Bruce Robinson’s first and most famous outing as a writer/director, Withnail & I has gone down in history as the student film…this book is lively with enthusiasm and full to bursting point with anecdotes and analysis…He doesn’t try to come across as anything more than what he certainly is: a die-hard Withnail fan with a keen eye for detail and a delightful nose for a story.
Bruce Robinson, who played Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet at age 22 and went on to write The Killing Fields, has also said that he was the target of unwanted sexual advances by Zeffirelli. In 1987, Robinson wrote and directed the movie Withnail and I, which features a lecherous old man he said he modeled on Zeffirelli. Zeffirelli never responded to Robinson’s allegations.
That five, six months with Zeffirelli completely destroyed me as an actor, the desire to do it and the ability to do it. He made me terrified of directors, because he was the first professional director I’d ever had and he treated me like shit.
I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something
we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana
wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot (excerpt from Poetry Foundation)
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.
Sicilian sculptor Arturo Di Modica died on February 19 in his hometown of Vittoria, Italy, at the age of eighty, following a years-long battle with cancer, his dealer Jacob Harmer confirmed. Di Modica, who operated outside the confines of the traditional art world for most of his career, is most widely known for his massive bronze 1989 sculpture Charging Bull, which has greeted passersby in New York’s Bowling Green for more than thirty years.
Early Days At The Studio Di Modica On Crosby Street, Which Arturo Built From The Ground Up With His Own Hands.
For her performance in director Éric Rohmer’s film Full Moon in Paris, Ogier was nominated for a César Award for Best Actress at the 10th César Awards and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 41st Venice International Film Festival. Shortly afterwards, on the day before she was to celebrate her 26th birthday, Ogier died of a heart attack probably caused by a heart murmur condition she had since age 12, combined with drug use.
Ogier is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The film Down by Law (1986) is dedicated to her.
“We are still in mourning. One month since Pascale Ogier died in her sleep. Still, nothing can soften the intolerable cruelty of that news. Around her lovely face, memory cannot yet set in. Pascale lives on.
When death comes, the grace of the young woman still spreads throughout the city. Nothing can prevent it; nothing can contain it. A great 25-year-old actress was born, as sumptuous and simple as a Renaissance castle on the banks of the Loire River.”
Marguerite Duras, 30 November 1984, Libération.
Milford Graves (August 20, 1941 – February 12, 2021) was an American jazz drummer, percussionist, Professor Emeritus of Music,[4][5] researcher/inventor,[6][7] visual artist/sculptor,[8][9][10][11] gardener/herbalist,[12] [13] and martial artist.[14][15] Graves is noteworthy for his early avant-garde contributions in the 1960s with Paul Bley, Albert Ayler, and the New York Art Quartet, and is considered to be a free jazz pioneer, liberating percussion from its timekeeping role. The composer and saxophonist John Zorn referred to Graves as “basically a 20th-century shaman.
Only two weeks ago did “Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal,” a major exhibition of his work at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, draw to a close after a five-month run.
As a young drummer, Milford performed at John Coltrane’s funeral and led successful Latin music combos, drawing on his Afro-Caribbean roots. When he was barely old enough to vote, his life had taken off in a half-dozen different directions that led to revolutions in music, activism, medicine, botany, and even martial arts. He led the charge in bringing the drums out from the back of the bandstand, to a position equal with the “melodic” instruments. An anchor in the New York Art Quartet with Amiri Baraka, he was also active in the collective-bargaining movement of the Jazz Composers Guild. At the same time, he began his training as a cardiac technician with zeal; he invented a martial art form called Yara based on the movements of the Praying Mantis, boxing, West African ritual dance, and Lindy Hop; and he had an abiding interest in botany and herbology, inherited from his grandmother. By the time he began his nearly 40-year career at Bennington College, as a professor of music and holistic medicine, his fecund intellect had begun to explore radical connections between rhythm and the universe: in music, in movement, in healing, in the subatomic, in the activity of the heart and other organs.
Legendary Jazz Keyboardist Chick Corea Dies of ‘Rare Form of Cancer’ at 79
“My mission has always been to bring the joy of creating anywhere I could, and to have done so with all the artists that I admire so dearly — this has been the richness of my life,” he said before his death
Carrière was born in Colombières-sur-Orb, France, the son of Alice and Felix Carrière, a farmer.[2] He published his first novel, Lézard, in 1957. He was introduced to Jacques Tati, who had him write short novels based on his films. Through Tati, he met Pierre Étaix, with whom Carrière wrote and directed several films, including Heureux Anniversaire, which won them the Academy Award for Best Short Subject. His nineteen-year collaboration with Buñuel began with the film Diary of a Chambermaid (1964); he co-wrote the screenplay with Buñuel and also played the part of a village priest. Carrière and the director would collaborate on the scripts of nearly all Buñuel’s later films, including Belle de Jour (1967), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).
He also wrote screenplays for The Tin Drum (1979), Danton (1983), The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), La dernière image (1986), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), Valmont (1989), Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), Birth (2004), and Goya’s Ghosts (2006), and co-wrote Max, Mon Amour (1986) with director Nagisa Oshima. He also collaborated with Peter Brook on a nine-hour stage version of the ancient Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata, and a five-hour film version. In 1998 he provided the libretto for Hans Gefors’ fifth opera Clara, which was premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.[3]
His work in television includes the series Les aventures de Robinson Crusoë (1964), a French-West German production much seen overseas.
Christopher Plummer, the Canadian-born Shakespearean actor who starred in films including “The Sound of Music” and “Beginners,” died on Friday morning at his home in Connecticut. He was 91. Variety obit
“Chris was an extraordinary man who deeply loved and respected his profession with great old fashion manners, self deprecating humor and the music of words,” said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager of 46 years. “He was a national treasure who deeply relished his Canadian roots. Through his art and humanity, he touched all of our hearts and his legendary life will endure for all generations to come. He will forever be with us.”
Robert Cohan, 95, Dies; Exported Contemporary Dance to Britain
A New York-born protégé of Martha Graham, he and a rich patron revolutionized dance in the U.K. with a cutting-edge new form.