COURTS: American Apparel Settles With Woody Allen

NEW YORK TIMES: So much for the trial of the century: a lawsuit filed by Woody Allen against American Apparel was quickly settled on Monday morning for $5 million, Reuters reported. Mr. Allen was suing the clothing maker for using without permission an image of him from “Annie Hall,” in which he was dressed as a Hasidic Jew, on billboards that appeared in New York and Los Angeles and in online advertisements. The weeks leading up to Monday’s brief courtroom action had been tense. In a deposition in December, Mr. Allen said the ads were “sleazy” and “infantile,” according to […]

Cinema , Culture , Media , NewsPosted on:

AND THEN THERE WAS MAUDE: Bea Arthur RIP

LOS ANGELES TIMES: “God will get you for that, Walter.” Nobody could do more with these words than Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay on the marital warpath. She could slingshot them in fury or release them in a chilling deadpan, but however she delivered them you could be sure they’d hit their mark with a prizefighter’s pop. All the tributes that will be lavished on Arthur, who died Saturday at 86, will extol her impeccable comic timing. Her ability to detonate a joke, to momentarily harness a punch line before releasing at full force, brought her Emmy-winning success in two […]

Culture , Media , News , PoliticsPosted on:

LETTER FROM ROME: Apocalypto Now

[Photo via THE BIG PICTURE] BY SIMONE SECCI FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT ROME — The noises that people used to hear in the streets of L’Aquila, one of the main cities in central Italy, were those that you can hear in every other place in the world: People talking, traffic, kids playing. Now L’Aquila is a ghost town ruled by a terrible empty silence, a silence of death. The numbers that corresponds to the terrible earthquake, that hit L’Aquila last Monday are those of a catastrophe: 228 people founded dead, hundreds injured and more than 70.000 homeless, so far. Unfortunately L’Aquila wasn’t […]

Culture , News , PoliticsPosted on:

HOT DOCUMENT: The Trouble With Facebook

Lily sent you a message.——————– Subject: Just like a buzzin’ fly, I come into your life, now I float away Dear Jon, I’m going to de-friend you.  It’s nothing personal, which is the whole point. We’re not personal people, with each other.  We don’t talk on the phone or send Christmas cards. We don’t mass email urban legends to each other.  We’re just not close. Even when we were close, back in the early 90’s, we weren’t close. Right before I left Philly, I saw you at a party and you thought my name was Missy. And it didn’t bother […]

Culture , NewsPosted on:

ARTSY: Detritus

“Icarus Ascending” by Jose Gamalinda, part of Detritus, now showing at T-bar BY AARON STELLA The long awaited debut of Jose Gamalinda, emergent artist and veteran bartender at Woody’s for over 18 years, has finally arrived. Now his pieces, which have hitherto  remained unexposed to the public, are on display at T-bar (located at 12th and Sansom streets) in a show aptly titled “Detritus.” Gamalinda specializes in collages and reproductions in Bic pen. Most of Gamalinda’s friends, co-workers and fellow art enthusiasts were already familiar with his work. For years, they’ve prodded him to invest the time needed to actualize […]

215 , Art , Culture , NewsPosted on:

HARD LUCK WOMAN: Farrah Fawcett Hospitalized

BBC NEWS:  Farrah Fawcett, who has been battling cancer for almost three years, has been admitted to a Los Angeles hospital, according to reports. The 62-year-old Charlie’s Angels star has been in an unidentified hospital since Thursday, People magazine said. A spokesman for the actress has not yet commented on her condition. Diagnosed with anal cancer in September 2006, Fawcett declared herself cancer-free four months later, only to have the disease return in May 2007. She shared her experiences of battling the disease with footage she released to the media in 2008. Her big TV break came in 1976 when […]

Culture , NewsPosted on: