Free Republic

Michel Legrand died a fortnight ago, of sepsis after contracting a pulmonary infection. He was 86, which is a grand age, but he was very active and had a full concert schedule booked for the spring. So one resents somewhat, as I mentioned re Albert Finney yesterday, the randomness of fatal affliction in otherwise healthy old men. Sometimes with the advancing years a writer starts to sound written out - as if everything he has to say has already been said. Legrand didn't sound like that to me. My pal Jessica Martin was in his last show, Marguerite, in the...

Michel Legrand, three-time Oscar winner and composer of such classic film songs as “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “I Will Wait for You,” “You Must Believe in Spring” and “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?,” along with the groundbreaking musical score for “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” has died. He was 86. Legrand died at his home early Saturday in Paris, his publicist told Agence France-Presse. His wife, French actress Macha Meril, was at his side. His most recent film score was “The Other Side of the Wind,” composed for Orson Welles’ last film, which was finally completed...

President Trump came out Friday afternoon announcing a deal in relation to the dispute over border security funding. The legislation was passed by Congress and signed by the President Friday evening..... "At the crack of dawn 29 FBI agents arrived at my home with 17 vehicles with lights flashing. They terrorized my wife and my dogs" That's Roger Stone's public response to the pre-dawn raid on his home in Florida in connection with Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation..... Today is the third anniversary of a deadly FBI operation that killed Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum, spokesman for the Oregon Standoff protest........

Some time ago, in my eternal quest to set the record straight, I suggested that the true hero of the motion picture industry wasn’t Thomas Edison or D.W. Griffith, not Chaplin or Keaton, not Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer, but the anonymous fellow who first came up with the notion of putting salt on popcorn, thus turning packing material into a concession stand bonanza that costs more per-pound than lox and caviar put together. But there are others who, more often than not, get overlooked while far too much praise is lavished on actors and directors. I refer to...