Passages

[Big Ben]

Dennis Waterman. Not exactly a big-screen star - though of course he did headline Sweeney! (1976) and Sweeney 2 (1978) opposite John Thaw and played supporting roles in numerous films from the 1960s onwards, including Hammer's The Pirates of Blood River (1962) and Scars of Dracula (1970). But his main claim to fame was as one of the most enduring British television stars of the last half-century, thanks partly to the original small-screen version of The Sweeney (1974-78) and then of course Minder (1979-94), which was originally written as a vehicle specifically for him, even if George Cole's Arfur Daley kept upstaging him. Even two decades later he was famous enough to inspire a running gag in Little Britain.

Interestingly, both he and Cole were members of a very exclusive club: child actors who managed to turn their careers into adult stardom.

(His other long-runner was New Tricks, from 2003-2015.)

I really enjoyed Waterman in New Tricks which I found to be a pretty fun spin on the traditional cop program. Waterman also did some stage work.

[colinr0380]

He is also in the original BBC television version of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (in the role of the two-timing husband who Ed Begley Jnr. would later play in the US feature film remake) as well as two films by Peter Collinson: Up The Junction and Fright (with Susan George, the same year she was in Straw Dogs. And George Cole pre-Minder!)

And like every comic actor of that generation from June Whitfield and Barry Cryer to Cliff Richard and Christopher Biggins, somehow he also appears in the 2012 notorious flop Danny Dyer film Run For Your Wife.

Apropos of nothing, to me Dennis Waterman also bore a strange resemblance to that portrait of Queen Mary, which became a real distraction during my History A Levels when the picture was on the front of the textbook! (I still think that he would have made for an amazing left-field gender-blind casting choice in a historical biopic!)

[Big Ben]

Jethro Lazenby, son of Nick Cave. Fans will note this is the second son he's now lost. Unimaginable.

[Aunt Peg]

Actor James Olson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Olson_(actor)

I always remember him best as 'Father' in Milos Forman's Ragtime (1981).

[colinr0380]

That's sad to hear. For me it will be his role as the only person with the key to stopping the nuclear detonation at the end of the 1971 film version of The Andromeda Strain (spoiler for the action scene ending). His character (being a bit more of an 'emotional' doctor rather than a 'stuffy' scientist) seems to be the one that the audience is mostly meant to experience the events in the film through.

He was in a couple of other interesting sci-fi films around that time too, including The Groundstar Conspiracy and the Hammer film Moon Zero Two, directed by Roy Ward Baker of A Night To Remember and Quatermass and the Pit fame. Olson also appears in another Hammer film Crescendo which is based on a script by Michael Reeves and was apparently due to be Reeves' next film following Witchfinder General before his untimely death.

[Cinephile1]

HERMANN NITSCH (1938–2022).

[domino harvey]

Naomi Judd

Ashley Judd reveals this was a self-inflicted gunshot suicide and that she was the one who found the body

[domino harvey]

Fred Ward discussion moved here

[ando]

Betty (Mabry) Davis

Damn. Thanks. Just found out. Just finished watching a rather spotty doc on her life/career, Betty Davis: They Say I'm Different, on tubi. It makes for a nice intro to her music. The three mid-70s albums make a great funk playlist.
R.I.P.

[JSC]

Mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza, who had a role in Joseph Losey's film adaptation of Don Giovanni.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical% ... a-has-died

[MichaelB]

Jerzy Trela, a Polish actor more renowned back home for his decades-long, 350-role stage career, but he also made his mark on many distinguished Polish films, including On the Silver Globe (1977/88) for Andrzej Żuławski, Man of Iron (1981) and Danton (1983) for Andrzej Wajda, A Woman Alone (1981) for Agnieszka Holland, Dekalog Nine (1988) and [i}Three Colours: White[/i] (1994) for Krzysztof Kieślowski, Quo Vadis (2001) for Jerzy Hoffman and, much more recently, Ida (2013) for Paweł Pawlikowski.

[hearthesilence]

Guitarist Ricky Gardiner, he's perhaps best known for his work with David Bowie and Iggy Pop when they made their landmark masterpieces in Berlin. The famous riff to "The Passenger" was Gardiner's own invention.

[MichaelB]

Prolific British TV and occasional feature-film writer Kay Mellor.

[MichaelB]

Czech actor Josef Abrhám, a regular presence in internationally-renowned 1960s/70s films (Transport from Paradise, The Cry, Everyday Courage, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Morgiana) and lots more thereafter - his hotel manager Brandejs in Jiří Menzel's I Served the King of England (2006) was probably the most visible outside his native country.

[colinr0380]

Prolific British TV and occasional feature-film writer Kay Mellor.

I most remember that period in the late 90s where she wrote the 1998 film Girls' Night, starring Brenda Blethyn (at the peak of stardom just after Secrets & Lies and Little Voice) and Julie Walters, in which the terminally ill character played by Blethyn goes off with her friend for a fling of a lifetime to Vegas and runs into Kris Kristofferson's cowboy for a holiday romance tinged with pathos. That has a great supporting cast too including George Costigan (from Rita, Sue & Bob Too) and a very early role for Maxine Peake. It falls in the middle of the Full Monty and Billy Elliot 'northerners are people too' run of films (as well as being obviously indebted to Thelma & Louise, except with the 'on the run from the law' element replaced by the characters being on the run from a sense of their own mortality), but is much better than either.

And then the year after she wrote and directed the 1999 film Fanny & Elvis with Ray Winstone and Kerry Fox. Which I particularly remember for being the subject of the run of location shooting segments from the production-in-progress which was shown in Channel 4's short lived (and now almost un-Google-able due to its title) attempt to make a serious-toned film show Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. I seem to remember there being a whole segment devoted to the logistics of staging that meet cute car crash scene that is briefly shown in the trailer.

There's not much footage from the Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang series out there, at least that I can find (I keep thinking I should figure out a way to digitise my aging VHS tapes, if just to preserve the segment from this series of Kathy Burke waxing lyrical about the films of Hal Hartley during a review of the cinema release of his then latest film Henry Fool!) except for this clip of Julie Christie talking about her love for Fassbinder's Fear Eats The Soul.

[hearthesilence]

Bob Neuwirth.

I've actually met him through mutual friends - never let on that I even listened to Dylan, I figured he got enough of that stuff (which he certainly did). Turned out to be a kind gentleman who was full of energy and just hilarious.

Made a few good records of his own too.

[DarkImbecile]

Vangelis

[beamish14]

Vangelis

One hell of a talent. His score for 1492 is such an epochal work. I hope we get to eventually hear his collaboration with GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan

[Big Ben]

Vangelis

It's hard to think of him and not think immediately how iconic his work on Chariots of Fire is. Granted I saw the parodies before I saw the film proper but I'm hard pressed to find a piece of music as synonymous with slow motion running than his title piece for the movie.

This is to say nothing of course about his similarly legendary work on Blade Runner.

[colinr0380]

And so many great pieces of music beyond his iconic film scores. I love the spoken word track Albedo 0.39, but something like the magisterial Alpha or Pulstar from that same album show how simple electronic loops can create so much emotion. That felt like the sound of the future even before his opening titles for Cosmos and Blade Runner cemented him as such. Although at the same time even in these pieces looking towards the future or into space, there is a kind of 'age of the explorers' style bombast there, anticipating his period work (especially 1492) and linking pioneers and explorers into the unknown together whether of the past or future.

[L.A.]

Not to forget his old band with another legend Demis Roussos on vocals, Aphrodite's Child. Great stuff.

[John Cope]

Such an enormous talent who left such an indelible mark. So many great scores but I just want to make a special mention of his work on Cavani's Francesco which is surely among his greatest but also his most under appreciated even as it contributed mightily to the magnificence of that film.

[Never Cursed]

Jean-Louis Comolli

[L.A.]

Bernard Wright

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Not to forget his old band with another legend Demis Roussos on vocals, Aphrodite's Child. Great stuff.

Agreed. My favorite use of Vangelis music, not originally in made for film, would be Hou's Three Times. Such a haunting scene.