CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Painting by Bo Bartlett via Fast Company.

Good news! Well, more like a confirmation for the skeptical ones. "A team of social scientists at the University of Arkansas is trying to scientifically prove the benefits of exposure to art. What they found, in a recent study published in the journals Education Next and Educational Researcher, is that students who are exposed to cultural institutions, like museums and performing arts centers, not only have higher levels of engagement with the arts but display greater tolerance, historical empathy, as well as better educational memory and critical thinking skills". Read full Jennifer Miller's article in Fast Company.

Movie still via The New Yorker

Joel and Ethan Coen’s new film Inside Llewyn Davis UK premiere is the 24th of January, and after reading Richard Brody's article it in The New Yorker is worth saving the date. Inside Llewyn Davis 'is a dramatization of an aphorism by Nietzsche about a pair of common “mistakes”: “Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find—a very remarkable human being.”
The Coens make no mistake in the discovery of a very remarkable human being behind an average artist, and they look upon their protagonist—a struggling folk singer in the Greenwich Village scene in 1961—with extraordinary sympathy and curiosity.' Read full article here. E.T.P. 7'

Jonas Mekas via The Atlantic.

Alexis C. Madrigal in The Atlantic tells us that one of the best websites on the Internet belongs to Jonas Mekas. "From the introductory video, in which Mekas welcomes his friends to the site and plays the bugle, to the videos of Alan Ginsberg or Mekas playing with his first Sony Camcorder, the site exudes the joy of creation." We visited and it's absolutely true, and as Mekas say "it's very exciting!" One awesome place for inspiring procrastination, updated almost daily with photos, films, documents and stories by the lovely 91 years old genius. So go ahead and read Alexis's article here (E.T.P. 3'), and visit Jonas Mekas's website here (E.T.P. 30-90').

Image via The New Yorker.

The New Yorker asked some contributors like Dan Chiasson, Teju Cole and Junot Diaz, for their favorite books they read this year. Most of them named new books, some picked older favorites. Have a look at this interesting list. Part I and Part II. E.T.P. 12' (total).

Movie still Frances Ha. Creenplay by Greta Grewig.

14 Screenwriters writing. "In the starry constellation of literary pursuits, screenwriters have always existed, reputationally if not financially, somewhere due south of novelists and maybe southeast of poets and playwrights. With their riches and big-screen credits, people who wrote for the movies used to be able to at least lord over lowly TV writers, but even that dynamic has reversed in recent years. TV writers are now routinely lauded as auteurs. Screenwriters are still screenwriters, i.e., the people who write the scripts that the directors and actors will eventually rewrite, mangle or ignore." Have a look at what Greta Grewig, Ethan Hawke and Richard Likelater have to say about screenwriting in this article in The New York Times. E.T.P. 7'