In Mexico, street clowns are beloved – and they can actually make a living. Jonathan Coumes visits with a trio of them in the city of Querétaro.
Tag: 11.09.16
There Is No Such Thing As ‘Western Civilization’ (And That’s Not Just A Barb)
Kwame Anthony Appiah, from this year’s BBC Reith Lecture: “I think you should give up the very idea of western civilisation. It is at best the source of a great deal of confusion, at worst an obstacle to facing some of the great political challenges of our time.” For a start, what exactly is “the West”?
Protect Your Library From Theft The Way Medieval Scribes Did Theirs – With Terrifying Curses
“If anyone take away this book, let him die the death; let him be fried in a pan; let the falling sickness and fever size him; let him be broken on the wheel, and hanged. Amen.” Yes, this was a real thing.
How Are Women Doing (On Stage, That Is)?
With a battle on several fronts – get more women on stage; make sure their characters are real, not caricatures; get more women into directing, etc. – what is the state of theatre for women characters in general? One playwright: “Probably the best decision every writer can make is to cultivate a loyal group of friends who are much smarter than you, whose feedback you trust, and who will tell you, ‘This is bullshit.'”
Why Deadlines – Even Unnecessary Ones – Make People Get Things Done
It’s not – or not just – because some people [fidgets nervously] are lazy procrastinators: there’s a more benign, and basic, explanation.
£10,000 Prize For Fiction That ‘Breaks The Mould’ Goes To One-Sentence Novel
“A novel written in a single sentence” – Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones – “has won the 2016 Goldsmiths prize, becoming the third Irish winner in the four-year history of an award set up to reward fiction that ‘breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form’.”
Big Cuts Coming In The New York Times Arts Coverage?
“The revamped Arts front page will have no more than three stories (there now are sometimes as many as six) anchored by an oversize photograph, according to sources who have been apprised of the changes. (Today’s Arts section is a good example of what the section will more typically look like.) Critics have been urged to stop covering events least likely to appeal to online subscribers: indie movies having brief runs in art houses; one-night-only concerts, off- and off-off-Broadway shows that aren’t star-driven, cabaret performances, and small art galleries. Many of the Times‘ contingent of freelance contributors, who provide much of that coverage, are likely to meet the same fate as the regional freelancers last summer. But even staff critics have been given the same marching orders, telling Deadline they are being pressured more frequently by editors to focus on higher-profile events.”
TV Industry Struggles To Figure Out Who’s Watching What (Why That’s Important)
“If Netflix or Amazon can control how our perception of how popular a TV show is – how many people are watching it – that controls the TV industry. So that controls what kind of shows the viewer ultimately gets to see. Right? And there’s other people, actors and producers, they want to get paid. And they also want people to recognize that they’re creating shows that are popular.”
The George Lucas Museum Tour-D’America Project Stops In LA – Could This Be Where It Gets Built?
George Lucas’ much-travelled museum project proposal made a stop in Los Angeles Wednesday, and LA County supervisors embraced the project. The LA proposal would put the museum at Exposition Park next to USC. But wait, you ask, wasn’t the project going to be located in Chicago? Then the Bay Area? Sure – so what is it about the Lucas museum that can’t quite find a landing spot?
Our Movie History – Alive Only Because Of The Obsessives Among Us
Given the ubiquity and popularity of movies, it’s easy to imagine that there’s some sort of central repository for all the movies ever made. But in fact, old movies disappear all the time, and sometimes it’s only because some obsessive collector found and saved a movie that it still exists.