What Happened To Criticism (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

“It became a profession, even a guild, heavy on trade craft and jargon and dedicated to exclusion and self-protection. It became a way of credentialing an insider class and assuring its members of an income inside of the academy. As such, criticism took up a specialized vocabulary whose chief function, as I see it, was to signal loyalty to the executive board of the approved critical class.”

The Real Problem With Blue Is The Warmest Color‘s Sex Scenes

Richard Brody: “The problem … is that they’re too good – too unusual, too challenging, too original – to be assimilated … to the familiar moviegoing experience. Their duration alone is exceptional, as is their emphasis on the physical struggle, the passionate and uninhibited athleticism of sex, the profound marking of the characters’ souls by their sexual relationship.”

Gay Rights Activists To Picket Valery Gergiev Concerts In London

“The demonstration is scheduled to take place outside the Barbican, where Gergiev will lead the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz – about a scholar who gets too close to the devil.” Picketers are objecting to Russia’s new anti-gay laws and Gergiev’s failure to speak out against them to his longtime friend Vladimir Putin.

Are We About To Lose Net Neutrality? (And Why You Should REALLY Care)

“Net neutrality is a dead man walking. The execution date isn’t set, but it could be days, or months (at best). And since net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently — say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes — the dead man walking isn’t some abstract or far-removed principle just for wonks: It affects the internet as we all know it.”