Category: people

Fan Bingbing’s place atop China’s movie pantheon is hard to describe to Westerners; she’s sort of a combination Jennifer Lawrence-Nicole Kidman-Julia Roberts-Sandra Bullock. (In the West, she’s appeared in the X-Men and Iron Man franchises.) Very suddenly last year, she vanished from public view, she was loudly denounced in a few official media outlets, and her ongoing projects were put on hold. Journalist May Jeong looks into the reason for her precipitous fall and the warning it sent to the entire Chinese film industry. – Vanity Fair

The British soprano Anna Patalong donned the yellow-and-blue outfit, along with a necklace of gold stars redolent of the EU flag, for a Classical Spectacular performance on Saturday after taking part in the anti-Brexit march in London earlier in the day. However, she changed back into a red dress worn for previous performances for Sunday’s concert following a request by the concert’s producer, Raymond Gubbay. – The Guardian

“He persuaded architects, developers and public officials to let him immortalize their buildings and monuments on film in altitudinous detail. He would scale precarious perches with construction workers and point his lens toward the ground hundreds of feet below, or mount his camera, sometimes equipped with a fisheye lens, on poles as long as 42-feet, so that he could snap the shutter remotely and even photograph himself.” (And, actually, he did have a fear of heights.) – The New York Times

“Infuriating Chicago’s mayor and police chief, prosecutors abruptly dropped all charges against Jussie Smollett on Tuesday after the Empire actor accused of faking a racist, anti-gay attack on himself agreed to let the city keep his $10,000 in bail. But he maintained his innocence and insisted he was attacked.” – AP

Before he got into collecting, Byrne “didn’t even know what I liked,” he recalled in a 2015 interview with Art+Auction magazine. New York dealer Jack Tilton suggested that he attend Art Basel, and after two trips to Switzerland, he bought six pieces in 1988 on a budget of $60,000. “That was the beginning of the collection,” he said. “After I got those first six, I was bitten.” – The Hollywood Reporter

She co-wrote the famous documentary Ordinary Fascism, which was seen by millions of ordinary Soviet citizens (and got past the censors because it was, on the surface, about the Nazis), but she spent most of her career as a widely admired theatre and film critic, “writing cultural criticism that was erudite and cleareyed — and that managed not to outrage the Soviet authorities.” – The New York Times

He was the first in Britain to stage operas for mass audiences in arenas, and his Sunday concerts at the Royal Albert Hall (though they irked critics) drew many newcomers to classical music. But he and his wife, Lilian, were best known for presenting the best musicians and artists from the Soviet Union — Oistrakh, Rostropovich, Richter, the Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets, and many more. – The Guardian

For more than a year, a group of Hollywood actresses waving the banner of the Time’s Up movement have been pressing Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to apply New York’s minimum wage to workers who earn tips, arguing that it would make waitresses less vulnerable to sexual harassment. But it has also created an unexpected divide: Waitresses and other servers are resisting the proposal, saying they can make more money from tips and do not need celebrities to help protect them from harassment. – The New York Times

Well, not really, but she does have more than one finger on the pulse of Chicago’s fiery cultural heart, and she writes about it in more than one way. “Part of me is an extremely argumentative person, and I really also enjoy just finding information and seeing how I can piece it together to figure out something that had previously seemed inscrutable. But part of me just likes to play and I think poetry allows for that a little bit more.” – The Cut

Cohen, writer and director of It’s Alive and Hell Up in Harlem, created cult classics. “By stocking his movies with sly social commentary and tongue-in-cheek humor, Cohen’s work felt edgier and more impactful than similar low-budget fare.” – The Hollywood Reporter