Category: people

The film critics’ code of never revealing surprise twists of a movie is coming under fire this week as disabled-rights activists launch a nationwide push for critics to condemn what they describe as the horrifying ending of Clint Eastwood’s latest film. Million Dollar Baby has won accolades from many of the critics now being targeted, but none have yet revealed the controversial fate which befalls lead actress Hilary Swank’s character at the film’s conclusion.

Steve Reich turns 70 next year, and as the music world gears up to celebrate the ever-changing, never-at-rest composer, the man himself shows no sign of realizing that he’s supposed to be in the twilight of his multifaceted career. “His ideas emerge in a swift current of words, formed by the crisscrossings of different streams of thought – not unlike his music, in which ideas are introduced, examined, juxtaposed, pursued, rediscovered.”

Nicola Benedetti is officially the new It Girl of the moment in the classical music world, and her name has spread so quickly that she still seems a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. But unlike several other recent teenage flavors of the month, the 17-year-old Scottish violinist has no plans to parlay her newfound celebrity into quick and easy cash by entering the much-reviled borderworld known as “crossover.”

Beverly Sills’ retirement as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera ends the career of an amazing cultural force in New York. First as a singer, then as an arts administrator and fund-raiser, she had a huge impact on the city’s cultural life. “There are plenty who are going to follow me. My time was always going to be limited, and so were my interests.”

Philip Johnson, dean of American architects, has died. “By his own description, Mr. Johnson was an architectural traditionalist. But in his view, the best use of tradition was “to improve it, twist it and mold it to make something new of it.” He once described architecture as “exuberance, like sex or taste.”

“Johnson’s own architecture received mixed reviews and often startled the public and his fellow architects. Because of his frequent changes of style, he was often accused of pandering to fashion and of designing buildings that were facile and shallow. Yet he created several designs, including the Glass House, the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art, and the pre-Columbian gallery at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington that are widely considered among the architectural masterworks of the 20th century.”

AJBlogger Terry Teachout is impressed by the nostalgia accompanying news of the death of Johnny Carson. Not impressed by Carson himself, though. Oh, there’ll be the predictable flood of warm tributes. “And after that? A fast fade to black, I expect. American popular culture is cruel and brutal when it comes to the immediate past: it respects only extreme youth, and has no time for the day before yesterday. All of which somehow makes me feel sorry for Johnny Carson. I wonder what he thought of his life’s work? Or how he felt about having lived long enough to disappear into the memory hole?”

“No conductor today is master of all he surveys as much as Riccardo Muti in Milan. Music director of La Scala for nearly 20 years and still going strong, Muti acts as a symbol for his country’s culture at home and abroad. Where Italian music is concerned, he is proud and protective. He rigorously schools his singers in the traditions he imbibed as a student – traditions which, through his revered teacher Antonino Votto, go back to Toscanini and Verdi himself, traditions that are in danger of being lost as national cultures succumb to the international melting pot of modern life.”

Michael Powell is stepping down as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He has been under fire in the past year for imposing big fines on broadcasters whom he and fellow commissioners felt were “indecent.”

Richard Dreyfus finally speaks out about why Mel Brooks replaced him before the London production of The Producers opened last year. “Brooks has told Playbill magazine that he always had Dreyfuss in mind for Bialystock, calling the actor a “brilliant artist” and a “nervous wreck”. But Dreyfuss soon discovered that doing a musical was like ascending to the pearly gates and being banished to the hellfires at the same time.”