Lauren Bacall, the tough-talking femme fatale who taught Humphrey Bogart how to whistle, died on Tuesday at the age of 89, according to a statement from Bogart’s estate.
“With deep sorrow, yet with great gratitude for her amazing life, we confirm the passing of Lauren Bacall,” read the brief but classy line, posted to Twitter with a picture of Bacall accepting an honorary Oscar in 2009.
“Fifi howls from happiness,” director Mitra Farahani’s elegiac post-scriptum to Persian artist Bahman Mohassess, was rolled out in theaters on Friday. I met with her in Paris to talk about the last living days of a artist.
About five years ago Farahani had decided to go on an investigation of the works of Mohassess. The Loch Ness creature of Iran’s expatriate artists and a prolific painter
The 2000s had been difficult for Robin Williams who was found dead yesterday at his home in California at age 63. That decade did not yield any major successes for the actor who wore bittersweetness on his sleeve and made poetry out of life’s daily vexations.
He earned one Oscar in 1998, a feat that happens rarely, if not at all, for most actors and directors (it took Scorsese forty years
"Golan-Globus ..." To this critic who grew up in the eighties in France in a decade when "La Boum" and "Un homme et une femme" where big, the hyphenated combo held the promise of cinematic thrills and brash entertainment: high stakes cop-vs-bad guys intrigues, meatheads in military gear knocking doors down and car chases aplenty. This was Hollywood at its best, making money without the obscenely outsize budgets
What can you do when you know that death is approaching? Joaquim Pinto contracted HIV and hepatitis C twenty years ago. In this film-diary which he directed he reveals his innermost thoughts as he lines up one difficult day with another, powerless to do anything about his debilitating afflictions. And yet, his documentary is less about the philosophical implications of life and death as it is, more simply, about how to live with
For those of you in the New York area look for this new documentary about sculptor and painter Bahman Mohassess, an artist from Iran who's lived in exile and seclusion in Italy for thirty years until his untimely passing in 2010. "Fifi howls from happiness" is slated for release tomorrow Friday. Paris-based filmmaker Mitra Farahani spent time at his Italy-based studio discussing his opus, his triumphs and his failures

