“For a four-year stretch at the turn of the 21st century, December was the most wonderful time of year to be a best picture Oscar contender. … Since then, though, only one December movie — ‘The King’s Speech’ — has won best picture.”
Tag: 12.27.14
One Portland (Maine) Theatre Company Founder Killed, Another Gravely Injured In Holiday Crash
“The Reillys founded and are the creative force behind the American Irish Repertory Ensemble, the Portland-based theater company better known as AIRE. Both actors also worked with other theater companies. The news of the accident has devastated the Portland theater community.”
It’s Taken 50 Years To Get A Civil Rights Movie Focused On African Americans Instead Of Whites
“The 1988 film Mississippi Burning, which focuses on two white FBI agents, exemplifies the normal Hollywood approach to the civil rights movement. The film angered a lot of black movie-goers because it made the FBI into heroes when, according to civil rights activist Charles Cobb, the bureau often looked the other way as black Southerners were beaten and murdered in the early ’60s.”
Fan Fiction Is Not A New Thing – But It *Is* A Great Way To Engage With Stories
“Shipping may have achieved prominence in the burgeoning world of Internet fan fiction, but the phenomenon, if not the expression, goes back at least a hundred years, when Sybil Brinton, a wealthy Englishwoman in her forties, wrote the first known work of Jane Austen fan fiction, ‘Old Friends and New Fancies,’ in 1913.”
Museums Trying To Make Up Budget Shortfalls By Selling Off Collections Will Be Sanctioned
In the UK, “the MA’s cuts survey found that 52 per cent of museums experienced falling income last year, the most since 2011, with local authority-run museums and national institutions badly hit. Some museum directors are talking about further cuts of up to 35 per cent next year.”
How Democracy Spreads (And Why That Spread Sometimes Fails)
“For Fukuyama, the great challenge of state-building is creating and sustaining an institution of collective rule that cuts against the grain of human nature: we are designed to favour friends and family, and a patrimonial tribal order is ‘hard-wired,’ he argues, into our neural circuitry.”
Prince Charles Thinks His Ideas About Architecture Are ‘For The People’ – And He Couldn’t Be More Wrong
“Charles and his friends like to portray themselves as the underdogs, as victims of a leftie conspiracy of inhumane modernism, but they couldn’t be more well connected, and their polemics in favour of twee cottage architecture resonate strongly with a public taste for the picturesque and sentimental, and the spurious notion of What People Really Want.”
In Dance, Collaboration Can Be Challenging (But Usually Worth It)
“There are pitfalls. Sweat causes the hands to slide upward from the waist to the chest, where they are least helpful. Leotards can be slippery.”
A Composer Accidentally Hits The Big Time
“It all felt a bit far-fetched. I went in to talk to them at the studio and we started working immediately. There wasn’t even time to think about it.”