Word: iconoclastic
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...world, a writer mentioned in the same breath as Borges and García Márquez. Unlike the other demigods of the literary canon, though, Bolaño seems like a guy you could meet on the street, not a monument cast in bronze. This is the lifelong iconoclast who dropped out of school at 15, stole the books he read, attended poetry readings only to shout down those he disdained, and led an outlaw band of avant-garde poets. This is the life he idealizes in “The Savage Detectives.” The semi-autobiographical...
...result, most American films are sitcoms, predictable from first reel to last. More precisely (in this era of Short Attention Span Cinema), they are commercials, peddling primitive stories with comfortable emotions. Today's typical filmmaker is a moneychanger in a fine old temple. And Altman, ostensibly the iconoclast, is actually the idealist, the conservative, keeping the faith, fighting to preserve what's best in movies: the sense that the screen can contain...anything. As Streep and Tomlin, finally in unison, said at the end of their Oscar introduction, "You leave his movies knowing that life is many things at once...
...DIED. Jack Palance, 87, hulking Hollywood iconoclast who won a best-supporting-actor Oscar for playing Curly, the hilariously creepy dude-ranch stud in City Slickers; in Montecito, California. The former heavyweight boxer shot to fame playing eerily calm, menacing heavies in films like Sudden Fear (Joan Crawford's deranged stalker) and Shane (a bullying gunslinger) in the 1950s. But his most memorable performance was at the 1992 Oscars. Accepting his award, Palance started to attempt a speech, then dropped to the floor, displaying his virility with a series of one-handed push-ups. Later asked what happened, he replied...
...medal. In May, University President Lawrence H. Summers will present the award to Durang during the 14th annual Arts First celebration, a four-day festival of theater, dance, music, and film produced by Harvard students. “I think he’s one of the great iconoclast writers of his generation,” said Robert E. Woodruff, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater. “I think his humor is biting. It’s social, it’s political, truly an American voice.” Durang’s most popular plays...
DIED. NAM JUNE PAIK, 74, impish Korean-born avant-gardist deemed the inventor of video art who in the 1960s won acclaim with works that simultaneously celebrated and spoofed the fledgling notion of media overload; of natural causes; in Miami. Inspired by iconoclast composer John Cage, he created such renowned installations as Video Fish, an array of 52 live monitors, each obscured by fish-filled aquariums...