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Evaluate: Searching for Crickets, and Coming Up Crickets

Review: Looking for Crickets, and Coming Up Crickets

Madeline Hollander is an artist interested in quotidian movement, movement habits and adaptations to change. It is therefore fitting that their art prompted me to return to a once mundane activity that I had previously avoided during the pandemic. I went to a museum – the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which is showing Hollander’s first solo exhibition at the museum.

Hollander is primarily a choreographer, but this isn’t her first foray into the art world. For her “Ouroboros: Gs” for the Whitney Biennale in 2019, she made a dance of installing sections of the Whitney flood control system, a task that drew attention to the museum’s location on the edge of the Hudson River, a precarious location in a rapidly changing climate.

The current exhibition “Madeline Hollander: Flatwing” is a video installation without a live component. In a dark room, we see infrared footage of Hollander’s nightly search for a particular type of cricket in Kauai, Hawaii. Spoiler alert: She won’t find any.

Of course there is more to it than that. The object of their search is not an ancient insect. Due to a genetic mutation, male flat-winged crickets lack the ridges on their wings to scrape out the mating songs we call chirping. That silence is a downside in the dating scene, but it has protected it from a parasitic fly that has nearly wiped out the island’s easy-to-find noisy cricket population. To attract mates, flatwings still rely on the chirping of the remaining undamped males. Flatwings keep dancing, but to someone else’s music for as long as the music lasts.

It’s easy to see how this might attract the mind of a resourceful choreographer. What Hollander really chases is metaphor. That her search is futile only gives her more potential meaning. As the chief curatorial assistant Clémence White eloquently explains in an accompanying essay, the silence of the flat wings could be heard as an alarm for ecological change; Her dance could be “a harbinger of our own inability to adapt”.

The failure is weird too. In the 16-minute video, Hollander’s point of view is stumbling through the rainforest, while the dark, blurry, pink-purple video doesn’t reveal crickets or anything else throughout. Is that a cricket? No, but there is a chicken.

The soundtrack also features humor in a phone conversation between Hollander and Marlene Zuk, an evolutionary biologist, an expert on flat wings. The way they pass each other is almost a comedy routine of mental habits across disciplines: Abbott and Costello mock the gap between art and science.

A habit that scientists and artists have in common is to make something of their research. Hollander’s installation – supplemented by drawings and mind maps in an adjoining gallery – is more like a scrapbook for a project that has not or not yet worked out. The experience of visiting it in person adds little to what you could get from staying home and reading about it.

But if you’re still at the Whitney – say, to see Julie Mehretu’s amazing mid-career retrospective on the same floor – you can check out Hollander’s video. You won’t find flat wings, but you will hear a cricket song and see a sky full of stars.

Madeline Hollander: Flat wing

Until August 8th at the Whitney Museum of American Art, whitney.org. Advance booking required.

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The Workplace Actress Kat Ahn Calls Out the Present’s Racist Jokes

THE OFFICE, Nancy Walls, Steve Carell,

Hollywood’s portrayal of Asian women in the media is historically disturbing. Harmful stereotypes, hypersexualization and fetishization have played a role in onscreen projects for decades, including at NBCs The office. Actress Kat Ahn recently opened up to that Washington Post about how her guest appearance on the “Benihana Christmas” episode of the comedy show led to her being the butt of racist jokes.

In the 2006 episode, Michael Scott (played by Steve Carrell) calls Benihana “Asian Hooters” and marks the arm of an Asian waitress with Sharpie so he can tell her apart from another. Michael’s behavior throughout the show’s tenure is knowingly problematic and is said to be a parody of ignorant bosses at workplaces across the country. For Ahn, however, this story remains hurtful even 15 years later. Ahn said she was “only there to make the joke” and felt powerless. “You should shut up and be grateful,” she said. “Actors have no power until they become a star.”

Ahn previously explained this experience in a TikTok video. “The plot with me and the other Asian American actress is that we were the ‘uglier’ version of the actresses in Benihana,” she said. “Also that all Asians look the same; we are a big monolith; and we’re just a big, walking stereotype with no personality or individuality, which is problematic.” Ahn’s personal life has also been influenced by the show’s racism. Later, a worker in her office tried to tag her arm just like below. He would wipe her discomfort with a sadly typical response and say it was just a joke.

Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, Pam and Angela of the series, agreed that this episode was problematic during their time Office ladies Podcast admitting the Sharpie scene makes them “wince”. Kinsey said, “I just don’t think this story was written today.” Fisher agreed, “I don’t think so either.”

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Paul Laubin, 88, Dies; Grasp of Making Oboes the Outdated-Original Manner

Paul Laubin, 88, Dies; Master of Making Oboes the Old-Fashioned Way

Paul Laubin, a revered oboe maker who was one of the few remaining woodwinds to build his instruments by hand – he made so few a year that customers might have to wait a decade to play one – died on March 1st in his Workshop in Peekskill, NY He was 88 years old.

His wife Meredith Laubin confirmed the death. She said that Mr. Laubin, who lived in Mahopac, NY, collapsed in his workshop at some point during the day and the police found his body there that night.

In the world of oboes, his partisans believe, there is Mr. Oubos oboes and then there is everything else.

Mr. Laubin was in his early twenties when he made oboes with his father Alfred, who founded A. Laubin Inc. and built his first oboe in 1931. He took over the business when his father died in 1976. His son Alex started working by his side in 2003.

Oboists in major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra have played Mr. Laubin’s instruments and appreciated their dark and rich tone.

“There’s something that hits a chord deep within your body when you play a Laubin,” said Sherry Sylar, the New York Philharmonic’s principal associate oboist. “It’s a resonance that no other oboe has. It rings in your body. You get addicted to making a sound like this and nothing else will. “

In a dusty workshop near the Hudson River, lined with machines built back in 1881, Mr. Laubin crafted his oboes and cor anglais with an almost religious sense of precision. He wore an apron and puffed a pipe as he bored and turned the grenadilla and rosewood from which his instruments were made. (The pipe also served as a test device: Mr. Laubin blew smoke through the joints of the instrument to detect air leaks.)

His father taught him instrument making techniques that go back centuries. As the decades passed and instrument makers began to embrace computer-aided design and factory automation, the younger Mr. Laubin steadfastly resisted change. If it took him 10 years to build a good oboe, so be it.

“What’s the rush?” Mr Laubin said in a 1991 interview with the New York Times: “I don’t want anything with my name on it that I didn’t make, check and play myself.”

Mr. Laubin stored the blocks of his rare hardwoods outdoors for years so they could get used to extreme weather conditions and become more resilient instruments that could withstand the cracks that do woodwinds to death. After drilling a hole that would become the drilling of the instrument, it sometimes took another year for the piece of wood to dry out.

Mr. Laubin, who was a professional oboist as a young man, constantly played every oboe he worked on looking for imperfections. “Every key is a fight,” he told News 12 Westchester in 2012.

When a Laubin oboe was finally completed, its unveiling became a cause for celebration. A customer came into the Peekskill workshop with a bottle of champagne, and as he played his first notes, Mr. Laubin raised a toast.

Paul Edward Laubin was born on December 14, 1932 in Hartford, Connecticut. His father, oboist and music teacher, started making oboes because he was dissatisfied with the quality of the instruments available. He built the first Laubin oboe as an experiment and melted down his wife’s cutlery to make his keys. Paul’s mother, Lillian (Ely de Breton) Laubin, was a housewife.

As a boy, Paul was enchanted by the instruments his father made, but Alfred initially didn’t want his son to make music. Paul harassed him again and again; When he was thirteen, his father reluctantly gave him an oboe, a reed, and a finger table, and Paul taught himself to play.

Mr. Laubin studied auto mechanics and music at Louisiana State University in the 1950s. It wasn’t long before his yearning for performance overwhelmed him and he got a place in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Soon after, he finally joined the family business and began building oboes with his father in the garage of their home in Scarsdale, NY

In 1958 they moved their workshop to a clarinet factory in Long Island City, Queens, and for a time the company was producing (relatively speaking) 100 instruments a year.

Mr. Laubin married the flautist Meredith Van Lynip in 1966. In 1988 he moved the company to its current location in Peekskill. Over time, Mr. Laubin’s team got smaller, as did his production.

In the 1990s, A. Laubin Inc. produced around 22 instruments a year. By 2005 the average had dropped to 15. Over time, the scarcity of the Laubin oboes only added to their legend. The company has rarely advertised and relied on word of mouth. A grenadilla oboe costs $ 13,200 and a rosewood instrument costs $ 14,000.

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Laubin survives a daughter, Michelle; a sister, Vanette Arone; a brother, Carl; and two grandchildren.

Mr. Laubin was aware that selling so few instruments each year, no matter how exquisite, did not necessarily make financial sense. “I made the decision to follow my father even though I knew I would never get rich,” he told The Times in 1989.

The company’s fate is now undetermined. Alex Laubin served as office manager and helped with some aspects of production, but didn’t learn the entire process. He often asked his father to modernize their business – to no avail.

“Nobody sits down and puts down keys,” said Meredith Laubin. “It doesn’t turn out that there is always an oboe joint. This is all automated now, just like robots build cars. But Paul didn’t advocate any of these things. For him there was no cheating on the family recipe. “

But Mr. Laubin knew that the old ways would come to an end. In recent years he has found it harder to ignore the stark realities of an Old World craftsman in the modern age.

“Paul had to have part of his dream, namely to be able to work with his son,” said Ms. Laubin. “But the other part of his dream, since he knew his work would continue the way he did things, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.”

Nevertheless, he stuck to the tradition. On the day of his death, the beginnings of the Laubin oboe No. 2,600 lay on his desk.

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40 Years of Michael Mann. 11 Nice Film Moments.

40 Years of Michael Mann. 11 Great Movie Moments.

Forty years ago Michael Mann released his first feature film this weekend, “Thief”, which in retrospect contained several signatures of the director’s work, such as stories that mostly revolve around lonely wolves and told with elaborate cuts, artful images and unexpected musical decisions will. We asked 11 writers to watch a career full of memorable films and choose the scenes that remain with them.

There is a lot of talk in most Michael Mann films: especially men who sometimes talk to women but mostly to other men about their work. The frequency of such conversations makes “Heat” (1995) the epitome of the Michael Mann film. The rightly famous diner scene in this context is the Michael Mann-est six minutes in the entire cinema.

During a frantic, epic cat-and-mouse game, tired and baffled Los Angeles cop Vincent Hanna sits down for coffee with Neil McCauley, the criminal mastermind whose plans he tries to thwart. They are mortal rivals, but only two who grapple with the existential demands of professionalism. They talk about marriage, about work, and while they don’t exactly become friends, there is no real animosity between them. Everyone realizes that the other is good at what they’re doing, maybe even the best. Of course they are: they are Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and they are sharing the screen for the first time. AO SCOTT

Mann has always been adept at extracting threats from the familiar hustle and bustle of public spaces, and the opening recording of this classic genre thriller (2004) is a good example. When Tom Cruise’s character, a relentless killer, slowly emerges from the crowd at a Los Angeles airport and approaches the camera, his deliberate step is deliberately inconsistent with the sea of ​​travelers around him. Silver-haired and expressionless behind pitch-black sunglasses, he glides through the terminal. His light gray, sharply cut suit and blinding white shirt give off a faint sheen. The shark metaphor is unsubtle and yet perfect: in just under 30 seconds of screen time and before we hear him say a word, we know that this man is a predator. JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Mann is such a distinctive stylist with such a recognizable visual and acoustic aesthetic that it’s easy to overlook how skillfully he stages his actors. To prove it, Pacino’s big scene in “The Insider” is just the ticket. In the late 1990s, after winning an Oscar for his roaring twist on “Scent of a Woman,” audiences expected Pacino to work at full volume and high intensity. Instead, Mann keeps the actor on a low level – until this scene in which Pacino’s “60 Minutes” producer, who is working on an investigation into Big Tobacco, has finally had enough. Mann and Pacino are building the blast we’re waiting for beautifully. The director modulates the escalation like a symphony conductor, while the actor slowly but surely discharges his bosses, only to let his closest collaborator take the wind out of his sails. JASON BAILEY

In “Thief” (1981) is James Caan Frank, an artisanal safecracker in Chicago. He knows that to live outside the law is to live on borrowed time. After showing up late on a date with Jesse (Tuesday Weld), he gets mad at her and at himself and drives her to a diner. The screaming subsides, but the emotional register becomes more startling. Man chooses simple shots of two people in a cubicle who are almost strangers to each other and are suddenly associated with complete openness and vulnerability. “My life is very ordinary,” protests Jesse. Then Frank lays out his past, present and what he hopes will be his ideal and probably ordinary future – with her. Just like that. GLENN KENNY

The 10-minute opening scene of the 2001 biopic Ali, starring Will Smith, a visual storytelling master class, sees the boxer as Louisville Lip, ironically silent, while training with Sonny Liston for his 1964 heavyweight bout. For this kinetic volley, Mann alternates between a rough performance by the Sam Cooke Club, a Malcolm X speech, and the boxer’s meeting with his rival and a trainer (Jamie Foxx). All of this is connected through Ali’s intense training and memories of his childhood at Jim Crow South: the colored part of a bus and Emmett Till’s face on a front page of a newspaper. Mann’s impressive study of Ali’s inwardness perfectly introduces the impressionable man rather than the invincible pop culture icon he would become. ROBERT DANIELS

Mann’s great romance with the cinema began when, in 1936, at the age of 4, he saw the “last of the Mohicans” in a church cellar. For Mann, James Fenimore Cooper’s story was a “war zone love story,” embodied in Daniel Day-Lewis’ Hawkeye, who fights with Madeleine Stowe’s British émigré Cora to protect both his adopted native family and his future. Cerebral stuff, but man communicates the powerful ideas of the 1992 film through eye contact. The first confirmation of the characters’ appeal is a star contest that spans 40 seconds as the music tiptoes into the shadows. While “I’ll find you!” has become the meme, this moment draws on the kid in man who was once that appreciative boy who just knew he liked what he saw. Amy Nicholson

Mann’s 2009 gangster film “Public Enemies” is a 1930 Ford with a brand new engine. His preference for mixing classic melodramatic impulses with new video technology is noticed when John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) get to know each other over dinner. She looks out of place in her glamorous restaurant in her “three-dollar dress” and asks what he does for a living. He says matter-of-factly: “I’m robbing banks.” Depp and Cotillard play the scene with Old Hollywood glamor, but Mann’s digital eye (with cameraman Dante Spinotti) gives the meet-cute a modern electricity. The director captures precise details in her expressions and goes into the frankness of Dillinger’s admission and the magic of Frechette’s impotence. Here you shake up a genre like a good cocktail. Kyle Turner

Cursed by a chaotic production history, “The Keep” (1983) has developed into a trippy, fascinating curiosity. As with most of my favorite man scenes, my favorite in this film is not one of its vaunted set pieces, but a quieter, almost quiet segment. In it, madness takes over a Romanian village after Nazis unknowingly liberated the malevolent entity contained in a centuries-old fortress. A priest drinks his dog’s blood, a white horse wanders the deserted streets, sheets flutter on a clothesline. It’s incredibly quiet. This is man in the field of Werner Herzog, to a Tangerine Dream soundtrack that answers Popol Vuh’s music for “Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes” and “Nosferatu the Vampyre”. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

There’s a lot to love about “The Last of the Mohicans” (not least as Daniel Day-Lewis pronounces “Kentucky”), but I’ve definitely seen it in full several times just to get through to the end. The last seven minutes of the film, almost completely free of dialogue, must be one of Mann’s greatest sequences. Call it a music video that serves as a finale if you want, but the combination of movement and emotion, human distress and natural size, all held together by one of the best film scores of the nineties makes it undeniable. GILBERT CRUZ

As a reliable trendsetter, Mann has often played with cutting-edge technology, and “Collateral” used novel high-resolution video to capture the cascading properties of light in a Los Angeles nighttime setting. In the finale, Cruise’s visiting killer attempting to kill a prosecutor (Jada Pinkett Smith) in a downtown skyscraper cuts the power supply and pursues her through a law library lit by almost nothing but the sprawling, indifferent cityscape beyond. Tension becomes a matter of sheer light and shadow, as the silhouette of a wandering murderer is difficult to distinguish from dancing architectural reflections in glass. The scene has possibly the most inspired use of mirrors since The Lady From Shanghai. BEN KENIGSBERG

Blurred white dots above the blackness. Maybe stars in space. A golf ball picking machine drives by and its lamps glow alien. It’s night on the driving range where a lonely Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) relaxes with a bucket of balls. But a slow pan shows another golfer in the distance. The metal noise of his club makes Wigand nervous. A close-up of a golf ball crashing into the net. The floodlights turn off. Long shadows, aquamarines and an opera score. Has our insider been followed or is the scary scene evidence of his paranoia? NATALIA WINKELMAN

Where to Watch: “Thief” is available on HBO Max. Ali, Collateral, The Fortress, Heat, The Insider, The Last of the Mohicans, and Public Enemies can be rented or owned on major platforms.

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Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros Dies at 63; Helped Ballet in Miami

Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros Dies at 63; Helped Ballet in Miami

The company’s debut program focused on works by George Balanchine – the founder of the City Ballet, whose repertoire still dominates that of Miami City – but also included Mr. Gamonet’s “Transtangos,” which became the company’s signature.

Updated

March 28, 2021, 3:40 p.m. ET

Mr. Gamonet was prolific, creating several ballets each season. He described himself as a neoclassical choreographer who was indebted to Balanchine, but also to the theatrics of his parents. His offer ranged from remakes of Spanish classics such as “Paquita” and “Carmen” to original pieces by Bach and swing music in “Big Band Supermegatroid”.

In a 1989 Washington Post review, Alan M. Kriegsman wrote that Mr. Gamonet’s works showed “a talent full of flair and flavor and an instinctive sense of dance rhetoric, but also, not unexpectedly, some compositional flaws and immaturity. ”

Music always came first for Mr. Gamonet, with careful study of the score. “Two in the morning,” recalled Mr. Mursuli, “and he would still be preparing and making notes on the score with his headphones on.”

Ballerina Iliana Lopez, who played many roles in Mr. Gamonet’s plays for Miami City, said, “He came with the choreography in mind,” adding, “He made me feel beautiful and free in his work, and not every choreographer can do that. “

During rehearsal and classes, Mr. Gamonet was often weird, nicknamed everyone, but he expected the dancers to work as hard as he did. “He always said, ‘Nobody’s hand is tied to the bar,'” said Mr. Mursuli. “If you didn’t want to work hard, you could go.” But, he added, Mr. Gamonet was also generous: “I can’t tell you how many times he has helped dancers who have no money.”

In 2000, Mr. Gamonet’s position with the Miami City Ballet was eliminated. From 2004 to 2009 he ran his own company in Miami, Ballet Gamonet. At the Ballet Nacional del Peru, he revived his earlier works and created new ones, including a full-length “Romeo and Juliet” in 2019.

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Bowen Yang Addresses AAPI Hate Crimes on SNL Weekend Replace

Bowen Yang Addresses AAPI Hate Crimes on SNL Weekend Update

Bowen. Yang. Pic.twitter.com/PWxQO1KPQu

– Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 28, 2021

Bowen Yang is one of the funniest performers Saturday night live has seen the seasons, but on March 27th it took on a more serious tone to address mounting racism and hate crimes against Asian Americans. Yang joined Colin Jost and Michael Che on the Weekend Update, jokingly as “Asian Cast Member” on the series – and admitted that he gave Jost the title. Jokes aside, however, Yang’s segment focused on the resilience of the AAPI community and how people have to do “more” than absolutely necessary to support them.

“If someone’s personality beats Asian grandmas, it’s not dialogue. I have an Asian grandma – you want to hit her, there is nothing in common, mom,” said Yang, referring to San Francisco resident, 75-year-old Xiao Zhen Xie. “I see my friends donating, and that’s great, but then I tell them do more. You order in Chinese restaurants? Great. Do more. Let me know when you feed your white chicken feet. You have meanwhile cried Threatening? Congratulation. I sobbed into my boner for Steven Yeun. Do more. “

He continued, “So why are you telling me you gave your manicurist a good tip? Let me know if you get on your knees and scrub her feet while she looks at your cell phone. Do more.” Yang admitted that as a comedian he “doesn’t have all the answers,” but he knows he’ll find them by looking further than an Instagram post. “I’m not just looking for them online. I look around. The GoFundMe for Xiao Zhen Xie, the grandmother who fought back against her attacker, raised $ 900,000 which she immediately returned to the community. There we are as Asians. Now come and meet us there. “

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Eurovision Track Contest Disqualifies Belarus Over Political Lyrics

Eurovision Song Contest Disqualifies Belarus Over Political Lyrics

The long unrest in Belarus has had an impact on this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The organizers have excluded the country from competing for songs that have been found to have repeatedly violated rules that exclude political content.

The country’s original song entry, “Ya Nauchu Tebya” (I’ll teach you) by the band Galasy ZMesta, was criticized by opposition groups who claim that lyrics like “I’ll teach you to keep the line” endorsed President Aleksandr G Lukashenkos violence against protests against the government. Eurovision fans launched an online petition urging organizers to withdraw Belarus from the competition.

This month the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the international music spectacle, wrote to the Belarusian national broadcaster BTRC that the program was not eligible for participation in the musical talent show in the Dutch city of Rotterdam this May.

“The song calls into question the apolitical nature of the competition,” said the broadcasting union’s statement.

Belarus was given the opportunity to submit a modified version of the song or a new melody. After evaluating the replacement, the union issued a further statement on Friday evening that “the new submission is also against the rules” and that Belarus will be disqualified.

Belarus was ravaged by large-scale protests for weeks last year after Mr Lukashenko won a landslide victory in a sham election for many Western governments in August. His security forces then brutally cracked down on mass demonstrations.

Both songs, which the Eastern European nation submitted for Eurovision this year, have been criticized because they were viewed by many as texts and images close to the government. The band performing the songs, Galasy ZMesta, also found something on their website that could be interpreted as an anti-protest message. Targeting people who are “trying to destroy the land we love and live in,” she added, “We cannot remain indifferent to them”.

The rules of Eurovision state that the event is non-political and that “no texts, speeches, gestures of political, commercial or similar nature are allowed in the competition”.

Belarus started participating in Eurovision in 2004 and has hired one participant every year since then. So it knew what it was doing when it entered songs with political news, said Oliver Adams, correspondent for Wiwibloggs, a widely read website for Eurovision news.

Although the coronavirus pandemic stopped the 2020 Eurovision grand finale, more than 180 million people saw the competition in 2019. As the world’s longest-running annual television music competition, it has amassed a highly dedicated following of enthusiastic fans.

The competition, which began 65 years ago, cemented its place as a cultural phenomenon last year with a Netflix movie gently mocking its eccentricity and obsessive fandom.

It is rare for countries to be attracted to Eurovision for submitting tunes with political overtones, but it has happened before. Georgia submitted the song “We Don’t Wanna Put In” for the 2009 competition in Moscow, but the organizers turned it down because it contained obvious references to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, including the play on words in the song title. Georgia withdrew from the competition that year, but denied that the song contained “political statements”.

That year, Armenia also withdrew from Eurovision. The public broadcaster attributed the decision in part to the political consequences of the conflict with Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“This is not the first time political tensions have found their way into Eurovision,” said Mx. Adams, who uses the gender-neutral courtesy title instead of Mr or Mrs.

“These problems with the Eurovision outer bubble sometimes intrude into the competition,” he added, “but ultimately they will never break it apart.”

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Inside Husavik’s Oscar Bid for a ‘Eurovision Track Contest’ Movie Anthem

Inside Husavik's Oscar Bid for a 'Eurovision Song Contest' Film Anthem

HUSAVIK, Iceland – In the back room of an empty seaside hotel one Monday, a group of locals anxiously gathered around a computer to broadcast live the 93rd Academy Awards nominations, waiting to see if their campaign was successful.

The good news came shortly after 1 p.m. and residents heard the name of their town say again in an American accent: “Husavik”, a song from the Netflix movie “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga”. was nominated for the best original song.

The song takes its name from this tiny coastal town that is also home to the main characters in the film, and residents have been working for weeks to give the song an Oscar nomination.

“I’m sick of it,” when I heard the news, said Orlygur Orlygsson, 37, one of the activists gathered at the hotel. “The film gave Husavik worldwide recognition, and we wanted to do the same for the song.” Still, he was shocked by the nomination, he said.

Orlygsson is possibly the most famous fan of “Fire Saga” among the 2,300 people who live in this port city on the north coast of Iceland. He owns a cafe called Ja Ja Ding Dong, named after a silly song from the movie. And in February, when “Husavik” was one of the 15 titles on the academy’s longlist for best song, Orlygsson launched the campaign to convince members of the academy to nominate him.

“Fire Saga” tells the story of two musicians from Husavik, played by Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams. The couple – who are “probably not” brother and sister – are selected by default to represent Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest after a ship exploded with more prominent Icelandic singers.

Let’s go into the world of “neon lights and billboards”, although in the end they find that there is no place like home. “Husavik” is their Eurovision act, the triumphant climax of the film.

When the film hit Netflix in June, critics weren’t impressed. Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for the New York Times: “This covered farce whips slapstick and cheese into an authentic soufflé of tastelessness.”

But fans of the Eurovision Song Contest, which draws 200 million television viewers each year, embraced the film in a pandemic year when the actual competition was canceled for the first time since its inception in 1956. And once the residents of Husavik started their online campaign, thousands of these fans spread the word on social media.

The campaign shows a fictional Husavik resident named Oskar Oskarsson, who raves about the city in a video published on the campaign website, in which only “another Oskar” is missing.

In the ironic video, a woman pretends that a fish is an Oscar statue and residents leave gifts to elves to help with the campaign. “People in Husavik are very excited,” said the campaign website.

The video was viewed up to 200,000 times on YouTube and social media platforms, according to the organizers.

The actor in the video is Sigurdur Illugason, a local house painter who is now performing in the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” in the Husavik Theater Club for a masked audience of 50 people.

Kristjan Magnusson, the mayor of Husavik, said the main value of the campaign is to lift the spirits of the people in the city. “The fun of getting together for a big project is the most important thing,” he said. “The rest is a bonus.”

Molly Sanden, who sings for McAdams’ character on the track, praised the Husavik people for gathering behind the song. “The campaign shows that the city has the heart and the spirit that the song is about,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in Sweden.

She said she hoped to visit Husavik once the pandemic is over to see the mountains, northern lights and seagulls described in the song lyrics.

The lyrics could apply to most of Iceland’s coastal communities, and the demo of the song was written with Husavik as a placeholder before the film’s director and producers visited Iceland to decide on a location for their film.

“I first heard a demo of the song when we were driving around Iceland looking for locations,” said Leifur Dagfinnsson, who runs the local production company True North that worked on Fire Saga.

The original plan, he said, was to find a town in the southern half of the island near the capital, Reykjavik, in order to save money on transportation. Husavik is closer to the Arctic Circle and has never been the setting for an international film production.

But the strong demonstration with Husavik was the decisive factor in favor of the northern city.

“Husavik is easier to pronounce than other Icelandic city names,” said Dagfinnsson. That gave him a clear textual advantage over Stykkisholmur (Stikk-is-hohlm-ur), a town he said “made sense from a budgetary point of view”.

Husavik has more whale watching boats than fishing vessels, and unlike the town in Fire Saga, there are half a dozen bars.

Tourism is the city’s main industry, and part of the reason a group of adults had time to campaign for the song is the widespread underemployment created by the pandemic. Residents hope that tourists will sing the city’s name in their car’s GPS as soon as Iceland allows vaccinated foreign visitors.

Leonardo Piccione, an Italian artist who lives in Husavik, noted that the tiny town had linked “two of the greatest television events in the world” and added, “I think you can work with that.”

The activists hope to build on the popularity of the Oscar nomination to open a Eurovision museum next to Café Ja Ja Ding Dong with memorabilia from Icelandic contestants who have never won the competition. And of course they will post more Oskar Oskarsson videos when the Academy members start voting next month.

It is widely predicted that “Speak Now” from “One Night in Miami” or Golden Globe winner “Io Si (Seen)” from “The Life Ahead” will win the best original song. Also nominated are “Fight for You” from “Judas and the Black Messiah” and “Hear My Voice” from “The Trial of the Chicago 7”, the third Netflix film in this category.

Win or lose, “Husavik” is now part of the urban fabric. The local soccer team, the Volsungs, play the pre-game soundtrack, and the children’s choir regularly plays the Icelandic portion of the song.

Fire Saga executive producer Savan Kotecha co-wrote the lyrics for the song using Google Translate for the Icelandic lines and Google Street View to get a feel for the city.

“It never occurred to me that the song would have a special meaning for the people there,” he said in an interview. “Now we really want to win for Husavik.”

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New York Theaters Are Darkish, however These Home windows Mild Up With Artwork

New York Theaters Are Dark, but These Windows Light Up With Art

Like many cultural organizations, the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan has streamed pandemic programs on its website.

A few days ago, the theater added a new type of broadcast to its repertoire: two 60-inch screens were installed in windows overlooking the sidewalk, speakers were installed high up on the building’s facade, and a collection of films were shown in which people read Poems in Ireland, London and New York.

One recent morning, Ciaran O’Reilly, the Representative’s production director, was standing by the theater on West 22nd Street looking at the screens as they showed Joseph Aldous, a British actor, reading a poem, “An Advancement of Learning” by Seamus Heaney describing a short break with a rat along a river bank.

“These are not dark windows,” said O’Reilly. “They are illuminated with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who perform.”

Over the past year, theaters and other performing arts in New York have turned to creative means of bringing work to the public, and sometimes bringing a bit of life to otherwise enclosed facades. These agreements continue, even though New York state has announced that a third of the art venues will reopen in April and some outdoor shows like Shakespeare will resume in the park.

However, the panes of glass have created a safe space. At the end of last year, for example, the artists Christopher Williams, Holly Bass and Raja Feather Kelly performed at different times in the lobby or in a smaller vestibule-like part of the New York Live Arts building in Chelsea. All were visible to the outside through glass.

Three other performances by Kelly of “Hysteria,” in which he takes on the role of an alien in pink and explores what is called “pop culture and its suppression of queer black subjectivity” on the Live Arts website, are for the 8th through the 20th century Scheduled April 10th.

Another street-level performance took place behind glass in Downtown Brooklyn last December, where the Brooklyn Ballet staged nine 20-minute shows of selected dances from its “Nutcracker”.

The ballet turned its studio into a theater, which its artistic director, Lynn Parkerson, referred to as a “jewel box” theater. chose dances that socially distanced masked ballerinas; and used barricades on the sidewalk to restrict the audience.

“It was a way to bring some people back to something they love and enjoy and maybe forget,” Parkerson said in an interview. “It felt like a real achievement.”

She said live performances were scheduled for April and would include ballet members in “Pas de Deux” with Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Gavotte et Six Doubles” with live music by pianist Simone Dinnerstein.

Pop-up concerts were organized by the Kaufman Music Center in a store on the Upper West Side – the address is not given but is described as “not hard to find” on the center’s website – north of Columbus Circle.

These performances, which run through the end of April, are announced in the store on the same day to limit crowds and encourage social distancing. Participants included violinist Gil Shaham, mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams, the Gabrielle Stravelli Trio, and the JACK Quartet.

St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is showing Julian Alexander and Khadijat Oseni’s “Supremacy Project,” a public art that explores the nature of injustice in American society.

The word “domination” superimposes a photo of police officers in riot gear, and there are photos of Michael T. Boyd by Sandra Bland, Elijah McClain, and Emmett Till.

And at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown, Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day places photographs of sculptures of human figures in display cases to encourage viewers to expect definitions of beauty and race. These exhibitions are part of a rotating public art series organized by artist, activist and writer Avram Finkelstein and set designer and costume designer David Zinn.

The goal, said Finkelstein in January when the series was announced, was to show works that “use dormant facades constructively to create a temporary street museum” and “remind the city of its buoyancy and originality”.

O’Reilly of the Irish Representative said the theater was heard from last year by Amy Holmes, executive director of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, who believed the theater was a good place to show some of the short films the organization had commissioned Make Make poetry a part of an immersive experience.

The series shown in the theater, titled “Poetic Reflections: Words on the Window-pane,” includes 21 short plays by Irish filmmaker Matthew Thompson.

Featuring contemporary poets reading their own works, as well as poets and actors reading the works of others, including William Butler Yeats and JM Synge, they were created in collaboration with Poetry Ireland in Dublin, the Druid Theater in Galway and 92nd Street Y Produced in New York and Poet in the City of London.

“I think there is something special about encountering the arts in unexpected ways in the city, especially an art form like poetry,” said Holmes.

Readers of the films include people who were born in Ireland, immigrants to Ireland, people who live in the UK, and some from the US, like Denice Frohman, who was born and raised in New York City.

Frohman was on the theater screens Tuesday night reading lines like “The beaches are fenced and nobody knows the names of the dead” from her poem “Puertopia” when Erin Madorsky and Dorian Baker stopped to listen.

Baker said he saw the films in the window symbolizing a “revival of poetic energy”.

Madorsky had been to theatrical performances regularly before the pandemic, but now she’s missed that connection, she said, and was delighted to have a dramatic reading on the way home.

She added that the sound of the verses read contrasted with what she called the city’s “standard” backdrop of booming horns, sirens and rumbling garbage trucks.

“I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “There’s something so reassuring about your voice that it just pulled me into it.”

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Beverly Cleary, Writer of Ramona Quimby Books, Dies at 104

Beverly Cleary, Author of Ramona Quimby Books, Dies at 104

Beverly Cleary died on March 25 at the age of 104, according to a statement from HarperCollins. The beloved children’s author was responsible for creating some of the most recognizable characters in children’s literature, including Ramona Quimby, Beezus Quimby, Ralph S. Mouse, and others. Beverly died in Carmel, California, where she had lived since the 1960s, and is survived by her two children, Malcolm and Marianne, three grandchildren and one great-grandson.

“We’re sorry that Beverly Cleary, one of the most popular children’s authors of all time, passed away yesterday, March 25, at the age of 104,” said Suzanne Murphy, president and editor of HarperCollins Children’s Books, in a statement. “In retrospect, Beverly often said, ‘I had a happy life,’ and generations of readers consider themselves lucky, too lucky to have the very real characters she created, including Henry Huggins, Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Ralph S. Mouse as true friends who shaped their youth. “After hearing of Beverly’s death, a Facebook commenter wrote,” The first author I ever loved. May you rest in a well-deserved peace. Thank you for all that You have given millions of budding readers. “

Beverly’s 55-year writing career began in 1950 with the publication of Henry Hugginsthrough which she began to set a standard for realistic children’s literature with her authentic storybook characters. Her books have since sold more than 85 million copies and have been translated into 29 different languages. During her lifetime, Cleary received the American Library Association’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 1975, the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal in 1980, and the University of Southern Mississippi Silver Medallion in 1982, among others. In 1984 she was the American author for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award and in 2000 was named “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress.

Donations on Beverly’s behalf can go to the Library Foundation of Portland or the University of Washington Information School.

We’re sad that Beverly Cleary, one of the most popular children’s authors of all time, has passed away …

Posted by Beverly Cleary on Friday March 26th, 2021

Image source: Alan McEwan