“[His] film career spanned five decades and included leading roles in many movies that endure as icons for millions across the former Soviet Union. […] He also played leading roles in films of the brooding Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, including Mirror and Nostalgia.“
Author: Matthew Westphal
New Acropolis Museum To Charge One-Euro Admission
“[I]n a bid to boost visitor numbers in hard economic times, Culture Minister Andonis Samaras announced Wednesday [that] … admission will cost €1 ($1.4) for the first six months – as much as a public bus ticket.”
Aristotle Was Right: Cities Are Like Living Organisms
“Whether you measure miles of roadway or length of electrical cables, you find that all of these [measures of infrastructure necessary for a city] also decrease, per person, as city size increases. And all show an exponent between 0.7 and 0.9. Now comes the spooky part. The same law is true for living things. That is, if you mentally replace cities by organisms and city size by body weight, the mathematical pattern remains the same.”
$74M Plan Proposed To Reopen St. Louis’s Kiel Opera House
“The [downtown] opera house, completed in 1934, is a grand old building … [with] eclectic Classical Revival-cum-Art Deco architecture. Inside is a 3,500-seat hall and four side theaters, each capable of seating 700.” The building has been empty since 1991, but the city is now negotiating with a group “who wants to reopen the opera house as a performing arts center.”
Under Pressure, Edinburgh Film Fest Gives £300 Grant Back To Israel
“The Edinburgh International Film Festival has returned a £300 grant to the Israeli government after Ken Loach called for the event to be boycotted. The money was to be used to fund an Israeli film maker’s travel expenses to Scotland to exhibit her short film.”
NY Phil Exec To Head Berkeley’s Cal Performances
“U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau named Matías Tarnopolsky as the new director of Cal Performances. Tarnopolsky, now vice president of artistic planning at the New York Philharmonic, takes over from outgoing director Robert Cole on Aug. 10.”
Jimmy Kimmel Acts Up (Repeatedly) In Front Of ABC Advertisers
“At Tuesday afternoon’s upfront presentation [of next season’s shows] in New York, Mr. Kimmel, the host of ABC’s late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, delivered a withering, blistering monologue that took direct aim at ABC, its potential advertisers and his NBC late-night rival, Jay Leno. The assembled advertisers received his performance with a mixture of uneasy laughs and the occasional gasp.”
Medieval Wall Paintings Of Becket’s Murder Unveiled – In Spain
“As a way of asking God to forgive her father [King Henry II of England], Eleanor commissioned paintings of the murder of Becket to adorn the walls of a church in the northern Spanish town of Soria. … [T]hree decades ago, builders were stabilising the ruin when they re-discovered these medieval paintings in excellent condition.” This week, protective wood and glass were removed temporarily to reveal these paintings and raise finds for their restoration.
You Neurotic, Perfectionist Artsy Types, You’re In Trouble
“Perfectionists – that is, those who expressed ‘a strong motivation to be perfect’ and revealed a tendency toward ‘all or nothing thinking’ – were approximately 51% more likely to have died during the life of the study than those with more reasonable self-expectations. Those who were rated high on neuroticism … did even worse: Their risk of death nearly doubled compared with those with a more relaxed disposition.”
Why The New Star Trek Was A Good Idea
“Even while the usually uninspired sequels, prequels and flat-out remakes continue to get made (and earn money), Hollywood has come up with a variation – The Reinvention – that shows promise.”