A chilling, inspiring tale from Communist Poland. “In that courtroom, in a split-second during Jaromar’s speech, my classmates and I connected in the mutual understanding of something profound, something that gave us power.”
Tag: 04.28.17
Hollywood, You Really Need To Follow The Money
As “The Fate of the Furious” takes in more than $1 billion, it’s time Hollywood stopped whitewashing and learned the lesson that to make money, they’ll have to diversify every cast (and not make Scarlett Johansson as a supposedly Japanese character either).
This Ivy League A Capella Group Got Kicked Off Campus For Hazing
That’s right, Cornell’s oldest a capella group, an all-male (shocker) group called “Cayuga’s Waiters,” were booted for hazing. Think “Icy Hot on their genitals” plus other hazing rituals that no, the college did not condone.
Dame Judi Dench Has Had It With Young Actors Mumbling Their Lines
Hoo boy, don’t ask her about the BBC. “Often I want to shout out, ‘Will you say that again because I can’t hear!’ It is an apathy – laziness.”
Why Leonard Bernstein Didn’t Succeed
“Bernstein’s heyday was in a time of high hopes. John F. Kennedy’s Camelot was meant to usher in a new world order; Norman Mailer was supposed to write the Great American Novel. Bernstein, similarly, was expected to catapult American music to a new level of excellence and prestige. But high hopes are invariably bound to be dashed. Kennedy was assassinated; Mailer petered out; Bernstein scattered his energies. Still, perhaps more than Kennedy or Mailer, Bernstein made an enormous contribution to American culture. His tragedy lay in the human fact that he was not the musical messiah that he came so close to being.”
The ‘Garden Bridge’ Is Dead, And Those Who Proposed It (Should) Owe The British Public Millions Of Pounds
How did it get so far in the first place? “Varnished with a Kevlar coating of celebrity sparkle, Bullingdon Club backing and architectural fairy dust, the garden bridge has always seemed capable of surviving every missile of common sense thrown at it. For three years it has been fiercely opposed by supporters of gardens and bridges alike, of which this vanity project was clearly never either.”
The Next Hot Thing In Opera?
Why don’t we know more about Giacomo Meyerbeer? “Few things could be further from the same old arias than Meyerbeer (1791-1864). Hardly a corner of the repertory has grown mustier, a puzzling development given the composer’s prominence during his lifetime. In his heyday, Meyerbeer was a uniquely powerful hitmaker, as well as an innovator who brought opera to new levels of orchestral color, dramatic scale, choral mass, historical richness and theatrical dazzle.”
Vito Acconci, Architect And Performance Artist, Has Died At 77
His move from performance artist (his most famous piece, “Seedbed,” included him lying beneath a false floor in a gallery, masturbating and speaking to gallery visitors over a hidden mic) to architect “confused his peers and caused his profile in the art world to recede, to the point where many younger artists who were indirectly influenced by his work had little idea who had created it. In his later years, Mr. Acconci sometimes agonized over this situation, but he said he had no choice but to follow his interests where they took him.”
The Tate Asked Office Workers To Pitch In To Buy A Sailboat For Departing Director Nicholas Serota
That went over really well among the staff. “The timing was awkward. The call for contributions came as the Tate group, which operates four museums and art galleries across the country, was in pay negotiations with staff.”
Suddenly, Composers Are Taking Over The Pop Music (Festival) World
The revenge of the school orchestra? No, seriously: “You can now scarcely move at big music events without bumping into a 30-piece woodwind section. If DJs are the new rock stars it’s looking suspiciously like composers might be outflanking them all.”