Category: people

“Lumet’s reputation as an ‘actor’s director,’ though accurate, has made it easy to overlook the subtle classicism and throwback efficiency of his technique, which he outlined in his congenial, common-sensical 1995 book, “Making Movies,” a memoir in the pragmatic guise of an instructional text. During rehearsals he is not merely fine-tuning the performances but also working out the cinematography.”

“Glass has the beguiling air of a working-class grand master. With his dolorous long face and austere dark garb that could be read as either downtown chic or repairman’s work clothes, he’s a mix of mystery and modesty, understatement and straight-ahead simplicity.”

“Opera legend Luciano Pavarotti died with 18 million euros of personal debt, according to Italian media reports. The famous tenor’s bank accounts were 11 million euros in deficit and he owed another seven million in unpaid loans, said the daily La Repubblica on Sunday.”

“Meier is a media-shy overachiever in an age of underachieving publicity hounds. The youngest-ever winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize — in 1984 — Meier speaks willingly of little beside his trade.”

Biographer David Michaelis, author of Schulz and Peanuts, says that cartoonist Charles Schulz was “a man who could neither forget nor forgive any slight or lonely moment. Not for a minute did he believe that ‘Happiness was a warm puppy’ – and he may not have believed in happiness at all. He thought it was impossible to draw a happy comic strip and actually he was fond of saying that ‘Happiness is a sad song’.”

“Film director Francis Ford Coppola has hit out at acting greats Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson, saying the trio lacked ‘passion’. The five-time Oscar-winner told GQ magazine they ‘all live off the fat of the land” and did not have ambition.'” All three actors starred in successful Coppola films.

“British actress Deborah Kerr, known to millions for her roles in The King And I, Black Narcissus and From Here To Eternity, has died at the age of 86. Born in Scotland in 1921, the actress made her name in British films before becoming successful in Hollywood. Nominated for the best actress Oscar six times, she was given an honorary award by the Academy in 1994.”

“The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has named both a new president/chief executive officer and a new museum director. Edward T. Lewis, 73, former president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland, will become president of the entire institution on Nov. 1. David R. Brigham, 43, an art scholar who was most recently executive director of the Allentown Art Museum, began work Monday as director of the academy museum.”

The devoted housekeeper of controversial novelist Günter Grass has marked his 80th birthday by releasing a touching memoir of his domestic side. The “seemingly mundane domestic reflections, based on her diaries and letters home, are being seen by the publishing world as a welcome antidote to the admissions [of Grass’s membership in the Waffen SS] that shocked his fans around the world.”

“Twenty years after he gave his first reading there, award-winning poet Simon Armitage has returned to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, as its artist-in-residence. Armitage has written five new poems inspired by artworks on display in the park – including installations by James Turrell and Andy Goldsworthy – and will publish them next spring.”