Life in chess has always been a struggle, never more so than today. During the two-year battle for the 2024 world chess championship, I saw tantrums, I saw tears, I heard one top grandmaster muse about leaving the game for a career in fashion. - The Walrus
Over 60 years he wrote or co-wrote more than 50 books and fronted several hundred hours of television, starting in 1956 with the British children’s series Zoo Time. … He was an acknowledged authority on mammal behavior, including that of humans, and maintained a separate career as a surrealist painter. - The Guardian
“Across a career that stretched more than four decades, Hayward developed a reputation for paintings that were both restrained and intensely physical. His best-known works used dense layers of oil paint and repeated diagonal strokes to build ridged, meditative surfaces that explored color, gesture and the material force of paint itself.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
“Baye, a stalwart of France’s domestic cinema, starred in about 80 films and took home the best actress César, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, four times, including three years running from 1981 to 1983.” - The Guardian (UK)
The multiple prize-winning author: “I guess it’s kind of ‘all or none.’ Either everyone is illegal except Native people, or no one is illegal. I don’t think anybody is illegal in the first place. I don’t believe in borders.” - El País English
The actor who plays Santos - the abrasive, competitive, smart young resident on The Pitt - is also a dab hand at karaoke, a longtime Broadway and national touring company singer, and a person who posts Instagram Stories defending the theatre from weird Pitt fans. - Vulture
“A newly discovered 17th-century map sheds new light on the Bard’s London life, pinpointing for the first time the exact location of the only home Shakespeare bought in the city, and where he may have worked on his final plays.” - AP
He spent a quarter-century at The Washington Post, including as Moscow bureau chief during the Brezhnev era; he then served as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. As CEO of NPR from 1998 to 2008, he played a central role in landing the transformative $150 million donation from Joan Kroc. - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
His new movie, Outcome — which he directed- co-wrote, and co-stars in — “is difficult to watch without drawing parallels to Hill’s odd and unexpected arc, as well as to the real-life controversies that could have sunk his career.” - The Hollywood Reporter
Opinions on her recent stance are strongly divided: some have praised her principled refusal to play the self-promotion game that takes so much out of writers, while others have called her a spoilt, entitled nightmare. - The Guardian
The accidental shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust, the two (unsuccessful) prosecutions in New Mexico, finishing the film in another state — it all took a huge toll on Baldwin, financially as well as psychologically and physically. - The Hollywood Reporter
’I would like to, with utmost sensitivity and respect, suggest to the administrations of the major American orchestras to consider using your voices... I’m quite convinced that the situation would get easier, faster, if the arts community came together to say “no more” in unison, in a way that inspires.’ - The Strad
A puppeteer since childhood, Sid, with his younger brother Marty (who died 2½ years ago), produced H.R. Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, The Bugaloos, Lidsville and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and created the look of The Banana Splits — all using a psychedelic 1970s day-glo style and flashes of knowing grownup humor. - Deadline
Bhosle, who recorded more than 12,000 songs, became her country’s pre-eminent exponent of playback singing – recording tracks that were then lip-synced on film by actors. She also boldly embraced cabaret and western-influenced melodies to forge a distinctive musical identity. - The Guardian
