Category: people

“[His] legacy of work is a mere four completed feature films and one television series. So, it’s likely many of you have not heard of the man – doubly likely since his films were all animated. … [Yet they] are so involving and cinematic it’s easy to forget that they are constructed one frame at a time. What’s more, they are definitely not for kids.”

“A Russian ballerina who became a Nazi spy was responsible for one of the earliest allied defeats in the second world war after getting hold of the British campaign plan for Norway, according to historic security services files released today.”

“I was told not to imitate singers; then you’ll only be part of the chorus. You have to imitate musicians. Find out how they’re phrasing. I like Art Tatum. He was the most unbelievable piano player. Stan Getz had this honeyed sound. I put those two together and got my own style.”

“[This] gay Pygmalion was most galvanized when he could turn these male Galateas” – Nijinsky, Massine, Lifar – “into artists the world would worship. Ballet had hitherto been essentially a heterosexual art glorifying femininity, but now a long series of Diaghilev ballets cast more luster on hero than heroine.”

“Japan’s most famous orchestral conductor, Seiji Ozawa, has concluded esophageal cancer treatment but will only conduct one piece in September concerts since his health remains frail, organizers said.”

“Dressed in jeans and polo shirt, the attire of the co-chief of Germany’s Bayreuth festival could hardly be in starker contrast to that of the high society event’s standard dress code. But then [Katharina] Wagner neither looks nor behaves as you might imagine the head of one of the world’s most talked-about cultural institutions to.”

“[A]ccording to a recent article in an academic journal, researchers have posited at least 118 causes of death for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. … [P]ublished speculation began within a month of his death in 1791, and musicologists, physicians and medical scholars have regularly joined the fray ever since.”

“The world’s most popular French novelist has just met a gruesome end, and police are questioning his many enemies in the hunt for his killer. Unfortunately for the Parisian literary types who loathe Michel Houellebecq and begrudge him his success, the murder is a fiction invented by the shock novelist himself.”

“The noted dissident playwright and former Czech president completed on-location filming on the movie adaptation of his stage drama Leaving on Saturday.” A Prague newspaper “quoted Havel as saying the feature-length film will probably also be his last.”

“Among his most famous numbers were ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love,’ recorded by Elvis Presley; ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight,’ recorded by the Tokens; and ‘What a Wonderful World,’ recorded by Louis Armstrong.”