Category: people

David Mamet is the latest of several prominent writers to abandon the Left for the political Right. “As former victims of political delusion, these defectors claim a unique authority. But there is something quite particular about spending the second half of your life taking revenge on the first.”

“His criticism shows a nearly unequaled grasp of film history and technique, and formidable intellectual range, but he rarely seems to be showing off. He’s just trying to tell you what he thinks, and to provoke some thought on your part about how movies work and what they can do.”

Salman Rushdie typically takes three to five years to write a book. “You think ‘How many more have I got?’ And so the question of which ones … becomes unusually important when you are no longer immortal.

“The board of Luminato, Toronto’s festival of arts and creativity, has signed Janice Price, its visionary and energetic leader, to a three-year extension of her contract as CEO. That means Price will be at the helm for a minimum of the first five Luminato festivals, starting with its debut last year and lasting through the 2011 edition.”

“The animator Ollie Johnston, the last of the Disney “nine old men,” as the studio’s core group of senior animators was called, died on Monday in Sequim, Wash… He was especially proud of his work on “Bambi” and its classic scenes, including the heartbreaking death of Bambi’s mother at the hands of a hunter.”

To those not enamored of rap music, Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, Puffy, P Diddy, etc.) is often seen as a punchline. But Combs has lately caught the serious acting bug, and he’s doing whatever he can to establish credibility on the legitimate stage.

Rowling told a New York court on Monday that the demands of the case had caused her to halt work on a new novel. The author, who wrote seven novels about the boy wizard, said the stress has “decimated my creative work over the past month.”

“Whether through workaholism or ambition, director Trevor Nunn has been both unflagging and unpredictable; a champion of highbrow modernis and then cheery populism.”

“At 73, the novelist Bahaa Taher has weathered political purges and a lengthy exile from his native Egypt to carry off the [first ever] Booker prize for Arabic fiction… One of the most respected living writers in the Arab world, he has written six novels (three translated into English), four short-story collections, plays and non-fiction.”

“You need a big block of time, and space, to say goodbye to Norman Mailer. More than 2,000 mourners filled Carnegie Hall to near capacity Wednesday for a two-hour-plus memorial, concert, literary tribute, family therapy session and Friars Club roast for the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of The Armies of the Night and The Executioner’s Song.“