Mark Swed: “Last week there happened to be something remarkable: two different (and they couldn’t have been more different) performances of Handel’s oratorio oriented around the one percent – the top and bottom one percent, that is.”
Tag: 12.11.16
How George Lucas Helped Reinvent Movie-Making By Challenging Hollywood
“Lucas’s titanic achievement is even more stunning when you consider his modest roots: he is from, ironically, Modesto, a small city in northern California where his dad owned a stationery store that he expected his son to take over. The taciturn young Lucas had other ideas, heading to film school at the University of Southern California (USC) where he fell in with a new generation of cineastes — among them, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola — who would be his co-conspirators in the takedown of the old Hollywood order.”
NPR Starts A Column Looking At Video Games As Literature
“For years now, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we’ve been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games. So we’re starting an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective.” Exhibit A: Mo Man’s Sky.
Here’s One Actor Who Says That Being Openly Gay Helped, Not Hurt, His Career
Russell Tovey: “For so long, as a young actor, I had this anxiety about making sure I could get straight roles, and now I know that’s not necessary. The gay roles are the best for me. Being gay has made my career.”
An Auction House’s Dream-Come-True: Guy Walks In Off The Street With A Leonardo Da Vinci
“That, more or less, is what happened to Thaddée Prate, director of old master pictures at the Tajan auction house [in Paris] … In March, Mr. Prate recalled being ‘in a bit of a rush’ when a retired doctor visited Tajan with 14 unframed drawings that had been collected by his bibliophile father.”
Nicholas Serota Wins A Well-Deserved Award (With Prize Money He Probably Doesn’t Need)
The out-going director of the Tate museums will receive the $25,000 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, given by Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies based on a poll of art professionals.
Beatrix Potter Was A Careful Scientific Recorder Of Mushrooms (She Also Happened To Write ‘Peter Rabbit’)
Her mushroom drawings hang in the Science Museum in London. “These drawings, most of them from the 1890s, are so accurate that even today, they are still consulted by scientists.”
The Sacramento Ballet Has Been On Shaky Footing, But Then A Patron Died And Left The Company… Everything
A gift the organizations didn’t expect or look for, from a patron who had attended many private ballet functions and climbed the Great Wall with the dancers when they went to China, surprises – and helps – the Sacramento Ballet .
The British Writer A.A. Gill, Acerbic And Brilliant Restaurant Reviewer, Has Died At 62
The writer, who battled alcoholism in his 20s but emerged one of the most elegant writers in the language, announced last month that he had cancer – and used his final column to rail at the British National Health System.
Tech Is In A Big Showdown, And It’s Taking Place Inside Your House
Will Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or something entirely new win this round of understanding how humans speak naturally? (It’s a big deal because real artificial intelligence depends on this point. Oh, and the machines are always listening.)