“A jailed member of the infamous Russian protest group Pussy Riot who went on a hunger strike last week was hospitalized on Tuesday … Maria Alyokhina, 24, is serving a two-year prison sentence for her part in an anti-President Vladimir Putin protest song the group performed last year in Moscow’s main cathedral.”
Category: people
What’s Going On With Sergei Polunin, Anyway?
“Friends and fans watched with trepidation as the wilder elements of the Polunin story emerged: a self-professed desire to quit ballet at the age of 26; … self-comparisons with Alexander the Great; lurid accusations that there was a ‘British mafia’ at Covent Garden … So what do we have in Mr Polunin: deep-thinking artistic genius or spoilt brat? The answer is: probably neither.”
Aleksei Balabanov, Top Post-Soviet Russian Filmmaker, Dead At 54
“[He] saw himself as the ‘anti-establishment rock’n’roller of Russian film’ with an aim to make ‘scandalous, harsh cinema’. Many of Balabanov’s films are metaphorical black comedies that gaze unflinchingly at the bleakness and violence of the last days of communism and post-Soviet society.”
Rudyard Kipling Admitted To Plagiarism
“The signed letter [to a friend], written in 1895, admits that the writer may have helped himself ‘promiscuously’ to the works of others in his account of the Law of the Jungle, which features in the Jungle Book.”
Ai Weiwei’s Prison Dioramas
“What took shape this spring at an industrial space in the Chinese capital” – and will be displayed in Venice in tandem with the Biennale – “were six fiberglass dioramas that depict, at half-scale, his often banal daily existence as a captive of the vast government security apparatus.”
The Man Who Was Convinced He Was Dead
“It’s really hard to explain. I just felt like my brain didn’t exist any more. I kept on telling the doctors that the tablets weren’t going to do me any good because I didn’t have a brain. I’d fried it in the bath.”
John Malkovich Can Play Casanova But Couldn’t Be Him
“It would be interesting to be like Casanova, but boy, I wouldn’t want it more than a week. I don’t think I could run around for 50 years trying to tell boys from girls, wives from daughters. I don’t know if I have that tenacity.”
Kristin Scott Thomas Has To ‘Turn on A Bitch Switch’ (At Last?)
“It’s nice to be asked to do something with the underworld and not in a country house or to sit weeping in my kitchen.”
The Young British Artists Are Now In Their 50s. What Does Tracey Emin Think Of That?
“With the cigarettes, that’s so weird because I don’t smoke anymore. I haven’t had sex for years, and there’s this condom. God, there’s a tampon, and I haven’t had a period for years. There’s my ex-boyfriend’s marijuana, I would never be with anyone who smokes marijuana now; there’s a whiskey bottle, and I don’t drink spirits.”
Morris Renek, 88, Who Devoted His Life To Writing Hard-Boiled Novels
“‘He was respected but not easily published, admired but impoverished,’ Mr. Elman wrote. ‘His works are not sufficiently appreciated; he’s a serious popular novelist who lacks a popular audience.'”