Celebrity news was intertwined with some of our culture’s most urgent issues, particularly involving mental health. Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade committed suicide in the same week. Demi Lovato, outspoken about her addiction issues, overdosed and went to rehab. The already-fractured political world was thrown into a frenzy when West, who addressed his bipolar diagnosis on his album this summer, visited the White House. – Washington Post
Category: people
Ringo Lam, Director Of ‘City Of Fire’ Who Changed Movies Forever, Has Died At 63
Lam’s 1987 movie inspired Quentin Tarnatino and helped usher in the 1980s Hong Kong New Wave. – The Hollywood Reporter
Norman Gimbel, Oscar-Winning Lyricist Of ‘Girl From Ipanema’ And ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song,’ Has Died At 91
Gimbel was “a Bronx-born songwriter who studied under Frank Loesser, the celebrated composer of Guys and Dolls” and who wrote the themes for Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. – The Washington Post
Mrinal Sen, Legendary Indian Filmmaker, Has Died At 95
“Along with his contemporaries Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, Sen was part of a troika of directors from the Eastern Indian state of Bengal that put Indian cinema on the global stage. During a tumultuous time in Bengal politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Sen and Ray both made Calcutta trilogies, with Sen choosing to be overtly political.” – Variety
Dame June Whitfield, Star Of BBC Comedies Including ‘Absolutely Fabulous,’ Has Died At 93
Whitfield spent decades being sought out for famous British male comics to play off her superb timing – but then she found her own stardom on TV in Terry and June and then as Edina’s mother in Absolutely Fabulous, which was, and still is thanks to streaming, international comedic gold. – BBC
IRS: Aretha Franklin Owed $6+ Million In Back Taxes
The IRS “proof of claim” filings entered Dec. 12 and 19 say the amount owed is cumulative, beginning with an unpaid assessed balance of $1,305,403 in December 2012 and including $552,718 due by the end of this year. – The Daily Beast
John Waters Says All His Work Is Political (‘But I’d Never Say That!’)
Among the other things he says: “The National Brainiac, that’s what I really wish I could edit. Imagine me being the editor of a tabloid for intellectuals. Imagining hiding outside their apartments for bathing-suit pictures of Philip Roth.” (Also: “Sample sales are vicious.”) — ARTnews
Amos Oz, Giant Of Israeli Literature, Dead At 79
“The author of 18 books in Hebrew and a longtime candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature, Oz was best known for novels including Black Box, In the Land of Israel and A Tale of Love and Darkness, his bestselling autobiographical novel. Much of his work, both fiction and non-fiction, explored kibbutz life and picked apart his characters’ often complex relationships with Israel and modern politics – reflective of his own. — The Guardian
Roxane Gay’s Radical Honesty
It is hard to read the abuse Gay gets for her size. If there is anything useful in the experience it is, she has said, in the way it engenders empathy, for other lives, for difficult lives, for different lives. Reading, she says now, does the same – fiction mostly, but also non-fiction, “because you just think, ‘Oh my gosh, imagine if that were my life, imagine if that were my children, how would I feel?’ – The Guardian
Edward Gorey And Frank O’Hara Were The Lucy And Ethel Of Harvard’s Postwar Gay Underground
“Insatiable in his cultural cravings, all-embracing in his tastes, unreserved in his opinions, O’Hara was in many ways Gorey’s intellectual double, down to the fanatical balletomania. … They made a Mutt-and-Jeff pair on campus, O’Hara with his domed forehead and bent, aquiline nose, broken by a childhood bully, walking on his toes and stretching his neck to add an inch or two to his five-foot-seven height, Gorey towering over him at six two.” — Literary Hub