Category: people

His breakout film was Pixote (1981), the story of a ten-year-old slum-dweller in São Paulo; he was also known for Ironweed, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, and Carandiru. His final film, My Hindu Friend starring Willem Dafoe, should be released in the U.S. later this year.

“[He] sold more than 600 cartoons and drawings to The New Yorker after William Shawn, the editor at the time, bought the first one in 1981. Like many cartoonists of a nonpolitical stripe, he was something of a sociologist – a student of habits and trends, memes and fashions, the purposes and cross-purposes of human interaction, most of which he exploited for gentle ridicule or defiant amusement.”

“Former Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra CEO Park Hyun-jung, who was ousted as the orchestra head in December 2014 over allegations of sexual and verbal harassment by members of the SPO, has filed a suit against Chung and his wife, surnamed Koo, who are currently staying in France, on charges of defamation.”

On his last day as Prime Minister David Cameron came out to speak to reporters and when we was done, turned away and hummed a short tune followed by “right!” But his mic was still on, and after news outlets played it, musicians began turning it into full-blown pieces of music…

The Human Rights Foundation withdrew the Vaclav Havel Prize from Pyotr Pavlensky – the man who nailed his scrotum to Red Square, tried to burn down the headquarters of the successor agency to the KGB and call it “art,” and saw Russia’s top art prize cancelled after he was nominated for it – because he planned to pay the legal bills of a violent group in the country’s Far East.

“[Her] mesmerizing stage presence and command of dozens of roles made her a mainstay of [the company] in the 1960s and ’70s … [She] had a dark, supple, powerful voice, … but it was her dramatic gifts and movie-star looks – The Daily News of New York once said she resembled ‘Ava Gardner of the love goddess years’ – that earned her a special place in the hearts of opera fans.”

“After 30 years of splitting his time between the tony enclaves of Manhattan and Bridgehampton, he has recently set about leaving much of his old life behind: filing for divorce from his wife, Leslie, after 43 years of marriage, disappearing for the winter to live virtually alone in a new apartment on Miami Beach and retreating from his summer friends to the crowded isolation of Long Beach. Even when Close ventures into the city for a gallery opening these days, he will often turn up in some outlandish costume, in fabrics printed with giant starfish and sunflowers, with lipstick smeared across his face and billowing, extravagant scarves.”

“Those who imagine that life in the past was simpler, slower and better are wrong. The experience of exhaustion, and anxieties about exhaustion epidemics in the wider population, are not bound to a particular time and place. On the contrary: exhaustion and its effects have preoccupied thinkers since classical antiquity.”

“A [recently discovered] note written by Félix Rey, a doctor who treated van Gogh at the Arles hospital, contains a drawing of the mangled ear.” Problem is, the note contradicts some key eyewitness testimony.