Category: people

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “election as governor and his newfound status as a public official have not curbed the zeal of his advisors to protect his image. If someone profits from or distorts his image, legal experts say, he can still sue for economic damages — even as governor. In the months since the recall, Schwarzenegger’s hard-nosed lawyers say, they have been on alert for unauthorized ads and products.”

“The celebrity murder case that has held France in thrall since last summer reached its conclusion yesterday when Bertrand Cantat, one of the country’s biggest rock stars, was found guilty of killing his lover, the film and TV star Marie Trintignant, and was jailed for eight years in Lithuania.”

Alistair Cooke, who broadcast his Letter from America for 56 years, has died at his home in New York. Earlier this month, he announced his retirement on health grounds following advice from his doctors. Leading the tributes, Prime Minister Tony Blair described him as “a remarkable man” and “one of the greatest broadcasters of all time”.

“He wrote 23 plays, 13 books, nine films and numerous memoirs, acted in 40 films and 20 plays, and directed eight films, eight plays and 14 operas. He spoke five languages. His entry in Who’s Who was seven inches long. According to Michael Parkinson, Sir Peter was ‘God’s gift to a talk show host’.”

Actor Peter Ustinov has died of heart failure in Switzerland. Ustinov, who spoke more than half a dozen languages, won Oscars for his roles in the films “Spartacus” and “Topkapi.” The multi-talented entertainer, who was knighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth but did not like to be known as “Sir Peter,” completed his last film as an actor, about the life of 16th century German protestant leader Martin Luther, late last year.”

Who is architect Zaha Hadid, asked Herbert Muschamp. “Born in Baghdad and long a resident of London, Hadid is 53. She has been my personal Alfred Hitchcock movie for roughly 20 years. At times, the suspense has been unbearable. Would Hadid become a builder? Or was she destined to remain celebrated as the designer of some of the greatest architecture never built? Hadid would get a big project, and she would lose it. She would get another big project, and she would lose it. She would be offered a show at a major museum, but would make such legendarily exotic demands that eventually the show would be canceled.”

“Jack Kyle has almost single-handedly put the city of Jackson, Mississippi on the cultural map. Neither an art historian nor a museum curator, he is instead a marketing man blessed with Southern charm and remarkable powers of persuasion who has coaxed the directors of some of Europe’s grandest museums and State collections into sending outstanding works of art to a city best known for jazz and fried catfish.”

“Born in Manhattan of Puerto Rican parents in 1936, Eddie Palmieri is salsa’s maverick genius and the winner of seven Grammy awards. With the passing of the great band leader Tito Puente, this one-time enfant terrible has become salsa’s elder statesman. Yet, while Afro-Cuban music’s overwhelming impact on 20th-century music is now universally acknowledged, for most of us salsa is simply great party music – sexy, stylish, but not much more than that. Palmieri represents Latin music at its most intellectual, but isn’t the whole idea of “deep salsa” a contradiction in terms?”

“The lifework of the late legendary American folklorist Alan Lomax has been acquired by the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress… Lomax, who took his first folkloric steps at the library in the 1930s, recorded and collected indigenous music, dances and stories from this country and others. He was especially fascinated by the idea that a culture’s music or way of dancing speaks to its very core. He marveled at the relationship of one people’s music to another’s and he tried to break down musical expression into what he called ‘cantometrics,’ a quantifiable set of attributes such as tones, beats, phrasings.”

Public radio commentator Sandra Tsing Loh, who was unexpectedly fired from Santa Monica station KCRW last month after uttering an expletive in a prerecorded commentary, has landed across town at Los Angeles’s KPCC. The hiring is something of a coup for KPCC, which is owned by Minnesota Public Radio, and which has been aggressively competing for a share of KCRW’s L.A. audience since its purchase. KCRW had offered to rehire Loh after a wave of bad publicity, but she declined to return.