LAST night's Academy Awards confirmed expectations that movies pining for the art of the past (the French past, in some cases) would walk away with the most trophies. The big winner, of course, was The Artist, which snagged best actor for Jean Dujardin, best director for Michel Hazanavicius and best picture.Scorsese's Hugo, set in a Paris train station in the '30s and with a backstory involving … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2012
The Roots of a Jazz Drummer
IT seems like everyone who saw Justin Faulkner's performance with Branford Marsalis out here has told me personally that we have to look out for this kid. Faulkner started that association on his 18th birthday, while still a high school senior.This week, as a ripe old man of 20, Faulkner spoke to me about his development as a jazz listener and drummer after cutting his teeth on R&B and gospel. … [Read more...]
Dustin Hoffman Falls Into "Luck"
What's this celebrated screen actor doing on television? Dustin Hoffman isn't quite sure either. But he sat down to speak with me recently about what brought him to the David Milch/Michael Mann show Luck, and talked about his career and television in general. HERE is my story.I was struck by how humble and openly neurotic Hoffman was; he spoke about his big break with The Graduate coming after … [Read more...]
The 2012 Oscars and Actors of a Certain Age
THIS week I have a brief piece on SecondAct, the site devoted to people 40 and over. (A demographic I joined four years ago today, and am happy to belong to if it includes Brad Pitt.) I look at some of the actors nominated for this year's Academy Awards -- George Clooney (The Descendants), Meryl Streep (Iron Lady), Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) and five others.Not sure there's an unalloyed … [Read more...]
The Journey of a Soprano
THIS week my Influences column looks at opera soprano Ana Maria Martinez, who started out as a West Side Story loving kid in Puerto Rico and became a star who sings all over the world. (She's also won a Latin Grammy and been dubbed "the most beautiful voice in Latin America."HERE is my conversation with Martinez, who had a fortuitous early meeting with Placido Domingo, who would go on to become a … [Read more...]
The Producer Behind "The Artist"
CRAZY ideas come and go; most don't see the light of day. When millions of dollars are required, it's even harder for unorthodox notions to go anywhere.So when Michel Hazanavicius decided he wanted to make a black-and-white silent film, he needed a lunatic to finance the project. He found one. HERE is my Q&A with Thomas Langmann, the producer who made The Artist -- nominated for 10 Academy Awards … [Read more...]
Architecture and the Creative Class
THINGS seemed to be going so well: The architect was a figure tailor-made for the heyday of bourgeois bohemia, and Frank Gehry was palling around with Brad Pitt.But things changed, badly, and it's not clear now when, or how, they'll change back. Corporate firms are in some cases doing fine, and architects who design for the 1% are doing better than those who depend on civic projects, but many … [Read more...]
Nerds, Autism and So On
THE writer Ben Nugent just had a funny and serious op-ed on the New York Times about being falsely diagnosed, as a kid, with the form of autism often associated with musical and mathematical genius. ("FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late ’90s," the piece begins, "I had Asperger syndrome.") Turns out he was just an awkward, artsy teenager who had not … [Read more...]