Passages

[beamish14]

Birth.Movies.Death

Didn't it cease operations last year? Devin Faraci, the racist sexual assault perpetrator who was its main draw, managed to siphon away much of their readership when he was sort-of canned by Tim League of the Alamo Drafthouse (the former owners of BMD). It seems like most of those film speculation/"geek credibility" (ugh) sites are gone now, or are basically just one person blogging under multiple names.

[Never Cursed]

Not sure when they actually stopped publishing articles, but the website went offline on or about Tuesday (and there was much rejoicing, etc)

[Caligula]

Anton Garcia Abril, Spanish composer (I recommend his works for orchestra and guitar if you like Rodrigo's works), who also did the soundtrack for Texas, Addio

[dwk]

Elgin Baylor

[bearcuborg]

Elgin Baylor

Unless I missed it, I didn’t see a lot of attention paid by the NBA. I guess he didn’t make enough money for the league to warrant the attention Kobe got... ESPN had this buried in 5th headline on their front page.

Elgin had some bad luck in his career, as injuries forced him to retire before a championship, and he was later linked with Donald Sterling. The amount of racism he endured and pushed down was pretty awful, as seen in Black Magic, a decent ESPN doc 15 yrs ago. Elgin was pretty honest about his experiences, the feeling that he knew and ignored Sterling’s bigotry.

Baseball can be criticized for a lot of things, but perhaps better than any sport, they really honor their history. Basketball seems to be the exact opposite.

[domino harvey]

George Segal discussion split off here

[John Cope]

Cinematographer Judy Irola, back on February 22, from COVID. Tragic of course. What is also tragic is that her best work, Rob Nilsson's Northern Lights, which won the Camera d’Or prize at Cannes in '79, and Everett Lewis's An Ambush of Ghosts, for which she won the Cinematography Award at Sundance in '93, remains still utterly unavailable (unless you count a long OOP VHS of the Nilsson film). Someone desperately needs to rectify that situation. We don't have forever.

[beamish14]

Cinematographer Judy Irola, back on February 22, from COVID. Tragic of course. What is also tragic is that her best work, Rob Nilsson's Northern Lights, which won the Camera d’Or prize at Cannes in '79, and Everett Lewis's An Ambush of Ghosts, for which she won the Cinematography Award at Sundance in '93, remains still utterly unavailable (unless you count a long OOP VHS of the Nilsson film). Someone desperately needs to rectify that situation. We don't have forever.

Northern Lights had a restoration (or at least a new print struck) within the last 10 years I believe, and it DID have a DVD, which is now impossible to find, sadly. It really needs far more exposure. Wonderful film with an interesting backstory (its two directors had a love triangle with the lead actress, I believe).

An Ambush of Ghosts sounds fascinating; another lost film festival success.

[hearthesilence]

Drummer Don Heffington, he was in Lone Justice with Maria McKee, a great band that never attained the success that it should have had (partly because no major label wanted to embrace "cowpunk," and when they finally signed with Geffen, they were tweaked into a more conventional and less distinguished mainstream rock band). He went on to a long and fruitful career as a session man, and Bob Dylan fans may know him from "New Danville Girl"/"Brownsville Girl."

[MichaelB]

Bertrand Tavernier.

[JSC]

That one stings. A great director. L'Horloger de Saint-Paul, La mort en direct,
Un dimanche à la campagne, L627, and Daddy Nostalgie are personal
favorites.

[Fiery Angel]

Seconded. It's criminal that so many of his great films are not available on Blu-ray, even in France.

[domino harvey]

Jessica Walter discussion moved here

[The Narrator Returns]

Craig muMs Grant

[hearthesilence]

I'm sorry to say the only film by Bertrand Tavernier I've ever seen is Round Midnight, but it's probably the best narrative film I've ever seen on jazz music, though the competition isn't great. (Even Eastwood's Bird has substantial flaws, and it's a pretty good film.)

I know of at least one jazz critic who bemoaned what he viewed as a few typical jazz film clichés, but it was like someone complaining about another shoot out or another desert landscape in a Western.

[domino harvey]

Craig muMs Grant

Loved Poet, just one of dozens of memorable characters on Oz. He also has a little cameo in Birdman out on the street when Keaton is running around in his underwear

[beamish14]

I'm sorry to say the only film by Bertrand Tavernier I've ever seen is Round Midnight, but it's probably the best narrative film I've ever seen on jazz music, though the competition isn't great. (Even Eastwood's Bird has substantial flaws, and it's a pretty good film.)

I know of at least one jazz critic who bemoaned what he viewed as a few typical jazz film clichés, but it was like someone complaining about another shoot out or another desert landscape in a Western.

Round Midnight is an amazing film, and has probably the greatest on-screen performance from a musician-turned-actor ever with what Dexter Gordon delivered. I'm very fond of Tavernier's Death Watch, too; a very cold, almost uninviting film about surveillance and the difficulty of truly disappearing in the modern world.

It's incredible that Tavernier went to boarding school alongside the great Volker Schlondorff.

[MichaelB]

It's incredible that Tavernier went to boarding school alongside the great Volker Schlondorff.

...although the Czech boarding school that housed Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer, Václav Havel and Jerzy Skolimowski takes some beating.

(I believe they all overlapped at some point, with classmates Forman and Passer being lifelong friends - Skolimowski’s presence is explained by him being the son of the cultural attaché at the Polish embassy in Prague.)

[MichaelB]

Larry McMurtry.

[beamish14]

Larry McMurtry.

A true giant among American writers is gone. I love how he used the microcosm of the fictional Thalia, TX in a Faulknerian or Wolfe-like way to chart his own impressions of a changing society. Lonesome Dove is a strong contender for the best American novel of the last 50 years; its scope and richness of characters showed that he was on par with Stendhal or Dickens.

If you haven't listed to it yet, Karina Longworth's podcast did an immense dive into the life and works of the late filmmaker Polly Platt, who had a significant and unjustly overlooked role into transposing McMurtry's Terms of Endearment and Last Picture Show to the screen. She also influenced some of McMurtry's novels, and the podcast heavily implies that he was deeply in love with her. It features some fresh insights written by McMurtry and read by an actor.

[The Pachyderminator]

Beverly Cleary at age 104

[Florinaldo]

Seconded. It's criminal that so many of his great films are not available on Blu-ray, even in France.

Yes. I was watching my DVD of "Que le Fête Commence" (a favourite of mine, despite the naive ending) a few months ago and I was remembering the image being of much better quality in a theater, all those decades ago, even though he did not go for super-sharp cinematography; I recall the image as a bit soft but still tighter than on the disc.

I guess his passing explains why his blog has not been updated since January. I will miss his insatiable, wide-ranging love and curiosty about film. The number and variety of new DVD releases he managed to cover was always astounding; he made me discover many titles I would otherwise have never been made aware of. And his voice was always welcome and reassuring, as an interviewee or as a commentator.

It seems very appropriate that the last project he directed hmself was a conclusion to his love letter to French cinéma, "Voyage à travers le cinéma français", the TV series which followed up on the earlier documentary he had made as a film.

[hearthesilence]

Morris Dickstein. Influential literary critic, cultural historian and City University of New York professor who was among the last of the first generation of Jewish public intellectuals reared on the Lower East Side.

[fdm]

Paul Jackson, Headhunters bassist.

[bearcuborg]

Larry McMurtry.

A true giant among American writers is gone. I love how he used the microcosm of the fictional Thalia, TX in a Faulknerian or Wolfe-like way to chart his own impressions of a changing society. Lonesome Dove is a strong contender for the best American novel of the last 50 years; its scope and richness of characters showed that he was on par with Stendhal or Dickens.

If you haven't listed to it yet, Karina Longworth's podcast did an immense dive into the life and works of the late filmmaker Polly Platt, who had a significant and unjustly overlooked role into transposing McMurtry's Terms of Endearment and Last Picture Show to the screen. She also influenced some of McMurtry's novels, and the podcast heavily implies that he was deeply in love with her. It features some fresh insights written by McMurtry and read by an actor.

Thanks for that podcast heads up. I never knew what to make of Karina, but I share the opinion that Polly Platt was immensely talented and made significant contributions to The Last Picture Show.

His adaptation of Brokeback Mountain with Diana Ossana very much feels like his work too. I also envy anyone who reads (or sees) Comanche Moon for the first time.