Category: people

At the end of a memo to his chief of staff, in which he sneered at “those who are on the modern art and music kick,” the 37th president added: “P.S., I also want a check made with regard to the incredibly atrocious modern art that has been scattered around the embassies of the world.”

“A former novelist and teacher of French and German literature, Mr. Rohmer emphasized the spoken and written word in his films at a time when tastes — thanks in no small part to his own pioneering writing on Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks — had begun to shift from literary adaptations to genre films grounded in strong visual styles.”

“The 52-year old law expert and classical music composer won Sunday’s runoff presidential vote in this former Yugoslav country, beating popular Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic.”

“Performers aren’t audacious enough today. They think audiences won’t respond to what’s unfamiliar. But to provoke — in the good sense — is the performer’s role. It’s not just to give one more concert. That’s not culture. That’s marketing.”

The book, due sometime before 2015, will focus “on the duo’s intense relationship, the myths surrounding her role in the Beatles’ break-up, the bed-in for peace, Lennon’s infamous ‘Lost Weekend’ and more.” Ono had been resisting writing such a book for years, saying “There are things that I can’t write because it may hurt someone.”

“Future biographers searching for the deep background to the genius behind ‘California Girls’ and ‘Good Vibrations’ have just been handed a goldmine. The document is a letter written on the headed notepaper of the Sea of Tunes music publishing company, through which Murry Wilson administered the Beach Boys’ copyrights.”

The global Tolstoy mania sparked by the centennial of his death doesn’t seem to have affected the author’s homeland. Is it the post-Soviet fall of the intelligentsia? His warmth and emphasis on love, so contrary to Dostoevsky’s darkness? His challenges to government authority and the Orthodox Church?

Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective boasts “probably the most successful and elaborate afterlife that any fictional character has ever enjoyed. He has appeared in countless movies, stage plays and television series, and has inspired a shelf full of literary sequels and knockoffs, as well as some cartoon versions. He has even been played by Daffy Duck.”

The 74-year-old Japanese conductor, who served for 29 years as music director of the Boston Symphony, “will cancel all performances for the next six months to concentrate on treatment.” He was already scheduled to step down this year as music director of the Vienna State Opera.

Making a documentary about the middle-class New York couple who assembled one of the great late 20th-century art collections wasn’t easy ”I asked them, ‘Why did you like this particular art?’, ‘Why do you like such and such artist?’, and the only answer I could get from them was, ‘Um … well, because I like them. I like them. It’s beautiful’.”