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Paolo Villaggio died July the 5th. National icon in Italy.

Feego wrote:Elsa Martinelli

RIP

Professor Wagstaff wrote:True Blood actor Nelsan Ellis

Died from complications of alcohol withdrawal

mfunk9786 wrote:Fresh Kid Ice

As a 12-year old in 1989, my friends and I did what we could to obtain a cassette copy of As Nasty As They Wanna Be. Luckily, the sellers at flea markets didn't really care if you were a minor or not and one of us was able to snag a copy and make copies for the rest. Good times.

George Romero discussion here

Bob Wolff, longtime running broadcaster in television and radio, passed Saturday.

Interview

Wow. Two greats in a single day.

What a shitty day.

I worked with Bob Woolf back in the early 90s. What a gentleman he was. Great career in sports.

Nice memory you got there Frau Blucher...

Martin Landau never took a day off. He reminded me of Jack Lemon in that sense. Just like Jack, I loved his idiosyncratic mannerisms.

Came across this this morning... The Babe and a young Bob Woolf.

British arthouse distribution legend Pam Engel, Artificial Eye co-founder and more recently a major part of New Wave Films.

"The end of an era" is an appalling cliché, but I'm really struggling to think of anyone else who's been in the business for as long as she was. Everyone else that I dealt with 25-30 years ago is either dead, retired or packed it in for something saner, and she was a veteran even then.

That's very sad news for anyone who relies on such figures to actually get the films onto screens and eventually on a disc. I've no way of knowing but it perhaps seems telling that the shift from Artificial Eye to New Wave led to Artificial Eye becoming less interesting and risk taking with their acquisitions (and more into US films with bankable casts), whilst New Wave helped to continue a commitment to existing artists as well as pioneer another whole swathe of arthouse cinema. Hopefully they'll be able to keep on in that tradition.

Sad news. I met her a few times in the days when I went to press showings.

Trevor Baxter, British actor whose best-known role was as Professor Litefoot in the Doctor Who serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and reprised the character in spin-off audiobooks. He had an acting career on both TV and in the cinema of over fifty years.

Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park

That's terrible news. Don't really know too much about him but I hate hearing these guys committing suicide knowing that they have so many people around them. I know that sounds simplified but it's frustrating nonetheless.

Btw... Next week Linken Park was to play with Blink 182 here at CitiField billed as "Blinkin Park"

And it happens on his close friend, Chris Cornell's, birthday.

Can't say I've been a fan (not since maybe the debut album when I was 11, or whatever) - but this is very, very sad. I feel immensely for him just reading his biography and what he went through growing up, and this was just awful news to wake up to.

That is sad to hear. I'm not musically savvy but one of the best aspects of the first Transformers film was its great soundtrack album that included Linkin Park's What I've Done used over its final scene. Though of course the lyrics to that particular song now are rather uncomfortable.

EDIT: And this is an interesting video about the influence of Linkin Park on many fan anime music videos.

SECOND EDIT: I just realised that Chester Bennington appears as one of the victims in one of the best(? certainly the most spectacular) traps in the Saw franchise, as he plays the Neo-Nazi superglued to the seat of a jacked up car in Saw: The Final Chapter.

Deborah Watling, aged 69, best known for her role as Doctor Who companion Victoria Waterfield in 1967 and 1968.

Pudsey the Dog, Britain's Got Talent winner in 2012 and star of his own film in 2014.

Pasolini's killer has died without speaking the truth.