Category: people

Raphael Schumacher “was performing in an experimental theater production in the courtyard of Pisa’s Teatro Lux when a member of the audience noticed that the rope around his neck was too tight. The actor’s head was covered at the time, but the spectator — a female medical graduate — saw him trembling and realized something was wrong.”

“‘The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding.’ At 17, Winona Ryder underlined those words by Holden Caulfield in one of two copies of The Catcher in the Rye she was carrying with her. ‘Me and Holden are, like, this team,’ she said.” Because she turned out to be completely incapable of phoniness, even when it might have done her some good.

“Wearing police uniforms and fishnet stockings, they whip hooded prisoners and waterboard them in their prison cells. The well-made-up women gleefully throw wads of cash into the air and flirt viciously with their viewers. The Russian punk protest group … sashayed back into the public eye on Wednesday with the release of a music video savaging the country’s prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika, who locked up three members of the group in 2012.”

“[He was] was the pre-eminent theoretician of the French ‘New Wave’ and the film-maker who, with Jean-Luc Godard, came closest in his own work to realising the movement’s aims and aspirations.” Yet he ultimately came to believe that there is no such thing as an “auteur” – “that ‘A film by Jacques Rivette’, for example, was a contradiction in terms.”

A court upheld the conviction of Palestinian poet, artist, and curator Ashraf Fayadh for apostasy – a charge that originally came out of an argument Fayadh had with another man in a cafe.

“He and the late Ray Goulding were among the drollest and most inventive pop-culture satirists of their generation as writers, producers and actors. … A hallmark of Bob and Ray comedy was bone-dry delivery of the absurd. With masterly comic timing – Mr. Elliott with a nasal deadpan, Goulding with booming authority – Bob and Ray mocked the cliches and banalities of newscasts, politics, sports and advertising.”

“Step into Tareq Salahi’s house and you’ll pass a framed Washington Post article crowning him a 2009 Person of the Year. … Look closer, though, and you’ll see what’s changed. There’s a Real Housewives of D.C. sticker covering [ex-wife] Michaele’s face, a bronze plaque listing ‘widely unknown facts’ about the White House gatecrashing incident, and, right next to it, Salahi merchandise that Tareq sells to his Airbnb guests.”

“The son of a Brooklyn baker who won acclaim as a brilliantly nimble dancer and a quirky and often surprising choreographer, … Louis and the choreographer Alwin Nikolais had been artistic collaborators and companions for more than 40 years.”

While the works he staged ranged from Britten to Debussy to Wagner and Gounod (an infamous Faust), his most-admired productions were in the repertoire closest to his heart, that of the 17th and 18th centuries. His most celebrated stagings included a landmark Rameau Boréades at the Aix Festival and a much-traveled Marriage of Figaro. He also had a difficult tenure as general manager of the Paris Opera, presiding over the troubled opening of the new theatre at the Bastille. (in French; Google Translate version here)

“A player of exceptional versatility with a distinctively rich sound, he was as renowned for exploring and championing new repertoire for his instrument as he was for his polished performances of the great works by the likes of Bach and Mozart.”