Passages

[GaryC]

Australian novelist and screenwriter Frank Moorhouse, aged 83.

[colinr0380]

Australian novelist and screenwriter Frank Moorhouse, aged 83.

Most notably for film as screenwriter (based on his short stories) of Dusan Makavejev's recently re-released The Coca-Cola Kid.

[L.A.]

Turkish actor Cüneyt Arkın, perhaps best known in Turkish Star Wars.

[domino harvey]

Margaret Keane

[Cremildo]

Joe Turkel

[JSC]

Peter Brook

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-12553081

[dwk]

Hong Kong screenwriter/Novelist Ni Kuang.

[diamonds]

Alex Law

[colinr0380]

Peter Brook

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-12553081

His 1963 version of Lord of the Flies is fantastic, with the relatively unpolished nature of the filmmaking (the dubbing lending a certain distanciation, whether intended as such or not!) and non-professional performances really working to suggest a child's eye point of view production that could almost have come from the hands of the characters themselves. That is probably the best way to have approached that material as you need that danger of feeling as if the lunatics have taken over the asylum, as probably carries over to Brook's film adaptation of Marat/Sade (which features Glenda Jackson's first film role). Although rather than the usual perspective of a rougher technique suggesting a closer tie to reality instead, as probably expected from someone better known as a theatre director (and whose later film adaptations of theatrical plays became much more abstract in setting) it is less a way of achieving verisimilitude of a particular situation but more of trying to capture the inner truth as perceived internally by the characters.

And he was a director with a perfect background to understand the nuances of William Golding's source novel: what does a group of privately educated characters do when they are trapped together for an indefinite period? Why, they form an exclusive, and somewhat exclusionary based on arcane rules, theatrical troupe of players, of course!

It may be the ultimate irony that Lord of the Flies may be the most accessible film by Peter Brook as well (and I would highly recommend the wonderfully insightful commentary track by Brook on the Criterion disc, which is another of the best Criterion commentaries), as the works which follow move more insistently into that more insular and hard to empathise with directly Brechtian theatricality. And it remains by some distance the best screen adaptation of Golding’s novel, although there is not really that much competition for that honour as the 1990 film kind of spectacularly missed the point of Goldings’ deeply allegorical exploration of the British class system (and the way it is ingrained from birth through the privilege of lineage which is then reinforced by the rituals of education in a manner that can come across as deeply sinister to those on the outside looking in) by changing it to a bunch of post-Dead Poets Society-style US Army brats with daddy issues.

(I do sometimes wonder if any theatrical production of Lord of the Flies has ever done the obvious and rather than setting Lord of the Flies on an isolated desert island instead put the action into a boarding school setting instead? That could be dangerous to do however, as it could either be brilliantly subversive or head-slappingly blunt!)

[L.A.]

Asao Sano.

[knives]

Kazuki Takahashi

[MichaelB]

James Caan.

[DarkImbecile]

[Big Ben]

I don't really know what to say. Caan was a living legend. So many great roles to choose from.

[hearthesilence]

Quite a career - the Howard Hawks films, The Godfather films, Thief, Bottle Rocket...and three of those basically put their respective directors on the map, which probably says something.

I also loved his later TV appearances, as himself in NewsRadio and as a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Big fan of Alien Nation, with Mandy Patinkin and Terence Stamp. A mismatched buddy film tackling prejudice and discrimination. Caan is the gruff, cynical human cop who learns a lesson.

[beamish14]

Caan’s lone effort as a director, Hide in Plain Sight, is worth seeing for his excellent, nuanced performance. He was very underrated as a comic actor.

[colinr0380]

He had that great run in 70s beyond The Godfather too with the John Updike adaptation Rabbit, Run, The Gambler, Rollerball and even a Claude Lelouch film with Another Man, Another Chance.

And we should not forget Misery. I watched it again a few months ago after not having watched it in over a decade and it really holds up. It may arguably be the best Stephen King adaptation, or at least up there with Carrie, The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption. I particularly love that final coda (which I can unfortunately only find in French dubbed form on YouTube!) with Lauren Bacall that shows that the main character will never really escape the trauma of his "Number One Fan" as it goes into the credits with a beautiful use of the song "I'll Be Seeing You".

In terms of 2000s films he also has a great final act appearance as Grace's father in Von Trier's Dogville and an important supporting role in The Way of the Gun

[hearthesilence]

I imagine Don Giller (essentially the archivist for Letterman's shows) will put together a complete compilation on YouTube, but here's Caan talking about pissing off Howard Hawks because he kept listening to John Wayne.

That appearance was a follow-up to a strangely tense appearance by Caan at a L.A. taping a few years prior. But if you watch the complete show above (of which a poor copy exists on YouTube), Caan is apologetic for his previous behavior.

[domino harvey]

Caan was apparently also a mobile game aficionado

[Never Cursed]

Ni Kuang, Chinese screenwriter and novelist

[Mr Sausage]

Former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has been assassinated.

[L.A.]

Larry Storch.

[Orlac]

Larry Storch.

A pretty decent Joker for Filmation.

[colinr0380]

Brian Jackson best known as "the Man from Del Monte" in the advert but had small roles in films including the first Carry On film Carry On Sergeant, one of Michael Winner's early sex films Some Like It Cool, Revenge of the Pink Panther, all the way up to the recent Saint Maud.