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In Rape Case, Filmmaker Luc Besson Is — Well, Not Exonerated, Exactly …

The charge by actress Sand Van Roy was first made in May 2018; it was dismissed for lack of evidence nine months later, and subsequently reopened following a civil complaint by Van Roy. After a five-hour hearing in Paris this week, the judge declared Besson an "assisted witness," a status under French law which means there is currently not...

Sculptor Barry Le Va Dead At 79

" became part of the New York art scene during the late 1960s and went on to be associated with the Process art and Post-Minimalist movements. Unlike the best known adherents of those movements, including Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Morris, Le Va has remained a somewhat obscure figure, no doubt in part because his work is so...

Leslie Odom Jr Almost Passed On Playing Sam Cooke

Those who have seen One Night in Miami will appreciate that the actor, singer, and star of Hamilton made a different choice, especially with his movie-closing performance of "A Change Is Gonna Come," Cooke's big civil rights song. The actor says, "There’s a part of me that feels like these projects I take on — and I could be...

Judi Dench Is A Bit Bored In Lockdown

Someone hire her, quickly. "Lockdown, I fear, is not the life Dench was born to. She used to practically eat and drink on the stage, but the theatres have closed, who knows for how long. She used to bounce from one film set to the next, but now production is mothballed and the industry has gone to ground. All...

Bob Avian, Broadway Choreographer, 83

Avian co-choreographed A Chorus Line with Michael Bennett, and choreographed Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard. He "directed a 2006 revival of A Chorus Line that ran on Broadway for almost two years, as well as productions of that show in London in 2013 and at New York City Center in 2018. He shared Tony Awards for choreography with Mr....

Walter Bernstein, Blacklisted And Celebrated Filmmaker, 101

Bernstein's "career as a top film and television screenwriter was derailed by the McCarthy-era blacklist, and decades later turned that experience into one of his best-known films, The Front." - The New York Times

Junior Mance, ‘One Of The Most Swinging And Utterly Delightful Pianists In Jazz,’ 92

Mance was "a buoyant, bluesy jazz pianist who worked with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley and Dinah Washington, before establishing himself as the leader of his own groups." - The New York Times

Larry King, Interviewer Of Darn Near Everyone, 87

King "shot the breeze with presidents and psychics, movie stars and malefactors — anyone with a story to tell or a pitch to make — in a half-century on radio and television, including 25 years as the host of CNN’s globally popular Larry King Live." - The New York Times

Why Storm The Capitol? “I Came To See The Art!”

“Faced with the photo evidence, Pham then allegedly admitted to climbing over torn-down fences to get inside. But still, he insisted his reasons were benign: He just wanted the rare opportunity to view ‘historical art,’ investigators said.” - Washington Post

The Lonely, Mysterious Death Of A Science Fiction Pioneer

"This past Saturday, about a dozen people from across the United States and Canada held a Zoom memorial for a man whose remains have been lying in an unmarked grave in Nova Scotia since last spring. He was Charles R. Saunders, and his lonely death in May belied his status as a foundational figure in a literary genre known...

Meet Maya Phillips, The NYT’s Newest Critic-At-Large

"There have been a lot of bad things happening this year, obviously. But the good thing about being a critic during this pandemic is that it forces us to be flexible in a way that a lot of critics may have been resistant to. I think it’s really essential that we don’t lock critics in this very strict, old-fashioned...

Roger Mandle, Who Ran RISD And Co-Founded Qatar’s Museums, Dead At 79

As director of the Toldeo Museum of Art, he organized a pathbreaking (and record-breaking) El Greco exhibition. As president of the Rhode Island School of Design, he built a new museum and quadrupled the endowment. And when a member of the Qatari royal family was determined to turn Doha into an international art destination, she hired him to direct...

How Amanda Gorman Became Amanda Gorman And Poet Laureate For The Inauguration

Her precocious path was paved with both opportunities and challenges, an early passion for language and the diverse influences of her native city. Gorman grew up near Westchester but spent the bulk of her time around the New Roads School, a socioeconomically diverse private school in Santa Monica. Her mother, Joan Wicks, teaches middle school in Watts. Shuttling among...

Remembering Director Mike Nichols

A vocal opponent of the auteur theory, which gives directors primary credit for the films they make, Nichols treated cinema as a fundamentally collaborative art and never sought to impose a uniform directorial approach on his work, which was unshowy, even self-effacing. “It’s not a filmmaker’s job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way...

Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto Reveals Second Cancer Diagnosis

The Oscar-winning electronic music legend was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, though he was back to making records by 2017 and the disease had gone into remission. This week, however, Sakamoto announced that he is being treated for rectal cancer. - Pitchfork

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