Category: people

“Yesterday’s announcement … is jolting, but it shouldn’t be surprising. Last fall, on the eve of his writing-directing feature-film debut, Stewart openly wrestled with how much longer he wanted to keep doing the TV show that made him famous. It wasn’t hard to see which way he was leaning.”

“Strate was a charter member of the National Ballet of Canada in 1951 and later its first resident choreographer. … In 1970, Strate went on to found York University’s department of dance, the first of its kind in Canada. Rejecting preconceived notions, he forged a vision focused on creative research and the concept of the ‘thinking dancer.'”

“Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec say they were given the art, worth 80m euro (£50m) by Picasso’s second wife. The Picasso estate says their account is “ridiculous” and is suing them for illegal possession of the works.”

“[Levy] shot to fame at age 35 when his opera, Mourning Becomes Electra, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in its inaugural season at Lincoln Center in 1967.”

Odin Biron, a wholesome young man from Minnesota who went to study at the Moscow Art Theater, is now a hugely popular actor who co-stars in one of Russia’s most-watched sitcoms and is playing the lead in an acclaimed staging of Gogol’s Dead Souls. Now he’s going public with a fact that could end his career in Russia.

“The 79-year-old author, perhaps best known for his 1979 novel A Dry White Season which focused on the death in detention of a black activist and was filmed with Marlon Brando, was a literature professor at the University of Cape Town and had just received an honorary doctorate from the Université Catholique de Louvain.”

“I keep only a New Yorker on my night stand, which I do my best to eke out over the space of an entire week. It distresses me that The New Yorker publishes just 47 issues a year, which makes the eking-out process a mathematical challenge.”

“She had the goods: the luminous eyes and moist lips that belied a heart of stone, the slinky figure, the sculptured cheekbones, the cascading hair and husky voice suitable for torch songs or seductive close-ups.”

“For the singer Anita Darian, getting to Carnegie Hall not only took practice, it also took a kazoo.”

“Given that Bollywood films are watched by a global three billion people, Amitabh Bachchan has a good claim to be the most famous actor in the world. In India, he has long transcended his day job to become a national institution, Brando, Pacino and De Niro rolled into one. Across Asia and the Middle East, [he] gets mobbed in the streets.”