Category: people

“Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning actor Jack Warden has died, aged 85… Warden was nominated for Oscars for Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait, and won an Emmy for the 1971 TV film Brian’s Song.He was twice Emmy-nominated for the 1980s television series Crazy Like a Fox. His other films included 12 Angry Men and All The President’s Men.”

“Henry Hewes, a longtime theater critic for The Saturday Review and the founder of the American Theater Critics Association, died at his home in Manhattan on Tuesday. He was 89… A past president of the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Drama Desk, and the editor from 1960 to 1964 of the “Best Plays” anthology, Mr. Hewes was also proud of his suggestion to Tennessee Williams that he turn a certain short story into a play; the play was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.“

Filmmaker Lee Daniels has built his career on his own terms, tackling controversial plots and taboo subjects that most producers and directors would think twice about loosing on an unsuspecting public. But somehow, the man behind Monster’s Ball and The Woodsman has convinced moviegoers that his twisted plots and startlingly imperfect characters are worth the price of admission.

“There are plenty of conservative publicists in America now. There are not many conservative thinkers, proper, worthy of the name. Philip Rieff, for all his crotchety obliqueness, was one of them.(By the way, the ratio of philosophers to propagandists is hardly any better n the left.)”

“Against all odds, or more vividly as it’s said in Spanish, contra viento y marea (against the wind and the tide), Ochoa kept a professional symphony orchestra going in our area when other, more ambitious ensembles had failed. And he did it, not out of personal ambition, but, as Miami Symphony board of directors chairman Rafael Díaz-Balart says, ‘because he wanted to give something back to the community that had given him so much’.”

Suraya Rais, the wife of an Afghan bookseller depicted in the international bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul is applying for asylum in Europe because she claims the book has endangered her life.

“Carrie Nye, a stage, film and television actress and a fixture at the Williamstown Theater Festival, died Friday at her home in Manhattan.”

Detective novelist Mickey Spillane, creator of Mike Hammer, has died. “Scorned by many critics for his artless plots, his reliance on unlikely coincidence and a simplistic understanding of the law, Mr. Spillane nevertheless achieved instant success with his first novel…. Mr. Spillane referred to his own material as ‘the chewing gum of American literature’ and laughed at the critics. ‘I’m not writing for the critics,’ he said. ‘I’m writing for the public.'”

“The town of Leiden hosted a festival where 17th-Century food and drink was served at restaurants and entertainers performed street theatre. In Amsterdam, some of Rembrandt’s most famous masterpieces have been put on display. Saturday also saw the opening night of the quirky Rembrandt the Musical at Amsterdam’s Royal Theatre Carre.”

“In the first decade of the 21st century, Mark Scorca may be the most passionate activist for opera in America, a role for which he appears to be typecast. As president and chief executive officer of the New York- based national service organization Opera America, he knows virtually every plot twist in the challenging music dramas that big and small opera companies face on a daily basis.”