January 4

Jason Klorfein at The House Next Door has am interesting essay on a director I'd not heard of, Lee Yoon-ki:

http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2010/01/films-of-lee-yoon-ki.html

But if your tastes run to less ambitious forms of expression, check out "The Worst Theatrical Movies of 2009":

http://www.dvdtalk.com/features/the_worst_theat_1.html

Peter Rozovsky at the excellent international crime fiction blog Detectives Beyond Borders offers a round-up of worthy African crime fiction:

http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/2010/01/global-reading-challenge-africa.html

Among notables born on this date are Chinese novelist and Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian, scientist Sir Isaac Newton, folklorist Jakob Grimm, Trinidadian writer C.L.R. James, film directors Carlos Saura and Harmony Korine, English story writer A.E. Coppard, composers Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and Josef Suk, English painter Augustus John, French painter Andre Masson, Russian painter Aristarkh Lentulov, German sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, film composer Lionel Newman, fusion guitarist John McLaughlin, jazz singer Susannah McCorkle, opera singer Grace Bumbry, pop singer Michael Stipe, tuba player Don Butterfield, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and actors Dyan Cannon and Julian Sands. Sands is a most interesting fellow, always caught up in offbeat projects, from films such as Wim Wenders's The Million Dollar Hotel and Mike Figgis's Timecode and Hotel, to his current theatrical venture doing readings of Harold Pinter's poetry.