Books: Deadwood actor Jim Beaver’s stunning memoir of loss [via Jacket Copy]
Dance/Opera: Being a Merce Cunningham ballerina makes you cry [via TONY]
Design: Zaha Hadid’s pop-up Chicago eco-pavilion [via Inhabitat]
Film: Slumdog filmmakers donate $743,000 to slum kiddies [via The Times]
Music: The Pirate Bay get a year in prison and $3.6m fine. [via Boing Boing]
Television: True Blood‘s hot campaign for Season Two [via THR]
Theatre: Next to Normal gets the awards shaft [via Arts Beat]
Visual Arts: Got 10K? Invest in a Banksy. [via Bloomberg]
Web: Ashton Kutcher beats CNN in Twitter showdown [via CNN]

Well it is for now, according to The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman, but there’s still plenty of time for Universal to tone things down in time for the July release. Per her post: “Among the objectionable scenes is one in which Bruno — a gay Austrian fashionista played by Baron Cohen — appears to have anal sex with a man on camera. In another, the actor goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor.” Read More »

For all the geeks in mourning: Top Ten Battlestar Galactica Moments

“He was the only man to win the grand prize on India’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” And though he wasn’t a slumdog, he has now devoted his life to helping impoverished children.”

“It is probably fair to say that Andrea Palladio, who died in 1580, is the patron saint of every McMansion that has ever cluttered the American landscape, because it was he who brought architectural aspiration to the houses of the moderately wealthy.”

Is Netflix about to get spanked?

Sylvia Plath’s son Nicholas Hughes commits suicide

The New York Times and Obama are going through a bit of a rough patch…

Robert Greenwald’s first “real-time” web documentary a bid to help shape policy in Afghanistan

Morbid fun: 25 Dead (Famous) People on Twitter

Bruce Willis marries Demi 2.0

“The House of Juliet, with the legendary balcony where Juliet Capulet is said to have pined for Romeo, will soon be used as a venue for weddings, city officials in Verona have announced.”

Alas, poor Julia: We guess people care more about Nic Cage in space than we thought.

An interview with our favorite TV guru, Josh Schwartz

And finally: DRUMS!

The first 22 minutes of Bruno is a hit: “In the footage, the very fey Austrian-accented Bruno auditions a series of (real) parents. One after another agrees without flinching to let him do terrible, dangerous things to their children — from extreme dieting and liposuction to letting them pose as Jesus on the cross — just to get a job.”

Sports architecture: The New Yorker reviews the new stadiums for the Yanks and the Mets.

Three people injured, six arrested at an America’s Next Top Model casting call in New York City. Maybe they were all channeling Naomi Campbell?

Spoiler alert: Digg’s Kevin Rose talks about the new iPhone 3.0 before Apple’s official announcement tomorrow.

Listen to readings by Joseph Heller and Vladimir Nabokov at the New York Times audio archive. Or, if you prefer your authors alive, there’s Jonathan Safran Foer.

How Cameron Crowe is like Coldplay

Nelly Furtado once wanted to be like Ani Difranco?! (Oh, and she’s launching her own indie record label.)

Film trend: “Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, which employed Indian settings, and, revolutionarily, Indian actors, may have also helped popularize India as a film destination.”

Michael Jackson is working on Moonwalk 2.0.

In real life Cooper Nielson from Center Stage is more taskmaster teach than ballet badass and Jody Sawyer isn’t in his dance company. :(

Sci Fi Channel Has a New Name: Now, It’s Syfy

We were sitting around with friends after Slumdog Millionaire win Best Picture when someone who hadn’t seen the film said that he couldn’t wait because he wanted to learn more about the slums of India. His words made us wince because a. how could we not, and b. we think (and maybe we’re wrong here) that there are plenty of Americans who are going to check out Danny Boyle’s fantasy flick for the same reason: a bit of cultural tourism.

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Oh, Freida Pinto. When we first saw you in Slumdog Millionaire you were so beautiful that it almost made us like girls. You seemed sweet and vulnerable, especially with that cut on your cheek. So we’re only saying this with only your best interests at heart: You need to stay away from Woody Allen.

Yes, we know that Penelope Cruz just took home an Oscar for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but Woody’s a mixed bag these days. And we’re not sure that you’ve got her moxie — beneath that vintage Balmain gown lurked an actress who would have cut a bitch if Nate Silver’s wack-a-doodle Best Supporting Actress prediction had been right. We feel like you’re the more sensitive type, who would have looked away from the camera while quietly shedding a perfectly-formed tear.

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“The movie piles impossibility on impossibility.”

- Salman Rushdie weighs in on Slumdog Millionaire in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also had some choice things to say about other book-to-film Oscar nominees The Reader (“[a] leaden, lifeless movie killed by respectability”) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (“It doesn’t finally have anything to say.”). On a random note, his Wikipedia page claims: “Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. Even from early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he would later realize in his frequent cameo appearances).”

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Regardless of whether you think Slumdog Millionaire deserves to be considered a masterpiece of pseudo-magical realism or an orientalist nod to middlebrow convention, there’s no denying that the performances by the two trios of young actors are pretty extraordinary. The young Latika, Jamal, and Salim carried the film to unconventional heights of pathos, and for this it’s no surprise that the film’s adventure through the award show circuit has been tainted by controversy over the treatment and compensation of the young actors who remain residents of the poorest parts of Mumbai.

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Books: Vikas Swarup (who wrote Slumdog Millionaire) might take his next novel out of India. [Business Standard]
Dance/Opera: Watch the BBC’s Comic Relief dance competition online. [New Media Age]
Design: Nicolai Ouroussoff weighs in on the new Lincoln Center. He think it’s pretty too. [NYT]
Film: Anne Hathaway to sing and dance in the opening number of the Oscars. Nuts. Is this going to be like when she showed off on SNL? [Celebrity Cafe]
Music: Why does everyone in the UK want Beth Ditto naked? [UnBeige]
Television: Will you watch the fake Project Runway? Kelly Rowland has some serious lederhosen to fill. [EW]
Theatre: Anthony Neilson’s play Stitching has been banned in Malta in part due to “obscene contempt for the victims of Auschwitz.” [Guardian]
Visual Arts: Is Futurism really dangerous? (Or just misunderstood?) [Guardian]
Web: A little victory for old media teaches us kids an important lesson. [Pop Matters]

Book publishing is used to dire forecasts for its future; the industry’s funeral has been prematurely anticipated for decades. Publishing was supposed to be killed off at various points by television, the Internet, and the general public’s apathy toward reading. But it’s always managed to scrape by — even if, in these scattered times, it’s been increasingly on the back of huge successes like The Da Vinci Code and the Harry Potter series. The stagnant-but-relatively stable industry has also long been seen as “recession-proof”; the thinking goes that consumers will still spend on small, non-luxe goods, such as books, during a downturn.

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