http://www.guardian.co.uk/
This piece by Edward Jay Epstein on "Why Journalists Don't Understand the Business of Hollywood" is exceptionally interesting, and whets the appetite for his forthcoming book on the subject. Epstein has been writing insightfully about media since the mid-Sixties:
http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/
David Cairns at Shadowplay is saddened by the decline of film critic David Thomson:
http://dcairns.wordpress.com/
Cairns is one of the better film bloggers around -- his yearlong Hitchcock series, 52 films in 52 weeks, was well worth reading, and it's by no means easy to say arresting new things about Hitchcock.
Among notables born on this date are Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, philosopher William James, stage actress Eva Le Gallienne, sculptor Alexander Calder, golfer Ben Crenshaw, Mexican film director and actor Alfonso Arau, conservationist Aldo Leopold, Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade, saxophonist and Bruce Springsteen collaborator Clarence Clemons, novelists Alan Paton and Jasper Fforde, Italian painter Parmigianino, and composers Christian Sinding (Norway), Maurice Durufle (France), and Reinhold Gliere (Russia). William James is one of those giants that Camille Paglia was thinking of when she wrote, "You read major figures not because everything they say is the gospel truth but because they expand your imagination, they expand your IQ, they open up brain cells you didn't even know you have." He is endlessly rewarding.
