Things might be a fire dump of terrible for women in Hollywood, as revealed by all too many #metoo stories (and oh yes, there are many more to come), but at least a few roles weren’t too bad this year: “Movie mothers tend to be monsters (Mommie Dearest, Carrie, Precious, Animal Kingdom), angels (Bambi, The Grapes of Wrath) or just a bit nothing-y (pretty much everything else). That, however, could be changing. While 2017 has been an awful year for women in film in most respects, it has thrown up a riot – or whatever the collective noun for mums ought to be – of complex on-screen mothers.”
Tag: 12.15.17
Anita Hill Will Lead A Commission On Sexual Assault In Hollywood
Whoa: “Called the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, the initiative was spearheaded by Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm; Maria Eitel, the co-chair of the Nike Foundation; the powerhouse attorney Nina Shaw; and Freada Kapor Klein, the venture capitalist who helped pioneer surveys on sexual harassment decades ago.”
The German Artist Who Uses Her Power To Change Things
Hito Steyerl, this year’s number one in the Art Review Power 100 list, is a filmmaker who also delivers hypnotic lectures and whose ideas influence many other artists and culture creators. “Her previous texts don’t become dated; her ideas keep circulating. …People take her work and build upon it. And she’s not afraid of the truth of her time. That’s important for generations that come after her.”
The 100-Year-Old Writer’s First Live Webchat
Diana Athill is just a few days from her centenary, but – despite some hand injuries that mean she can’t type into a computer – she’s going strong. “Seasoned Athill watchers won’t be surprised to hear that she is at work on a new book – a tale of upward mobility in England as demonstrated through her own family’s rise from country doctors in early 19th-century Yorkshire to wealthy Norfolk landowners. At the centre of the story is her great-grandfather, who was left £44,000 by a grateful patient at a time when doctors were not considered to be gentlemen and such a sum could buy a handsome Queen Anne mansion in a landscaped park.”
What’s The Deal With All Of These New, And Deeply Popular, History Podcasts?
The genre, which exploded after Malcolm Gladwell started his “Revisionist History” podcast, is riddled with sweeping pronouncements, some of which ignore recent scholarship or popular knowledge. They can definitely be informative and useful, but beware: “Sometimes the counterintuitive take is just wrong.”
With The Purchase Of 21st Century Fox, A Leader Defines His Legacy At Disney
And wow, is this deal going to affect everything in Hollywood. “The film business has not seen significant consolidation in generations — perhaps not since 1935, when 20th Century Pictures and Fox Film merged to form 20th Century Fox, going on to deliver classics like ‘How Green Was My Valley,’ ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Wall Street.’ Now that Disney is a content colossus, analysts expect a wave of Hollywood mergers, as companies like Viacom, CBS, Sony, Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer look to gain scale.”
The Arts Council Of England Claims Literary Fiction Is In A Freefalling Crisis
Even genre fiction can’t make up for the dramatic decline in reading. “It’s a much more unforgiving ecosystem for authors of literary fiction today. We inevitably end up with a situation where the people best positioned to write literary fiction are those for whom making a living isn’t an imperative. That has an effect on the diversity of who is writing – we are losing voices, and we don’t want to be in that position.”
Despite 11,000 People Demanding That The Met Remove This Painting, It Won’t – And Shouldn’t
Yes, this artwork can be read as problematic. Jerry Saltz acknowledges that, and then says a lot more: “Even in our rush to protect the innocent, curtail creeps, and assume the moral high ground, art can never abandon paradox. Unlike pornography, which we know it when we see it, Balthus throws us into a nether region of being unsure of what we’re seeing at all. Even if it’s only coy, that’s still not all that it is.”
A New Space For ‘Provocative’ Contemporary Art, Just Two Miles From Mar-A-Lago
Beth Rudin DeWoody, “who is president of the Rudin Family Foundations and on the boards of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Hammer Museum, owns more than 10,000 pieces of art, including a vast array of work that is lyrical, artisanal and playful. But she has a special fondness for the big button-pushers that other collectors of her caliber might be more inclined to eschew. ‘I think art should be provocative,’ she said.”
The Academy Awards Are Still Wide Open
Basically? “Screwiness seems destined to prevail this season.”