This week on the Huffington Post Arts&Culture we heard from the Met on their controversial admission policy, we LOLed over the upcoming SNL themed exhibition and wished farewell to beloved film critic Roger Ebert.
SNL Art
A hilarious new exhibit in Los Angeles is paying tribute to one of America's longest-running television shows: Saturday Night Live. Featuring a playful collection of impressive fan art, the show's masterpieces include portraits of Church Lady, Harry Caray and, of course, Toonces the dreaded driving cat. Read more here.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, that well-known behemoth of the New York City art scene, has been the subject of some not-so-favorable press in recent months. After not one, but two lawsuits filed by unhappy patrons contesting the institute's "recommended" admission fee policy, the museum has posted a strongly worded response on its website
In the lengthy statement, director Thomas P. Campbell defends the pay-what-you-will standard that's been in use since the 1970s (one that, for the record, prompts but does not require visitors to pay a suggested fee of $25) and attempts to debunk some of the rumors that have been floating around since the museum was first accused of fraud last year.
Jennifer Pawluck took the photo above of police spokesman Ian Lafreniere in Montreal last month, and was surprised when police officers showed up at her home with a warrant for her arrest.
"Many of my friends do not like the police," Pawluck told the Huffington Post Québec, in French. "I thought it would be funny to put the picture on Instagram. I do not even know who he is."
L to R: Gene Siskel, Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert at the NATPE television convention 30 years ago.
Leonard Maltin writes:
I'm still in a state of shock over the news of Roger Ebert's death, at age 70, so soon after going public about the recurrence of cancer in his system -- and promising to file reviews as often as possible. That's the Roger Ebert I'm thinking about right now: not the influential critic or the lifelong newspaperman who never missed a deadline, but the guy who faced a staggering series of health crises and refused to give in. He was the bravest person I've ever encountered. It helped that he had an equally indomitable partner in his devoted wife Chaz; they made a great team.
It's impossible to overstate the impact Roger and his longtime partner and rival Gene Siskel had on popular culture and the perception of film criticism. They were both firmly established in Chicago (a great newspaper town), writing for the Sun-Times and the Tribune, respectively, when their local public television affiliate exposed them to a national audience on PBS in the early 1980s. Imagine: a weekly half-hour program consisting of two critics reviewing and debating current movies. There had never been anything like it before and it caught on like wildfire. Gene and Roger were in the right place at the right time, and they made the most of it; they became bona fide celebrities, and soon their names were synonymous with film criticism. (I know this first-hand, because Entertainment Tonight went on the air around the same time. When people started recognizing me in hotel lobbies and airports, they would often ask, "Aren't you Siskelandebert?", as if it were a compound name.)
That was our week. How was yours?