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DarkImbecile wrote: Sun Jul 24, 2022 8:06 pm Bob Rafelson

The last of the BBS partners. The latter years weren’t incredibly kind to him, but he directed and produced some of the best that New Hollywood had to offer

Mountains of the Moon is a neglected masterpiece

hearthesilence wrote: Sun Jul 24, 2022 9:43 pm William Richert

Jesus. He was a such a unique figure. I love how independent he was, even fighting to re-edit and re-release three of his features (The American Success Company/Succes$ has three distinct versions, none of which are really commercially available today)

His website has a very detailed breakdown of how Aaron Sorkin allegedly stole a spec script he wrote in the 80’s and turned it into The American President. He sued the WGA and Castle Rock over it

David Warner discussion split here

Big Ben wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 6:41 pm Paul Sorvino

Tough week already and it's not even Tuesday.

Another omnipresent “That guy.” The obit made a good point: I can’t really think of any movie he headlined, but in my mind he seemed like an elder leading man

domino harvey wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 7:07 pm Another omnipresent “That guy.” The obit made a good point: I can’t really think of any movie he headlined, but in my mind he seemed like an elder leading man

One memory I have of him wasn't in a film - sitting in the audience in floods of tears when his daughter won an Oscar.

Big Ben wrote: Mon Jul 25, 2022 6:41 pm Paul Sorvino

And the ink isn't even dry yet on Imprint's commemorative "James Caan in The Gambler" mug

He’s great in Larry Cohen’s the stuff. Goodfellas definitely overwhelms my image of him, but everything is fairly great.

The Gambler has a great supporting role for Sorvino alongside the recently departed lead James Caan. First memory of him was voicing a evil land developer in my childhood favorite Hey Arnold, though such a reliable character actor that I notice him whenever he popped up in a movie.

This has been such a divesting year for famous mafia actors.

His story of how he found the Paulie character is so enlightening as it really became his signature role - and yet he didn't look or sound like that at all. My lasting memory of him is him tearing up and his daughter won her Oscar...

“It was very difficult, I’m a poet, I’m an opera singer, I’m an author … none of it is gangster.” But then, for Sorvino, came a moment - when he was straightening his tie. In other recountings, he was removing a bit of spinach from between his teeth. In both versions, Sorvino looked in the mirror. And there was a fixed scowl meeting him. “I saw this guy.” And that was it.

Tony Dow, best known as older brother Wally on Leave It to Beaver.

I couldn’t get the link to work but Bill Tull, Conan O’Brien’s prop master throughout his late night career, passed. His little bits throughout Conan’s shows were always a treat.

Blutarsky wrote:I couldn’t get the link to work but Bill Tull, Conan O’Brien’s prop master throughout his late night career, passed. His little bits throughout Conan’s shows were always a treat.

Conan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConanOBrien/status/ ... 5884040192

Bernard Cribbins - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-62330478

The scientist and proponent of the Gaia theory James Lovelock on his 103rd birthday on the 26th July. If you want an interview with him (and an explanation of the Gaia theory) he features in the "Nature Says No" episode of the New Nightmares series from 1993.

He also inspired and was an advisor for one of the early spin-offs of the Sim City game series, 1990's Sim Earth

Orlac wrote:Bernard Cribbins - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-62330478

Cribbins was a mainstay of my childhood with The Wombles, Jackanory (including their two week adaptation of The Hobbit) and many others, not to mention the film of The Railway Children. He’s also a Doctor Who icon, appearing in the film Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD and then the revived series in a great role as Catherine Tate’s Grandad - indeed he’s the best thing in the overblown End of Time which ended the original Davies / Tennant era. A legend for at least two generations of British children.

Bernard Cribbins is also in two of the best Carry On films - 1964's Carry On Spying and Carry On Jack - as well as one of the worst in 1992's unfortunate attempt to reboot the series 14 years after the last entry with a bunch of more risque modern alternative comedians Carry On Columbus. Columbus is a kind of depressing watch although for the opposite reasons to 1978's Carry On Emmanuelle: whilst Emmanuelle felt as if the veteran cast were struggling to catch up to the more cruder and more explicit single-entendre sexual shenanigans of mid-70s cinema (not just Emmanuelle but the Confessions of... and Adventures of... films); Columbus, despite its couple of key series veterans, kept having its atmosphere punctured by the presence of the newer comedians who just kept showing that times had changed. Much as I love Julian Clary, and he might superficially have been seen as a natural Kenneth Williams stand-in, he was of a quite different camp character!

(Speaking of which, Cribbins is of course inevitably in that giant ensemble cast of the 2012 Danny Dyer film Run For Your Wife)

Cribbins was also in a couple of films directed by Robert Day (Day himself directed three of the four films in Criterion's Monsters & Madmen set) with the somewhat neglected now Hammer film She and the Peter Sellers film Two-Way Stretch. He is also in another Peter Sellers films from that era, The Wrong Arm Of The Law. That early period of comedy films is my favourite, which also includes The Mouse on the Moon and Crooks In Cloisters.

But perhaps his best role is the station master in The Railway Children (which may also be quite relevant to the current moment where strikes are crippling the rail infrastructure over plans to get rid of manned ticket offices in stations as cost cutting measures). That scene where the children decide to throw a surprise party for him, which he jumps to conclusions and gets angry about as probably being a class thing where the kids are trying to condescendingly give him charity, until his wife talks some sense into him about their actual motivations for wanting to give him presents, is a very moving scene.

Ron Zimmerman.

Nichelle Nichols.