Passages

[Drucker]

Rough day.

Manuel Gottsching

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Yoshida is one of the film makers I got to hear/see when he came to the Harvard Film Archive several years ago. Unlike Shinoda (who was very voluble and pretty down to earth), Yoshida was pretty abstract in most of his answers. Still it was a privilege to get to see him in person.

BTW -- Shinoda is now 91 -- but still among the living, I believe.

Hani Susumu (94) as well. Adachi Masao is a spring chicken at 83 and unlike the others is still an active filmmaker, most recently drawing death threats with a fictionalized movie about the assassin of ex-PM Abe.

Yoshida spoke with Rithy Panh in 2020 as part of the Tokyo Film Festival's "Asia Lounge" series. It might be a bit frustrating for those hoping to hear Yoshida speak more about his films, but it was still interesting for me to hear about his then-new debut novel, especially since I have no expectation I'll ever be able to actually read it.

[soundchaser]

Angelo Badalamenti

One of the great mood-setters in film & TV music history. His albums with Julee Cruise and David Lynch are also fantastic.

[colinr0380]

He also appears as an actor in Mulholland Drive, where he memorably portrays somebody having the antithesis of a "damn fine coffee!"

Beyond the defining Lynch scores, he also provided the beautifully emotionally mournful score (which works perfectly to plunge the new player immediately into controlling the main character who has just inexplicably and with no memory of the event murdered somebody in a diner's bathroom and has to make a quick exit) to what eventually escalates into a completely loopy video game with 2005's Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. And given that so much of his work involves dream worlds shifting into nightmares, it perhaps is appropriate that one of his scores was for A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors!

[dadaistnun]

Regarding “dream worlds shifting into nightmares” (a great description btw), he also composed the lovely score to The City of Lost Children, the theme for which is sung by Marianne Faithful (he did a full album with her around the same time).

Loved all of his Lynch collaborations, with Blue Velvet, Fire Walk with Me, and Mulholland Drive being particular favorites. The love theme in the latter never fails to move me.

[hearthesilence]

He also appears as an actor in Mulholland Drive, where he memorably portrays somebody having the antithesis of a "damn fine coffee!"

I love his work on Twin Peaks, but truth be told, that's probably my favorite contribution from him to a David Lynch film.

[Finch]

Angelo's passing really hurts. His music had such a profound impact on me. It made me feel like floating in the air. The Peaks theme was already wonderful but his Fire Walk With Me score is overall even stronger than the show's. I also really enjoyed the track he composed for Bill Pullman's saxophone scene in Lost Highway. Rough year for Peaks cast and crew members: first Lenny Von Dohlen, then Julee Cruise, then Al Strobel only a few days ago, now Angelo.

[bottlesofsmoke]

In addition to the Lynch stuff, I love Badalamenti’s score for The Comfort of Strangers, it adds so much to the wonderful atmosphere of that film.

[colinr0380]

Regarding “dream worlds shifting into nightmares”, he also composed the lovely score to The City of Lost Children, the theme for which is sung by Marianne Faithful (he did a full album with her around the same time).

I would love for that film to get re-discovered at some point. It has been decades since I last saw it (and even back then it was rather overshadowed by Jeunet and Caro's Delicatessen) but remember it being a wonderful dark fairy tale of the style that Guillermo del Toro has gone on to corner the market in.

[Caligula]

Stuart Margolin, whom many here will remember as Angel from The Rockford Files

[Dr Amicus]

Chris Boucher Doctor Who writer (created the character of Leela, wrote "The Robots of Death", an all time great story), script editor for Blakes Seven and then creator of the short lived but fondly remembered (by some!) Star Cops.

[Sloper]

As the very hands-on script editor of every episode of Blake's 7 (and writer of nine episodes, including the infamous finale), Boucher is often credited as being just as important a creative force behind this show as its creator, Terry Nation. He claimed to have had some input into almost every line spoken by Avon, who is probably most people's favourite character.

And another of my childhood heroes died the other day: Victor Lewis-Smith, a major influence on Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker among others.

[colinr0380]

Star Cops was great! An actual attempt by the BBC to do something more serious sci-fi rather than aimed at kids, so of course it was doomed from the outset. I kind of bracket it together with Hideo Kojima's Policenauts!

And that is a shock about Victor Lewis-Smith. I think I have probably linked to too many TV Offal clips on the forum over the years, and really admired his absolutely take no prisoners approach to humour, even if it did often veer too much into the juvenile at times. He even did the journey that Chris Morris later took of starting out on the BBC with radio before the Inside Victor Lewis-Smith series, before transferring to Channel 4 and really pulling out all the stops with the essential TV Offal series! While not all the TV Offal series sketches worked (I never particularly liked the Gay Daleks, but did think the one off "Sparky The Boy-Molesting Piano" sketch was fantastic, which was pretty much the same electronic vocal-shifted thing but more concentrated!) but loved the regular "Assassination of the Week", "Kamikaze Karaoke" and gobsmackingly libelous "Honest Obituary" segments roasting Z-list minor celebrities!

1998 was his big television year really, since he also did a BBC series Ads Infinitum too! Although on a more downbeat note as well as Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker I have a suspicion that he and Mark Thomas between them with their end credits telephone calls (which were always comfortably the least amusing part of their shows, though always sharply satirically and politically pointed and targeted in their particular cases) helped to pave the way for the resurgence of perhaps the least appealing comedy trend ever: the prank phone call genre later done to death by the likes of Dom Joly and Fonejacker, which was a big thing through much of the 2000s until it was thankfully brought to a screeching halt by the (somewhat overblown by the tabloids) "Sachsgate" scandal. Which may have been the final prank played on the viewer!

But what else is there to say about Mr Lewis-Smith, except that he was a bit of a loner, really!

[lacritfan]

Coach Mike Leach, known for his off the wall comments as much as college football.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

And another of my childhood heroes died the other day: Victor Lewis-Smith, a major influence on Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker among others.

I remember reading long ago that Lewis-Smith harbored no small amount of bitterness towards Morris, partly out of conviction that Morris had plagiarized him—at the very minimum it's hard to see Morris's "Wayne Carr" character as much more than a clone of Lewis-Smith's earlier "Steve Nage"—and partly from his sense that Morris got kid-gloves treatment from the BBC, e.g. being able to include prank calls in On the Hour without the victims' permission, which Lewis-Smith was required to obtain for the equivalent segments on his Radio 1 show. But Morris's comedy is laser-focused compared to Lewis-Smith's stream-of-consciousness sensibility and it's not hard to see why VLS never rose to the same level of prominence, though his tendency to bite the hand outstripped even Morris's and surely had something to do with it (his Radio 1 Christmas special credited the station's controller as "Johnny 'I'm Going to Remove Ten Million Hours of Material from Your Show and Then Send You a Letter Asking Why It’s Not Funny Anymore' Beerling").

Lewis-Smith was also a serious music buff, which came across through his selection of targets—Andrew Lloyd Webber and Michael Nyman, among others—and in much of his non-comedy work, notably the BBC's 21st Century Bach and Alchemists of Sound. The latter is a more or less "straight" documentary on the Radiophonic Workshop, but with the odd touch of a sinister shadowy figure materializing in the background during interviews, apparently Lewis-Smith's evocation of the always-looming BBC bureaucracy.

[MichaelB]

I remember a Lewis-Smith review of something by Chris Morris that could have been printed in green ink, so palpable was the jealousy.

[colinr0380]

I had forgotten that Lewis-Smith had done the 21st Century Bach series! That series of short musical interludes made for a real contrast with TV Offal!

[MichaelB]

I remember a Lewis-Smith review of something by Chris Morris that could have been printed in green ink, so palpable was the jealousy.

Found it! Evening Standard, 20 November 1996, an absolutely blistering denunciation of Brass Eye (then yet to be broadcast), which Lewis-Smith claims is "not funny", "no laughing matter", "looking dangerously close to its sell-by date", and, oddly, given Lewis-Smith's own past as a public prankster, "ultimately undignified, because there's something profoundly unbecoming in the sight of men in their late thirties still getting their kicks by playing televisual knock-down ginger on the adult world".

Interestingly, when the series was reviewed in the paper's TV column and it was quite clear that Lewis-Smith's opinion was a minority one (to put it mildly), he was conveniently on holiday and someone else contributed a rave review.

[colinr0380]

Lewis-Smith was also a serious music buff, which came across through his selection of targets—Andrew Lloyd Webber and Michael Nyman, among others...

Here's that segment on Nyman (which also drags Philip Glass into the abuse!), and while of course I completely and fundamentally disagree with Lewis-Smith's opnion, I cannot deny that I laughed!

(Also listening to that radio show, let's just say that BBC Radio 4 Extra will probably not be repeating it any time soon in tribute due to some, erm, rather broad stereotypical accent skits that take up the majority of it. Though the Harrods prank call was pretty funny!)

[hearthesilence]

Dino Danelli, drummer for the Rascals and he was fantastic to watch. Guy was like a machine.

[Drucker]

Dino Danelli, drummer for the Rascals and he was fantastic to watch. Guy was like a machine.

Those first three records all kill in my book, "A Girl Like You" one of my all time favorite openers.

[Feego]

TCM Remembers

The most surprising omissions are Betty White, Sally Kellerman, and Jacques Perrin, though I'm also surprised they left out Bobby Rydell and Joanna Barnes.

This year's annual inclusions that I didn't know about beforehand are William Reynolds (best known for playing offspring from hell in Douglas Sirk films) and Alfonso Mejia (star of Los Olvidados).

[fiendishthingy]

Betty White died on December 31 of last year, so that may explain the omission. (I’m not sure what their usual practice is for people who pass away after the year’s video is released.)

[Feego]

Typically, people who die very late in the year are included the following year (indeed, Alfonso Mejia died on December 29). I won't be surprised if TCM updates the video to include some of these folks, especially if they get complaints on social media. It's a rare year that they don't alter their memoriam in some way after it first airs, either to add people or to fix an incorrect clip (it's astounding how frequently they have used a clip of the wrong person!).

[otis]

Lando Buzzanca