Passages

[maxcherry]

Pyotr Todorovsky

[MichaelB]

Eddie Romero.

[colinr0380]

Eddie Romero.

Those 42nd Street Forever trailer compilations helped to introduce me to Eddie Romero's films - Savage Sisters and White Mama, Black Mama, and so on!

Here's the trailer for Sudden Death. Apparently, according to the commentary on the disc, the alliterative narration for the trailer is done by Ernie Anderson (Paul Thomas Anderson's father).

[dadaistnun]

Jean Bach, director of A Great Day in Harlem.

[GaryC]

SF/fantasy/mystery writer Jack Vance, at the age of 96. His novel Bad Ronald was adapted twice, once as a US TV movie and again as a French theatrical feature.

[RagingNoodles]

Ernesto Guerra passed away last night. He recorded for various indie record labels throughout the years like Bego, RyN and Del Valle. He mas many memorable instrumental pieces, most memorably "La sicodélica". He was good friends with many of the great conjunto, norteño and Tejano musicians of the last 60 plus years like Esteban Jordan, Flaco Jimenez, Mel Villarreal, Wally Gonzalez, Cornelio Reyna, Ramiro Cavazos, Los Hermanos Ayala and countless of others. He collaborated with many musicians like Reyna, Cavazos and Tomas Ortiz. He was a McAllen native, well known and liked by his fellow peers. He was a really talented button-diatonic accordionist, with his own unique style that he taught himself. He had been ill for a while, really sad to hear he's gone.

Personally speaking, I only met him once. Outside of Cine El Rey on 17th street in McAllen, I noticed him playing a two-row button diatonic accordion. I didn't know who he was, but I knew he was 'somebody'. I struck a conversation with him that night and he was a great guy. I became a fan of his that evening. That was two years ago and I regret that I didn't get a chance to meet him again. This is a vinyl record of his that I own.

[flyonthewall2983]

Jean Stapleton

[manicsounds]

actor Isamu Nagato, 81 years old (Three Outlaw Samurai)

[MichaelB]

British comic novelist Tom Sharpe, whose work was adapted (badly) as the film Wilt and (very well) as the TV series Porterhouse Blue.

I hadn't given him so much as a passing thought for a good couple of decades, but he was massive in the 1970s and 80s - my parents had a complete set of his books, and I must have read the vast majority.

[lubitsch]

Not long after her 100th birthday Lotte Koch one of the last film stars of Third Reich cinema passed away.

[antnield]

Esther Williams.

[domino harvey]

Richard Ramirez

[colinr0380]

I have only found the news in Spanish so far - Elías Querejeta, producer of many of Carlos Saura's films (including Cria Cuervos) and Victor Erice's El Sur and Spirit of the Beehive.

[GaryC]

Scottish novelist Iain Banks, aged 59, of cancer, two months after revealing his terminal diagnosis. Complicity was filmed in 2000 and The Crow Road became a TV serial in 1996. Films of his other novels (both under his own name and science fiction as by Iain M. Banks), such as his debut The Wasp Factory, have been in the works for ages but so far not been made. He made Granta's 1993 list of Best Young British Novelists.

I met him once, when I was on a convention panel with him three years ago. He struck me as a very genuine, down to earth man, and comments from those who knew him better than I did bear this out. This is very sad news.

[colinr0380]

My father is an enormous fan of the Iain M. Banks science fiction "Culture" novels, though never tried more of the contemporary set Iain Banks novels after finding the first he tried to be too bleak and depressing! He's certainly a big loss to both general literary and sci-fi circles though.

The biggest film tribute to Banks that I can think of so far came in Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz where the identical twins manning the front desk at the Police Station (both played by Bill Bailey) can only be differentiated by which 'brand' of Iain Banks novel that they are reading!

Here's the Guardian obituary

[GaryC]

Jiroemon Kimura, the longest-lived man and ninth-longest-lived person in history with a verified age, 116 years and 54 days.

[Donald Brown]

Michael Hastings, one of the best reporters of the wars in the Middle East, dead at 33.

[Polybius]

Christ, that is just brutal. He was, as the piece suggests, really fearless.

[MichaelB]

Slim Whitman, the man who indirectly helped save the planet in Mars Attacks!.

(His death was the subject of a hoax report a few years back, but this one appears to be genuine.)

[Arthur House]

Chet Flippo, Rolling Stone writer/editor extraordinaire.

[Black Hat]

Hastings is dead??? That is a devastating loss, he did great work. Conspiracy theories have to be flying all over the web.

[The Narrator Returns]

Holy shit, James Gandolfini.

[knives]

I refuse to believe this until someone not TMZ reports.

[The Narrator Returns]

Here you go.

[mfunk9786]

Only 51 years old. Jesus.

CNN