obituary
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Best Character ActorSunday, 02 February 2014
The news that Philip Seymour Hoffman has died at the age of only 46 robs cinema of - almost unarguably - the greatest screen actor of the age, and certainly its outstanding character actor. Where once there was Charles Laughton, or Ernest Borgnine,... Read more... |
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Giant of the StageSunday, 02 February 2014
On screen, Philip Seymour Hoffman will be forever immortalised as the Oscar-winning star of Capote who was both a darling of the indie film world (think Todd Solondz and the Coen Brothers) and an invaluable supporting player in such mainstream fare... Read more... |
Pete Seeger: 1919-2014Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Pete Seeger has had a vast number of tributes since he died aged 94 on Monday. That might seem surprising for an artist whose real heyday was over 50 years ago. Part of the reason no doubt was the dignified and steadfast aura of a man of the people... Read more... |
Addio, Claudio AbbadoMonday, 20 January 2014
“It is at the end that a composer can achieve his finest effects,“ declared Richard Strauss. He was thinking of his great operatic and symphonic epilogues, but apply that to the art of conducting, adjust the “at” to “towards”, and it applies... Read more... |
'I've gone far far too early': David Coleman, voice of sportSaturday, 21 December 2013
David Coleman never said, "Juantorena opens his legs and shows his class," any more than Queen Victoria said, "We are not amused." The words belonged to Ron Pickering, but Private Eye got it wrong. The chances are that Coleman, who has died at the... Read more... |
Peter O'Toole dies at 81Sunday, 15 December 2013
Perhaps 20 people in thick puffa jackets and clumpy boots crouched behind a wooden sea wall on a shingle beach in Whitstable. Or Islington-on-Sea, to give it its modern name. The north coast of Kent glittered in the sun. Across the Medway you could... Read more... |
'I photographed Nelson Mandela'Friday, 06 December 2013
In 1997 I was in South Africa working on Truth and Lies, my book about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, when the New York Times Magazine said that they were doing a major feature on Mandela. He’d been in office for three years. The... Read more... |
'Books have been my life': Doris LessingSunday, 17 November 2013
Doris Lessing’s storm-tossed life would make a stirring biopic. She spent her early years on an isolated farm in the Southern Rhodesian veldt, abandoned the children of her first marriage to take up with a German communist refugee during the war,... Read more... |
Lou Reed, High Priest of Rock: 1942-2013Sunday, 27 October 2013
We had heard he was ill, and had a recent liver transplant, but then he always seemed to be off colour. When Lester Bangs interviewed him in 1973 for Let It Rock he seemed ill then. When Bangs met him he had just had his greatest hit album... Read more... |
Patrice Chéreau, 1944-2013: a partial viewTuesday, 08 October 2013
It has to be partial, because out of the 10 opera productions from the iconoclastic French actor-director, who died yesterday of lung cancer at the age of 68, I’ve seen but two, on screen only – but a big two at that – and only three of his 11 films... Read more... |
David Frost, giant of the small screen, diesMonday, 02 September 2013
David Frost, who has died at the age of 74, was a character. The obituaries will tour the entirety of his career as swinging young presenter of TW3, as the first transatlantic celebrity of the gogglebox who gave his name to a sugary brand of... Read more... |
Obituary: Singer-songwriter JJ CaleSunday, 28 July 2013
“JJ Cale will be onstage in three minutes.” With the house lights still full on, an old cove with tatty, silvering hair and an open untucked-in puce shirt shuffled about onstage, tinkering with equipment, before picking up a guitar and leaning into... Read more... |
