Me About Putin? (Oh, By The Way, Speaking Of Ukraine, …)

“People come to hear music, not to hear shouting. And to go on stage and scare Netrebko, how can the Met let this happen? If someone were to shout an anti-American slogan on the stage of the Mariinsky, it would be my fault.” The conductor then goes on to talk about Ukraine and Crimea.

This Greek Artist Is Hacking The Euro

“A handful of euro notes have circulated depicting ominous events like people fleeing buildings, hanging themselves, and writing bloody-looking graffiti that reads, ‘THE END IS NIGH.’ Playing off the typical euro note’s blandly interesting and politically approved historical architecture, this altered money strikes right to the heart of the crisis.”