Passages

[Orlac]

My late Grandma had an Edward VIII coronation mug.

[dadaistnun]

Masahiro Kobayashi

[colinr0380]

Masahiro Kobayashi

Did Bashing ever get a release in the West? That was one of the films I remember eagerly following during its Cannes Film Festival Palme d'or run in 2005 and then it just never turned up anywhere. I have always been curious about just how the subject matter of an Iraq aid worker taken hostage and then for some reason ostracised back at home for not committing suicide and making the Japanese look weak in the eyes of the world, would work. Or indeed if it would work.

(EDIT: Ah, it looks as if Facets released it on DVD in the US)

[hearthesilence]

Speaking of money with the Queen's face, comedian Alex Edelman has a bit about Prince Harry's alleged experimentation with cocaine. Regardless of whether it actually happened, he thought the idea was hilarious when you consider that it's his grandmother on that banknote.

[Quote Perf Unquote]

If they ever change the money, it should be Prince Harry in a Nazi costume, Justin Trudeau in blackface, Biden sniffing little girls' hair, that sort of thing. At least make us laugh when we're parting with a fiver for a gallon of gas or milk.

[domino harvey]

Who uses cash? There should be a picture of you on it

[yoshimori]

Masahiro Kobayashi

Did Bashing ever get a release in the West? That was one of the films I remember eagerly following during its Cannes Film Festival Palme d'or run in 2005 and then it just never turned up anywhere. I have always been curious about just how the subject matter of an Iraq aid worker taken hostage and then for some reason ostracised back at home for not committing suicide and making the Japanese look weak in the eyes of the world, would work. Or indeed if it would work.

(EDIT: Ah, it looks as if Facets released it on DVD in the US)

Bashing and Koroshi are both good, but my favorite Kobayashi films are two the Schilling's Variety obit doesn't even mention: the soft-core Perfect Education 5: Amazing Story and the darkly comic Flic. Neither seems to be readily available, but I'd recommend keeping an eye out for them especially.

[Fred Holywell]

Actress and activist Marsha Hunt, at 104.

Marsha Hunt (1917 - 2022) | TCM Remembers

[Computer Raheem]

Queen Elizabeth II

I know most sensible people have moved on already, but I'm a little disappointed no one here has linked this for prosperity.

[Orlac]

My old film professor, and an early researcher into the Video Nasties , Professor Martin Barker - https://usdaynews.com/celebrities/celeb ... ker-death/

[Swift]

Based on the article, he must've been the same named author of a book I read as a teenager on the short lived but controversial Action comic in the UK in the late 70s. It was a fascinating book showing the original comic strips beside the censored versions that went to press.

[Dr Amicus]

It was indeed the same person, he also wrote an excellent book on the British horror comics ban of the 1950s, A Haunt of Fears, which comes strongly recommended.

I got to to know him a bit as he was at Sussex when I started my PhD - with the overlap on Amicus and EC Comics he was surprised he hadn’t been assigned to be my tutor! His main interest was in audience research and how viewers approached films, and he could be forthright in his opinions!

[MichaelB]

Ligia Branice, Polish actress who emigrated to Paris with her animator husband Walerian Borowczyk, for whom she played unforgettable lead roles in his short Rosalie (1966) and his first two live-action features Goto, Isle of Love (1968) and especially Blanche (1971).

She wasn’t so much a great actress as a great presence - Borowczyk was under a lot of pressure to cast someone more bankable like Catherine Deneuve as Blanche, but he stuck to his guns and the film is unimaginable with anyone else in the role.

Much more recently, Arrow’s restoration and revival of Borowczyk’s work would have been impossible without her support, not least because she inherited the rights to much of it.

[colinr0380]

Ligia Branice, Polish actress who emigrated to Paris with her animator husband Walerian Borowczyk, for whom she played unforgettable lead roles in his short Rosalie (1966) and his first two live-action features Goto, Isle of Love (1968) and especially Blanche (1971).

She wasn’t so much a great actress as a great presence - Borowczyk was under a lot of pressure to cast someone more bankable like Catherine Deneuve as Blanche, but he stuck to his guns and the film is unimaginable with anyone else in the role.

Much more recently, Arrow’s restoration and revival of Borowczyk’s work would have been impossible without her support, not least because she inherited the rights to much of it.

She is also the lead in Borowczyk's Behind Convent Walls in 1978, which was her last film role. Beyond Borowczyk she also briefly appears as one of the people in the future sections of Chris Marker's La Jetée.

[colinr0380]

Masahiro Kobayashi

Did Bashing ever get a release in the West? That was one of the films I remember eagerly following during its Cannes Film Festival Palme d'or run in 2005 and then it just never turned up anywhere. I have always been curious about just how the subject matter of an Iraq aid worker taken hostage and then for some reason ostracised back at home for not committing suicide and making the Japanese look weak in the eyes of the world, would work. Or indeed if it would work.

(EDIT: Ah, it looks as if Facets released it on DVD in the US)

Bashing and Koroshi are both good, but my favorite Kobayashi films are two the Schilling's Variety obit doesn't even mention: the soft-core Perfect Education 5: Amazing Story and the darkly comic Flic. Neither seems to be readily available, but I'd recommend keeping an eye out for them especially.

Just looking up the details of Perfect Education 5: Amazing Story on imdb I see that it stars Kazuki Kitamura (a regular in Takashi Miike's films) and Naoto Takenaka, so that immediately makes me interested in tracking it down! And I see that all of these Perfect Education films are based on novels by Michiko Matsuda, who also had a work adapted into film by Shinji Aoyama with 1999's Embalming.

[Lemmy Caution]

Mable John, 91.
I was surprised the NYTimes had a good sizeable obit for her.

[diamonds]

Alain Tanner

[Mooney]

Javier Marías, 70.
So sad about this. My favorite contemporary writer. I've encountered very few writers who could write the inner thoughts of a protagonist more clearly and nakedly than him.

[beamish14]

Alain Tanner

Oh, wow. One of the first “auteur” directors from outside of Hollywood who I really delved into as a young cinephile. His work deserves a major reappraisal

[Aunt Peg]

Alain Tanner

Oh, wow. One of the first “auteur” directors from outside of Hollywood who I really delved into as a young cinephile. His work deserves a major reappraisal

Most definitely a formable talent. He made so many great films that have largely been sadly forgotten. A box set of his work from the late 60's to the late 80's would be most welcome. That was probably his golden era.

[charal]

I agree. A box set of Tanner to put next to my Soutter box has been in on my want list for years. I have a sub-standard DVD of LIGHT YEARS AWAY which has one the best Trevor Howard performances ever. I saw most of Tanner’s 70s and 80s films on YouTube over the years but they are all unavailable now unfortunately. I want everything from CHARLES to NO MAN’S LAND. Is that too much to ask?

[MichaelB]

Film historian Christophe Dupin (whose specialist area this is) has confirmed that Tanner was the last surviving member of the 1950s Free Cinema generation.

[MichaelB]

Gwyneth Powell, who I don't imagine made the tiniest splash outside the UK, but pretty much every British person over the age of, say, forty will vividly remember Grange Hill headmistress Mrs McCluskey. And my kids know her as Greg Davies' mum in the much more recent sitcom Man Down.

[colinr0380]

She was also in one of the few vaguely interesting ITV television experiments of the 2000s (although Rob Brydon playing an aging TV director doing awkward voiceovers for his old ITV progammes in Director's Commentary was the best show on ITV of the 2000s!), appearing in a supporting role in the rather generic and glossy Cornish-set soap opera starring Martine McCutcheon and Jason Donovan Echo Beach, which was notable for being immediately preceded by a tie-in Extras-style comedy series supposedly detailing the dramas behind the scenes of the show, Moving Wallpaper.

[A Tempted Christ]

William Klein