Lyn Gardner loves it: “Queues for sold-out theatre shows (and to get into Edinburgh venues) are often very friendly places – after all, you’ve a shared interest. In my time I’ve made one lifelong friend … and had interesting conversations with people I’d otherwise never have met. … An added pleasure is that you tend to see the same people you queued with, later the same evening.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Roger Ebert, 70
“[He] reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and [he] was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic” – and the first movie writer ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism.
Frenemies, A Love Story: An Oral History Of Siskel And Ebert
“In recognition of [Roger Ebert’s] life and achievements, we reprint below excerpts from an oral history of his legendary partnership with fellow film critic Gene Siskel, originally published in 2012 in the first issue of The Chicagoan.”
Roger Ebert’s Camp Masterpiece (Don’t Tell Us You Forgot It)
“In the wake of Roger Ebert’s death, most will remember him for his work as a critic, but a small niche of fans will fete him for a more obscure but nonetheless worthy reason: his writing of the screenplay for the 1970 cult classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”
France Announces Major Program To Aid Struggling Booksellers
The culture minister “announced that a fund of €5m would be created for loans to booksellers with cashflow problems and that the budget of ADELC, the association that subsidises booksellers, would rise from €4m to €7m to help outlets when they change hands.”
Seven National Ballet Of Cuba Dancers Defect
“The seven young members of the internationally acclaimed National Ballet of Cuba who defected last month after a tour in Mexico came to the United States in search of wider artistic horizons, one of them has declared.”
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, 85, Novelist And Screenwriter For Merchant-Ivory
“For years, people who read Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s novels assumed she was born in India. … [But she was] a German Jew displaced by war to England, who married an Indian man and settled in his country. She absorbed enough of subcontinental culture to portray it with clarity and comic sensibility in books that earned her comparisons to Jane Austen.”
Revisiting Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s New Yorker Stories
The magazine has made six of the late author’s short stories available for non-subscribers.
Corcoran Gallery Announces Planned Partnership With Univ. Of Maryland
“The Corcoran’s board of trustees voted, 13 to 0, Wednesday afternoon to sign a preliminary agreement to explore a long-term partnership with Maryland that could include shared faculty; joint student degrees; cooperation on developing new courses; … and expansion of the Corcoran College of Art and Design by several hundred students.”
Stricken Franz Welser-Möst Not Yet Ready To Return To Podium
The conductor, who withdrew from a Vienna State Opera productio of Parsifal after opening night’s Act One due to severe back pain and low blood pressure, won’t be returning to the Cleveland Orchestra for next week’s concerts.