Sad news: illustrator Maurice Sendak has passed away at the age 83

The author and illustrator of "Where the Wild Things Are" has died today, the 8th of May 2012, at the age of 83; may he rest in peace.

Maurice Sendak was born in 1928. He was a prolific illustrator and is the author of prize-winning and internationally renowned children's books, most notable among them is "Where the Wild Things Are".

My favourite book by Maurice Sendak has to be "In the Night kitchen", its use of the comics format and the rhyming of the words that go along with the pictures is just brilliant. A close second would be "Where the Wild Things Are".

Further Information and Other Interesting Things

NY Times website."Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83".

BBC News website. "Wild Things author Maurice Sendak dies at 83".

Sieruta, P. D. "Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012". A great article about Sendak's first book illustration project, for a physics text book Atomics for the Millions.

Thoughts on the film "Seven Samurai" (1954)

The film is directed by Akira Kurosawa. It stars Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Keiko Tsushima among others. It is set in 16th Century Japan, and tells the story of a poor farming village beset by a group of bandits, who plunder their crops and abduct their women. A few villages go to the nearest town to seek help from samurai in return for the meagre payment of bed and board; most samurai consider the terms insulting and rebuff them. Finally, they meet a master-less samurai, a ronin, and he agrees to help them fight the bandits, so long as they can find seven more to follow him.

A Classic of World Cinema

This film is definitely a classic of world cinema, and as such deserves well its place among the British Film Institute's selection of World Classics and its status as number one in Empire's The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema¹: it has at least seven great actors, great characterization and great action sequences, a great score and great peaks and deep troughs of the human spirit. This is a tremendous, terrific, thrilling film.

(spoilers maybe found below)