Names and faces
■ The twisty final season of Game of Thrones saw one of its most universally loved characters, Daenerys Targaryen, devolve into one of its most polarizing figures. Taylor Swift says that she can relate. “People love new female artists so much because they’re able to explain that woman’s success,” Swift said in the new issue of Rolling Stone released Wednesday. “Look at the Game of Thrones finale.
I specifically really related to Daenerys’ storyline because for me it portrayed that it is a lot easier for a woman to attain power than to maintain it.” During a lengthy interview, Swift sounded off on a number of hot-button topics, from her highly publicized feuds with rapper Kanye West and music executive Scooter Braun — to the mother of dragons’ controversial, murderous turn at the conclusion of HBO’s hit fantasy epic. Though the “Lover” singer clarified she didn’t condone Daenerys’ jaw-dropping decision to set fire to hundreds of helpless civilians, she could understand where Emilia Clarke’s dragon queen was coming from. “It’s a total metaphor!” Swift said. “Obviously I didn’t want Daenerys to become that kind of character, but in taking away what I chose to take away from it, I thought maybe they’re trying to portray her climbing the ladder to the top was a lot easier than maintaining it, because for me, the times when I felt like I was going insane was when I was trying to maintain my career in the same way that I ascended.”
■ Academy Award-winning director Pawel Pawlikowski and other top Polish filmmakers are demanding artistic independence for the nation’s most prestigious film festival after a politically charged movie, Solid Gold, was withdrawn. The filmmakers guild wants the selection procedure for the ongoing annual Polish Film Festival in Gdynia to become independent from its organizers. These include the Culture Ministry, which tends to promote art in line with the conservative government’s policy. The appeal came after the last-minute withdrawal of a movie inspired by the Amber Gold pyramid scheme revealed in 2012, when the current government’s opponents were in power. It was one of Poland’s biggest financial scandals in which some 19,000 investors lost more than $225 million. Solid Gold was generally believed to be harmful to the opposition ahead of Oct. 13 elections, but its producers had it withdrawn after its director, Jacek Bromski, refused to re-edit it. Government-controlled television TVP is among the producers. Afterward, Pawlikowski and other filmmakers like Agnieszka Holland and Malgorzata Szumowska demanded that the festival have an independent artistic director and that film selection be made independently from the organizing body.