Asura, a big-screen historical fantasy that cost $113 million, did such lousy box office that it was pulled from theaters after three days; meanwhile, Dying to Survive, a dark comedy about smuggling low-priced medicines into the country because they’re so expensive inside the People’s Republic, “is on track to become one of China’s highest-grossing productions of all time.”
Tag: 07.19.18
An Open Letter To The NEA’s New Acting Chairwoman
“As a Dance Mom, you might get an undeserved bad rap but you definitely have much needed knowledge and capacities. You know that your child is entitled to a dance education. You fight for that. You drive for that, in more ways than behind the wheel — which I know from experience that you do at high volume. I hope you can harness that drive and sense of entitlement for good, living up to your stated intentions to make the NEA more accessible.” Mary Anne Carter replied here.
Lin-Manuel Miranda To Direct Film Version Of Last Musical By Writer Of ‘Rent’
“It’s Tick, Tick … Boom!: a show that ran Off Broadway in 2001 and was written by Jonathan Larson, the playwright and composer behind Rent. The musical, loosely based on Larson’s life, opened five years after he died in 1996. Mr. Miranda took part in a 2014 production Off Broadway at New York City Center.”
Artificial Intelligence Only Understands People With A Very Specific Accent
Turns out Alexa, Siri, Google’s Assistant and other AI voice responsive systems really understand West Coast English. Everything else? Wellllllll … let’s say that even if you’re a native English speaker, but you’re from the South or Midwest? They’ll understand you less often. Worse: “People with nonnative accents, however, faced the biggest setbacks. In one study that compared what Alexa thought it heard versus what the test group actually said, the system showed that speech from that group showed about 30 percent more inaccuracies.”
An Attempt At A Parallel, More Diverse NYT ‘By The Book’ Column
It started centuries ago, and also six months ago, when an author listed his favorite books for The New York Times, and he seemed not to know that women have been writing books for – yes – centuries. Then came the #ReadMoreWomen hashtag. At Electric Lit, “in light of that simple mission statement — read more women — we’re launching a new series, which we’re thinking of as a stripped-down, feminist version of ‘By the Book.’ Twice a month, we’ll have some of our favorite writers — of any gender — discuss their favorite or most influential books that aren’t by men.”
History – And A Lot Of Music – Gets Lost When Writers Think Women ‘Play Like Girls’
The problem starts with access to audiences and continues with the way women who produce, conduct, and play music get described in the media – which ends up leaving women, including an integrated all-women’s swing group that was a direct precursor to the Freedom Riders in Mississippi, out of the histories of their eras.
Why Should The Theatre World Worry About The End Of Theatre Criticism?
“Now, you might think good riddance – critics sometimes don’t do themselves any favours. But theatre should worry about criticism’s survival.” Why? Because criticism does a lot more than sell tickets (if it does that at all). It’s important for the history and future of the theatre itself.
Is A Podcast A Hot New Way To Help Solve The Thefts At The Gardner Museum?
Whoa: “The podcast includes a raft of interviews, including one with the night watchman who let in the thieves and the first public interview with a second museum guard who was on duty that night.”
Plagiarism? Are There Really Any New Ideas?
Writing consists of basically two things: idea and execution. You come up with an idea, and you figure out how to execute it in terms of style, setting, and genre. Writers are understandably protective of our ideas, but for better or worse the law only really protects execution. Unless someone is directly stealing your exact words, it is nearly impossible to prove that they took the idea. And it probably wouldn’t be a good thing if it did.
Does The Future Of Stagecraft Lie In Virtual Or Augmented Reality?
Howard Sherman: “While I don’t look forward to watching plays while holding up my mobile phone (ringer off, of course) for two hours, technology is beginning to offer ways for companies to create more immersive worlds without the construction of physical scenery. As work increasingly bursts out beyond prosceniums, augmented reality may offer possibilities to performances anywhere people can congregate, but without the need for lugging scenery into parks and playgrounds.”