“I don’t want to be Jasmine. She’s one of my favorite princesses, but I don’t want to perpetuate that stereotype: completely powerless, or overly sexualized,” says the Baltimore-born daughter of an Egyptian immigrant father. After understudying Laura Benanti on Broadway (she went on a dozen times), Ahmed is headlining the national tour, currently at the Kennedy Center. – The Washington Post
Tag: 12.21.19
Hallmark Christmas Movies Are Big Business In British Columbia
Basically, it’s always Christmas in July in British Columbia, complete with fake snow, fake characters, fake love stories, fake Christmas and … er … yes, the whole schlockfest (BELOVED schlockfest, we note) that is the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas movie production factory. “Picking out the locations has become a favourite pastime for locals. [One said,] ‘You get to see the locations on the movie and know exactly where that was and have attachment to it now, you feel like you were part of the movie in a way, which is pretty awesome.'” – CBC
The Creator Of A Joyful Game About Golden Poop Says Yes, We Can Be Happy
Keita Takahashi, an artist and an “unconventional” game developer, is beloved for his game “Katamari Decency,” and now he’s got a new game out – ostensibly about golden poop. The game “was inspired by watching his two younger children play. He wanted to create something that presented a more hopeful view of the world.” – Los Angeles Times
Is Anyone Happy Anymore?
Indeed: “The catastrophe of climate neglect, the toxic politics, the tangible sense of so many things worsening in your own lifetime, along with a sense of your obscure or outright complicity, all combined to make the idea of any possible happiness seem at best childish, at worse willfully blind.” – The New York Times
New Movies, Old Formats
The popularity of older formats is growing, including black and white and things like Canción sin nombre‘s 4:3 format. – Los Angeles Times
The Bestselling Adult Novel Of 2019 Started Small In 2018, And Has A Very Long Tail
It’s a tough selling environment for fiction; the numbers are bleak and falling fast. But Where Late the Crawdads Sang has been going, and going, and going, and going … “Crawdads has sold more print copies than any other adult title this year — fiction or nonfiction — according to NPD BookScan, blowing away the combined print sales of new novels by John Grisham, Margaret Atwood and Stephen King. Putnam has returned to the printers nearly 40 times to feed a seemingly bottomless demand for the book. Foreign rights have sold in 41 countries.” What the heck? – The New York Times
Do Music Genres Even Exist Anymore?
Music critics may resist the idea, but “what if the genre killers are right? What if it doesn’t matter whether they’re right, but it’s happening anyway? Start to finish, 2019 gave us plenty of evidence.” – Slate
The Sceptered Isle And Its Many (Many) Historically Important Buildings
Historic England has released a new list of 500 additions to the built environments it accords “enhanced” or new status. Why does anyone care? “They grow not only ever more surprising – our sense of what constitutes our built heritage is expanding incrementally – but more joy-sparking, too. What loveliness, and what fascination. Look at the buildings that have made the grade and not only does the sweep of history wash over you in an invigorating wave.” – The Guardian (UK)
Backstage At Matthew Bourne’s ‘Swan Lake’
Twenty-two years after the groundbreaking production had its U.S. debut in Los Angeles, it returned – “as gloriously relevant as ever.” And here is a photo gallery of what happens backstage, offstage, and around stage as audiences watch the stage itself. – Los Angeles Times
Christmas, With Its Fights And Fury And Beauty, Is A Gift To Novelists
And, famously, short story writers. Why? “It’s a chance to bring together a wide cast of characters at a time when the sense of occasion allows them and the novelist to take the long view of their lives.” – The Guardian (UK)