“Pretending to present daringly counterintuitive views to his readers, he actually strengthens the hold on them of a view of things that they have long taken for granted. This is, perhaps, the essence of the genre that Gladwell has pioneered: while reinforcing beliefs that everyone avows, he evokes in the reader a satisfying sensation of intellectual non-conformity.”
Tag: 11.21.13
Casting For An Oscar Bait Movie Isn’t As Easy As It Sounds
The casting director for “12 Years a Slave” says finding the right actors for the epic historical film meant looking outside the usual pool.
Ballet’s Top Stars Become Brands In Their Own Right
“A wave of international ballet stars are increasingly leaping from company to company, creating their own brands and becoming more like world-traveling conductors and opera stars. In doing so, they are … changing an art form long defined by national styles that dancers perfected as they grew up with – and stayed loyal to – a single company.”
What Bill Gates Doesn’t Get About Arts Philanthropy
Gates recently told an interviewer that donating money to a museum rather than to the treatment and prevention of blindness was morally equivalent to taking 1% of the visitors to a museum and blinding them. Terry Teachout takes the argument on.
Watching Nelson Mandela’s Story Unfold From In Front Of The Cameras
“He has been Nelson Mandela’s confidant in prison and his main protector as president. He has watched the liberation leader go from a womanizing gallivant to a statesman who stitched together a torn nation. Tony Kgoroge has seen this history unfold like a movie. Well, actually, two movies.”
Is Monty Python Still Funny? The Guys Themselves Want To Know
John Cleese: “The main danger we have is that the audience knows the scripts better than we do.”
Are Broadway Musicals Really A Jewish Creation?
A recent PBS documentary made the case, but Mark Lawson argues that, for all the myriad contributions to the form made by artists who were Jewish, thinking that way isn’t necessarily logical or useful.
Fun Home‘s Five-Year Journey To The Stage
Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, has presented his share of complicated new musicals. But Fun Home, he said, was in a class by itself. ‘They went through more iterations and drafts than I think I’ve ever seen a musical go through.'”
Predicting A Viral Hit Is Difficult
“So we know that scalable distribution results in a winner-takes-all phenomenon where a few players take an overwhelming share of the rewards in their market, leaving very little for the median players. The question is, can we predict or create these hits with any consistency?”
Michael Kaiser To Leave Kennedy Center Early
“Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser is leaving his contract four months early and taking his arts management institute with him. The University of Maryland announced Wednesday that the Kennedy Center’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management will join the University of Maryland in September, cutting ties with the country’s busiest performing arts center.”