New this week: Bruce Springsteen, 'The Big Brunch' and Sonic
This weekโs new entertainment releases include albums by Bruce Springsteen and Louis Tomlinson, Olivia Wilde's โDon't Worry Darlingโ hits HBO Max, and Dan Levy of Emmy-winning โSchittโs Creekโ fame has โThe Big Brunch,โ a cooking competition he created and hosts.
PBS chief defends filmmaker Ken Burns, touts diversity
FILE - Ken Burns, director of the PBS documentary series "Country Music," takes part in a panel discussion during the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour on July 29, 2019, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Speaking Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, to the Television Critics Association in a virtual Q&A, PBS chief executive Paula Kerger rejected a filmmakers claim that public TVs long relationship with Burns has come at the expense of diversity. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)LOS ANGELES โ The chief executive of PBS rejected a filmmakerโs argument that public TV's 40-year relationship with documentarian Ken Burns has come at the expense of diversity. โWe create lots of opportunities for many filmmakers,โ Kerger said. "The stuff thatโs coming up is incredibly diverse in every sense of the meaning of that word,โ Burns said.
Publishing saw upheaval in 2020, but 'books are resilient'
(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)NEW YORK โ Book publishing in 2020 was a story of how much an industry can change and how much it can, or wants to, remain the same. To its benefit and to its dismay, publishing was drawn into the events of the moment. Penguin Random House, among other initiatives, asked all employees to read Ibram X. Kendiโs โHow To Be an Anti-Racist.โ Kendi later presided over a company town hall. Macmillan CEO Don Weisberg, who cited a wide range of diversity programs at the publishing house that began before โAmerican Dirt,โ said he โunderstands the skepticism." The CEO of Penguin Random House U.S., Madeline McIntosh, noted how well book publishing could meet the public's needs during the pandemic and other events of 2020.
Jan Morris, author and transgender pioneer, dies at 94
NEW YORK โ Jan Morris, the celebrated journalist, historian, world traveler and fiction writer who in middle age became a pioneer of the transgender movement, has died at 94. Morris died in Wales on Friday morning, according to her literary representative, United Agents. The British author lived as James Morris until the early 1970s, when she underwent surgery at a clinic in Casablanca and renamed herself Jan Morris. Morris went on to receive praise for her immersive travel writing, with Venice and Trieste among the favored locations, and for her โPax Britannicaโ histories about the British empire, a trilogy begun as James Morris and concluded as Jan Morris. Born James Humphrey Morris in Somerset, with a Welsh father and English mother, Morris remembered questioning her gender by age 4.
Virus-hit Paris bookshop Shakespeare & Co appeals for help
A man walks by the closed English and American literature Shakespeare and Co. bookstore in Paris, France, Thursday, Nov. 05, 2020. Since sending the email appeal, Whitman says she has been โoverwhelmedโ by the offers of help Shakespeare and Company has received. Founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, Shakespeare & Company became a creative hub for expatriate writers including Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Sylvia Whitman looked to the past for a solution to her new problem. A lot of expats had to leave Paris, as it was too expensive, so she and her friends set up a Friends of Shakespeare and Company,โ Whitman said.
Little to celebrate in Pamplona with no running of the bulls
Known for its races with bulls running along cobbled streets, the festival was popularized by Ernest Hemingways 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises and was last called off during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. With more than 28,000 deaths from the novel virus and an economy in the doldrums following a strict nationwide lockdown, local authorities say there is little to celebrate. They gathered at the city hall square at noon, the time a rocket known as Chupinazo opens the 9-day festival in normal times. Revelers from all around the world respond to the rocket by bathing each other with red wine and champagne. Instead a large sign from the city halls facade displayed the slogan #WeWillExperienceThem, an invitation to revelers to return for next years celebrations.