Deaths (Obituaries)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Catie Lazarus, Comedian With a Lot of Questions, Dies at 44

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCatie Lazarus, Comedian With a Lot of Questions, Dies at 44On her live show “Employee of the Month,” she got laughs by interrogating writers, artists, politicians, intellectuals and her fellow comics.The comedian Catie Lazarus in 2015. She began interviewing prominent people about their careers, she said, “because I couldn’t quite figure out how to break in.”Credit…Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesDec. 20, 2020, 2:10 p.m. ETCatie Lazarus, a writer and comedian who probed the minds of celebrities and created her own late-night comedy universe on her longstanding self-produced live New York talk show, “Employee of the Month,” died on Dec. 13 in her apartment in Brooklyn. She was 44. Her father, Simon Lazarus III, said the cause was breast cancer.In 2011, as the nation recovered from the Great Recession, Ms. Lazarus was just another struggling comic trying to make it in New York. She had dropped out of a doctoral program in clinical psychology at Wesleyan University to move to the city, but as she tried establishing herself on the stand-up circuit, she discovered that stable jobs were hard to find. In light of these circumstances, she started hosting “Employee of the Month,” an interview-based talk show about work and labor at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.Ms. Lazarus asked notable writers, artists, politicians, intellectuals and comedians how they had achieved their enviable careers. She eventually interrogated subjects like Rachel Maddow, Dick Cavett, Greta Gerwig and David Simon. She inquired about disappointment, too — for example, she asked the journalist Kurt Andersen how he felt about getting pushed out of New York magazine.“I started hosting this show because I couldn’t quite figure out how to break in,” Ms. Lazarus told The New York Times in 2015. “I wanted to hear from people who, for the most part, love what they do and have carved out a niche for themselves. It wasn’t just about how they broke in, but what they continue to find worth struggling for, worth the heartache and the rejection and the economic toil and other types of losses that go along with it.”Her disarmingly intrusive interview style developed a following, and in 2014 Ms. Lazarus started hosting the show monthly at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. A live band accompanied her onstage, and nights crackled with the spontaneous energy of late-night television.Ms. Lazarus with her house band at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in 2017.Credit…Abel Fermin/ShutterstockMs. Lazarus approached her inquiries from a more philosophical level as well, seemingly trying to answer a bigger question: Why exactly do people do what they do for a living during their relatively brief time on earth? She often steered guests into illuminating revelations and spectacle.Wallace Shawn reminisced about how he had considered becoming a taxi driver. Billy Crudup whispered something to her when she asked him how much he was paid for voicing Mastercard ads (she looked shocked). Gloria Steinem tap-danced onstage. And Ms. Lazarus asked Josh Russ Tupper, a co-owner of Russ & Daughters, to participate in a blind taste test of lox from his competitors Zabar’s and Barney Greengrass.“They said you can tell the difference in the lox,” she challenged him. “Do you feel there’s a difference in how your lox tastes?” (Mr. Tupper largely succeeded in identifying his shop’s salmon.)Lin-Manuel Miranda, who appeared on the show, was also a frequent guest in her audience. “Catie was the ultimate New York comedy connector,” he said in a phone interview. “Once you did the show, you were in the alumni group.” He added: “It’s unbelievable the level of connections that came through there. People before they blew up. After they blew up.”“It was,” Mr. Miranda said, “sort of a crime she didn’t have her own TV show.”Catherine Simone Avnet Lazarus was born on April, 26, 1976, in Washington. Her father was a public policy lawyer who had been associate director of the White House domestic policy staff in the Carter administration. Her mother, Rosalind (Avnet) Lazarus, was a federal government lawyer. A great-great-great-grandfather was Simon Lazarus, founder of the Lazarus & Company department store chain, which later became Macy’s Inc.A nursery report card from the Beauvoir School appeared to portend Ms. Lazarus’s future. “Katie is a great talker and will volunteer to sit in the ‘hot seat’ and speak on any topic whether she knows anything about her subject or not,” it read. “The class expects this now and, in fact, the resulting arguments are more lively due to Katie’s proddings.” (Ms. Lazarus delighted in this document as an adult and quoted from it frequently).She attended the Maret School and Wesleyan University, where she received a B.A. and an M.A. in psychology. She eventually pursued a doctorate in clinical psychology at Wesleyan but dropped out after a semester to try comedy in New York. (Ms. Lazarus said that an encouraging chance encounter with Tina Fey, in which they discussed improv, helped galvanize her decision.)Ms. Lazarus first took the stage at Stand Up NY on the Upper West Side, and she relished the nervous rush of trying to get people to laugh. She began performing on the comedy circuit at clubs like Carolines on Broadway and the Laugh Factory. And she took improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, where she started hosting her show. Early guests included Rachel Dratch, Reggie Watts and the Times journalist David Carr.“I was keenly aware that people went on to achieve these great things,” Ms. Lazarus told The Times. “I just didn’t know the steps that were involved to get there. That is why I started my show, because there is somewhat of a science to success.”In 2015, Ms. Lazarus had a career break herself when Jon Stewart gave her his first interview after leaving “The Daily Show.” She pressed Mr. Stewart about his next projects and who he thought might replace him on the show. While discussing his career, she projected an image of him wearing underwear in a spoof of a Calvin Klein ad from his MTV talk-show days.Around 2017, Ms. Lazarus ended her run at Joe’s Pub and brought her show to other venues, including the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan and the Bell House in Brooklyn. Slate started airing a podcast of the show in 2018. Ms. Lazarus also took the show on the road, hosting it at Largo in Los Angeles and at the Sundance Film Festival.“All these people over the years, they wanted to be interviewed by her,” her father said. “And she shot for the moon. She really thought she could get anybody. She thought she could get Barack Obama. She didn’t get him, but she wasn’t shy about trying.”In addition to her father, Ms. Lazarus is survived by two brothers, Ned and Benjamin; her mother; and her stepmother, Bonnie Walter.In 2019, Ms. Lazarus took a break from her talk show. She had learned she had breast cancer in 2014 and underwent chemotherapy for years. She also wanted to finish a book of personal essays she was working on. As the pandemic took hold of life in New York, Ms. Lazarus spent her time at her apartment in Prospect Heights, writing in the company of her cocker spaniel, Lady.Ms. Lazarus at Joe’s Pub in 2016. “It was sort of a crime she didn’t have her own TV show,” Lin-Manuel Miranda said.Credit…Abel Fermin/ShutterstockMs. Lazarus always hoped her show might get picked up by a network or streaming service, and she was vocal about the gender disparity among late-night television hosts.“Showbiz has notoriously rewarded those who fail upwards,” she told Out magazine in 2018. “If and when Hollywood is ready for a talk-show host with chops, chutzpah, humor, no cavities and a genuine moral compass, will you tell them where to find me?”In her Times interview, Ms. Lazarus was asked what her own dream job was. She answered definitively.“What I do right now,” she said. “Hosting a talk show. I found mine, but it wasn’t intentional.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Barbara Windsor, Beloved British TV and Film Star, Dies at 83

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBarbara Windsor, Beloved British TV and Film Star, Dies at 83She went from bubbly sex symbol in the “Carry On” films to working-class hero on “EastEnders.” Her private life was often as troubled as her “EastEnders” character’s.The actress Barbara Windsor at the British Academy Television Awards in London in 2009. She was a star of the series “EastEnders” on and off from 1994 to 2016.Credit…Luke Macgregor/ReutersDec. 18, 2020Updated 4:07 p.m. ETLONDON — Barbara Windsor, a star of the “Carry On” films and the long-running BBC soap opera “EastEnders,” whose dirty staccato laugh and ability to embody working-class life seared her into Britain’s collective memory, died on Dec. 10 at a care home here. She was 83.Her death was announced in a statement by Scott Mitchell, her husband and only immediate survivor, who said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.Ms. Windsor with Prime Minister Boris Johnson last year in London. Mr. Johnson wrote on Twitter that Ms. Windsor had “cheered the world up with her own British brand of harmless sauciness and innocent scandal.”Credit…Pool photo by Simon DawsonIn a sign of the impact Ms. Windsor had on Britain’s cultural life over the last six decades, members of the royal family were among those who paid tribute on social media, as was Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who wrote on Twitter that Ms. Windsor “cheered the world up with her own British brand of harmless sauciness and innocent scandal.”Ms. Windsor also had an impact in the United States, albeit briefly, when she appeared on Broadway in 1964 in “Oh! What a Lovely War,” Joan Littlewood’s music-hall-style show that used irreverent songs from World War I to mock the absurdity of conflict.Some American theatergoers might have found Ms. Windsor’s cockney accent hard to understand — one of her first movies, “Sparrows Can’t Sing,” played with subtitles at some screenings in New York — but she was nominated for a Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical.In 1970, she told a BBC interviewer that she really wanted to make a film in Hollywood, preferably a comedy with Jack Lemmon. “That’d be smashing, wouldn’t it?” she said. She didn’t achieve that particular ambition, but she was soon immortalized in British movie theaters thanks to her roles in the farcical, innuendo-laden — and hugely successful — “Carry On” movies.Later, she became even more well known for her role as the matriarchal pub landlady Peggy Mitchell on “EastEnders,” a character she portrayed on and off from 1994 to 2016. She stopped once her Alzheimer’s made it impossible to continue.Ms. Windsor with her “EastEnders” co-stars in 1999, during the filming of an episode that included the wedding of her character, Peggy Mitchell.Credit…John Stillwell/PA, via Associated PressMs. Windsor was born Barbara Ann Deeks on Aug. 6, 1937, in Shoreditch, then a working-class part of East London. Her father, John, a bus driver, and her mother, Rose, a dressmaker, had a tumultuous marriage, and at 15 Ms. Windsor was made to testify about their rows at a divorce hearing.As a child in World War II, she was evacuated to Blackpool, a seaside resort in northern England. There, she revealed in her 2001 autobiography, “All of Me: My Extraordinary Life,” she first stayed with a family that tried to abuse her sexually, before moving in with a friend whose mother sent them both to dance lessons. The mother was so impressed by her talent that she wrote a letter to Ms. Windsor’s parents begging them to let her take lessons in London. “She’s a proper show-off,” the letter said, Ms. Windsor recalled in the 1970 BBC interview.Back in London, Ms. Windsor was spotted by a talent agent who tried to cast her in a pantomime, the peculiarly British form of theater popular at Christmas, but her school refused to give her time off. She eventually left to go to acting school, where the teachers repeatedly tried — and failed — to get her to lose her accent.Ms. Windsor became celebrated for her bawdy roles in the “Carry On” comedy movies. She is seen here with Sid James, as King Henry VIII, in a scene from “Carry On Henry” (1971).Credit…Bob Dear/Associated PressFor all the promise Ms. Windsor showed, her break didn’t come until 1960, when she traveled to East London to audition for a role with Ms. Littlewood’s Theater Workshop, a company whose works often brought working-class life and humor onstage. The acclaim she got for her work there soon led to appearances on TV and then in film, where she became celebrated for her bawdy roles in the “Carry On” comedies.In those films, the camera often focused on the short (4-foot-11) but buxom Ms. Windsor’s figure. She is probably best remembered for a scene in “Carry On Camping” (1969) in which her bikini top flies off during an outdoor aerobics class (during filming an assistant pulled the top off using a fishing line). That clip has been shown numerous times on British television ever since.Ms. Windsor in 1980 with Ronnie Knight, her first husband, who had just been released on bail after more than two weeks in custody. He was accused (and later acquitted) of ordering a hit man to murder his brother’s killer.Credit…Associated PressAlthough Ms. Windsor found success onscreen, her private life was troubled. She had liaisons with a series of famous men, including the soccer player George Best and the East London gangsters Reggie and Charlie Kray. In 1964 she married Ronnie Knight, another gangster, who in 1980 was tried for ordering a hit man to murder his brother’s killer (he was acquitted), and in 1983 was involved in stealing six million pounds (more than 17 million pounds, or about $23 million, in today’s money) from a security depot and fled to Spain.Her relationship with Mr. Knight caused her to have a nervous breakdown, she told the BBC in the 1990 interview. That marriage and a subsequent one ended in divorce.Her life got back on track on the 1990s after she was cast as Peggy Mitchell on “EastEnders,” the wildly popular kitchen-sink soap opera whose story lines often reflected social issues.She quickly became one of the show’s stars, known for slapping her co-stars when the plot demanded a climatic moment and for story lines that could be far darker than anything one would find in a “Carry On” movie. (In 2010, one of her character’s sons burned down the pub in the middle of a crack cocaine binge.)In the 1990s, her character had breast cancer twice and underwent a mastectomy, a plot that led hundreds of viewers to write to the BBC to express gratitude for how sensitively she handled the subject. In 2016, in her final appearance on the show, her character killed herself because her cancer had returned.Whatever happened to Ms. Windsor, onscreen or off, she never lost the joy of performing.“I don’t think negatively,” she told the BBC in 1990 when asked how she would look back on her life. “I’ll pick out all those wonderful things that have happened, and how lucky that I got paid — paid! — for doing something that I absolutely adored.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Jeremy Bulloch, Who Played Boba Fett in ‘Star Wars’ Movies, Dies at 75

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJeremy Bulloch, Who Played Boba Fett in ‘Star Wars’ Movies, Dies at 75Mr. Bulloch said he based his performance as the menacing bounty hunter in part on a Clint Eastwood role as a laconic gunslinger.Jeremy Bulloch in 2017 with the Boba Fett suit he wore in “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.”Credit…Associated PressDec. 17, 2020Jeremy Bulloch, the British actor who helped to make Boba Fett, the menacing bounty hunter with the dented helmet and T-shaped visor, one of the most popular characters in the “Star Wars” firmament, died on Thursday. He was 75.Mr. Bulloch’s death was confirmed by a statement on his website, which said he had spent his final weeks at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London. Mr. Bulloch had health complications, including Parkinson’s disease, the statement said.Mr. Bulloch became an actor at an early age, starring in commercials before expanding into television, stage, and film.Among his credits were numerous TV shows from the 1970s and ’80s, including “Doctor Who” and “Robin of Sherwood.” He also played supporting roles in three James Bond features — “Octopussy,” “The Spy Who Loved Me” and “For Your Eyes Only.”But he was best known for playing Boba Fett in “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.”Mr. Bulloch landed the role thanks to his half brother, Robert Watts, who was an associate producer of “The Empire Strikes Back,” according to StarWars.com. “‘If the suit fits, the part’s yours,’” Mr. Watts once recalled telling Mr. Bulloch. “He came in and it fit.”Mr. Bulloch said that donning Boba Fett’s battered armor, jetpack and helmet was a pleasure and a life-changing experience, although the costume itself could be quite uncomfortable.He said he had modeled the mysterious mercenary’s slow, deliberate head nod and cold, imposing physicality on Clint Eastwood’s turn as the laconic gunslinging antihero in the classic Spaghetti western “A Fistful of Dollars.”“I thought of Boba Fett as Clint Eastwood in a suit of armor,” Mr. Bulloch once said, according to StarWars.com. Ben Burtt, the sound designer on “The Empire Strikes Back,” even added the sound of jangling spurs when Fett walked, the website said.Jason Wingreen, a character actor best known for playing the genial bartender Harry on the hit sitcom “All in the Family,” voiced Boba Fett in “The Empire Strikes Back.” Mr. Wingreen died in 2016. He was 95.Mr. Bulloch said that he had terrific memories of portraying the character.“When I walked on to the set for the very first time in the costume, George Lucas looked at the costume and sort of looked out and said: ‘Mm-hmm. Yup. OK. Well, welcome aboard. It’s not a big role, but I’m sure you’ll have fun,’” he recalled in a 2015 interview with the Boba Fett Fan Club, one of many encounters he had with fans of the character and the series.Mr. Bulloch said he remembered going home after that first day and exulting to his sons: “Yes! I’m doing this.” Their response: “Dad, we’ve got homework to do. We’ll talk later.”Mr. Lucas said in a statement on StarWars.com that “Jeremy brought the perfect combination of mystery and menace to his performance of Boba Fett, which is just what I wanted the character to convey.”Born on Feb. 16, 1945, in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, England, Mr. Bulloch also appeared in “The Empire Strikes Back” without Fett’s helmet as an Imperial officer escorting a captive Princess Leia. He had a small role in “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” as the captain of the Tantive III, Captain Colton.Mr. Bulloch is survived by his wife, Maureen, three sons and 10 grandchildren.Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, said Mr. Bulloch “was the quintessential English gentleman.”“A fine actor, delightful company & so kind to everyone lucky enough to meet or work with him,” Mr. Hamill wrote on Twitter.Billy Dee Williams, who played Lando Calrissian, said, “Today we lost the best bounty hunter in the galaxy.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Harold Budd, Composer of Spaciousness and Calm, Dies at 84

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostHarold Budd, Composer of Spaciousness and Calm, Dies at 84Known for his collaborations with art-pop artists like Brian Eno and Cocteau Twins, he created a signature sound suspended in reverberation and drone.The composer and pianist Harold Budd in Birmingham, England, in 2011. His music was known for its unhurried, organic spontaneity.Credit…Steve Thorne/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDec. 17, 2020Updated 5:45 p.m. ETHarold Budd, a composer and pianist known for the preternatural spaciousness and melancholy calm of his music, and for his collaborations with art-pop artists like Brian Eno and Cocteau Twins, died on Dec. 8 in a hospital in Arcadia, Calif. He was 84.The cause was complications of Covid-19, which he contracted at a short-term rehabilitation facility while undergoing therapy after suffering a stroke on Nov. 11, his manager, Steve Takaki, said in an email.Born in Los Angeles, Mr. Budd grew up close to the Mojave Desert, a likely inspiration for the sparsity and vastness his music could evoke. Engaged initially by free jazz, John Cage’s avant-garde innovations and early minimalism, he broke with all of those styles to create a signature sound that centered on the piano, soft-pedaled, sustained and suspended in a corona of reverberation and drone.That sound, which Mr. Budd began to develop in 1972, found its initial fruition on “The Pavilion of Dreams,” a 1978 album produced and released by Mr. Eno. In 1980, Mr. Budd and Mr. Eno jointly created “Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror,” a watershed work for both artists, not least for its feeling of unhurried, organic spontaneity. For their next collaboration, “The Pearl,” released in 1984, they brought in a second credited producer, Daniel Lanois.“I just want to say one thing again clearly right now: I owe Eno everything,” Mr. Budd proclaimed in a 2016 interview with L.A. Record, a music publication. Recording with Mr. Eno in London had “opened up another world for me that I didn’t know existed,” he said, “and suddenly I was a part of it.”Mr. Budd would go on to work with other artists active in popular music, including Andy Partridge of XTC and John Foxx, a founder of Ultravox. A collaboration with the Scottish trio Cocteau Twins, whose music shared with Mr. Budd’s a quality of esoteric reverie, produced the 1986 album “The Moon and the Melodies.” An enduring bond with Robin Guthrie, the Cocteau Twins guitarist and songwriter, resulted in several film scores and duo albums. The latest, “Another Flower,” was recorded in 2013 but released this month.Mr. Budd announced his retirement from music in 2004, but within a few years he was working again, with fresh vitality and variety. “Bandits of Stature,” issued in 2012, comprised 14 succinct pieces for string quartet. By 2018, Mr. Budd was collaborating with chamber groups in concerts that amounted to career retrospectives, including a high-profile appearance at the 2019 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn.When Mr. Budd died, Mr. Takaki wrote in an email, he had recently completed 19 new string quartets. Some had been recorded this year. Others have yet to be performed. Preparations to transcribe and edit Mr. Budd’s solo piano music and chamber works for publication began during the summer, and will continue.Mr. Budd in performance at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., in 2019.Credit…Jake Giles Netter for The New York TimesHarold Montgomery Budd was born on May 24, 1936, to Harold Budd, who worked in the textile industry, and Dorothy (McNeill) Budd, a homemaker. His father died when he was 13, resulting in financial hardship that prompted the family to move to Victorville, on the edge of the Mojave Desert.An early interest in jazz led Mr. Budd to take up the drums. He played nightclub dates in Los Angeles while working days at Northrop Corporation, the aircraft manufacturer, to support his family, and later attended Los Angeles Community College. Drafted into the Army, Mr. Budd performed in a band with the saxophonist Albert Ayler, who would later achieve renown as a free-jazz firebrand.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Kim Ki-duk, Award-Winning South Korean Filmmaker, Dies at 59

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve lostKim Ki-duk, Award-Winning South Korean Filmmaker, Dies at 59He was celebrated for movies centered on society’s underbelly, but he was later accused of sexual misconduct. He died of Covid-19.The South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk in 2013 at the Venice Film Festival, where his “Moebius” was screened out of competition. A year earlier, his film “Pieta” had won the Golden Lion there. Credit…Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDec. 17, 2020, 12:42 p.m. ETSEOUL, South Korea — Kim Ki-duk, ​an internationally celebrated South Korean film director who made movies ​about people ​on ​the margins of society​ that ​often ​included ​shocking scenes of violence against women, and whose career was dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, died on Dec. 11 in Latvia.​ He was 59.The cause was Covid-19 and related heart complications, his production company, Kim Ki-duk Film​, said. According to the company, he had undergone two weeks of treatment for the disease at a hospital in Latvia, where he had recently relocated and was reported to have been scouting locations for his next film.Mr. Kim remains the only South Korean director to have won ​top ​awards at the three ​major international film festivals: those in Cannes, Venice and Berlin. He ​spent much of his time abroad after allegations that he had sexually abused actresses began to haunt his career in 2017​.Few film industry groups issued formal statements on ​Mr. Kim’s death or his films. ​Film critics who shared their condolences and appreciations on social media faced blistering reactions from people who said that doing so was tantamount to violence against his victims.“I stopped teaching Kim Ki-duk’s films in my classes in 2018 when the program about his sexual assaults screened on Korean TV,” Darcy Paquet​, an American film critic​ who specializes in Korean cinema​, wrote on Twitter.​ “If someone does such awful violence to people in real life, it’s just wrong to celebrate him. I don’t care if he’s a genius (and I don’t think he was).”​But Mr. Kim’s films also attracted fans who said his depictions of poverty and violence ​helped spark important debates about life in South Korea. “I try to discover a good scent by digging into a garbage heap,” he once said of his approach to filmmaking.His movies often centered on society’s underbelly. One dealt with a coldhearted man who turned a woman he once loved into a prostitute. He also tackled issues like suicide, rape, incest, plastic surgery and mixed-race children.“Crocodile” (1996), his first film, tells the story of a homeless man who lives on the Han River in Seoul and makes a living by stealing cash from victims who kill themselves or by recovering bodies in the river and demanding rewards from grieving families. The man saves a woman from suicide and then rapes her.Mr. Kim in Seoul in 2012 with the award he had just won in Venice. He was the only South Korean director to have won ​top ​awards at the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals.Credit…Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Pieta” (2012) is perhaps Mr. Kim’s most recognized film. A deeply unnerving tale, it follows a mother and son on a quest for revenge and redemption and includes graphic scenes of torture and violence. It won the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. The year before, Mr. Kim had received an award at the Cannes festival for “Arirang,” a documentary about a near-fatal accident that occurred on one of his shoots.While his movies often garnered critical acclaim abroad, most of them were commercial failures in South Korea.“I made this movie so that we can reflect upon ourselves living in this miserable world where you are lauded for succeeding in life even if you do so through lawbreaking and corruption,” he said after his movie “One on One,” about the brutal murder of a high school girl, flopped in 2014. “I made it hoping that some will understand it. If no one does, I can’t do anything about it.”Many moviegoers, especially women, were disturbed by what they considered perverted, misogynistic and sadistic scenes of violence against women in Mr. Kim’s movies. The criticism grew significantly in 2017 when an actress starring in Mr. Kim’s movie “Moebius” accused him of forcing her into shooting a sexual scene against her will.He was later fined for slapping her in the face, but other charges were dismissed for lack of evidence or because the statute of limitations had expired.More actresses came forward with accusations of sexual abuse. Women’s rights groups in South Korea rallied behind the victims, accusing Mr. Kim of confusing “directing with abusing.”He ultimately became known as one of the many prominent ​South Korean ​men​​ — including theater directors, prosecutors, mayors, poets and Christian pastors — to face serious accusations of sexual misconduct as part of the country’s #MeToo movement. In 2018, the local broadcaster MBC aired “Master’s Naked Face,” which examined the allegations against Mr. Kim.Min-soo Jo in a scene from “Pieta” (2012), perhaps Mr. Kim’s most recognized film.Credit…Drafthouse FilmsMr. Kim denied being a sexual predator and sued his accusers for defamation. The cases were still pending in court when he died.Mr. Kim was born on Dec. 20, 1960, in ​Bongwha, a rural county in the southeast of South Korea. His early formal education ended in primary school. His father was reported to have been a disabled Korean War veteran who abused him.As a teenager, Mr. Kim toiled in factories and sweatshops. He enlisted in the South Korean Marine Corps and later enrolled in a Christian theological school, before moving to Paris to study painting when he was 30.When he returned to South Korea in 1995, he was determined to become a film director and began churning out one low-budget movie after another, winning international recognition that few South Korean directors were able to achieve.Mr. Kim is survived by his wife and a daughter.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Ann Reinking Dies at 71; Dancer, Actor, Choreographer and Fosse Muse

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAnn Reinking Dies at 71; Dancer, Actor, Choreographer and Fosse MuseFrom the ensembles of “Cabaret” and “Pippin,” she stepped into the role of Roxie Hart in “Chicago,” and the rest is Tony-winning history.Ann Reinking as a character based on herself in Bob Fosse’s autobiographical 1979 movie. “All That Jazz.” “I think I came off as a good person,” she said, “and as someone who meant something to him.”Credit…Everett CollectionPublished More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Charley Pride, Country Music’s First Black Superstar, Dies at 86

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose we’ve lostCharley Pride, Country Music’s First Black Superstar, Dies at 86He began his career amid the racial unrest of the 1960s and cemented his place in the country pantheon with hits like “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.”Charley Pride performing in Nashville in 2018. In the 20 years after his breakout hit, “Just Between You and Me,” in 1967, 51 more of Mr. Pride’s records reached the country Top 10.Credit…Laura Roberts/Invision, via Associated PressPublished More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Noah Creshevsky, Composer of ‘Hyperreal’ Music, Dies at 75

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNoah Creshevsky, Composer of ‘Hyperreal’ Music, Dies at 75He built his musical works from myriad sampled sounds, including noises from the street as well as voices and instruments. He was also a respected teacher.The composer Noah Creshevsky in 1985 with the tools of his trade, including a Moog synthesizer. “We live in a hyperrealist world,” he said, and he wrote music to match it.Credit…via Tom HamiltonDec. 12, 2020, 5:51 p.m. ETNoah Creshevsky, a composer of sophisticated, variegated electroacoustic works that mingled scraps of vocal and instrumental music, speech, outside noise, television snippets and other bits of sound, died on Dec. 3 at his home in Manhattan. He was 75. His husband, David Sachs, said the cause was cancer.Mr. Creshevsky studied composition with some of the most prominent figures in modern music, including the French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and the Italian composer Luciano Berio.Rather than pursuing a career that might have resulted in concert-hall celebrity, Mr. Creshevsky found his calling in the studio-bound world of electronic music. Using the prevailing technologies of the day — at first cutting and splicing magnetic tape, later using samplers and digital audio workstations — he made music that was dizzyingly complex in its conception and construction.But because he built his works from everyday sounds as well as voices and instruments, his compositions felt accessible, engaging and witty. The term he used to describe his music, and the philosophy that animated it, was “hyperrealism.”The “realism” comes from what we hear in our shared environment, and the “hyper” from the “exaggerated or excessive” ways those sounds are handled, Mr. Creshevsky wrote in “Hyperrealism, Hyperdrama, Superperformers and Open Palette,” an influential 2005 essay.“Contemporary reality is so densely layered and information-rich and so far removed from a hypothetical state of ‘naturalness’ that hyperrealism is an accurate term for identifying the fabric of daily life,” he continued. “We live in a hyperrealist world.”Mr. Creshevsky conveyed those qualities through his music with wild juxtapositions and fantastical distortions. He used recordings of John Cage’s speaking voice to create “In Other Words” (1976), a leisurely whirlpool of disembodied chatter. In “Great Performances” (1978), clips of classical-music performances and deadpan announcers poke gentle fun at highbrow culture. “Strategic Defense Initiative” (1978) mashes up martial-arts movie sound bites, funk beats and inexplicable noises in an exuberant tour de force of tape manipulation.The same energy and wit animate Mr. Creshevsky’s digital creations. In “Ossi di Morte” (1997), tiny scraps of recorded opera are stitched into a vignette that never existed. Similarly, “Götterdämmerung” (2009) infuses samples of the Klez Dispensers, a local klezmer ensemble, with superhuman energy and speed.Mr. Creshevsky was also a much-admired teacher. He joined the faculty of Brooklyn College in 1969 and served as director of the college’s trailblazing Center for Computer Music from 1994 to 1999. He also taught at the Juilliard School and Hunter College in New York and spent the 1984 academic year at Princeton University.Over the years Mr. Creshevsky documented much of his music on record labels that specialized in classical or experimental music. This album was released by the Mutable Music label in 2003.Noah Creshevsky was born Gary Cohen on Jan. 31, 1945, in Rochester, N.Y., to Joseph and Sylvia Cohen. His father worked in his family’s dry-cleaning business, and his mother was a homemaker. He changed his surname to Creshevsky, according to Mr. Sachs, “to honor his grandparents, whose name it was.” At the same time he also changed his first name, because, he said, “I never felt like a Gary.”The Cohen household was not especially musical, but young Gary was drawn to a piano that had been bought for his older brother. His parents, Mr. Sachs said, “were surprised to see toddler Noah — his legs too short to reach the pedals — picking out pop melodies he had heard and retained.”He began his formal musical training at 6, in the preparatory division of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. “Since my nature is that of a composer rather than a performer, I never liked spending much time practicing someone else’s composition,” Mr. Creshevsky said in an interview published by Tokafi, a music website. “Instead of working on the music that had been assigned by my teachers at Eastman, I spent many hours improvising at the piano.” He made money, he said, working as a cocktail pianist at bars and restaurants.After finishing at Eastman in 1961, he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo, now known as the University at Buffalo, in 1966. There he studied with the noted composer Lukas Foss. He also spent a year with Boulanger at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, in 1963 and 1964, a rite of passage for many prominent American composers.After graduating he moved to New York City, where he founded a new-music group, the New York Improvisation Ensemble. He studied with Berio at Juilliard and earned his master’s degree in 1968.Not long afterward, Mr. Creshevsky gave up composing music meant to be performed live. In espousing hyperrealism, he identified two chief threads in his own work.Beginning with “Circuit,” a 1971 work for harpsichord and tape, he used sounds derived from familiar instruments, including the voice, to evoke “superperformers,” a term he applied to artificial performances of inhuman dexterity and exactitude.The idea had many precedents, Mr. Creshevsky wrote in 2005, including the violin music of Paganini, the piano music of Liszt and the player-piano works of Conlon Nancarrow.He also sought to radically expand the sonic palette available to a composer, a venture aided by affordable personal computers and the advent of sampling. Composers could now “incorporate the sounds of the entire world into their music,” he wrote. The result, he proposed, would be “an inclusive, limitless sonic compendium, free of ethnic and national particularity.”Mr. Creshevsky’s view of music education balanced a healthy respect for classical music’s lineage and literature with an open-minded approach to global culture and emerging technologies. “It seems probable that the next Mozart will not play the piano, but will be a terrific player of computer games,” he predicted in the Tokafi interview. “A senior generation needs to educate itself by understanding that digital technologies are creative instruments of quality.”He retired from Brooklyn College in 2000, and in 2015 he delivered his personal archives of recordings, papers and ephemera to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Over the years he had documented much of his music on record labels that specialized in classical or experimental music. He found a kindred spirit and fervent advocate in the composer and saxophonist John Zorn, whose Tzadik label issued compelling discs of Mr. Creshevsky’s compositions in 2007, 2010 and 2013.Another album suggested that Mr. Creshevsky’s influence had traveled well beyond the classical avant-garde. “Reanimator,” a career-spanning 2018 survey, appeared on Orange Milk, a label associated with contemporary styles like vaporwave and hyperpop.Seth Graham, a founder of the label, had heeded a friend’s advice to listen to Mr. Creshevsky’s music, and was struck by its audacity and prescience. Mr. Graham contacted Mr. Creshevsky on Facebook to propose a recording project — a gesture that quickly yielded a fast friendship.Orange Milk, Mr. Graham said, functioned like a close-knit community in which artists shared tips and feedback with one another. “Noah started to interact with all of us,” he said in an email, “and I know for many artists, it was helpful and a joy to interact with him.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More