I saw a video not too long ago about Mel and Carl having dinner together every night for I-forget-how-many years. (I could not find the video again). The two of them were hysterical playing off of one another.
I suppose it says something about Oh God! that it made George Burns, then in his 80s, a household name once again, and he was rarely out of the spotlight afterwards. Also remarkable how he became almost instantly synonymous with that role, as if he had been playing it for decades.
Granted, that probably had at least as much to do with Burns' own charisma, as with Reiner's direction, which seemed somewhat light in that particular project. (Not to mention he was likely hobbled by those cross-eyed glasses; Jerk reference.)
Photographer Li Zhensheng has died. Most of us don't recognize the name, but if you've ever seen those harrowing black and white photos of China's Cultural Revolution you're familiar with his work.
Ennio Morricone, the composer most famous for giving the sound to Sergio Leone's films, has died, aged 91.
I saw him conduct the Czech National Symphony Orchestra at the Millenium Dome a few years ago, when he collected his BAFTA for his score for The Hateful Eight.
Ennio Morricone, the composer most famous for giving the sound to Sergio Leone's films, has died, aged 91.
I saw him conduct the Czech National Symphony Orchestra at the Millenium Dome a few years ago, when he collected his BAFTA for his score for The Hateful Eight.
He'd been on my list ever since I started joining in and, of course, this is one year I forgot to add my list!! 9 lost points to me....
Ennio Morricone, the composer most famous for giving the sound to Sergio Leone's films, has died, aged 91.
I saw him conduct the Czech National Symphony Orchestra at the Millenium Dome a few years ago, when he collected his BAFTA for his score for The Hateful Eight.
He is one of those people whose music is know by everyone. Whatever your style or preference. Sad loss.
Ennio Morricone, the composer most famous for giving the sound to Sergio Leone's films, has died, aged 91.
I saw him conduct the Czech National Symphony Orchestra at the Millenium Dome a few years ago, when he collected his BAFTA for his score for The Hateful Eight.
He'd been on my list ever since I started joining in and, of course, this is one year I forgot to add my list!! 9 lost points to me....
Usually, if one has a given celebrity, that ensures they live!
Another baseball player who did not manage to get onto my Kiss-Of-Life List, Tony Taylor has died. Taylor was part of the group of players who were playing just as I was learning the game in the 1960s: Taylor, Dick Allen, Johnny Callison, Cookie Rojas...as I entered into double digits of age, they left to be replaced by the likes of Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa, Greg Luzinski and Bob Boone.
Tony Taylor held the record for most games played for the Philadelphia Phillies at second base (1,003), until he was finally surpassed by Chase Utley in 2011. Taylor also holds second place in most career pinch hits by a Phillies player. To put all of that into a little bit of perspective, remember that the Phillies have been playing baseball for more than 135 years.
He was one of the good ones, and I feel just that little bit older knowing that he is gone.
I have a question for players, or those who think they might like to play next year. I'm thinking of a couple minor rule changes. One would be that you can, as now, pick folks over 100, only you won't get negative points if they die, just a fat goose egg. I moderate two other deathpools in the USA, and that is the practise on those. But if players prefer the current rule, I'll leave it alon.
That doesn't sound like a bad idea at all, Baker - I can think of one person who I took off my list when he turned 100, but as my list tends to be something of a "kiss of life", I'd be quite happy to reinstate him (he's an acquaintance as well as being a celebrity in cathedral music circles!).
Goodness - that's way too young. I used to enjoy the odd episode of Mythbusters when I lived in Canada.
RIP Mr. Imahara.
I read that the cause of Grant's death was a brain aneurysm. That can strike out of nowhere, although trauma can cause it, but I don't know if the the aneurysm can arise years later from an earlier event.
Piglet, in one game I moderate all my picks are at least 95 years old. So I could never be #1 in points, but there are seperate awards for the most picks, and for the most unique picks. I lead in both. I chose Kirk Douglas, Earl Cameron, and Vera Lynn. Not a point among them. If Olivia de Havilland and Norman Lloyd would cooperate, I'd really it.
Piglet, in one game I moderate all my picks are at least 95 years old. So I could never be #1 in points, but there are seperate awards for the most picks, and for the most unique picks. I lead in both. I chose Kirk Douglas, Earl Cameron, and Vera Lynn. Not a point among them. If Olivia de Havilland and Norman Lloyd would cooperate, I'd really it.
Piglet, in one game I moderate all my picks are at least 95 years old. So I could never be #1 in points, but there are seperate awards for the most picks, and for the most unique picks. I lead in both. I chose Kirk Douglas, Earl Cameron, and Vera Lynn. Not a point among them. If Olivia de Havilland and Norman Lloyd would cooperate, I'd really it.
Piglet, in one game I moderate all my picks are at least 95 years old. So I could never be #1 in points, but there are seperate awards for the most picks, and for the most unique picks. I lead in both. I chose Kirk Douglas, Earl Cameron, and Vera Lynn. Not a point among them. If Olivia de Havilland and Norman Lloyd would cooperate, I'd really it.
Olivia de Havilland has just cooperated.
I fell kinda guilty about that.
She was 104 years old. That she was breathing at all was a miracle. I am certain that your name will not be listed under the official "causes of death."
I hope not. But my grandmother was even older when she passed, less than a month short of her 108th birthday.
Fun facts about my grandma, not that they are relevant here. She was born one year to the day after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. When she was the age I am now she saw men walk on the moon. She had breast cancer, and at the age of 91 had a mastectomy, yet lived almost another seventeen years.
The thing I am so proud of her for was her voting record. She was born in December of 1904, about a month after the US presidential elections. In those days you needed to be twenty-one to vote, it's now eighteen. So since the elections are held every four years she couldn't vote in a presidential election until 1928. She voted in a presidential election for the last time in 2012. That's 22 times, and although we can't of course prove it, she may hold the record for the most continuous presidential votes. Even now, if a US citizen voted for president on their 18th birthday, they'd still have to live to 102 to equal what my grandmother did.
Businessman and Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has died from COVID-19. Cain attended Donald Trump's largely mask-free rally in Tulsa last month.
Businessman and Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has died from COVID-19. Cain attended Donald Trump's largely mask-free rally in Tulsa last month.
Evidently the Trump rally was eleven days before Cain was diagnosed with Covid-19. And he was photographed mask-free at the event while sitting cozily with other rally attendees.
I feel sad that he probably lost his life due to making a political point.
Alan Parker has died. I have seen a few of his films.
The man who made "Turkish prison" shorthand for "everything horrible that can happen to westerners abroad." One doubts the flags in Ankara are flying at half-mast today.
And that was probably my favorite of his films. Pink Floyd: The Wall I always thought was mostly just pandering to teenaged angst(unlikely that too many of the target audience had experienced a school system such as the one bewailed in that film), though it did enter some startling imagery into the cinematic canon.
His more traditional musicals largely seemed to coast on their own source material, though Bugsy Malone and Evita were competently enough handled.
I didn't think The Life Of David Gale was quite as bad as the critics said, though admittedly a somewhat silly plot. For some reason, I've always wanted to see Shoot The Moon, but that is one film that seems to have completely vanished from sight.
Fame was a pretty big influence on the wannabe-theatre crowd that I associated with in my junior-high years(some of whom might have been more into the TV show than the movie). I think I was in my forties before I ever saw the film. It was alright.
Except for a couple of scenes, I don't remember anything of Birdy. Same with Angel Heart. Mississipi Burning was pretty much what you'd expect, possibly guilty of the white-saviour motif, plus appearing to
condone police violence in the service of liberal ends.
Only ever saw a few minutes of The Road To Wellville on TV; seemed rather farcical. Never seen Come See The Paradise(one of the few movies made about the Japanese internment), The Commitments, or Angela's Ashes. I'd be interested to hear from people who have.
Fame was a pretty big influence on the wannabe-theatre crowd that I associated with in my junior-high years(some of whom might have been more into the TV show than the movie). I think I was in my forties before I ever saw the film. It was alright.
I was in college—specifically in a school of music—when Fame came out. It was very popular among my crowd. I can still sing along with the entire soundtrack.
Fame was a pretty big influence on the wannabe-theatre crowd that I associated with in my junior-high years(some of whom might have been more into the TV show than the movie). I think I was in my forties before I ever saw the film. It was alright.
I was in college—specifically in a school of music—when Fame came out. It was very popular among my crowd. I can still sing along with the entire soundtrack.
One thing that struck me about that film when I finally saw it about a decade ago was how much it was basically just holding up a mirror to its target audience, showing them the world they were already inhabiting.
For example, the scene where they all go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There's almost something incestuous about a film like Fame showcasing Rocky Horror, since the fan base for the two films was pretty much identical.
(Or at least, that was my observation from the summers I attended a fine-arts camp in the '80s. TRHPS and Fame seemed to be the two things that everybody was into.)
As for singing along with the soundtrack, the only two songs I can remember from Fame are the theme, and I Sing The Body Electric, the former because it was ubiquitous in the '80s, the latter because we sang it at that arts camp. Actually seeing the movie years later didn't do anything to impress the music on me further.
I definitely agree about the holding up a mirror aspect. We saw it as a movie that reflected the world we inhabited—though we didn’t dance in the streets or in the lunch room, and there wasn’t a big Rocky Horror fan base among my classmates. (I was one of the relatively few who’d seen it, much less seen it more than once.) But then, we were music majors, not theater majors.
And I should probably add that I can sing along with most cast albums and soundtracks. It’s how I’m wired. But I did like a number of the songs in Fame. As I recall, we had slightly altered lyrics to ”Hot Lunch Jam”, that mentioned the names of the two women who worked the lunch counter we frequented.
Surprised to hear that Rocky Horror cultists were so under-represented in your music class. Then again, my perception that everyone in my fine-arts summer school was into the film might have owed something to what the sociologists call out-group homogeneity. I was kind of a loner, not part of the popular circles, and had never seen the movie. So it might have seemed to me that everyone else had, based on a relative few who talked about it.
Also, the film's appeal might have been more to drama types, as distinct from music types. (The music is actually not that brilliant.)
Also, the film's appeal might have been more to drama types, as distinct from music types.
That was my impression.
If one sees music and acting as separate things. There is a category of performance that encapsulates both: Musical theatre. Hell, even most genres of music have performance as an important part of a concert. Can you imagine Pink Floyd sitting on chairs, behind a drawn curtain?
Comments
Now Mel has lost both Anne and Carl.
Granted, that probably had at least as much to do with Burns' own charisma, as with Reiner's direction, which seemed somewhat light in that particular project. (Not to mention he was likely hobbled by those cross-eyed glasses; Jerk reference.)
Wow, he was the Mugabe-esque dictator in The Interpreter. Good performance, that.
I saw him conduct the Czech National Symphony Orchestra at the Millenium Dome a few years ago, when he collected his BAFTA for his score for The Hateful Eight.
He'd been on my list ever since I started joining in and, of course, this is one year I forgot to add my list!! 9 lost points to me....
He is one of those people whose music is know by everyone. Whatever your style or preference. Sad loss.
Usually, if one has a given celebrity, that ensures they live!
Also gone is one of the founders of Fairport Convention, Judy Dyble, aged 71.
RIP Mr. Imahara.
Tony Taylor held the record for most games played for the Philadelphia Phillies at second base (1,003), until he was finally surpassed by Chase Utley in 2011. Taylor also holds second place in most career pinch hits by a Phillies player. To put all of that into a little bit of perspective, remember that the Phillies have been playing baseball for more than 135 years.
He was one of the good ones, and I feel just that little bit older knowing that he is gone.
A sad loss. He was a great theologian. RIP Jim.
1 Spike 27 2 0
2 Priscilla 23 1 0
2 Schroedingers Cat 23 1 0
2 Simon Toad 23 1 0
2 Sipech 23 1 0
6 Leorning Cniht 19 2 0
7 Wet Kipper 10 1 0
8 la vie en rouge 9 1 0
9 jedijudy 8 1 1
10 Eigon 4 1 0
10 Phantom_Flan_Flinger 4 1 0
12 McMaverick -6 2 2
I read that the cause of Grant's death was a brain aneurysm. That can strike out of nowhere, although trauma can cause it, but I don't know if the the aneurysm can arise years later from an earlier event.
RIP, indeed.
Piglet, in one game I moderate all my picks are at least 95 years old. So I could never be #1 in points, but there are seperate awards for the most picks, and for the most unique picks. I lead in both. I chose Kirk Douglas, Earl Cameron, and Vera Lynn. Not a point among them. If Olivia de Havilland and Norman Lloyd would cooperate, I'd really it.
Olivia de Havilland has just cooperated.
That is a sad loss - definately one of the greats, and someone who has had a massive influence on music - not just Fleetwood Mac.
I fell kinda guilty about that.
Fun facts about my grandma, not that they are relevant here. She was born one year to the day after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. When she was the age I am now she saw men walk on the moon. She had breast cancer, and at the age of 91 had a mastectomy, yet lived almost another seventeen years.
The thing I am so proud of her for was her voting record. She was born in December of 1904, about a month after the US presidential elections. In those days you needed to be twenty-one to vote, it's now eighteen. So since the elections are held every four years she couldn't vote in a presidential election until 1928. She voted in a presidential election for the last time in 2012. That's 22 times, and although we can't of course prove it, she may hold the record for the most continuous presidential votes. Even now, if a US citizen voted for president on their 18th birthday, they'd still have to live to 102 to equal what my grandmother did.
Evidently the Trump rally was eleven days before Cain was diagnosed with Covid-19. And he was photographed mask-free at the event while sitting cozily with other rally attendees.
I feel sad that he probably lost his life due to making a political point.
The man who made "Turkish prison" shorthand for "everything horrible that can happen to westerners abroad." One doubts the flags in Ankara are flying at half-mast today.
And that was probably my favorite of his films. Pink Floyd: The Wall I always thought was mostly just pandering to teenaged angst(unlikely that too many of the target audience had experienced a school system such as the one bewailed in that film), though it did enter some startling imagery into the cinematic canon.
His more traditional musicals largely seemed to coast on their own source material, though Bugsy Malone and Evita were competently enough handled.
I didn't think The Life Of David Gale was quite as bad as the critics said, though admittedly a somewhat silly plot. For some reason, I've always wanted to see Shoot The Moon, but that is one film that seems to have completely vanished from sight.
Fame was a pretty big influence on the wannabe-theatre crowd that I associated with in my junior-high years(some of whom might have been more into the TV show than the movie). I think I was in my forties before I ever saw the film. It was alright.
Except for a couple of scenes, I don't remember anything of Birdy. Same with Angel Heart. Mississipi Burning was pretty much what you'd expect, possibly guilty of the white-saviour motif, plus appearing to
Only ever saw a few minutes of The Road To Wellville on TV; seemed rather farcical. Never seen Come See The Paradise(one of the few movies made about the Japanese internment), The Commitments, or Angela's Ashes. I'd be interested to hear from people who have.
One thing that struck me about that film when I finally saw it about a decade ago was how much it was basically just holding up a mirror to its target audience, showing them the world they were already inhabiting.
For example, the scene where they all go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There's almost something incestuous about a film like Fame showcasing Rocky Horror, since the fan base for the two films was pretty much identical.
(Or at least, that was my observation from the summers I attended a fine-arts camp in the '80s. TRHPS and Fame seemed to be the two things that everybody was into.)
As for singing along with the soundtrack, the only two songs I can remember from Fame are the theme, and I Sing The Body Electric, the former because it was ubiquitous in the '80s, the latter because we sang it at that arts camp. Actually seeing the movie years later didn't do anything to impress the music on me further.
And I should probably add that I can sing along with most cast albums and soundtracks. It’s how I’m wired. But I did like a number of the songs in Fame. As I recall, we had slightly altered lyrics to ”Hot Lunch Jam”, that mentioned the names of the two women who worked the lunch counter we frequented.
Surprised to hear that Rocky Horror cultists were so under-represented in your music class. Then again, my perception that everyone in my fine-arts summer school was into the film might have owed something to what the sociologists call out-group homogeneity. I was kind of a loner, not part of the popular circles, and had never seen the movie. So it might have seemed to me that everyone else had, based on a relative few who talked about it.
Also, the film's appeal might have been more to drama types, as distinct from music types. (The music is actually not that brilliant.)