Billy Strayhorn Would Be Only 110 Today
Happy birthday to super-composer Billy Strayhorn, who was born on this day in 1915. Billy Strayhorn is best known as the composing partner of Duke Ellington; together they created classic …..
Biographies
Arkady Renko’s Last Case
Arkady Renko is not dead, but we’ve heard all of his tales that we’ll ever hear. That’s because his amazing creator, Martin Cruz Smith, died this July at age 82. …..
Richard Linklater has a cool new (wave) film coming out
Director Richard Linklater has a new film at Cannes: Nouvelle Vague. It’s about the making of Breathless, the 1960 classic of the French New Wave. (Until just now, I didn’t know …..
Francis I is Dead: Remembering a Great-Hearted Pope
[Editor’s note: Pope Francis I has died, just one day after greeting the usual Easter crowds in the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square. He was 88. No cause of death has …..
RIP Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024
President Jimmy Carter has died at age 100, at his home in Plains, Georgia. If you didn’t like and admire this excellent public servant, have your heart examined. He did …..
The ‘S’ in ‘Harry S. Truman’ Really DID Stand for Something
So now it comes out that the ‘S’ in the name of Harry S. Truman actually did have a meaning. For years we’ve heard people say that the S “doesn’t …..
Kier Starmer, SPECTRE Agent?
Look, this never would have happened if they hadn’t killed James Bond in No Time to Die. But they had to go for the cheap noble sentiment and the big …..
Humphrey Bogart in ‘Sahara’: A Brief Review
A few nights ago I decided on a whim to look for any Humphrey Bogart film I’d never seen. I landed on Sahara, a 1943 war film that was Bogart’s …..
Emily Blunt Tries to Remember Her Lines
Here’s a great little video from Variety in which actress Emily Blunt is handed cards with lines from some of her past roles and tries to remember the movies. It’s …..
Rosalynn Carter and the Battle for Mental Health
Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady of the United States and for 77 years the wife of former President Jimmy Carter, has died at age 96. She died on November 19, …..