L☀RNA S☁RE

Sarah Cole teaches a class called Woolf, Gender, History, Modernism. I’m in the class. There is a Russell Banks story called “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story.” A coincidence?

Heathcliff Andrew Ledger was born on April 4, 1979, to Sally Ledger, a French teacher, and Kim Ledger, an engineer. Named for a character in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” he and his older sister, Katherine, grew up in Perth, Australia; his parents were divorced when he was about 10.

I’m pissed that Paul Dano wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for There Will Be Blood. 

Fassbinder in NYRB

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Why is my teenage daughter dressing like Yasser Arafat?

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Woody Allen: I - just this personality quirk of mine. I just – I’m not – I just don’t make friends easily. So I’ve never met - I have very few show business friends. I have friends - I have very few friends, actually, because I just am not – I’m not good at it. I just have never been good at it.

Scarlett Johansson, who I have done three pictures with, feels that I’m the most antisocial person that she’s worked with. And I always insist that I’m not antisocial. I’m just not social. I don’t know. It’s just personality, my personality.

Scott Simon: Have you not, at least on one or two occasions in your life, had well- known longstanding romantic relationships…

Woody Allen: Oh, yes. I’ve been - I was lucky in that way, too.

Scott Simon: …with people who have been in your film. But with people who’ve been in your films.

Woody Allen: Yes. I don’t count those exactly as friendships, you know, in the sense, you know, guys I can could up and you go to the basketball game which is something. I’ve had some wonderful romances in my life with the wonderful and beautiful women. And they’ve made real contributions to my life and to my work. And you know, and I’ve been very lucky that way. I mean, I’m really, really lucky.

Woody Allen on NPR

Much more problematically, when he was governor of Arkansas in the 90s, Huckabee pushed for the release of Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist. This was despite a number of Dumond’s victims writing to him personally - including one who had been raped at knifepoint while her three-year-old daughter slept beside her. Huckabee was apparently more moved by the right-wing tabloid campaign waged in Dumond’s favour, and his influence helped to release the rapist 25 years early. Dumond went on to rape and murder one woman, and died in prison as charges were being brought against him for the rape and murder of yet another.

Staunchly opposed to abortion (which he has compared to the Holocaust), one of Huckabee’s first acts as governor was to block Medicaid, the health scheme for people on low incomes, from funding an abortion for a 15-year-old with learning disabilities who had been raped by her stepfather. This went directly against federal law, which requires states to fund abortions in cases of rape.

[Guardian]