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The Czech native also helmed 'The Firemen's Ball,' 'Hair,' 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' and 'Man on the Moon.' Milos Forman, the anti-authoritarian director who left his native Czechoslovakia for creative freedom in the U.S. and captured Oscars for the masterpieces One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, has died. He was 86. Forman, also known for two biopics about controversial Americans — The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999) — died Friday after a short illness, according to his wife, Martina, who broke the news to the Czech news agency CTK. His manager,...

Roy Dotrice, a British stage, film and television actor who began performing as a prisoner of war in Germany and worked in Britain and America for six decades, notably in one-man shows portraying Abe Lincoln, the diarist John Aubrey and other historical figures, died on Monday at his home in London. He was 94... While he kept a home in London, Mr. Dotrice lived in Los Angeles and worked mostly in the United States after 1980. He appeared in New York stage productions of Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” (1985) and Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” (1991). On film, he...

A fussy, effete lttle man, whose own character is well expressed by that of the protagonist in Don Giovanni, going through life transfixed with his own navel (but that's too high). In violin concerto no. 5 in A major, he's using the noble instrument of Stradivarius, Guarneri and Amati as his own pudenda, a prolonged act of cultural onanism. His failure even to attempt to approach God in emulation of the Blessed angels, shows how granting the boon of total, infused knowledge is casting pearls before swine to a corrupt little human. He lived as if his genius had been...

The playwright Sir Peter Shaffer, whose critical and popular successes in the West End and Broadway included Equus, Amadeus, and The Royal Hunt of the Sun, has died aged 90. His agent, Rupert Lord, said: “He was simply at the end of his life but delighted to have been able to celebrate his 90th birthday with friends and then, I think, decided it was time.” The National Theatre, which staged the world premieres of many of his plays, and was already planning the first revival of Amadeus at the theatre since it opened there in 1979, described him as “an...

Czech cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek, who was nominated for Oscar twice and cooperated with Czech-born director Milos Forman, died on Saturday evening at the age of 80, Martha Issova, partner of his son David, told CTK today. Ondricek is famous in the Czech Republic and abroad primarily for his cooperation with Forman in Czechoslovakia and in the United States. Both film-makers are leading personalities of the Czech New Film Wave of the 1960s.

It is 30 years since Amadeus swept the board at the Academy Awards. Miloš Forman’s 1984 film of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, took home eight statuettes that night, including best film, best director, best actor and best adapted screenplay. Arguably the finest movie ever made about the process of artistic creation and the unbridgeable gap between human genius and mediocrity, it has taken its place in motion picture history and is invariably described as a masterpiece. All this is despite the fact the film plays shamelessly fast and loose with historical fact, taking as its basis a supposedly bitter rivalry...

He won Oscars for producing three best picture winners -- "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," "Amadeus" and "The English Patient" -- after a great career with Fantasy Records and feuds with John Fogerty. Saul Zaentz, who parlayed a successful career in the music business into a Oscar-winning second act as an independent movie producer, died Friday at his home in the San Francisco area from complications of Alzheimer's. He was 92. His nephew Paul Zaentz, a fellow producer, confirmed the news. "He was an extraordinary man," Paul Zaentz, who worked with his uncle for 37 years, said. "He had...

MONDAY, Aug. 17 (HealthDay News) -- It's one of the enduring mysteries of classical music: What -- or who -- killed Mozart at the age of 35 when he was at the height of his creative powers? Now, there's a new theory: He died of complications of strep throat. The latest hypothesis lacks the inherent drama of murder by a rival or suicide, which have both been suggested as causes of Mozart's death. But Andrew Steptoe, co-author of a historical diagnosis published Aug. 18 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, said an infection makes the most sense, considering medical records...

<p>LOS ANGELES — Actor Jeffrey Jones, best known as the suspicious high school dean of students in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, was arrested Thursday for allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old boy and possessing child pornography, authorities said.</p> <p>Jones, 56, surrendered and was freed on $20,000 bail, said Officer Jason Lee, a police spokesman. Arraignment was scheduled for Nov. 21.</p>