DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ A Writer’s To-Do List: Learn History. Learn Chinese. Learn to Draw Comics.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-01 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When Tessa Hulls set out to write a book about three generations of women in her family, she had few illusions about how hard the task would be. The tale was geographically sprawling, and spanned a century: Her grandmother Sun Yi, a journalist in Shanghai, fled China for Hong Kong in 1957, then slowly went mad; her mother, Rose, attended an elite boarding school in Hong Kong founded in part for the mixed-race children of European expatriates, then moved to the United States in 1970. Much of her family’s story was accessible only via her grandmother’s memoir, a best seller published in Hong Kong and written in Mandarin — a language that Hulls, who was born and raised in Northern California, could not read — and through her mother, whom Hulls had spent a lifetime running away from.

Persons: Tessa, Sun Yi, Rose Locations: Shanghai, China, Hong Kong, United States, Northern California

☆ Confronting What It Means to Be Black in America Through Faith and Art
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-25 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When Mark Doox entered an Eastern Orthodox monastery in Texas in 1987, he thought he might have a calling as a monk. “It was almost like a physical vision,” he said. Doox decided then and there to become an iconographer. But as a Black man who came up in the 1960s, Doox wrestled with the racism he experienced in society and the church — and with the prospect of creating icons of a white Jesus. “I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to express this spirituality, but dealing with the existential quandaries of what it means to be Black in America?” he said.

Persons: Mark Doox, Jesus Christ, Virgin Mary, ”, Doox, “ Locations: Eastern, Texas, America

☆ Christopher Nolan, Robert Downey Jr. and Missed Connections
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-11 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Christopher Nolan and Robert Downey Jr. have each worked on some of the most lucrative and beloved superhero films of our time, many of them with enormous star-filled casts, so how is it that the two had never worked together on a movie before now, superhero or otherwise? Their paths crossed, sort of, on “Batman Begins” (more on that later). Among those nominations are three for Nolan, 53, for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay, and a best supporting actor one for Downey, 58, for his performance as Lewis Strauss, the title character’s Salieri-like nemesis. The nominations are hardly their first — counting “Oppenheimer,” Downey has received three, Nolan, eight — but neither has ever won before and now they’re both considered front-runners. The day after the Oscar nominations were announced, the two got together on the Universal studio lot to talk about how they first met, what winning an Oscar would mean to them, and why so many people didn’t notice that that balding, sweaty guy who had it in for Oppenheimer was actually Robert Downey Jr.

Persons: Christopher Nolan, Robert Downey Jr, “ Oppenheimer ”, Nolan, Downey, Lewis Strauss, character’s Salieri, Oppenheimer, ” Downey Organizations: Universal Locations: New Mexico

☆ This ‘Expats’ Star Can’t Believe She’s Actually in It
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-24 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In “Expats,” the actress Ji-young Yoo, a relative newcomer to Hollywood, shares the screen with Nicole Kidman, the Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress and producer. Yoo plays Mercy, a Columbia grad and would-be babysitter for the young son of Kidman’s Margaret, a former landscape architect and a mother of three living, none too happily, in Hong Kong. When Mercy loses her charge in a moment of distraction (yes, she was texting), it sends Margaret into — well, just imagine how Nicole Kidman might react if, say, you were texting and you lost her child. “When I watch the scenes with me and Nicole, it still feels like I was Photoshopped in,” she said in an interview last month. Premiering on Friday, the Amazon series tells the story of three women, all of them expatriates, living in Hong Kong amid the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests.

Persons: “ Expats, Ji, Yoo, Nicole Kidman, Mercy, Kidman’s Margaret, Margaret, ”, —, Nicole, Kidman, Lulu Wang’s Organizations: Hollywood, Columbia Locations: Hong Kong, —, Moulin Rouge

☆ Celebrating Literature That ‘Brings the World Close’
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Words Without Borders, one of the few magazines in the world dedicated to literature in translation, is turning 20 at a fraught time: Around the world, wars are raging. Writers are being jailed, dissident voices silenced and books banned. The answer, said Karen M. Phillips, the magazine’s executive editor and publisher, was right there, baked into their mission — to gather and celebrate international literature, and in doing so, strengthen the connection between readers and writers around the world. “Literature is a really powerful space for imagining new ways forward, or thinking through situations that are impossible if you take them head on as facts,” she said. “We’re always publishing contemporary writers who are reflecting, through their literature, the events and crises of the world.”

Persons: Karen M, Phillips, ”, “ We’re

☆ Cousins (and Co-Authors) Write a Love Letter to New York
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-30 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the new graphic novel “Roaming,” Dani and Zoe, best friends from a suburb of Toronto, meet up in Manhattan over spring break. Before long, they’re savoring their first slice of New York pizza (“huge, like a place mat!”) and getting hassled for cash by a creepy Times Square busker dressed as Elmo. Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, the cousins who wrote and illustrated the book, drew from their own memories of traveling for the first time to New York City. Mariko, 47, who grew up in Toronto, recalled being spooked by the subways, among other things. Jillian, who was raised in Calgary, remembered how electric the air felt in Times Square, and how the light was like nothing she’d ever seen.

Persons: ” Dani, Zoe, Elmo, Jillian, Mariko Tamaki, Mariko, “, ”, Dani Organizations: American Museum of, Metropolitan Museum Locations: Toronto, Manhattan, York, New York City, Hollywood, Calgary

☆ What Does It Mean to be Blind? A Writer Chronicles the Loss of His Vision.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-17 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Leland also takes on questions about being blind that many of us might never ask, or might not know whom to ask. Do blind guys want to know if the woman they’re speaking to is pretty? He made the decision after a blind woman told him that he should learn now, rather than when his sight was gone for good, an experience that for many can be an emotional tornado. The writing process, he said, kept him going despite his declining vision and accompanying worries about the future. But given the fact that he was writing about blindness, “losing vision almost felt productive.

Persons: Leland, “ I’ve, I’ve, ”, “ That’s, I’m

☆ How Manga Was Translated for America
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( Gabriel Gianordoli | Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Since manga was first introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s, American companies have wrestled with how to adapt the genre for their readers. The history of manga translation in the U.S. has been one of fits and starts, as publishers grappled with questions about how to present it to fans outside of Japan. Striking the right balance is tricky, said Frederik L. Schodt, one of the early translators of manga and the author of “Manga! : The World of Japanese Comics,” a groundbreaking work in the field of manga studies. “Readers in English should be able to enjoy the story without thinking about it being a translation,” he said.

Persons: Frederik L, ” Organizations: Comics Locations: U.S, Japan

☆ How ‘Nimona’ Helped Its Creator Explore His Emerging Identity
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The film had its beginnings in 2015, the same year the book was published, and is that rarest of Hollywood literary makeovers. For Stevenson, much of the book spoke to his own upbringing and experiences. Stevenson, 31, was born and raised in Columbia, S.C., the middle child of five siblings. After years of home-schooling and two more at the local high school, he went to the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he began posting Nimona comics online in 2012, a project that became his senior thesis. “When I first started making the comic, I didn’t consider myself a writer,” he said.

Persons: Nimona, Stevenson, ”, “, Nimona ”, Eisner, ” Stevenson, Ra Organizations: Hollywood, Netflix, Maryland Institute College of Art, ”, Fox Animation, Blue Sky Studios, DreamWorks, Media Locations: Hollywood, Burbank, Sur Monterey County, Columbia

☆ How to Be a Star by Not Giving Your All
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-31 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

IF NORA IS NOTHING LIKE many of Lee’s previous party-girl characters, neither is Lee herself. She’s a mother, for starters, of two young boys with her husband, Russ Armstrong. On set, “Greta is like a Hunter S. Thompson-meets-Fellini character,” Natasha Lyonne said in an interview. Isn’t this completely wild?”Lee, now 40, was born in Los Angeles and spent most of her childhood here. After high school, Lee attended Northwestern University in the hopes of going into musical theater.

Persons: NORA, Lee, She’s, Russ Armstrong, Greta, Thompson, Fellini, ” Natasha Lyonne, “, “ I’m, ”, ” Lee, Liza Minnelli Organizations: ”, Northwestern University Locations: Los Angeles, American

☆ Making a Michael J. Fox Movie With Michael J. Fox’s Movies
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-14 | by ( Robert Ito | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Davis Guggenheim approached Michael J. Guggenheim’s wife, the actress Elisabeth Shue, had worked with Fox before, starring as his girlfriend in the second and third installments of the “Back to the Future” series. Even so, Fox initially balked at the idea of a movie, particularly one centered on tales he had already written about in four best-selling memoirs. Guggenheim wanted to make a movie with as much life and humor as its subject, a fun, fast-paced effort not unlike, say, a movie starring Michael J. In the end, Fox relented, albeit with one request: no violins.

Search resuls for: "Robert Ito"

11 mentions found