Passages

[hearthesilence]

Polish jazz great Zbigniew Namyslowski. (And this is the only English language reporting that I can find, though it seems to be more of a guest post on a blog.)

[pet42]

André Wilms

[flyonthewall2983]

I watched this years NASCAR Hall of Fame with my dad a few weeks ago and discovered that back in August, the announcer Bob Jenkins passed away. Dad told me a nice story about meeting him after seeing the nice tribute they put together.

[flyonthewall2983]

Ian McDonald

[Never Cursed]

Ivan Reitman

[beamish14]

Ivan Reitman

Wow. An enormous figure in Canadian cinema. He would’ve made a huge mark even if he had stopped after producing some of David Cronenberg’s early features, Animal House and Heavy Metal (which was an enormous production, and it’s just amazing how he and Gerry Potterton supervised hundreds of animators across two countries). Of his work as a director, Dave and of course Ghostbusters are still pitch-perfect.

His passing must have been incredibly sudden. He was promoting his son’s film and supervised the UHD disc of Heavy Metal within the last few months

[colinr0380]

Very sad news. National Lampoon's Animal House and Ghostbusters of course looms large, but his Arnold Schwarzenegger films Twins and Kindergarten Cop with their goofy high concept premises work much better than they probably had any right to (Junior less so, and they wisely stopped at that point, but even that is better than something like Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! was!). They have a kind of earnest sweetness to them that the run of family comedies that followed in their wake problematically replaced with harried fathers being the butt of the joke, like in the Beethoven films.

It has been a while since I last saw it but I would agree with beamish14 on Dave as well, which also I seem to recall having the same kind of earnest sweetness about it. Its a film made in the hopeful optimism of the early Clinton years (come to think of it the last time I saw it was around 1996, still in the somewhat halcyon days for Clinton), where the down home charm of the double-swapped doppleganger President might be just the thing needed to revitalise his reputation and lead America, which also involves an illicit and unplanned rekindling of a spark of romance with the suspicious First Lady as she gets spirited away from her Secret Service handlers for a romantic liaison through the secret tunnels under the White House. It all plays as something romantically Shakespearean in execution rather than a little creepy! (The other big film of the same ilk was the Michael Douglas and Annette Benning starring The American President from 1995)

Of course that film came out before that romanticised view of a Clinton-esque President all got rather tarnished with the events of his Presidency and the run of disillusioned later Clinton era films (Wag The Dog, Primary Colors) started being made. I guess that is why it does not get shown much any more, being a bit out of step with the changing times.

__

As beamish14 says, even without his illustrious film career that followed he still made a mark on the Canadian horror scene of the 1970s, directing Cannibal Girls and producing or executive producing Ilsa: The Tigress of Siberia, the great home invasion film Death Weekend (aka The House By The Lake), the similarly interesting Blackout (based on the 1977 New York City blackout that occurred) and Cronenberg's Shivers and Rabid! I guess that background explains the nightmarishly scary (or at least it was to me) arson art installation sequence that crops up in the middle of Legal Eagles! Or the zombie taxi cab driver moment in Ghostbusters, both sequences that deliciously haunted my nightmares for a number of years as a kid!

[Saturnome]

How far into production his Twins sequel was? I'm pretty sure I saw a video of him, Schwarzenegger and DeVito on what seemed to be a set a few weeks (months?) ago.

[colinr0380]

I had not realised before now that the same year he directed Twins Reitman also executive produced the female version of an odd couple pairing (though it is just as obviously riffing on Police Academy) with the Rebecca De Mornay-starring Feds! (The only film directed by Daniel Goldberg, the writer and producer of Cannibal Girls! And who was part of the writing team of Meatballs, Stripes and Heavy Metal) That also unfortunately looked a little bit quaint only a couple of years later once Clarice Starling was on the scene! But its still an enjoyable, if undemanding, watch.

[flyonthewall2983]

I just read a few days ago that the Twins sequel was moving forward with Tracy Morgan, instead of Eddie Murphy as was originally planned.

I really like Dave, too. Hope it comes on HBOMAX again, in the right aspect ratio. Such a good character piece, to cover up the high-concept aspect of it all.

[Cremildo]

Brazilian filmmaker Arnaldo Jabor.

[Swift]

Bamber Gascoigne, the original host (1962-87) of University Challenge, died last week.

[MichaelB]

P.J. O'Rourke.

[dekadetia]

Brenda Deiss, from Red Rocket. Excellent in her first and only screen role.

[CSM126]

Director, actor and Best of the Worst legend Leo Fong

[colinr0380]

I've only seen those Best of the Worst episodes but Leo Fong is overdue for some kind of Arrow boxset. Although he certainly does not do much to counter the stereotype of Asian drivers in Low Blow, so much so that he makes Frank Drebin look like a model driver!

[yoloswegmaster]

Chor Yuen. Famous for the many films that he directed under the Shaw Brothers studios, including 'Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan' and 'The Magic Blade', as well as his role as the main villain in 'Police Story'.

[DarkImbecile]

Alternative singer/songwriter Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees, among other bands

Been listening to his music for 25+ years; I read a couple of months ago that he nearly died from COVID-19, but had seemingly recovered

[FrauBlucher]

Oh god, damn. Sorry to hear this. His solo album Whiskey for the Holy Ghost is one of my very favorites. I am always recommending this out.

[flyonthewall2983]

Gary Brooker from Procol Harum

[CSM126]

Amazing Johnathan

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Chor Yuen. Famous for the many films that he directed under the Shaw Brothers studios, including 'Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan' and 'The Magic Blade', as well as his role as the main villain in 'Police Story'.

Also directing (and acting in) House of the 72 Tenants, which jumpstarted the revival of Cantonese cinema in Hong Kong when it seemed all but dead—it had been over 2 1/2 years since the release of the last Cantonese film, but the following year there were over twenty, and by the end of the '70s four out of five HK films were released in Cantonese.

[Jack Kubrick]

Sally Kellerman.

[soundchaser]

It's a testament to how contemporary M*A*S*H (both the film and show) feels that every time someone from either passes away I think "there's no way that's right."

[therewillbeblus]

She's a lot of fun as the enigmatic beauty taken to the literal extreme in Brewster McCloud too, what a double-whammy of tonally polar opposite perfs