Who's Next To Croak?

[polkablues]

And a million Batman fans simultaneously scream, "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! ... wait, never mind."

[Stefen]

Not cool. But R.I.P.

[MacGuffin]

Actor Ron Silver dies at 62
Emmy-nominated actor was in 'West Wing,' 'Fortune'
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Actor Ron Silver, who won a Tony Award as a take-no-prisoners Hollywood producer in David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow" and did a political about-face from loyal Democrat to Republican activist after the Sept. 11 attacks, died Sunday at age 62.

"Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him early Sunday morning" in New York, said Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition, which Silver helped found. "He had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years."

Silver, an Emmy nominee for a recurring role as a slick strategist for liberal President Jed Bartlet on "The West Wing," had a long history of balancing acting with left-leaning social and political causes.

But after the 2001 terrorist attacks, longtime Democrat Silver turned heads in Hollywood with outspoken support of President George W. Bush over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Silver spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention, began referring to himself as a "9/11 Republican" and reregistered as an independent.

In an interview with the Associated Press a month later, Silver said his support for the war on terror was costing him work in liberal-minded Hollywood.

"It's affected me very badly. I can't point to a person or a job I've lost, but this community is not very pluralistic," Silver told the AP. "I haven't worked for 10 months."

His switch to a more conservative image threatened to overshadow an esteemed career on stage, television and film, along with his long history of activism, which included co-founding the nonpartisan Creative Coalition, an advocacy group for entertainers.

"He was a talented actor, a scholar and a great believer in participatory democracy," Bronk said Sunday night. "He was an activist who became a great artist and his contributions will never be forgotten."

His big-screen credits included "Ali," "Reversal of Fortune," "Enemies: A Love Story," "Silkwood" and "Semi-Tough."

Besides "The West Wing," Silver was a regular or had recurring roles on such TV shows as "Veronica's Closet," "Chicago Hope" and "Wiseguy." He directed and co-starred in the 1993 TV movie "Lifepod," a science-fiction update of Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat."

Silver's Tony for "Speed-the-Plow" came in 1988, a year after he earned his first Emmy nomination, for the murder thriller "Billionaire Boys Club."

Silver still found work despite his conservative shift, appearing in episodes of "Law & Order" and "Crossing Jordan" and such movies as "Find Me Guilty" and the Ten Commandments comedy "The Ten."

[modage]

Natasha Richardson.

[Sleepless]

Not sure how to take that. But here is the latest legitimate news:

Natasha Richardson, the actress wife of Liam Neeson, is in a Montreal hospital after a skiing accident in Canada, her family has told the BBC. Unconfirmed reports had suggested the 45-year-old suffered head injuries at the resort of Mont Tremblant on Monday. A statement from the resort later said the actress did not show any immediate signs of injury following a fall on the training slopes. She was taken to hospital an hour later after continuing to feel unwell. Neeson is believed to have flown to his wife's bedside from the set of his latest film, Chloe, which is shooting in Toronto. The couple married in 1994 after appearing in the film Nell, and have two sons. A member of Richardson's family, who spoke to the BBC but has asked not to be named, said the whole family was "very distressed" by the incident. The statement from the Mont Tremblant resort in Canada said the actress "fell in a beginners' trail while taking a ski lesson". "She was accompanied by an experienced ski instructor who immediately called the ski patrol," it continued. "She did not show any visible sign of injury but the ski patrol followed strict procedures and brought her back to the bottom of the slope and insisted she should see a doctor." The actress was later taken to the nearby Centre Hospitalier Laurentien before being transferred to the larger Hopital du Sacre-Coeur. A spokesperson for the hospital in Montreal could not confirm whether the actress was still there on Tuesday morning, but suggested her family might make a statement on Wednesday. Part of the Redgrave acting dynasty, Richardson is the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, and the sister of Nip/Tuck star Joely Richardson. She has starred in a number of Hollywood films and acted opposite an 11-year-old Lindsay Lohan in 1998's The Parent Trap. But she is better known for her work on the stage, winning a Tony award in 1998 for her starring role in Sam Mendes' Broadway production of Cabaret.


From BBC News.

[Gold Trumpet]

TMZ is reporting that she has brain swelling but is not brain dead.

[MacGuffin]

The Xixax Awards. 

[72teeth]

 .... apparently, Richardson died this morning.

[MacGuffin]

Actress Natasha Richardson dies at 45.
From the Associated Press

NEW YORK -- A spokesman for the family of Natasha Richardson says the actress has died.

Richardson, a gifted and precocious heiress to acting royalty whose career highlights included the film "Patty Hearst" and a Tony-winning performance in a stage revival of "Cabaret," died after suffering an apparent head injury from a skiing accident. She was 45.

Alan Nierob of Rogers & Cowan said in a statement Wednesday night: " Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha. They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time."

[Ravi]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7971223.stm

Film composer Maurice Jarre dies

French composer Maurice Jarre, best known for his music for Hollywood films, has died in Los Angeles at 84, after suffering from cancer.

Jarre, father of the composer Jean-Michel Jarre, rose to prominence relatively late in life.

His breakthrough came in 1962 when he wrote the score for Lawrence of Arabia, for which he was awarded an Oscar.

He won two further Oscars for Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India, and composed music for more than 150 films.

His scores enhanced the work of some of the film industry's greatest directors - among others David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston and Luchino Visconti.

He also wrote symphonic music for theatre, ballet and television, including the 1970s mini-series Jesus of Nazarath.

Jarre, who moved to the US in the 1960s, was married four times and is the father of Jean-Michel Jarre, a pioneer of electronic music.

One of his final public appearances was at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, where he received a lifetime achievement award.

At the time, festival director Dieter Kosslick paid tribute to Jarre saying: "Film composers often are in the shadows of great directors and acting stars.

"It's different with Maurice Jarre - the music of Doctor Zhivago, like much of his work, is world-famous and remains unforgettable in cinema history."

[MacGuffin]

X-rated star Marilyn Chambers dies at 56

LOS ANGELES – Marilyn Chambers, the pretty Ivory Snow soap girl who helped bring hard-core adult films into the mainstream consciousness when she starred in the explicit 1972 movie "Behind the Green Door," has died at 56.

The cause of death was not immediately known. A family friend, Peggy McGinn, said Chambers' 17-year-old daughter found the actress' body Sunday night. Chambers was pronounced dead at the scene, the county coroner's office said Monday.

Chambers and fellow actresses Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin shot to fame at a time in the early 1970s when both American social mores and the quality of hard-core sex films were changing.

For the first time, films like "Behind the Green Door" and "Deep Throat" (also released in 1972 and starring Lovelace) had decent acting and legitimate if fairly thin plots. As the audiences for them grew to include couples, they also began to take on higher production values and to be seen in places other than sleazy theaters.

But "Behind the Green Door" brought something more in Chambers, an attractive young woman who had begun her career as a legitimate actress and model.

While the film was still in theaters, the public learned that its star was the same young blonde smiling and holding a freshly diapered baby on boxes of Ivory Soap. The manufacturer quickly replaced her, but it was later discovered that she also had a small role in the 1970 Barbra Streisand film "The Owl and the Pussycat."

"She was the first crossover adult star. She was the Ivory Snow girl and when she decided to make an adult movie that was big news," Steven Hirsch, co-CEO of adult filmmaker Vivid Entertainment Group, told The Associated Press on Monday.

"It was the first adult movie that was more than just a bunch of sex scenes," Hirsch said of her breakthrough film. "She was an actress and she brought that ability to the set of 'Behind the Green Door.' That's part of what made that movie so successful."

In an online chat with AdultDVDtalk.com in 2000, Chambers attempted to explain what caused her to take such a radically different career path after "The Owl and the Pussycat" and her modeling work.

"Back then in my naive brain I was thinking that something like 'Behind the Green Door' had never been done before and the way our sexual revolution was traveling I really thought it was going to be a stepping stone which would further my acting career," she said.

She learned afterward, she said, that wasn't the case.

"There will always be a stigma on people who do adult films," she said. "It's unfortunate that that's the way society has made it."

She followed "Green Door" with the hard-core films "Resurrection of Eve," in 1973 and "Inside Marilyn Chambers" in 1975.

Then she announced in 1976 that she was giving up adult films to pursue other interests. She starred in the 1977 horror movie "Rabid" and to put together a song-and-dance show that played Las Vegas and elsewhere.

She returned to adult films in 1980 in "Insatiable" and through the rest of her career went back and forth between explicit movies and R-rated ones.

Hirsch noted that one of the most striking things about Chambers' career was its longevity in a business where stars quickly fade. She still has a photo gallery on the Web site Adult Video News and the Internet Movie Database credits her as recently completing a film called, "Porndogs: The Adventures of Sadie" with Ron Jeremy.

Although Chambers was quick to point out in 2000 that she had done more R-rated films that X-rated ones, she made no apologies for the latter.

"I have to say that the adult films have been a total pleasure," she said. "They were like getting paid to live out my greatest fantasies. The rest of the stuff ... sometimes got to be a real grind."

[SiliasRuby]

This is a real shame. Fuck. Man, I didn't mean to make a pun.

[MacGuffin]

British author J.G. Ballard dies at 78
'Empire of the Sun,' 'Crash' among works adapted to film
Reuters

British author J.G. Ballard, whose vivid portrayal of his childhood imprisonment in wartime Shanghai was adapted into a hit Hollywood film, died Sunday, his agent said. He was 78.

Ballard, who had been suffering from prostate cancer, died at his home in Shepperton by the River Thames in west London, his agent Margaret Hanbury said in a statement.

"J.G. Ballard has been a giant on the world literary scene for more than 50 years," she said. "His acute and visionary observation of contemporary life was distilled into a number of brilliant, powerful novels which have been published all over the world."

He was best known for "Empire of the Sun," a novel based on his privileged childhood with his expatriate parents in China and their subsequent internment in a prison camp after the Japanese invasion during World War II.

Director Steven Spielberg adapted the book for the big screen and it was nominated for six Oscars. Ballard would later write in his memoirs that his early, often brutal, experiences shaped all his later work.

"In many ways my entire fiction is the dissection of a deep pathology that I had witnessed in Shanghai and later in the postwar world," he wrote.

In a prolific career spanning more than half a century, he wrote many dystopian science fiction novels, including "The Drowned World" and "Cocaine Nights."

One of his most controversial works was "Crash," a novel about people who are sexually aroused by car accidents. It was later turned into a film directed by David Cronenberg.

[SiliasRuby]

God damn it, that fucking sucks.

[polkablues]

Since mod decided we could take the title "Who's Next To Croak" literally back with Natasha Richardson, I'll follow his lead:

Stephen Hawking