Originally set in the Roman-Volscian War of the 6th Century, we bring the same narrative, the same cycles of fear and hope, oppression and rebellion, mayhem and peace to the stage. In this era in which mass-media allows for new forms of social discourse and uprising, Coriolanus is a woman of colour on a stage of political unrest, competing opinion, and uncertainty.
MC
Veturia Asks Coriolanus To Spare Rome
This show was NUTS's first production of 2018, performed in Studio One, UNSW.
A film shot over a single day in an old Sydney University chemistry building has taken Derin Seale all the way to the Academy Awards and the chance for an Australian first - joining his father in winning an Oscar.
Oscars 2018: Live coverage of the 90th Academy Awards
Oscars 2018: Live coverage of the 90th Academy Awards
Swag bags are a big perk of going to the Oscars. But movie stars who accept the goodies could owe a hefty tax bill. ...
For
top-earning movie stars, the result could be a tax bill that eats up
roughly half the value of the bag. While the recent Tax Cuts and Jobs
Act lowered the top federal income tax rate, it still amounts to a hefty 37%. There’s also state income tax, which in California tops out 13.3%. In other words, movie stars who collect a gift bag worth $100,000 could end up owing $50,300 in state and federal taxes. ...
GIFT BASKETS WORTH $200,000? BUT ONLY FOR ACTORS AND DIRECTORS! END ACTOR/DIRECTOR PRIVILEGE! Oscar nominees get tons of free stuff — even if they lose
Bob Hope opens the 34th Academy Awards in 1962—ranked 13 out of the Oscars’ 66 best monologues and opening numbers
Michael Chabon's Instagram Impersonator: There are at least two social media accounts pretending to be the novelist.
A New Native American Writers Generation: A new wave of indigenous writers has been trained in a program that rejects the standards of white academia.
A Literary Look at What’s In the Bag: Writer Kaitlin Phillips shares her favorite books, pairing them with this season’s most covetable pocketbooks.
Army ants have tiny brains and no one’s in charge. So how do they organize themselves into building bridges? They rely on their strength in numbers and simple rules
To see how this unfolds, take the perspective of an ant on the march. When it comes to a gap in its path, it slows down. The rest of the colony, still barreling along at 12 centimeters per second, comes trampling over its back. At this point, two simple rules kick in.The first tells the ant that when it feels other ants walking on its back, it should freeze. “As long as someone walks over you, you stay put,” Garnier said.This same process repeats in the other ants: They step over the first ant, but — uh-oh — the gap is still there, so the next ant in line slows, gets trampled and freezes in place. In this way, the ants build a bridge long enough to span whatever gap is in front of them. The trailing ants in the colony then walk over it.
BAD NEWS FOR GOOD NEWS: Little
Things, which thrived by putting good news and videos up on Facebook, has closed, a victim of Facebook’s shift from
publisher content to user posts in its News Feed, Digiday reports. The outlet
said it lost 75 percent of its organic reach since the shift, announced in
January. About 100 people are out of work. “We’re disappointed. It’s their
platform,” company president Gretchen Tibbits said of Facebook. “But until
earlier this month, what we were doing was working.”
ATTENTION SPAN: Are we moving too fast to really grasp the power of still photography? Is a surfeit of citizen journalists devaluing the command that a classic professionally produced image, like this (below) by Paul Fusco from a train carrying the assassinated body of Robert F. Kennedy to Washington, could have? Journalism entrepreneur Jeff Israely asks those questions in Nieman Lab — and this: “How can we make great photography stand out in the non-stop stream of content?”
Fact-checking the Oscars
Did Winston Churchill really hop on the train?
The 90th Academy Awards are Sunday, and three of the best
picture nominees are based on true historical events: “Darkest Hour,” “Dunkirk”
and “The Post.”
Our colleagues at PolitiFact thought it would be interesting to
fact-check each of these to see if there had been any embellishing for the sake
of drama.
Here are some of the questions they get to the bottom of.
(Warning! Spoilers and plot points ahead.)
- Did the king really visit Winston Churchill late at night in his bedroom?
- Did Churchill jump on the tube to talk to ordinary people?
- And what was up with that backward V the prime minister used to infamously flash?
- Did those troops really stay in lines, exposed on the beach?
- Did the flotilla of private boats really go all the way to Dunkirk to pick up the troops?
- And just what was the connection to a major disaster and the Moonstone vessel in the movie?
- Did the Washington Post find the Pentagon Papers, or did the Papers find the Post?
- Did Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara really plead with Katharine Graham not to publish the Papers?
- Did the Post’s decision to print inspire other newspapers to follow?
The awards air on ABC at 8 p.m Eastern. and will be hosted by
Jimmy Kimmel for the second year in a row. Here are some other interesting
takes on the Oscars from around the internet:
- Forbes has a “by the numbers.” For example, at 88, Christopher Plummer is the oldest acting nominee ever.
- Time has everything you need to know about this year’s edition.
- The Hollywood Reporter takes you inside preparations for the official after-party, the Governors Ball. With 1,500 invited, here are a few of the food stats they list: 7,500 individual U.S. shrimp, 250 Maine lobsters, and 1,500 quail eggs. Oh, and 13,000 glasses for beverages.
- Variety gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how the telecast is produced.
- New York Magazine dishes about the best items in the Oscar goody bags.
NO LIE, APPARENTLY: Hope
Hicks, the White House communications director, announced she was leaving the Trump
administration. The news comes a day after she spoke with House investigators
and said she was occasionally required to tell white lies under Trump.
‘A GUT PUNCH’: Seven
reporters, some of whom had never discussed this before, described how covering
mass killings have affected them. Here are snippets:
- "Don't suggest we like it." - Trevor Hughes
- "I had never cried on the job until June 12, 2016." - Christal Hayes
- ”I get sick. My stomach aches. My head hurts." - Alan Gomez
- "An editor reminded me we have counseling services for reporters who cover tragedies" - Eleanor Dearman
Here’s the full story. Hat-tip to USA Today’s
Elizabeth Shell, who put the package together.
CAN’T. STOP. SQUABBLING: Why
do Fox News and CNN go at each other like a long-married couple?
It’s smart business to differentiate, says Gabriel Kahn, a professor at the University of
Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication. “CNN can no longer
afford to play it down the middle,” Kahn tells the Washington Post’s Paul
Farhi. “They’d look like Melba toast in an environment of olive bread and
croissants if they did. They have to define their audience. One way to define
your audience is by saying what you’re not.”