Category: people

“Brit Art’s biggest superstar opens a new show of paintings, Superstition, at the fancy Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills on Thursday, just three days before the Academy Awards. Hirst and the gallery’s owner, Larry ‘Go-Go’ Gagosian, both masters of media manipulation, will be counting on Hummer-loads of A-listers making the pilgrimage.”

“In a crystalline 17 minutes, Two Hands, a nominee for best short documentary at this month’s Academy Awards, chronicles the Baltimorean’s decades-long struggle to regain the use of his right hand and restart his performing career. As Fleisher slowly walks onto the concert stage and takes his seat, not playing, Nathaniel Kahn conveys what it must have been like for a young master to view his instrument not as the vehicle of all his creative desires, but as an antagonist.”

William Preucil is concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestram, one of the most coveted jobs in the music world. When he arrived in Cleveland he was greeted as a prime catch. But questions have been raised about his behavior, both personal and professional…

“The Nobel laureate is believed to be at risk of assassination in Turkey following the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink last month. Threats appeared to have been made against Pamuk by the man who confessed to orchestrating the murder.”

We all have guilty pleasures, even the greatest literary giants among us…

“Gone are the heady days when Havel led the Velvet Revolution that toppled Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime, paving the way for the Czech Republic to join NATO and the European Union. After years in office, Havel stepped down as president in 2003 and is again a solitary writer.”

“Jeannette Ordman, a South African-born dancer and teacher who headed the Bat-Dor Dance Company, one of Israel’s most important contemporary-dance organizations, died on Wednesday in Tel Aviv.”

“In my early teens, I had an unusual hobby. Whenever the urge grew strong enough to overcome my basic diffidence, and whenever I didn’t think it would show up too badly on my parent’s phone bill, I used to make long – distance calls to different jazz musicians I admired. From the safety of my home in Brookline, I’d tell them how much I liked their music and then ask such typically journalistic questions…”

“His death came as a shock as he had not been ill and was due to begin filming his next role in TV show Midsomer Murders next week, his agent said… Before ‘The House of Cards’, Richardson was already renowned as one of the great Shakespearean actors of his day, bearing comparison with Sirs John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, a generation earlier.”

Her fame was more about us (natch) and our seemingly insatiable appetite for celebrities than it was about her. “The news of her death brought the inevitable jolt that comes when anyone dies suddenly at 39. And there is the inescapable tragedy of a 5-month-old left without her mother. But Anna Nicole Smith’s fame is as sad and shallow in death as it was in life, just as much of a tawdry compact between her and us.”