Passages

[therewillbeblus]

Julie Powell, blogger and author of Julie & Julia, of cardiac arrest at 49

[beamish14]

Douglas McGrath, frequent Woody Allen collaborator and director of Emma (1996)

[agnamaracs]

Nobody posted it, but Jules Bass (of Rankin-Bass) died last week, a couple days after Warner and Universal announced a huge set of their Christmas specials

[knives]

I know this is weird to say about an 87 year old, but I’m surprised he was that young. The films were long enough ago and have such an always there feeling in the cultural memory that I would have expected him to be over a hundred.

[hearthesilence]

I know this is weird to say about an 87 year old, but I’m surprised he was that young. The films were long enough ago and have such an always there feeling in the cultural memory that I would have expected him to be over a hundred.

I know what you mean. When it talked about his other works and the year he retired from animation, I realized all of that happened when he was still a pretty good distance from retirement age.

[swo17]

Warner and Universal announced a huge set of their Christmas specials

It's lame this set is DVD-only when almost half the titles have previously come out on Blu-ray and three just barely came out on UHD!

[soundchaser]

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is such a weird film. As are most of these, honestly — and I love them for it. But it’s on another level.

[Orlac]

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is such a weird film.

It was one of my first movies, recorded by some rich friends off their new fangled Sky Movies package back in 1990! Watching it again recently, I noticed that the evil Ogwars' pet dragon has Rodan's roar!

[CSM126]

Aaron Carter

[therewillbeblus]

Aaron Carter

Rough, I saw a few videos of him getting into some charged and irrational arguments with people on live podcasts over the last year, and he really didn't look like he was doing well

[fiendishthingy]

I've been watching CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel and keep looking up various figures who appear in the documentary, which led me to discover that Josef Somr of Closely Watched Trains and The Joke died on October 16.

[hearthesilence]

Mimi Parker of Low. Parker was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2020. Very sad. They were supposed to tour this year before they cancelled those dates to allow her recovery from cancer treatment.

[MongooseCmr]

HEY WHAT was an instant all timer for me, connected in an immediate way that whole albums rarely do lately. What a loss

[zedz]

Mimi Parker of Low. Parker was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2020. Very sad. They were supposed to tour this year before they cancelled those dates to allow her recovery from cancer treatment.

An amazing band and an amazing voice:
Congregation

[brundlefly]

One of the great American rock bands and musical marriages. Their work was a blessing. They never stopped being themselves, never stopped searching. They were so perfectly balanced. Her voice was casually ethereal, but she kept them grounded. They worked with time and tension and the unknown, but she summoned such humble, inviting certainty. Loved Low live, and their Christmas shows at the Bowery always made everyone feel like extended family. All love to Alan and theirs.

[cdnchris]

A number of posts on Facebook are indicating Bill Olsen from Code Red has passed away.

[denti alligator]

One of the great American rock bands and musical marriages. Their work was a blessing. They never stopped being themselves, never stopped searching. They were so perfectly balanced. Her voice was casually ethereal, but she kept them grounded. They worked with time and tension and the unknown, but she summoned such humble, inviting certainty. Loved Low live, and their Christmas shows at the Bowery always made everyone feel like extended family. All love to Alan and theirs.

Thanks for these words. That Christmas EP was always my favorite thing they did. It will be hard to listen to this year.

[beamish14]

Jan Rabson, voice over actor who portrayed Tetsuo in the 1989 dub of Akira and computer game icon Leisure Suit Larry

[GaryC]

Leslie Phillips, aged ninety-eight.

[Buttery Jeb]

Kevin O'Neill, comic artist and co-creator of Marshal Law and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

[Swift]

Kevin O'Neill, comic artist and co-creator of Marshal Law and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Here's 2000 AD's obituary featuring some of his artwork on strips like A.B.C. Warriors and Nemesis the Warlock, the latter of which I found oddly unsettling as a kid. With Alan Grant's death earlier this year, and Ezquerra a few years ago, I guess we're at that stage where the early influential creators at 2000 AD will be passing on more often.

[colinr0380]

Leslie Phillips, aged ninety-eight.

To keep in with the video game voice actor theme, it was amusing to see that Phillips voiced the 90s video game character Gex in the UK localisation replacing Dana Gould's voice acting from the US version!

Perhaps his best moment in film was in the laughing gas scene in Carry On Nurse, though he is also in a few of the classic black and white Carry Ons with Carry On Teacher and Carry On Constable. And then he was in a couple of the other big Ralph Thomas directed series of Doctor films, though not all of them, and none of the entries that starred Dirk Bogarde and which notoriously made Bogarde uncomfortably into a pin-up sex symbol for teen girls for a brief moment!

Phillips was also the only member of the cast of the long running BBC radio series The Navy Lark to move across to the 1959 film version, maybe because his vocal mannerisms were too distinctive!

The 50s and 60s were his big period but he turns up in a number of other small roles, notably as the more concerned with the situation member of the Royal household in King Ralph, he has a quite touching single scene with Angelina Jolie in the first Tomb Raider film (in which he somehow manages to restrain himself from going "Ooohh, hello!" at her!), and appears with King Ralph co-stars Peter O'Toole and Richard Griffiths in Venus!

[colinr0380]

Also a couple of other UK actors, though more known for their TV roles: Bill Treacher at 92 best known for his over 1,000 episodes as Arthur Fowler in the BBC's Eastenders soap opera, during the mid 80s-mid 90s, and particularly for his mental breakdown storyline. Though he had a really strange run of films in the late 90s and early 2000s where he co-starred with Jason Scott Lee and Shelley Duvall(!) and an ingenue Gerard Butler in Russell Mulcahy's 1998 film Tale of the Mummy; with Patrick Swayze and Michael Clarke Duncan(!) in 2004's George and the Dragon; and perhaps most bizarrely with Catherine Deneuve(!) in the weirdest of the wave of post-Matrix films desperately trying to understand the new zeitgeist, Peter Hyams's 2001 wire-fu version of The Musketeer!

And Tom Owen who was more prolific on the stage but was persuaded to continue in the footsteps of his father Bill Owen and appear in the BBC's Last of the Summer Wine comedy series for over 90 further episodes as the son of the character his father had played in the show. He also turns up in early roles in the 1969 Peter O'Toole version of Goodbye Mr Chips and in the 1971 film version of Unman, Wittering & Zigo, plus more recent post-Last of the Summer Wine roles in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Bromley Boys.

[zedz]

Kevin O'Neill, comic artist and co-creator of Marshal Law and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Kevin O'Neill earnt the remarkable distinction of being - as far as I'm aware - the only artist whose work was blanket banned by the Comics Code Authority on the basis of style alone. They couldn't specify any objectionable content, but they were pretty sure that there was something evil there!


And his creation Nemesis the Warlock inspired the song by Shriekback.

[jazzo]

O’Neill was, in my opinion, a giant of the industry, too big and far too original for the squeamish North American comic book industry.

Every one of his lines felt like a wink and a smile.

He will be dearly missed.