Word: ismail
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Exactly what was happening was difficult to tell. There were reports that President Ali Nasser Muhammad, 46, had been injured, that he had been killed, and that he had survived. There were rumors that four key plotters who tried to take over the government, including former President Abdul Fattah Ismail and Vice President Ali Ahmed Nasser Antar, had been executed. But the persistence of the fighting suggested otherwise. On an ideological basis, the struggle appeared to pit the pragmatic Marxist, President Muhammad, who has sought more amicable relations with his Arab neighbors and would welcome aid from such countries...
...films Ismail Merchant made with director James Ivory in 44 years?they shared a line in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most enduring movie partnership?were stately endeavors, with nary a monster shouting Boo! to frighten the children. But Merchant's death in London last week at 68, after an ulcer burst in his abdomen, was a shock to the international film community. A genial friend had left life's banquet much too early...
...producer for whom the whole world was his back lot. Being on a first-name basis with theatrical royalty, he insisted on the same informality from others. Introduced to a stranger, he would quote the first line of Herman Melville's Moby Dick and say, "Call me Ismail...
...Born in Bombay (where he was buried on Saturday), he met Ivory, his professional and personal partner, in 1961 in Manhattan. The Merchant-Ivory brand ("Well," Ismail said of the billing, "who wants to be known as an Ivory Merchant?") won wide acclaim with their first collaborations, The Householder and Shakespeare Wallah, both written by the other crucial member of their group, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In these fables about a collision?rather, a gentle jostling?of cultures old and new, imperial and indigenous, the team had found their enduring theme...
...DIED. ISMAIL MERCHANT, 68, producer half of the filmmaking team that revitalized and repopularized the literary, elaborately costumed period film; after surgery for stomach ulcers; in London. With director James Ivory (also his life partner) and usually with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the Indian-born Merchant oversaw more than 40 films over five decades, turning classic novels by authors like E.M. Forster (Howards End), Henry James (The Europeans) and Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day) into box-office successes. Famous for his relentless, sometimes outlandish efforts to keep costs low (he was known to steal props and grab journalists...