Xixax Film Forum

Film Discussion => News and Theory => Topic started by: cine on September 28, 2003, 11:07:39 AM

Title: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on September 28, 2003, 11:07:39 AM
So who's it gonna be, folks? This is the gameshow where corpses can make you money.

Who's next to take that plunge six feet under? Rodney Dangerfield? Bob Barker? How about Rip Torn?

Death is knocking.. who's going to answer?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Cecil on September 28, 2003, 11:31:54 AM
death wont even return my phone calls, i doubt hell be paying me a visit any time soon
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 28, 2003, 12:11:04 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.code7r.org%2Finquiz%2Fimages%2Fkermit.jpg&hash=3a2d037a031d4f658b56ac8a15be73efe0691f18)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: aclockworkjj on September 28, 2003, 01:29:29 PM
Kirk Douglas.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek237 on September 28, 2003, 03:33:52 PM
My money's on Brando. He's old, and fat.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SHAFTR on September 28, 2003, 04:58:01 PM
what a horrible topic.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: oakmanc234 on September 28, 2003, 08:46:32 PM
Maybe Charlton Heston. The thing is, when he does eventually pass, people wont be as compassionate as before because of his controversial 'little' appearance in Bowling For Columbine, which has severly dented his rep.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on September 28, 2003, 11:21:39 PM
oohh Rodney Dangerfield for sure. Years of substance abuse matched with a job where he has trouble finding jobs now and trouble trying to keep anywhere near active while actually doing it. His stint is all about his abuse. He's beyond bitching for therapetic reasons. This shit has to take a tole.

Horrible topic, horrible. XIXAX Member of the Year to whoever predicts one of these things right.

~rougerum
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on September 29, 2003, 01:54:09 PM
This may be a horrible topic to people, but its certainly not alienating anybody here nor does it offend any races of people, etc. So I don't find it too bad.. its topical right now anyway in my mind. And, hey, awarding XIXAX Member of the Year for predicting one's death is just as deplorable or even worse, yes?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: phil marlowe on September 29, 2003, 02:42:39 PM
this topic is waaaay more pointless than it is disturbing.

maybe cinephile is next...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Cecil on September 29, 2003, 06:27:19 PM
i hope kubrick doesnt die next. i hope he stays alive for a very long time, so he can make a many movies
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 22, 2003, 12:20:50 AM
Wild-eyed Western movie villain Jack Elam dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) Jack Elam, a character actor and favorite Western villain who menaced good-guy cowboys with his crazy grin, menacing eyes and remorseless gunslinging in films such as "Rawhide'' and "Wichita,'' has died, a family friend said Tuesday.

Elam, who had been in declining health in recent years, died Monday afternoon at his home in Ashland, Ore. of unspecified illness, according to longtime friend Al Hassan.

"He was cantankerous in a great way, in a funny way,'' Hassan said. "He smoked, drank, all that stuff. He lived one of the best lives I've ever seen.''

Elam, born in Miami, Ariz., didn't always play the mean old hombre he also found himself cast as dirty old men and harmless drunks, sometimes with a humorous bent in comedies like "Support Your Local Sheriff'' and "The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County.''

The actor's own cockeye was the result of a childhood fight in Phoenix. The way he told it, a fellow Boy Scout stabbed him in the left eye with a pencil during a scrape at a troop meeting. He remained blind in that eye, which wandered lazily around its socket.

Elam is survived by his second wife, Jennie; a daughter and two sons. Funeral plans were unspecified late Tuesday.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MacGuffin's Note: It doesn't mention it, but you guys might know him best from his role in "Once Upon A Time In The West" - he's the cowboy in the opening credits trying to catch the fly and does so with his gun barrel. He also may be known as the phony doctor in "Cannonball Run".

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americasbabes.com%2Fautographcollect%2Fjack-elam-1.jpg&hash=a4c28f7112f517f52a46bad3078a2ffe1d3ce9fb)

R.I.P.  :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: TheVoiceOfNick on October 22, 2003, 03:12:28 PM
Quote from: MacGuffinWild-eyed Western movie villain Jack Elam dies


I was just about to post that he's next to die... what do I win?  :-D
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 11, 2003, 05:45:39 PM
'Honeymooners' Actor Art Carney Dies

HARTFORD, Conn. - Art Carney, who played Jackie Gleason's sewer worker pal Ed Norton in the TV classic "The Honeymooners" and went on to win the 1974 Oscar for best actor in "Harry and Tonto," has died at 85.

Carney died in Chester, Conn., on Sunday and was buried on Tuesday after a small, private funeral. He had been ill for some time.

The comic actor would be forever identified as Norton, Ralph Kramden's bowling buddy and not-too-bright upstairs neighbor on "The Honeymooners." The sitcom appeared in various forms from 1951 to 1956 and was revived briefly in 1971. The shows can still be seen on cable.

With his turned-up porkpie hat and unbuttoned vest over a white T-shirt, Carney's Ed Norton with his exuberant "Hey, Ralphie boy!" became an ideal foil for Gleason's blustery, bullying Kramden. Carney won three Emmys for his role and his first taste of fame.

"The first time I saw the guy act," Gleason once said, "I knew I would have to work twice as hard for my laughs. He was funny as hell."

His career resumed, and in 1974 he was cast in Paul Mazurksy's "Harry and Tonto" as a 72-year-old widower who travels from New York to Chicago with his pet cat. He stopped drinking during the making of the film.

When it won him his Oscar, Carney wisecracked: "You're looking at an actor whose price has just doubled."

Among his movie credits: "W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings," "The Late Show," "House Calls," "Movie Movie," "Sunburn," "Going in Style," "Roadie," "Firestarter," "The Muppets Take Manhattan" and "Last Action Hero."

:yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Xixax on November 13, 2003, 11:08:59 PM
Quote from: oakmanc234Maybe Charlton Heston. The thing is, when he does eventually pass, people wont be as compassionate as before because of his controversial 'little' appearance in Bowling For Columbine, which has severly dented his rep.
I think you're giving too much credit here. Most of the general public who knows who Charlton Heston is don't have the slightest clue what "Bowling for Columbine" is. An even more minute minority have seen it.

My vote for next to kick the bucket... Charles Durning.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SHAFTR on November 14, 2003, 01:44:51 AM
I don't understand how thread about sex often get locked here...but a thread about who is going to die next isn't.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: TheVoiceOfNick on November 14, 2003, 10:48:46 AM
Quote from: SHAFTRI don't understand how thread about sex often get locked here...but a thread about who is going to die next isn't.

It's like selective communism... or selective democracy... like the whole "glass half empty / glass half full" thing... take your pick... :)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on December 04, 2003, 11:16:56 AM
LONDON - David Hemmings, the British actor who starred in the 1966 film "Blow Up," has died while filming a movie in Romania. He was 62.

Hemmings died Wednesday after paramedics on the film set of "Samantha's Child" were unable to revive him, his agent, Liz Nelson, said.

"He had just finished his final shots of the day and was going back to his dressing room," she said.

Hemmings was one of the screen icons of the swinging '60s but later went behind the camera to focus on directing and producing TV shows like the "A-Team," and "Airwolf." He returned to acting in Ridley Scott (news)'s 2000 epic "Gladiator" and most recently appeared in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

Born Nov. 18, 1941 in Guildford, England, Hemmings began his career as a singer, with nightclub appearances in his early 20s, before moving onto the stage and gradually into films.

After his voice changed, Hemmings studied painting at the Epsom School of Art where he staged his first exhibition at 15.

He returned to singing in his early 20s with nightclub appearances before moving onto the stage and gradually into films.

His early British movie roles usually saw him cast as misunderstood youths and belligerent "Teddy Boys," leading to his role in Michelangelo Antonioni (news)'s "Blow Up," which won Cannes' Golden Palm award in 1967.

"I desperately wanted to work for him. This was a job you seek," Hemmings later said of the role.

Hemmings played a fashion photographer, reportedly based on David Bailey (news), who believes he may have unwittingly photographed a dead man. Scenes in which he photographed a model, played by Vanessa Redgrave (news), have often been ranked among the sexiest moments captured on screen.

His boyish good looks were also put to use in the science-fiction romp "Barbarella" and the film version of the stage musical "Camelot."

In 1975, Hemmings played the title role in "By Jeeves," a short-running collaboration between Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

With 1972's "Running Scared," Hemmings began a new career as a director of several movie and TV productions in England, Australia and Canada.

The two careers ran in parallel for several years with his directing credits including the movie "Just a Gigolo," but by the 1980s his TV directing took precedence with shows such as "Magnum PI," "Airwolf," "The A-Team" and "Quantum Leap."

"People thought I was dead. But I wasn't. I was just directing The A-Team," he once remarked.

Hemmings returned to acting in 2002 with the role of Cassius in the Oscar-winning "Gladiator." Other recent roles include parts in "Gangs of New York," "Spy Game" and "Mean Machine."

Hemmings, who was divorced twice, is survived by his third wife, Lucy Williams, and their two sons; and by a daughter from his first marriage and a son from the second.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 13, 2003, 01:32:19 AM
'Free Willy' whale, Keiko, dies

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Keiko, the killer whale made famous by the "Free Willy" movies, has died in Norwegian coastal waters where he remained after millions of dollars and a decade of work failed to coax him back to the open sea, his caretakers said early Saturday.

The whale, who was 27, died Friday afternoon after the sudden onset of pneumonia in the Taknes fjord. He was old for an orca in captivity, though wild orca live an average of 35 years.

David Phillips, executive director of the San Francisco-based Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, said Keiko had been in good health but started showing signs of lethargy and loss of appetite on Thursday.

"This is a long sad day for us," Phillips said.

One of his handlers, Dale Richards, also said Keiko died quickly. "We checked his respiration rate and it was a little irregular ... he wasn't doing too well," Richards told The Associated Press. "Early in the evening, he passed away."

Keiko -- which means "Lucky One" in Japanese -- was captured in Iceland in 1979 and sold to the marine park industry.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on December 13, 2003, 02:12:43 AM
ugh, that is sad... it would be kind of weird attending his funeral though. i bet that the norweigan bastards are already barbecuing him right at this very moment.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on December 22, 2003, 12:07:13 PM
Oscar nominee Hope Lange dies at 70

SANTA MONICA, California (AP) -- Hope Lange, who starred opposite Hollywood's top actors over a decades-long career and earned an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in the 1957 film "Peyton Place" has died, her husband said Sunday. She was 70.

Lange died Friday at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica after suffering an infection caused by an intestinal inflammation known as ischemic colitis, said her husband, Charles Hollerith.

Lange split her time between homes in Los Angeles' Westwood section and New York City, said Hollerith, a former theatrical producer and vice president of the Actors' Fund of America.

Lange starred in dozens of films and television shows and captured two Emmy awards in 1969 and 1970, both for lead actress in a comedy series for her role in "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir."

Her big-screen credits included "The Best of Everything" in 1959 with Joan Crawford, "The Young Lions" in 1958 with Marlon Brando and "Peyton Place" with Lana Turner. More recently, she was in "Blue Velvet" (1986) and "Clear and Present Danger" (1994).

Actor Don Murray, who was married to Lange for several years in the 1950s, said Lange had both good looks and acting prowess.

"She was considered a great beauty who was also a serious and dedicated actor who didn't pay attention to being glamorous," Murray said.

Murray said her looks even intimidated Marilyn Monroe, who wanted Lange's naturally blonde hair dyed light brown in their 1956 film "Bus Stop."

"Marilyn complained about sharing the screen with another blonde," said Murray, who also starred in the film. "I guess she felt competition because Hope was a young beauty."

Lange is survived by her husband; a son, actor Christopher Murray; a daughter, Patricia Murray; and two grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Thecowgoooesmooo on December 27, 2003, 03:42:03 AM
I've got my money on Jack Nicholson in less then 2 years.

Cause of death you ask?

Cancer... But Im thinking more along the lines of lung cancer.



chris
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on December 28, 2003, 09:13:22 AM
British actor Alan Bates dies[/b]

LONDON, England (AP) -- Alan Bates, who first gained fame on the London stage and went on to star in a string of successful 1960s movies including "Zorba the Greek," has died, his agent said Sunday. He was 69.

Bates died of cancer in a London hospital Saturday night, said his agent Rosalind Chatto.

His first important film role was opposite Laurence Olivier in 1960's "The Entertainer." In 1964 he played Basil in "Zorba the Greek," and two years later acted in "Georgy Girl" with Vanessa Redgrave.

Bates was nominated for a best actor Oscar award for his work in 1969's "The Fixer" and played Rupert Birkin in "Women In Love," based on the D.H. Lawrence novel, the same year.

He won a best actor Tony Award in 2002 for his portrayal on Broadway of an impoverished nobleman in "Fortune's Fool," Ivan Turgenev's dissection of mid-19th century Russian country life.

An Associated Press review praised the actor's "accomplished and affecting portrait."

"Bates is remarkable in carefully negotiating (his character's) foolishness and faith," it said.

Bates, who was born in Derbyshire, central England, studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and made his stage debut in 1955.

He first gained attention for his role as a resentful young working class man in John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" and also starred in playwright Harold Pinter's "The Caretaker" on stage and film.

More recently, Bates played the butler Mr. Jennings in Robert Altman's 2001 aristocratic murder mystery "Gosford Park" and also had a role in 2002's "The Sum of All Fears," which starred Ben Affleck.

Bates was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1995 and knighted at the end of 2002.

His son, Tristan, 19, died of an asthma attack in 1990 and his wife, actress Victoria Ford, died in 1992. He is survived by two brothers; his son, Benedick and a granddaughter, Chatto said. Funeral arrangements were not yet final, she added.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on December 30, 2003, 09:05:57 AM
'Home Improvement' actor dies

NEW YORK (AP) -- Actor Earl Hindman, best known for playing a neighbor whose face was forever obscured by a fence on the television show "Home Improvement," died of lung cancer Monday in Stamford, Connecticut. He was 61.

As Wilson, the neighbor of Tim Allen's character on the long-running sitcom, Hindman dispensed folksy advice from behind a white picket fence, with only his eyes and forehead visible to audiences. Before appearing on the show, he played Detective Lt. Bob Reid for 16 years on the daytime drama "Ryan's Hope."

He made his name in New York theater, appearing in "Dark of the Moon" off-Broadway in 1970 and in "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel" at the Public Theater in 1971. He also acted in two short-lived Broadway plays and in several movies, including "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" (1991) and "Final" (2001).

He was born in Bisbee, Arizona, and studied acting at the University of Arizona in Tucson.


So long, neighbour :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on December 30, 2003, 06:53:06 PM
:shock:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on January 21, 2004, 06:54:28 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmembers.rogers.com%2Fwolfman59a%2Fimages%2Fwach03.jpg&hash=044eb9122fc03799cf0c88475f8cab2f13d39c58)
'Walker, Texas Ranger' actor Willingham dies

PALM SPRINGS, California (AP) -- Noble Willingham, who worked steadily as a supporting actor over the last 30 years and left his role as a saloon owner on the series "Walker, Texas Ranger" to run for Congress, has died. He was 72.

Willingham died Saturday at his Palm Springs home, his manager, Sandy Josephs, said Tuesday. He died of natural causes, according to the Riverside County coroner's office.

He played barkeep C.D. Parker on "Walker, Texas Ranger" from 1993-99. His character was a former Texas Ranger who provided advice on cases to Ranger Cord Walker, played by series star Chuck Norris.

Willingham was the 2000 Republican nominee for a congressional seat in eastern Texas, but lost to Democrat Max Sandlin.

Willingham's "distinctive voice and warmly gruff manner" helped him bring authority figures to life, Josephs said.

He was among the local Texans hired when "The Last Picture Show" (1971) was filmed on location by director Peter Bogdanovich.

His other film credits included "Paper Moon" (1973); "Chinatown" (1974); "Good Morning, Vietnam" (1987); City Slickers" (1991); "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" (1994) and "Up Close and Personal" (1996).

A native of Mineola, Texas, Willingham pursued his dream of acting after earning a master's degree at Baylor University and working as a teacher.

He returned to acting after his failed congressional campaign, filming "Blind Horizon" with star Val Kilmer in 2002. The movie is scheduled to be released this year.

A visitation was planned for Wednesday, with another to be held Thursday.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ©brad on January 21, 2004, 11:43:05 AM
awww, i liked that old dude.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on January 21, 2004, 01:03:01 PM
Quote from: oakmanc234Maybe Charlton Heston. The thing is, when he does eventually pass, people wont be as compassionate as before because of his controversial 'little' appearance in Bowling For Columbine, which has severly dented his rep.


HAHAHA ,  there's an episode on Family Guy where someone accidentaly shoots Charlton Heston and  he says  agonizing  "Don't worry son, it's your right as an american..."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on January 21, 2004, 10:30:05 PM
Quote from: chuckhimselfo.HAHAHA ,  there's an episode on Family Guy where someone accidentaly shoots Charlton Heston and  he says  agonizing  "Don't worry son, it's your right as an american..."
yeah, it has its moments.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 22, 2004, 03:33:08 PM
Legendary dancer, actress Ann Miller dead
Starred in 'On the Town,' 'Easter Parade'

LOS ANGELES, CA (AP) -- Ann Miller, the raven-haired, long-legged actress and dancer whose machine-gun taps won her stardom during the golden age of movie musicals, died Thursday of lung cancer. She was 81.

Miller died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said Esme Chandlee, her longtime friend and former publicist.

A onetime childhood dance prodigy, she reached the peak of her film career at MGM in the late 1940s and early '50s with "On the Town," "Easter Parade" and "Kiss Me Kate."

She remained a dazzling tapper in her 60s and earned millions on Broadway and touring with Mickey Rooney in "Sugar Babies," a razzmatazz tribute to the era of burlesque.

"At MGM, I always played the second feminine lead; I was never the star in films," she once recalled. "I was the brassy, good-hearted showgirl. I never really had my big moment on the screen.

" 'Sugar Babies' gave me the stardom that my soul kind of yearned for."

Miller's legs, pretty face and fast tapping (she claimed the record of 500 taps a minute) earned her jobs in vaudeville and nightclubs when she first came to Hollywood. She adopted the stage name of Anne Miller. Her early film career included working as a child extra in films and as a chorus girl in a minor musical, "The Devil on Horseback."

An appearance at the popular Bal Tabarin in San Francisco won a contract at RKO studio, where her name was shortened to Ann.

Her first film at RKO, "New Faces of 1937," featured her dancing. She next played an acting hopeful in "Stage Door," with Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball and Eve Arden.

Most of her RKO films were low-budget musicals and comedies. A contract at Columbia Pictures started impressively with the role of the would-be ballerina in Frank Capra's Oscar-winning "You Can't Take It with You."

Then she was cast in a series of wartime B musicals with titles like "True to the Army," "Priorities on Parade" and "Hey Rookie."

When Cyd Charisse broke a leg before starting "Easter Parade" at MGM with Fred Astaire, Miller replaced her. That led to an MGM contract and her most enduring work.

She was teamed with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in "On the Town," Red Skelton in "Watch the Birdie," and Bob Fosse in "Kiss Me Kate."

Other MGM films included: "Texas Carnival," "Lovely to Look At," "Small Town Girl," "Deep in My Heart," "Hit the Deck" and "The Opposite Sex."

The popularity of musicals declined in the 1950s, and her film career ended in 1956. Miller remained active in television and the theater, dancing and belting songs on Broadway in "Hello, Dolly" and "Mame."

In later years, she astounded audiences in New York, Las Vegas and on the road with her dynamic tapping in "Sugar Babies" when she was in her 60s. In 1990, she commented that "Sugar Babies" had made her financially independent.

Before each performance (1,700 on Broadway), she practiced for an hour.

"Honestly, I have had to live like a high priestess in this show," she remarked in a 1984 interview. "It is a very, very lonely life. When you work the way I work -- that means hard -- there's no time for play."

She was born Johnnie Lucille Collier in Chireno, Texas, the first name dictated by her father, who had wanted a boy. After her parents divorced, she was called Annie, for reasons she never knew.

:yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:
Although not mentioned, and because I doubt anyone besides me knows who she is, she also played Coco in "Mulholland Drive":
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Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 23, 2004, 01:04:41 PM
Bob Keeshan, Captain Kangaroo, Dies at 76  

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.cnn.net%2Fcnn%2F2004%2FSHOWBIZ%2FTV%2F01%2F23%2Fobit.kangaroo%2Fstory.capt.kangaroo.ap.jpg&hash=377dd3f1f225b097b2a207936c3f164a7deceb9f)

Television's Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, died Friday morning in Vermont, a family friend told CNN.

"Captain Kangaroo," a children's show, featured the walrus-mustached, bowl-haircut Keeshan entertaining youngsters with his gentle, whimsical humor. Among the show's other characters were Bunny Rabbit, Mr. Moose and Mr. Green Jeans (Hugh Brannum).

The show ran on CBS from 1955 to 1985, and then moved to public television for six more years.

Shows were frequently interrupted with silliness, such as hundreds of ping-pong balls dropping from the ceiling or Mr. Moose's knock-knock jokes, but the mainstay was Keeshan, who chatted with Brannum and told stories.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on February 02, 2004, 12:55:07 AM
Not in front of the camera but whatever:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Mary-Ellis Bunim, a pioneering reality TV producer who co-created MTV's "The Real World" and other influential unscripted programs, has died of breast cancer in Los Angeles. She was 57.

With Jon Murray, her partner in the Bunim-Murray Prods. banner, Bunim produced a number of top reality series, including Fox's recent hit "The Simple Life," a "Green Acres"-esque vehicle featuring socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie and their adventures on an Arkansas farm.

Bunim, who died Thursday, helped launch the current wave of reality programming with the 1992 debut of "Real World," which focused cameras on a diverse group of seven young adults who agreed to live together and let producers document their daily lives. The series has become a signature franchise for MTV and is now in its 14th season.

"She had a great sense of character, and it showed in the casting on 'Real World,"' said Brian Graden, entertainment president at MTV and VH1. "She had great insight and could forecast the stories that might play out in these people's lives.

"They were also absolutely pioneers of diversity and showing how people learn by interacting with one another and being with people who are different than themselves," Graden said, citing the cultural significance of "Real World," including an HIV (news - web sites)-positive gay man, Pedro Zamora, in its 1994 edition.

The idea for "Real World" grew in part out of Bunim's earlier work as an executive producer of such network soap operas as "Search for Tomorrow," "As the World Turns," "Santa Barbara" and "Loving."

In 1987, Bunim partnered with Murray at the suggestion of their mutual friend, Mark Itkin of the William Morris Agency. Murray's background in news made him interested in chronicling the coming-of-age struggles of youth, while Bunim brought a keen sense of what would make for intriguing drama gleaned from the hours and hours of footage collected.

"Mary-Ellis was a one-in-a-million partner and friend, and I will always treasure our incredible years of collaboration," Murray said. "We will honor her memory by remaining committed to her ideals of creativity, adventure and excellence, both on the screen and in our lives."

Itkin called Bunim "a lovely person and a class act."

Bunim was born in North Hampton, Mass. After a successful run in soaps, she worked in the mid-1980s as an executive at New World Entertainment developing a range of daytime, late-night and children's programs.

In addition to "Simple Life," Bunim-Murray's active production slate includes the drama "Starting Over," distributed by NBC Enterprises & Syndication, which follows the lives of a group of women whose lives are at a crossroads.

"Mary-Ellis was a true visionary in our business," NBC Enterprises & Syndication president Ed Wilson said. "She was a true professional who not only cared about the product she put up on the screen but also those she worked with."

Bunim is survived by her daughter, Julianna Bunim. A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Bunim's name to the Washington-based National Breast Cancer (news - web sites) Coalition Fund.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on February 24, 2004, 10:26:48 AM
Tough-guy actor Viterelli dead at 66[/size]
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LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- Joe Viterelli, a stocky actor whose pug face helped him land a series of roles as lovable mugs in mob flicks that included "Analyze This," its sequel, and a recent Staples ad, has died. He was 66.

Viterelli died of complications from heart surgery on January 29, said his son, film composer Joseph Vitarelli, who spells his last name differently than his father.

A jack-of-all-trades before embarking on an acting career in his 50s, Viterelli said in interviews that he once operated a string of music schools started by his family in Queens. He later ran bars, drove a truck and had a job drilling bowling-ball holes, he said.

A New York City native, Viterelli moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s. He became friends with director Leo Penn, who thought Viterelli's tough-guy features would play well in movies and television.

Viterelli initially declined to get into acting, but years later, the director's son, Sean Penn, called about his 1990 gangster tale "State of Grace."

Viterelli accepted the role and established himself as a dependable character actor, appearing in several dozen movies, including "Bullets Over Broadway," "Mobsters" and "Shallow Hal."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 09, 2004, 03:33:35 AM
Oscar-Nominated Actor Paul Winfield Dies

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Paul Winfield, an Academy Award-nominated actor who was known for his versatility in stage, film and television roles, including a highly praised 1978 depiction of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has died. He was 62.

Winfield died Sunday of a heart attack, said his agent Michael Livingston.

In 1968, Winfield played the boyfriend of Diahann Carroll in her situation comedy "Julia" - a role that some suggest helped open television to other black performers.

Four years later Winfield's portrayal of the father in "Sounder" earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

He was Emmy-nominated for best actor in the title role of the 1978 miniseries "King," and nominated the next year in the best supporting actor category for playing a college chancellor willing to sing Negro spirituals to get donations for his school in "Roots: The Next Generation."

He finally won an Emmy in 1995 for a guest appearance on "Picket Fences." He played a federal judge whose rulings on busing inner-city children are challenged by a local resident.

Despite acclaim, Winfield was often relegated to supporting roles, including the 1974 remake of "Huckleberry Finn," "The Terminator," "Presumed Innocent" and his portrayal of Don King in the 1995 HBO movie, "Tyson."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jasper_window on March 09, 2004, 03:35:05 PM
'Murphy Brown' Co-Star Pastorelli Dies Aged 49  




LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Robert Pastorelli, the boxer-turned-actor best known to television audiences as the house painter Eldin on long-running CBS comedy "Murphy Brown," has died, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said on Tuesday.

Pastorelli, 49, was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home on Monday afternoon, a coroner's spokesman said. Drug paraphernalia was found on the scene, he added, and an autopsy was to be conducted on Tuesday.


The New Jersey-born Pastorelli got into stage acting in the 1970s in productions like "Rebel Without A Cause" but found his greatest fame on "Murphy Brown," painting the house of the title character played by Candice Bergen (news) but never quite finishing his ambitious artistic projects on her walls.


He briefly had his own series, "Double Rush," about the manager of a bicycle messenger service. Most recently, he was cast in the film "Be Cool," a sequel to "Get Shorty."


Syndicated TV entertainment show Access Hollywood, which first reported the actor's death, said his girlfriend died in the same home in early 1999. The two had a daughter.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 12, 2004, 01:02:04 AM
Dead Milkmen bassist commits suicide

NEW YORK -- Dave Blood, bassist for defunct Philadelphia rock act the Dead Milkmen, committed suicide Wednesday, according to a post by his sister on the band's official message board (http://deadmilkmen.com). In a subsequent post, drummer Dean Clean confirmed the news. A memorial service will be held in the Delaware County area of southeastern Pennsylvania at some point in the near future, with details to be announced. The Dead Milkmen formed in 1983 and quickly rose to prominence in the college radio circuit. Their 1985 debut album, "Big Lizard in My Backyard" boasts the cult-classic single "Bitchin' Camaro," but was overshadowed in 1988 by "Punk Rock Girl," which was an MTV staple of the time. The band dissolved after releasing "Stoney's Extra Stout (Pig)" in 1995. In late 2003, Restless/Ryko released a retrospective of early and rare recordings, "Now We Are 20," and the "Philadelphia in Love" DVD, which compiled all of the band's videos. In recent years, Blood had stopped playing bass due to extreme tendonitis.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on March 12, 2004, 01:06:02 AM
Quote from: MacGuffinDead Milkmen bassist commits suicide
or just: Dead Milkmen bassist Dead
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 12, 2004, 05:57:15 AM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: MacGuffinDead Milkmen bassist commits suicide
or just: Dead Milkmen bassist Dead

or just: Dead Milkman Dead
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 12, 2004, 07:26:32 AM
Quote from: P
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: MacGuffinDead Milkmen bassist commits suicide
or just: Dead Milkmen bassist Dead
or just: Dead Milkman Dead
I prefer: Dead Dead Milkman
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 12, 2004, 07:29:38 AM
Quote from: Cinephile
Quote from: P
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: MacGuffinDead Milkmen bassist commits suicide
or just: Dead Milkmen bassist Dead
or just: Dead Milkman Dead
I prefer: Dead Dead Milkman
how bout: Dead Milkmen Man Dead, man
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 12, 2004, 08:21:08 AM
Quote from: P
Quote from: Cinephile
Quote from: P
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: MacGuffinDead Milkmen bassist commits suicide
or just: Dead Milkmen bassist Dead
or just: Dead Milkman Dead
I prefer: Dead Dead Milkman
how bout: Dead Milkmen Man Dead, man
Or even something sort of ridiculous like: Dead Milkman Man of Dead Milkmen Dead, Call the Milkmen because he's outta milk, man
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 18, 2004, 06:11:35 PM
MTV "VJ" J.J. Jackson Dead at 62  

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LOS ANGELES, Mar 18, 2004 (United Press International) -- J.J. Jackson, one of the original VJ's on MTV, has died of an apparent heart attack in Los Angeles, MTV reported Thursday. He was 62.

Jackson died Wednesday night, according to friends and former business associates.

Jackson was part of the first line-up of air personalities when MTV was launched in 1982. In five years with the music cable channel, he became familiar to viewers for his upbeat, friendly demeanor -- as well as his interviews with some of the top musical acts of the era.

He covered the Live Aid benefit concert in 1985 and took part in the "unmasking" of KISS during a 1982 interview on MTV.

"J.J. Jackson's deep passion for music, his ease and good humor on air, and his welcoming style really set the tone for the early days of MTV," said the music channel in a statement. "He was a big part of the channel's success and we are sure he is in the music section of heaven, with lots of his friends and heroes."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: El Duderino on March 18, 2004, 07:40:14 PM
i hope the woman that plays George's mom on Seinfeld dies soon. Estelle somethin
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 18, 2004, 08:48:51 PM
Quote from: El Duderinoi hope the woman that plays George's mom on Seinfeld dies soon. Estelle somethin
wtf, did she kill ur father or sumthing?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: El Duderino on March 18, 2004, 09:03:53 PM
Quote from: Pubrick
Quote from: El Duderinoi hope the woman that plays George's mom on Seinfeld dies soon. Estelle somethin
wtf, did she kill ur father or sumthing?

stepfather
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on March 18, 2004, 09:51:32 PM
Quote from: El Duderino
Quote from: Pubrick
Quote from: El Duderinoi hope the woman that plays George's mom on Seinfeld dies soon. Estelle somethin
wtf, did she kill ur father or sumthing?

stepfather

Damn.  I should keep quiet about Jerry Stiller slugging my uncle in the nuts then.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: El Duderino on March 18, 2004, 10:03:31 PM
Quote from: hacksparrow
Quote from: El Duderino
Quote from: Pubrick
Quote from: El Duderinoi hope the woman that plays George's mom on Seinfeld dies soon. Estelle somethin
wtf, did she kill ur father or sumthing?

stepfather

Damn.  I should keep quiet about Jerry Stiller slugging my uncle in the nuts then.

classic....well put
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 19, 2004, 03:16:27 AM
i hope she never dies.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 29, 2004, 04:07:51 AM
Oscar-winner Peter Ustinov dies
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Oscar-winning actor Peter Ustinov has died in Switzerland. He was 82.

A close friend said said Ustinov died last night. The British-born actor had lived in Switzerland for decades.

A person who answered the telephone at Ustinov's home in a mountain village overlooking Lake Geneva confirmed he had died but declined to give further details.

Born in London on April 16, 1921, the only son of a Russian artist mother and a journalist father, Ustinov claimed also to have Swiss, Ethiopian, Italian and French blood – everything except English.

Ustinov was educated at the prestigious Westminster School, but hated it and left at 16. He appeared in his first revue and had his first stage play presented in London in 1940, when he was 19.

In a career lasting some 60 years, Ustinov appeared in roles ranging from Emperor Nero to Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

He won Academy Awards for supporting actor in the films Spartacus and Topkapi in the 1960s.

More recently he was the voice of Babar the Elephant, played the role of a doctor in the film Lorenzo's Oil, and in 1999 appeared as the Walrus to Pete Postlethwaite's Carpenter in a multimillion-dollar TV movie version of Alice in Wonderland.

Ustinov faced criticism in the early 1990s for his controversial views on the emergence of Russia from Communist rule, and for his unstinting support for Mikhail Gorbachev, but his long service as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF led UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to joke that Ustinov was the man to take over from him.

No immediate details funeral arrangements were available.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: (kelvin) on March 29, 2004, 11:16:47 AM
There goes one of the finest men we could hear of...farewell, Sir Peter.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 30, 2004, 07:25:10 AM
Broadcaster Alistair Cooke dies
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LONDON, England -- UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has led tributes to veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke who has died aged 95, less than a month after recording his last "Letter from America."

A spokesman for the BBC said on Tuesday that Cooke, who was credited with improving transatlantic understanding for more than half a century, died at his home in New York.

The broadcaster, who was born in England, retired earlier in March following advice from doctors after 58 years. He was famous throughout the world for his weekly broadcast on BBC World Service and in Britain on Radio 4.

Blair told the BBC: "I was a big fan. I thought they were extraordinary essays and they brought an enormous amount of insight and understanding to the world.

"He was really one of the greatest broadcasters of all time, and we shall feel his loss very, very keenly indeed.

"He was a remarkable man who was broadcasting the Letter from America right up to a few weeks ago. He will be deeply, deeply missed."

Cooke, who had missed only three broadcasts in about 3,000 programs over 58 years, thanked his listeners for their loyalty after announcing his retirement.

"I can no longer continue my 'Letter From America,'" Cooke said.

"Throughout 58 years I have had much enjoyment in doing these talks and hope that some of it has passed over to the listeners, to all of whom I now say thank you for your loyalty and goodbye."

Millions of listeners across the world tuned in for Cooke's weekly observations of life in America since his show began in 1946.

Cooke was perhaps best known for "Alistair Cooke's America," a BBC series aired around the world, and as host of the PBS series "Masterpiece Theatre" in the United States for 22 years.

Born Alfred Cooke in 1908 and raised in a boarding house in Blackpool, England, he changed his name to Alistair after graduating from Cambridge University with an honors degree in English and joined the BBC in 1934 as a film critic.

"Letter From America" -- said to be the world's longest-running radio speech program -- was originally intended to last only 13 weeks.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on March 30, 2004, 12:37:50 PM
Sad that my only real memories of this man are Cookie Monster's "Alistair Cookie."  If Cookie Monster can spoof him, he must have been great.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on March 30, 2004, 01:49:21 PM
"Letter from America" really irritates me sometimes. But he did have an interesting way of telling stories.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 27, 2004, 02:30:36 AM
Selby, author of 'Last Exit,' 'Requiem,' dead at 75

Hubert Selby Jr., the acclaimed and anguished author of "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and "Requiem for a Dream," died Monday of a lung disease, his wife said. He was 75. Selby died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at his home in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, said his wife of 35 years, Suzanne Selby. Born in New York City, Selby's experience among Brooklyn's gritty longshoremen, homeless and the down-and-out formed the basis for his lauded 1964 novel "Last Exit to Brooklyn," which was made into a film in 1989. "It was a seminal piece of work. It broke so many traditions," said Jim Regan, head of the master's of professional writing program at USC, where Selby taught as an adjunct professor for the past 20 years.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on May 09, 2004, 05:04:05 PM
Comic and actor Alan King dead at 76

NEW YORK (AP) -- Alan King, whose tirades against everyday suburban life grew into a long comedy career in nightclubs and television that he later expanded to Broadway and character roles in movies, died Sunday at the age of 76.

King, who also was host of the New York Friars Club's celebrity roasts, which had recently returned as a staple on television's Comedy Central, died at a Manhattan hospital, said a son, Robert King.

King appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" 93 times beginning in the 1950s.

Comedian Jerry Stiller, who knew King for more than 50 years, said King was "in touch with what was happening with the world, which is what made him so funny."

"He always talked about the annoyances of life," Stiller said. "He was like a Jewish Will Rogers."

King played supporting roles in more than 20 films including "Bye Bye Braverman," "I, the Jury," "The Anderson Tapes," "Lovesick," "Bonfire of the Vanities," "Casino" and "Rush Hour 2." He also produced several films, including "Memories of Me," "Wolfen" and "Cattle Annie and Little Britches," and the 1997 television series "The College of Comedy With Alan King."

He said he was working strip joints and seedy nightclubs in the early 1950s when he had a revelation while watching a performance by another young comedian, Danny Thomas.

"Danny actually talked to his audience," he recalled in a 1991 interview. "And I realized I never talked to my audience. I talked at 'em, around 'em and over 'em, but not to 'em. I felt the response they had for him. I said to myself, 'This guy is doing something, and I better start doing it."'

King, who until then had been using worn out one-liners, found his new material at home, after his wife persuaded him to forsake his native Manhattan, believing the suburban atmosphere of the Forest Hills sections of Queens would provide a better environment for their children.

Soon he was joking of seeing people moving from the city to the suburbs "in covered wagons, with mink stoles hanging out the back."

His rantings about suburbia, just as America was embracing it, struck a chord with the public and soon he was appearing regularly on the Sullivan show, Garry Moore's variety show and "The Tonight Show."

Bookings poured in, and he toured with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra, played New York's showcase Paramount theater and performed at top nightclubs around the country.

He also worked as the opening act for such music stars as Lena Horne, Billy Eckstine, Patti Page and Judy Garland, whom he joined in a command performance in London for Queen Elizabeth II.

After that show he was introduced to the queen and, when she asked, "How do you do, Mr. King?" he said he replied: "How do you do, Mrs. Queen?"

"She stared at me, and then Prince Philip laughed," he recalled. "Thank God Prince Philip laughed."

King appeared in a handful of films in the late 1950s, including "The Girl He Left Behind," "Miracle in the Rain" and "Hit the Deck," although he didn't care for his roles. "I was always the sergeant from Brooklyn named Kowalski," he once complained.

He also appeared on Broadway in "Guys and Dolls" and "The Impossible Years," and produced the Broadway plays "The Lion in Winter" and "Something Different."

He wrote the humor books "Anyone Who Owns His Own Home Deserves One" (1962) and "Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery" (1964).

Born Irwin Alan Kniberg, he grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side and in Brooklyn.

"Both of them were tough neighborhoods, but I was a pretty tough kid," he recalled in 1964. "I had an answer for everything. ... I fought back with humor."

He married Jeanette Sprung in 1947 and they had three children, Robert, Andrew and Elaine Ray. When King was at the height of his career, he faced one son's drug addiction and said he realized he had neglected his family.

"It's not easy being a father," he said, "but I've been allowed a comeback."

He spent more time at home and his son conquered his addiction.

"Now everyone kisses," he said. "We show our affections."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on May 17, 2004, 09:39:06 AM
'GH' actress Anna Lee dead at 91

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Anna Lee, whose nearly 70-year acting career in movies and television spanned from her breakthrough role in "How Green Was My Valley" to an extended run on "General Hospital," died Friday of pneumonia, her son said. She was 91.

Lee had been ailing for the past several months and died at her home near Beverly Hills with son Jeffrey Byron, 48, by her side, Byron said Sunday.

Paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident just a year after she began playing Lila Quartermaine in ABC's "General Hospital," Lee acted in a wheelchair for more than two decades until she left the soap last year, Byron said.

Born in Kent, England, Lee studied acting in London and was known as "the British bombshell" when touring with the London Repertory Theatre, her son said.

In the early 1930s she moved to California to work in Hollywood, and appeared in more than 60 films including "The Sound of Music" (1965), "Fort Apache" (1948) and "King Solomon's Mines" (1937).

"She was beautiful," said actress Maureen O'Hara, who starred with Lee in 1941's "How Green Was My Valley." "She came to the United States and immediately everybody fell in love with her."

O'Hara said Lee was most effective as an actress in straightforward tales of love and family life. "She made you feel, looking at her, that you belonged to the same family as her," she said.

Nearing retirement age, Lee's stint on ABC's "General Hospital" rejuvenated her, Byron said. "That was really a great elixir for her. Without a doubt it gave her much more longevity later in life," he said.

In 1982, Lee received an MBE, or Member of the Order of the British Empire award. She is to be honored with a lifetime achievement award at Friday's Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony.

Lee was married three times, first to Robert Stevenson, the director of films including "The Love Bug" and "Mary Poppins." She was married to George Stafford for two decades and wed writer Robert Nathan in 1970. Nathan died in 1985.

Lee is survived by a sister, Ruth, two sons, two daughters, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held in Los Angeles in several weeks, Byron said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on May 18, 2004, 10:55:24 AM
(has this been already covered?)

Actor Tony Randall Dies at 84

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Actor Tony Randall, the stage, screen and television actor best known as fussy Felix Unger on the 70s sitcom The Odd Couple, died in New York in his sleep Monday night after complications from a long illness; he was 84. An actor who specialized in playing comedic sidekicks and best friends, Randall first gained prominence onscreen by reprising his Broadway starring role in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1957. That film was followed two years later by his scene-stealing turn in Pillow Talk opposite Rock Hudson and Doris Day, the first of many supporting romantic comedy roles for which he would become best known (others included Let's Make Love, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers), although he was also an effective and versatile lead in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Randall seamlessly transitioned to television in 1970 with The Odd Couple, based on the hit Neil Simon play, in which he was paired with Jack Klugman, who played the messy Oscar Madison; the show ran for five years and won both actors Emmy Awards for their roles. Innumerable television appearances followed, most notably The Tony Randall Show (1976-78 ) and Love, Sidney (1981-83), a pioneering sitcom in which his character's homosexuality was implied but never stated. Randall turned most of his energy to the stage in his later career, founding the non-profit National Actors Theatre in 1991, starring in and directing a number of the company's productions. The actor made a brief return to the screen last year in Down with Love, an homage to the Rock Hudson-Doris Day films in which he co-starred. Randall is survived by his wife Heather Harlan Randall – who was fifty years younger and made him a father for the first time at 77 – and their two children, a 7 year-old daughter and a 5 year-old son.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on May 18, 2004, 04:33:40 PM
poor tony randall.  he was lookin' good in Down With Love just last year.  :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 05, 2004, 04:23:10 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.a.cnn.net%2Fcnn%2F2004%2FALLPOLITICS%2F06%2F05%2Freagan.health%2Fvert.reagan.1990.ap.jpg&hash=f598ff71944cce61b357558b4a06ae4847b57856)

Ronald Reagan dead at 93
Former president had Alzheimer's disease for 10 years

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Former President Ronald Reagan died Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 93.

At least two of his children and his wife, Nancy, were at his bedside, according to the former president's Los Angeles office.

Ron Reagan Jr. and Patty Davis -- children from his current marriage to Nancy Davis Reagan -- were with him, the office said.

Michael Reagan, his adopted son from his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, might have been with his father or was still en route. Maureen Reagan, his daughter from that marriage, died in 2001.

In a statement earlier Saturday, Joanne Drake, Reagan's chief of staff in Los Angeles, said: "He is 93 years old. He has had Alzheimer's disease for 10 years. There are plenty of rumors. When there is something significant to report, I will do so."

The news came as President Bush toured Europe to honor the heroes of World War II on the weekend of the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Alzheimer's is a progressive, irreversible, incurable neurological disorder that causes losses of memory and mental abilities -- eventually leading to dementia, according to the Mayo Clinic Web site.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 10, 2004, 11:49:14 AM
Hollywood engineer, developer of Steadicam, dies.

Associated Press

Malibu, Calif. - Edmund DiGiulio, a Hollywood technical innovator who
oversaw development of a stable-filming system known as the Steadicam,
has died. He was 76.

DiGiulio died at his home in Malibu west of Los Angeles on Friday
after a long struggle with congestive heart faliure, his wife, Louise,
said Tuesday.

Awarded a lifetime achievement Academy Award two years ago, DiGiulio
also received three technical awards and a medal commendation from the
academy.

In the 1970s, as head of Cinema Products Corp., DiGiulio directed the
creation of the Steadicam, a mounting system that provides stable
images while allowing operators to move freely with a movie camera
slung to their torsos. The system is a staple on movie sets today.

Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown and Cinema Products' engineering
staff received an Oscar for the system in 1978.

After graduating from Columbia University, DiGiulio went to work for
IBM in 1950, then went to Mitchell Camera Corp., where he worked on
advancements in film technology.

At Mitchell, DiGiulio developed a reflex-viewing system for movie
cameras that earned him his first technical honor at the Oscars in
1969. He received technical awards for other camera and film
advancements in 1993 and 1999.

At Cinema Products, DiGiulio worked on Stanley Kubrick's films
beginning with 1971's "A Clockwork Orange." Their collaboration
included development of ultra-high-speed lenses to capture candlelit
scenes in 1975's "Barry Lyndon."

"Ed was a technological guru, even for Oscar-winning technologists,"
said Don Rogers, former post-production chief at Warner Bros. "He
always had a twinkle in his eye and a smile in his voice."

A five-time chairman of the academy's Scientific and Technical
Committee, DiGiulio was a fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and
Television Engineers,
a fellow of the British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society and
an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers.

Besides his wife, DiGiulio is survived by his daughter, Amanda
DiGiulio Richmond, and a granddaughter, Samantha Victoria Richmond.

A memorial service is planned for Saturday.

Link (http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/8872149.htm)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on June 10, 2004, 04:03:37 PM
Legendary Musician Ray Charles Dies at 73
Legendary Grammy-winning singer Ray Charles, whose gospel and blues-tinged music touched generations of music lovers and pervaded a number of films, died Thursday at his Beverly Hills home after a long battle with liver disease; he was 73. Blind by the age of 7, Charles's musical gifts transcended genres, as he went from country to jazz to blues to gospel with agility and left his mark on each. Ballads like "Georgia on My Mind," R&B hits like "Hit the Road Jack" and his iconic interpretation of "America the Beautiful" were just a few of the hits that won him 12 Grammy Awards, nine of which he received between 1960 and 1966. Appearing on innumerable TV specials (which earned him three Emmy nominations), Charles's best-known screen appearance was his show-stopping turn in The Blues Brothers. A biopic about Charles, entitled Ray, is slated for release later this year starring Jamie Foxx and Regina King. --Prepared by IMDb staff
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on June 10, 2004, 04:32:24 PM
looks like kotte beat you to it.

http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=6380
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on June 10, 2004, 04:38:53 PM
Quote from: mogwailooks like kotte beat you to it.

http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=6380
I knew that was going to happen eventually.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Chest Rockwell on June 18, 2004, 08:25:56 AM
Hagman: "I Want To Die"

Former Dallas star Larry Hagman has told doctors he'd rather die than have a liver transplant. The 72-year-old actor, who played villainous JR Ewing in the hit 1980s soap, had to have part of his liver removed at the end of last year when bacteria attacked his organs. And Hagman, who was told he might need a transplanted liver in the near future, was left so exhausted by the procedure he has told medics to let him die if his liver starts to fail on him. He says, "I was on my back for a month. My muscles atrophied. I didn't have any strength. They said if I did need one (a liver), then they would put me on the (transplant) list. I said, 'Don't bother. I'm 72-years-old and I don't want to deprive somebody of a new liver just because I'm greedy.' I feel fine now. I am not afraid of death. I had taken LSD 40 years ago and I had ego death. That took the fear of death away."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on June 18, 2004, 08:47:33 AM
pfft, why don't you help him then? :roll:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: coffeebeetle on June 18, 2004, 08:52:42 AM
"I had taken LSD 40 years ago and I had ego death."

What a great line.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on July 12, 2004, 12:48:18 PM
Weezie is dead!

Isabel Sanford, 'Jeffersons' star, dies
Actress was 86
Monday, July 12, 2004 Posted: 1:26 PM EDT (1726 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Actress Isabel Sanford, best known as "Weezie," Louise Jefferson on the television sitcom "The Jeffersons," died of natural causes, her publicist said Monday. She was 86.

Sanford died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized since July 4, said Brad Lemack. Her daughter, Pamela Ruff, was at her side, he said.

Her health had waned after undergoing preventive surgery on a neck artery 10 months ago, Lemack said. He did not give a specific cause of death.

Sanford co-starred with Sherman Hemsley from 1975 to 1985 on CBS' "The Jeffersons," a spin-off of the popular series "All in the Family," in which she also appeared.

In 1981, Sanford became the first black woman to receive an Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on "The Jeffersons."

She also played Tillie, the maid to Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn's Matt and Christina Drayton, in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967) -- her feature film debut.

Recently, Sanford lent her voice to "The Simpsons" and appeared in commercial campaigns for Denny's restaurants and retailer Old Navy.

Besides her daughter, Sanford is survived by two sons, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 13, 2004, 11:38:06 AM
Cinematographer Carlo Di Palma dies

Italian cinematographer Carlo Di Palma died Friday after a series of illnesses at home in his native Rome. He was 79. Di Palma, whose career was forged in the post-World War II era of Italian cinema, collaborated on films with the most famous Italian directors -- from Michelangelo Antonioni, for whom he shot "Blowup" (1966), "The Red Desert" (1963) and "The Identification of a Woman," (1982) -- to Bernardo Bertolucci, Ettore Scola, Roberto Rossellini and Roberto Benigni. Di Palma's pioneering work on "Blowup" is widely considered a historic contribution to color cinematography. Once established, Di Palma served as the director of photography on nearly a dozen American movies for director Woody Allen, including "Hannah and Her Sisters," "Bullets Over Broadway," "Deconstructing Harry" and "Everyone Says I Love You."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 23, 2004, 01:42:31 PM
http://www.jerrygoldsmithonline.com/news.html

Rest In Peace Jerry   

July 22nd 2004: News services across the world are reporting the terribly sad news that Jerry Goldsmith passed away in his sleep on Wednesday evening after a long battle against Cancer. Over the last few years the composer had put up a gallant fight against this horrible disease and when possible continued to write new music for film and perform in front of his fans in concert. Perhaps fittingly his last recorded score was with friend and regular collaborator Joe Dante for Looney Tunes Back In Action. In the last few months of his incredible life the composer spent time with his daughter documenting his wonderful career for a planned book project.

Our deepest sympathies to his family, friends and loyal fans. Visit our forum (http://www.jerrygoldsmithonline.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) if you would like to leave a message.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on August 09, 2004, 02:24:54 PM
CNN is reporting that Fay Wray, of "King Kong" fame, has died at age 96.

I guess on the upside, we'll see great stuff about her for the upcoming DVDs...?

:(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on August 09, 2004, 05:09:39 PM
I want to die on april fools day, then when people say I die everyone gives them shit cause they think its a joke "How could you even joke like that?! We all know hes very sick and could go at any time!!!" And then they find out its the truth and feel bad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on August 09, 2004, 11:39:52 PM
Dying on April Fools Day would be the best prank ever.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on August 12, 2004, 02:56:26 AM
I'll kill you on April 1st then
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on August 12, 2004, 03:22:46 AM
Excuse me, you speak English, right?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Raikus on August 12, 2004, 10:23:49 AM
Only fools die on April 1st.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 19, 2004, 12:24:25 AM
Oscar-winning film composer Bernstein dies

Elmer Bernstein, whose eclectic film music ranged from the rousing theme of "The Magnificent Seven" to the lighthearted score for "Thoroughly Modern Millie," for which he won an Oscar, died Wednesday afternoon at his home in Ojai, Calif. He was 82. The composer died after a lengthy illness -- the exact cause of death has not been determined -- with his wife, Eve, and his two daughters, Elizabeth and Emilie, by his side, a spokesperson said.

The prodigiously prolific Bernstein worked steadily in films and television since the early '50s, writing more than 200 major film and television scores, encompassing a range of genres. "Never has anyone reinvented themselves so many times," said Richard Kraft, Bernstein's former agent and longtime friend. "And he didn't just compose one film in each genre, he did a few. He would become the go-to guy for completely different genres, and he kept that going for 50 years. From the first Oscar (nomination) to the last is almost a five-decade span." He wrote his last major film score, a lush evocation of '50s melodrama, for Todd Hayne's 2002 drama "Far From Heaven," for which Bernstein received the last of his 14 Academy Award nominations.

"His last project was a documentary on Cecil B. DeMille for TCM," said Jeff Bond, senior editor of Film Score Monthly. "It was a great score that let him revisit his 'Ten Commandments' style and adapt some early silent film scores."

A memorable film score depends on a memorable melody, Bernstein insisted, reminiscing last year at a luncheon of the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers. Calling melody "the emotional core of a film," Bernstein said "a good line will always win."

Bernstein introduced jazz elements into American film scoring with 1955's "The Man With the Golden Arm," Otto Preminger's groundbreaking drama about heroin addiction, and went further in that direction with 1957's "Sweet Smell of Success," which captured the moody tempos of Broadway by night, and 1962's "Walk on the Wild Side," scored to the rhythms of a New Orleans bordello.

But almost simultaneously, his work also ranged from sweeping epics like 1956's "The Ten Commandments," with all its biblical sound and fury, to intimate Americana like 1962's "To Kill a Mockingbird," which introduced its themes with just a piano and solo flute.

After turning out his indelible theme for 1960's "The Magnificent Seven" -- it is quoted in Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" and, inevitably, evokes a laugh of recognition from audiences -- Bernstein frequently turned to Western fare in the '60s. He scored John Wayne's last seven films, including "True Grit" and "The Shootist."

During the '70s and '80s, he was frequently sought out by a new generation of filmmakers including John Landis and Ivan Reitman who had been raised on his films and who invited him to score such comedies as "National Lampoon's Animal House," "Airplane!" "Stripes" and "Ghostbusters."

Bernstein began a long-running collaboration with director Martin Scorsese when he composed the score for Stephen Frears' 1990 feature "The Grifters," which Scorsese produced. Scorsese and Bernstein worked together on "Cape Fear," "The Age of Innocence" and "Bringing Out the Dead."

"He liked taking risks with new directors," Kraft said. "He knew what made movies work. He brought new filmmakers his expertise, but he was not stodgy in his expertise. The knowledge and experience he brought to other people and their films can never be replicated."

In addition to his wife and daughters, Bernstein also is survived by his sons Peter and Gregory and five grandchildren.

Memorial plans have not yet been decided.

:yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 16, 2004, 12:40:54 AM
Johnny Ramone of the Ramones dies at 55

Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of seminal punk band the Ramones has died. He was 55. Ramone died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, his publicist said. He had been fighting a five-year battle with prostate cancer. (AP)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on September 16, 2004, 12:46:16 AM
The KKK took Johnny awayyy..


rip johnny  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 16, 2004, 10:25:00 AM
fuck.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on September 22, 2004, 08:53:59 AM
Legendary filmmaker Russ Meyer dead

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tempimoderni.com%2F1999%2Fottobre%2Fmeyer%2Fmeyer11.jpg&hash=5c4c93a501a347143411ec3edfd844a23bccb7bc)

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Russ Meyer, who helped spawn the "skin flick" with such films as "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" and "Vixen," has died. He was 82.

Meyer died Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills, according to his company, RM Films International Inc. Spokeswoman Janice Cowart said Meyer had suffered from dementia and died of complications of pneumonia.

Meyer's films were considered pornographic in their time but are less shocking by today's standards, with their focus on violence and large-busted women but little graphic sex.

Altogether he produced, directed, financed, wrote, edited and shot at least 23 films, including his debut, "The Immoral Mr. Teas," in 1959 and the 1968 film "Vixen," whose success earned him notice from major studios.

He went on to direct the major studio release "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", which was co-written by film critic Roger Ebert.

In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, Meyer described his films as "passion plays. ... Beauty against something that's totally evil."

Meyer was unapologetic for his movies, arguing the onscreen female nudity put customers in theater seats. But he maintained that women liked the films.

"The girls kick the hell out of the guys. I've always played well at the Ivy League -- Cornell, Dartmouth. I have never encountered a berating woman," he said.

Meyer's work made him rich and earned him critical acclaim. He was honored at international film festivals, his movies were discussed in college courses, and his work was shown at top museums.

His 1966 classic, "Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!" about three hip go-go-girl club dancers who go on a vengeful murder spree against the men who did them wrong still makes the art house rounds.

"This film is not derogatory to women," Meyer said. "There were three tough cookies to deal with. Besides, they get what's coming."

Meyer married three times. His studio said he left no survivors.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 22, 2004, 01:30:50 PM
http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/cst-ftr-xmeyer22.html

King of the funny skin flicks

September 22, 2004

BY ROGER EBERT



Russ Meyer is dead. The legendary independent director, who made exploitation films but was honored as an auteur, died Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills. He was 82, and had been suffering from dementia. The immediate cause of death was pneumonia, said Janice Cowart, a friend who supervised his care during his last years. She announced his death Tuesday.

Such bare facts hardly capture the zest of a colorful man who became a Hollywood icon. Meyer's "The Immoral Mr. Teas" (1959), hailed by the highbrow critic Leslie Fiedler as the funniest comedy of the year, created the skin flick genre, and after the box office success of his "Vixen" (1968) he was crowned "King of the Nudies" in a front-page profile in the Wall Street Journal. His "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" (1970), for which I wrote the screenplay, represented the first foray into sexploitation by a major studio (20th Century Fox).

His films were X-rated but not pornographic. Meyer told me he had two reasons for avoiding hard-core: (1) "I want to play in regular theaters and keep the profits, instead of playing in porn theaters and doing business with the mob." (2) "Frankly, what goes on below the waist is visually not that entertaining." For Meyer, what went on above the waist was a lifelong fascination; he cheerfully affirmed his obsession with big breasts.

Meyer was the ultimate auteur. He not only directed his films, but could and often did write, photograph, edit and distribute them, and carried his own camera. In a genre known for sleazy sets and murky photography, Meyer's films were often shot outdoors in scenic desert and mountain locations, and his images were bright and crisp. He said his inspiration was Al Capp's "L'il Abner" comic strip, and his films were not erotic so much as funny, combining slapstick and parody. He once told me there was no such thing as a sex scene that couldn't be improved by cutaways to Demolition Derby or rocket launches.

Meyer was born March 21, 1922 in San Leandro, Ca., and raised in the Oakland area by a mother who gave him his first 8-mm movie camera. He enlisted at 18 in the U. S. Army Signal Corps, learned motion picture photography in an Army school at MGM, and found World War II "the greatest experience of my life."

He was often assigned to Gen. George Patton, and told of being taken along one night late in the war, to shoot the newsreel footage when Patton assembled a strike force to dart across the lines and capture Hitler - who was believed to be visiting the front. The report was false, Hitler was not captured, Patton issued dire warnings to anyone who spoke of the raid, and Meyer was denied the greatest newsreel scoop in history.

On another assignment, he filmed the original Dirty Dozen before they were parachuted into France, and E. M. Nathanson's best-selling novel credits Meyer as its source. "In the real story," Meyer said, "they disappeared and were never heard of again."

In peacetime Meyer and other Signal Corps cameramen found themselves frozen out of the cinematographer's union. He made industrial and educational films, and then drifted into cheesecake. More than half of the first year's Playboy Playmates were photographed by Meyer. Observing Hugh Hefner's success at retailing nude images of young, wholesome-looking women, Meyer tried the same approach in "Mr. Teas." Films exploiting nudity had been consigned to marginal theaters and burlesque houses, but "Teas" won mainstream distribution, played for a year in some of its first engagements, and defined the rest of Meyer's career.

He made one film after another, all of them involving unlikely plots, incongruous settings and abundantly voluptuous actresses. "Where do you find those women?" I asked him. "After they reach a certain bra size," he said, "they find me." He disapproved of silicone implants: "They miss the whole point."

Meyer's titles were entertaining in themselves: "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" and "Mud Honey," both made in 1965, were taken as names by 1990s rock bands, and director John Waters said "Pussycat" was the greatest film of all time. Other directors who praised his work included Jonathan Demme, who always uses Meyer's favorite actor Charles Napier in his movies, and John Landis. Mike Meyers used music and dialog from "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" in his "Austin Powers" pictures.

Other titles included "Motor Psycho" (1965-a busy year), "Common Law Cabin" and "Good Morning...and Goodbye!" (both 1967), "Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!" (1968), "Vixen" (1968), "Cherry, Harry and Raquel" (1970), "Blacksnake" (1973), "Supervixens" (1975), "Up!" (1976), and "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens" (1979), which I co-wrote. In the 1980s he announced an epic film to be called "The Breast of Russ Meyer," but it was never completed. He did publish a massive three-volume, 17-pound, 1210-page, $199 autobiography, (ital) A Clean Breast (unital) (2000). "It keeps you turning the pages even when you can't lift the book," wrote Time magazine film critic Richard Corliss, who called "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" one of the 10 best films of the 1970s.

After I wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal praising Meyer's work we met and became friends, and when he was summoned by Fox to make "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" he asked me to write the screenplay. We produced it in six weeks, making it up as we went along, laughing aloud, although in directing it Meyer urged the actors to perform with complete seriousness. The film cost $900,000, grossed $40 million, and became a cult favorite; the Sex Pistols punk rock band saw it in London in the late 1970s and hired Meyer to direct and me to write a film for them. "Who Killed Bambi?" (1978) shot for only one day before the Pistols' production company went bankrupt.

Russ Meyer made X-rated movies, but he was not a dirty old man. He didn't use the casting couch, prohibited sex on his sets ("save it for the camera"), and was a serial monogamist. He married Eve Meyer in 1955, and later photographed her as a Playmate; they had a friendly divorce in 1970 and continued to work together until her death in an airplane crash. His 1970 marriage to starlet Edy Williams was not so happy, and inspired a scene in "Supervixens" where the hero's wife attacks his pickup with an axe. In later years his most frequent companion was Kitten Natividad, who starred in "Ultra-Vixens."

He was a loyal friend. He stayed in lifelong contact with his Signal Corps comrades, organizing local and national reunions and sending tickets to those who needed them. He worked with the same crew members again and again. In a field known for devaluing women, he treated the actresses in his movies with affection and respect. Haji, Uschi Digard, Tura Satana, Kitten Natividad and the "BVD" stars Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom and Erica Gavin stayed in contact and attended reunions.

His films were unique in that the women were always the strong characters, and men were the mindless sex objects. The film critic B. Ruby Rich called him "the first feminist American director." Meyer took praise with a grain of salt. After "The Seven Minutes" (1971), an attempt at a serious mainstream big studio picture, flopped at the box office, he told me: "I made the mistake of reading my reviews. What the public wants are big laughs and big tits and lots of 'em. Lucky for me that's what I like, too."


Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 04, 2004, 07:00:31 AM
Actress Janet Leigh Dies at 77

LOS ANGELES - Janet Leigh, the wholesome beauty whose shocking murder in the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller "Psycho" was credited with making generations of film fans think twice about stepping into a motel room shower, has died at her Beverly Hills home, her daughter's publicist confirmed Monday. She was 77.

The actress' husband, Robert Brandt, and her daughters, actresses Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis, were at their mother's side when she died Sunday, said Heidi Schaeffer, a spokeswoman for Jamie Lee Curtis.

"She died peacefully at home," Schaeffer told The Associated Press.

Lee had suffered from vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels, for the past year.

The stunning blonde beauty enjoyed a long and distinguished career, appearing in such films as the 1962 political thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" and in Orson Welles' 1958 film noir classic "Touch of Evil."

But she gained her most lasting fame in "Psycho" as the embezzling office worker who is stabbed to death in the shower by cross-dressing madman Anthony Perkins. The role earned her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress.

Hitchcock compiled the shower sequence in 70-odd takes of two and three seconds each, for which Leigh spent seven days in the shower. Rumors circulated that she was nude, but she wore a flesh-colored moleskin.

Although tame by today's standards, the scene was shocking for the time for its brutality.

Leigh wrote in her 1995 book "Psycho: Behind the Scenes in the Classic Thriller" that the filming was easy until the last 20 seconds when she had to express total horror as her character was being slashed to death.

She often said she hadn't been able to take a shower since the movie. "It's not a hype, not something I thought would be good for publicity," she insisted. "Honest to gosh, it's true."

:yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:

This passing is a tough one for me. Not only because she starred in one of my favorite movies of all time, but because I had the honor of meeting Ms. Leigh and she autographed a Psycho poster for me that now hangs in the bathroom.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on October 04, 2004, 09:32:10 AM
yeah thats really sad.  she always seemed to be doing well in any interviews i'd seen her in recently.  :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on October 05, 2004, 01:29:29 PM
i watched psycho twice last night
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on October 05, 2004, 02:02:51 PM
Quote from: 03i watched psycho twice last night

Then you did your part.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on October 05, 2004, 07:45:25 PM
I stabbed two people in hotel showers last night.  But then I realized that that was a more accurate tribute to Anthony Perkins.

So instead, I got married to Charlton Heston in Mexico to make up for it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on October 05, 2004, 08:10:15 PM
Rodney Dangerfield just passed away today.
LOS ANGELES - Rodney Dangerfield, the bug-eyed comic whose self-deprecating one-liners brought him stardom in clubs, television and movies and made his lament "I don't get no respect" a catchphrase, died Tuesday. He was 82.
 
Dangerfield, who fell into a coma after undergoing heart surgery, died at 1:20 p.m., said publicist Kevin Sasaki. Dangerfield had a heart valve replaced Aug. 25 at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center.

Sasaki said in a statement that Dangerfield suffered a small stroke after the operation and developed infectious and abdominal complications. But in the past week he had emerged from the coma, the publicist said.

"When Rodney emerged, he kissed me, squeezed my hand and smiled for his doctors," Dangerfield's wife, Joan, said in the statement. The comic is also survived by two children from a previous marriage.

As a comic, Dangerfield — clad in a black suit, red tie and white shirt with collar that seemed too tight — convulsed audiences with lines such as: "When I was born, I was so ugly that the doctor slapped my mother"; "When I started in show business, I played one club that was so far out my act was reviewed in Field and Stream"; and "Every time I get in an elevator, the operator says the same thing to me: `Basement?'"

In a 1986 interview, he explained the origin of his "respect" trademark:

"I had this joke: `I played hide and seek; they wouldn't even look for me.' To make it work better, you look for something to put in front of it: I was so poor, I was so dumb, so this, so that. I thought, `Now what fits that joke?' Well, `No one liked me' was all right. But then I thought, a more profound thing would be, `I get no respect.'"

He tried it at a New York club, and the joke drew a bigger response than ever. He kept the phrase in the act, and it seemed to establish a bond with his audience. After hearing him perform years later, Jack Benny remarked: "Me, I get laughs because I'm cheap and 39. Your image goes into the soul of everyone."

Dangerfield had a strange career in show business. At 19 he started as a standup comedian. He made only a fair living, traveling a great deal and appearing in rundown joints. Married at 27, he decided he couldn't support a family on his meager earnings.

He returned to comedy at 42 and began to attract notice. He appeared on the Ed Sullivan show seven times and on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson more than 70 times.

After his standout film role in "Caddyshack," he began starring in his own movies.

He was born Jacob Cohen on Nov. 22, 1921, on New York's Long Island. Growing up in the borough of Queens, his mother was uncaring and his father was absent. As Philip Roy, the father and his brother toured in vaudeville as a pantomime comedy-juggling act, Roy and Arthur. Young Jacob's parents divorced, and the mother struggled to support her daughter and son.

The boy helped bring in money by selling ice cream at the beach and working for a grocery store. "I found myself going to school with kids and then in the afternoon I'd be delivering groceries to their back door," he recalled. "I ended up feeling inferior to everybody."

He ingratiated himself to his schoolmates by being funny; at 15 he was writing down jokes and storing them in a duffel bag. When he was 19, he adopted the name Jack Roy and tried out the jokes at a resort in the Catskills, training ground for Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Red Button, Sid Caesar and other comedians. The job paid $12 a week plus room and meals.

In New York, he drove a laundry and fish truck, taking time off to hunt for work as a comedian. The jobs came slowly, but in time he was averaging $300 a week.

He married Joyce Indig, a singer he met at a New York club. Both had wearied of the uncertainty of a performer's life.

"We wanted to lead a normal life," he remarked in a 1986 interview. "I wanted a house and a picket fence and kids, and the heck with show business. Love is more important, you see. When the show is over, you're alone."

The couple settled in Englewood, N.J., had two children, Brian and Melanie, and he worked selling paint and siding. But the idyllic suburban life soured as the pair battled. The couple divorced in 1962, remarried a year later and again divorced.

In 1993, Dangerfield married Joan Child, a flower importer.

At age 42, he returned to show business. He remembered in 1986:

"It was like a need. I had to work. I had to tell jokes. I had to write them and tell them. It was like a fix. I had the habit."

Even during his domestic years, he continued filling the duffel bag with jokes. He didn't want to break in his new act with any notice, so he asked the owner of New York's Inwood Lounge, George McFadden, not to bill him as Jack Roy. McFadden came up with the absurd name Rodney Dangerfield. It stuck.

Dangerfield's bookings improved, and he landed television gigs. After his ex-wife died, he took over the responsibility of raising his two children. He decided to quit touring and open a New York nightclub, Dangerfield's, so he could stay close to home. A beer commercial and the Carson shows brought him national attention.

His film debut came in 1971 with "The Projectionist," which he described as "the kind of a movie that you went to the location on the subway." He did better in 1980 with "Caddyshack," in which he held his own with such comics as Chevy Chase, Ted Knight and Bill Murray.

Despite his good reviews, Dangerfield claimed he didn't like movies or TV series: "Too much waiting around, too much memorizing; I need that immediate feedback of people laughing."

Still, he continued starring in and sometimes writing films such as "Easy Money," "Back to School," "Moving," "The Scout," "Ladybugs" and "Meet Wally Sparks." He turned dramatic as a sadistic father in Oliver Stone's 1994 "Natural Born Killers."

In 1995, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected Dangerfield's application for membership. A letter from Roddy McDowall of the actors branch explained that the comedian had failed to execute "enough of the kinds of roles that allow a performer to demonstrate the mastery of his craft."

The ultimate rejection, and Dangerfield played it to the hilt. He had established his own Web site ("I went out and bought an Apple Computer; it had a worm in it"), and his fans used it to express their indignation. The public reaction prompted the academy to reverse itself and offer membership. Dangerfield declined.

"They don't even apologize or nothing," he said. "They give no respect at all — pardon the pun — to comedy."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: El Duderino on October 05, 2004, 09:31:04 PM
jesus....rip
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on October 05, 2004, 09:41:08 PM
Quote from: hacksparrowI stabbed two people in hotel showers last night.  But then I realized that that was a more accurate tribute to Anthony Perkins.

So instead, I got married to Charlton Heston in Mexico to make up for it.

HACKSPARROW YOU INSENSITIVE PRICK!!! THIS IS NOT FUNNY!

haha i'm just kidding.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on October 05, 2004, 09:45:59 PM
My god, Rodney Dangerfield...

This is deeply saddening news.

Rest In Peace.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on October 05, 2004, 09:47:01 PM
Oh yeah, that's sad too.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on October 05, 2004, 09:59:22 PM
Quote from: StefenOh yeah, that's sad too.

No respect.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on October 05, 2004, 10:17:35 PM
Quote from: Walrus, Kookookajoob
Quote from: StefenOh yeah, that's sad too.

No respect.

Were you calling me out? Or just dropping Dangerfields catch phrase?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on October 05, 2004, 10:47:33 PM
Quote from: Stefen
Quote from: Walrus, Kookookajoob
Quote from: StefenOh yeah, that's sad too.

No respect.

Were you calling me out? Or just dropping Dangerfields catch phrase?

My guess? Both.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on October 06, 2004, 01:05:50 PM
Can we somehow blame Caddyshack 2 for his death?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on October 06, 2004, 01:18:20 PM
Wally Sparks  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on October 06, 2004, 07:29:24 PM
i'll remember him for this:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.noboundariesstudios.com%2Fpictures%2Frover185.jpg&hash=d0ffaed0b61981dc981abeed611c9c2c01bcd8b2)

and the ladybugs
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: El Duderino on October 06, 2004, 11:41:47 PM
that dog really looks like rodney
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on October 07, 2004, 12:07:52 AM
that's the joke
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on October 07, 2004, 12:28:14 AM
can we have a contrasting thread for people being born?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on October 07, 2004, 01:07:42 AM
Quote from: 03can we have a contrasting thread for people being born?
(https://xixax.com/files/P/cavett.JPG)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 11, 2004, 12:37:03 AM
SUPERMAN ACTOR DIES

Superman actor Christopher Reeve has died, his publicist has said.  

The 52-year-old fell into a coma on Saturday after suffering a cardiac arrest at his New York home.

Reeve had been paralysed from the neck down in a near-fatal horse-riding accident nine years ago.

The former actor spent most of his time since in a wheelchair and became an advocate for spinal cord research.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on October 11, 2004, 01:28:14 AM
Quote from: Pubrickthat's the joke
"Hey ladies, don't you hate it when men leave the toilet seat up?....Dat's the joke." "You suck McBain!"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Kal on October 11, 2004, 01:31:00 AM
Quote from: MacGuffinSUPERMAN ACTOR DIES

Superman actor Christopher Reeve has died, his publicist has said.  

The 52-year-old fell into a coma on Saturday after suffering a cardiac arrest at his New York home.

Reeve had been paralysed from the neck down in a near-fatal horse-riding accident nine years ago.

The former actor spent most of his time since in a wheelchair and became an advocate for spinal cord research.

just saw that and couldnt believe it... very sad news... he was a great superman... and a fighter... RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on October 11, 2004, 02:24:19 AM
Quote from: MacGuffinSUPERMAN ACTOR DIES

Superman actor Christopher Reeve has died, his publicist has said.  

The 52-year-old fell into a coma on Saturday after suffering a cardiac arrest at his New York home.

Reeve had been paralysed from the neck down in a near-fatal horse-riding accident nine years ago.

The former actor spent most of his time since in a wheelchair and became an advocate for spinal cord research.

Fuckin a..

I am seriously bummed to hear about Reeve's death. I really believed that one day he would make a recovery and his efforts would lead to millions of people being able to walk again and recover from spinal injuries.

:(

Very sad..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Just Withnail on October 11, 2004, 05:03:07 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.omelete.com.br%2Fimagens%2Fcinema%2Fnews%2Fsuperman%2Fclark_super.jpg&hash=ad6f4993f5a14194a400bcbf353bc105f86805a3)

I refuse to belive it  :cry:

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Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 11, 2004, 09:50:54 AM
holy fuck!  :shock: :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on October 11, 2004, 10:19:00 AM
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

::spinsaroundtheearth::

He was a real fighter.  :(

RIP


Quote from: Myxomatosis

I really believed that one day he would make a recovery and his efforts would lead to millions of people being able to walk again and recover from spinal injuries.


Couldn't agree more.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gloria on October 11, 2004, 11:35:11 AM
Remembering a super man.... :cry:  

He really was a fighter.  He showed such strength and heart.  Very, very sad news.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on October 11, 2004, 02:21:29 PM
:cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 11, 2004, 03:09:45 PM
best avatar tribute: regularkarate's. :yabbse-thumbup:

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Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on October 11, 2004, 03:57:05 PM
Quote from: mogwaibest avatar tribute: regularkarate's. :yabbse-thumbup:


Quote from: Pubrick
rek's, always consistent.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on October 11, 2004, 04:54:18 PM
thanks

I think Reeves was a great human being and it's hard not to associate him with Superman.  I grew up on that movie... still (to me) the best Superhero movie ever made.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Thrindle on October 11, 2004, 07:24:55 PM
:cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: coffeebeetle on October 11, 2004, 07:39:14 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alpc.com%2FDigital%2Freeves.jpg&hash=919c2340491c664f1908bc5097114689e62f6b65)

RIP

I can't believe this....
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on October 11, 2004, 10:33:18 PM
yeah this is terrible.  i loved those movies as a kid.  he was a great superman.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on October 12, 2004, 02:33:11 AM
Rest in peace Superman..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on October 12, 2004, 02:38:41 AM
I'm waiting for modernage's Superman collagatar.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on October 12, 2004, 09:56:06 AM
Quote from: CinephileI'm waiting for modernage's Superman collagatar.

Haha, I was thinking the same thing when I logged in this morning.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on October 12, 2004, 11:13:30 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pvponline.com%2Fimages%2Fnews%2Ftribute.gif&hash=77c8607aafeac7bc22a11586e3efe34fde022f92)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on October 12, 2004, 11:18:22 AM
Wow.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 12, 2004, 12:28:03 PM
awesome.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pedro on October 12, 2004, 05:08:59 PM
i think it's kinda funny...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on October 12, 2004, 05:14:25 PM
I'm glad I'm not the only one
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on October 12, 2004, 08:59:04 PM
i will miss u, dean cain.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on October 12, 2004, 10:05:10 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tuttouomini.it%2Fmen%2Fimages%2Fnudi04%2Fdeancain.JPG&hash=2a7aaecd0e8579a4e63a91ad6a0ed5dc16ca52f9)
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geocities.com%2FTelevisionCity%2FStudio%2F4253%2FEspiritoNatal.jpg&hash=c9e1405a21d418c2223a7ee6a283f6d5b6c10c42)

In memorium (1993-1997)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 12, 2004, 10:50:26 PM
Jacques Derrida, founder of Deconstructionism, dead at 74

PARIS (AP) - Jacques Derrida, a philosopher who founded the school known as deconstructionism, has died, the French president's office said Saturday.

He was 74.

Derrida died at a Paris hospital of pancreatic cancer, French news media reported, quoting friends and admirers.

The French intellectual taught and thought on both sides of the Atlantic and his works were translated around the world.

Provocative and as difficult to define as his favourite subject - deconstruction - Derrida was a leading intellectual for decades. He is considered the modern-day French thinker best known internationally.

"With him, France has given the world one of its greatest contemporary philosophers, one of the major figures of intellectual life of our time," President Jacques Chirac said in a statement, calling Derrida a "citizen of the world."

Born to a Jewish family July 15, 1930, in El Biar, Algeria, then a French colony, Derrida wrote hundreds of books and essays. His reputation was launched with two 1967 publications in which he laid out basic ideas, Writing and Difference and Of Grammatology. Among other works were the 1972 Margins of Philosophy and, more recently, Spectres of Marx (1993).

Derrida was known as the father of deconstructionism, a branch of critical thought or analysis developed in the late 1960s and applied to literature, linguistics, philosophy, law and architecture.

Derrida focused his work on language, showing it has multiple layers and thus multiple meanings or interpretations, challenging the notion that speech is a direct form of communication, or even that the author of a text is the author of its meaning.

Deconstructionists like Derrida explored the means of liberating the written word from the structures of language, opening limitless textual interpretations. Not limited to language, Derrida's philosophy of deconstructionism was then applied to western values.

The deconstructionist approach has remained controversial, with detractors even proclaiming the movement dead. So divisive were Derrida's ideas that Cambridge University's plan to award him an honorary degree in 1992 was forced to a vote which he won.

Critics accused Derrida of nihilism, which he adamantly denied.

"Deconstruction is on the side of 'yes,' an affirmation of life," Derrida said in an August interview with Le Monde newspaper.

Former French culture minister Jack Lang, who knew Derrida, praised his "absolute originality," as well as his combative spirit.

"I knew he was ill, and at the same time, I saw him as so combative, so creative, so present, that I thought he would surmount his illness," Lang said on France-Info radio.

Derrida was often named - but never chosen - for a Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1949, Derrida left Algeria for Paris to further his education, receiving an advanced degree in philosophy from the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure in 1956. He later taught philosophy at the Sorbonne University from 1960-64 and at the Ecole des Hautes Etude en Sciences Sociales from 1984-99.

He also taught in the United States, at the University of California at Irvine and at Johns Hopkins and Yale universities.

Despite his esoteric path, Derrida said in several interviews he really wanted to be a soccer player but wasn't talented enough.

He refused to confine himself to an intellectual ivory tower, fighting for such things as the rights of Algerian immigrants in France and against apartheid in South Africa.

French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called Derrida "profoundly humanist," saying the philosopher spent his final years working for the "values of hospitality," particularly between Europe and the Mediterranean.

"He wanted to build an open idea of Europe," a ministry statement said.

As Derrida grew ill, death haunted him. In a Le Monde interview in August, Derrida said learning to live means learning to die.

"Less and less, I have not learned to accept death," he was quoted saying.

"I remain uneducable about the wisdom of learning to die."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on October 13, 2004, 12:22:19 AM
this is one i care about. how sad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on October 13, 2004, 09:36:28 AM
Give me a break...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on October 13, 2004, 06:07:32 PM
Quote from: PwaybloeGive me a break...
Hahahahaha

I could live without the guy who says my textbook is a novel.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 26, 2004, 09:40:46 AM
JOHN PEEL DIES OF HEART ATTACK

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JOHN PEEL has died of a heart attack aged 65.

The broadcasting legend, who had a career spanning over 40 years, was on holiday in Peru when he was taken ill.

A statement has been issued by the BBC which reads: "It has been confirmed that BBC radio broadcaster John Peel died from a heart attack last night whilst on holiday in Peru. He leaves behind his wife Sheila and four children."

Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt said "John Peel was a broadcasting legend. I am deeply saddened by his death as are all who work at Radio 1. John's influence has towered over the development of popular music for nearly four decades and his contribution to modern music and music culture is immeasurable.

"Hopeful bands all over the world sent their demo tapes to John knowing that he really cared. His commitment and passion for new music only grew stronger over the years. In fact, when I last saw him he was engaged in a lively debate with his fellow DJs over the state of new music today. He will be hugely missed. "

BBC Director of Radio & Music Jenny Abramsky added "John Peel was a unique broadcaster whose influence on Radio 1 could be felt from its very first days. He nurtured musicians and listeners alike introducing them to new sounds. His open minded approach to music was mirrored by his equally generous approach to his audience when he went to Radio 4 to present Home Truths.

"He had a remarkable rapport with all his listeners. Everyone at BBC Radio is devastated by the news. John is simply irreplaceable. Our hearts go out to Sheila and his children."

Musicians from across the world are already starting to pay tribute. Manic Street Preachers singer James Dean Bradfield said that he'd been a huge influence.

He said: "It was because of him I got to hear some of the most obscure but influential music I ever heard. He was a lifeline to hearing music I would never have heard otherwise. The service he provided was getting to hear music that you couldn't buy in Cardiff. He was a portal to a whole new world."

Fellow Welshman Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals described Peel as "very open-minded".

He said: "He was very inclusive of all kinds of music, very open-minded, and introduced a lot of diverse music to the public. He championed Welsh language music and for years was the only DJ on national radio who was willing to embrace it. He was very wary of trends such as Britpop, he was introducing people to drum 'n' bass and techno, things that were going on outside of the media."

Peel was born in Heswall near Chester and started his radio career in Dallas, Texas.

Throughout the 1960s he worked at a number of radio stations across the US, before returning to Radio London in 1967.

Over a career spanning 40 years Peel consistently championed new music, and in 1994 was given the NME Godlike Genius award for his services to music.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 02, 2004, 06:51:33 AM
Dutch Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh Murdered

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A Dutch filmmaker who had criticized the treatment of women under Islam in a movie and in newspaper columns was shot dead Tuesday outside a city government office in Amsterdam, police said.

Police spokeswoman Elly Florax confirmed media reports the victim was filmmaker Theo van Gogh and that a suspect had been arrested after a shootout in a local park. The suspect, who was not identified, and a police officer were injured, she said.

No motive was given for the attack.

Van Gogh had made headlines recently with a film critical of some elements of Islamic culture. He also wrote columns about the Islam which were published on his Web site, www.theovangogh.nl, and Dutch newspaper Metro. He had reportedly received death threats following the airing of the film.

The short television film "Submission" aired on Dutch television in August and enraged the Muslim community in the Netherlands which said it was provocative and lacked insight.

It told the fictional story of a Muslim woman forced into a violent marriage, raped by a relative and brutally punished for adultery.

The English-language film was scripted by a right-wing politician who years ago renounced the Islamic faith of her birth and now refers to herself as an "ex-Muslim."

Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament, has repeatedly outraged fellow Muslims by criticizing Islamic customs and the failure of Muslim families to adopt Dutch ways.

The place of Muslim immigrants in Dutch society has long been a contentious issue in the Netherlands, where many right-wing politicians have pushed for tougher immigration laws and say Muslims already settled in the country must make a greater effort to assimilate.

Theo van Gogh, 47, has often come under criticism for his controversial movies. In December, his next movie "06-05," about the May 6, 2002 assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, is scheduled to debut on the Internet.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 07, 2004, 11:01:31 PM
Howard Keel, Star of Musicals, Dies at 85

Howard Keel, the broad-shouldered baritone who romanced his way through a series of glittery MGM musicals such as "Kiss Me Kate" and "Annie Get Your Gun" and later revived his career with television's "Dallas," died Sunday. He was 85.

Keel died Sunday morning of colon cancer at his home in Palm Desert, according to his son, Gunnar.

Keel starred in Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals in New York and London before being signed to an MGM contract after World War II. The timing was perfect: He became a star with his first MGM film, playing Frank Butler to Betty Hutton's Annie Oakley in "Annie Get Your Gun."

Keel's size and lusty voice made him an ideal leading man for such stars as Esther Williams ("Pagan Love Song," "Texas Carnival," "Jupiter's Darling"), Ann Blyth ("Rose Marie," "Kismet"), Kathryn Grayson ("Show Boat," "Lovely to Look At," "Kiss Me Kate") and Doris Day ("Calamity Jane").

His own favorite film was the exuberant "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on November 07, 2004, 11:17:16 PM
i always come here thinking it's gonna be a real star.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 08, 2004, 12:19:14 AM
Howard Keel was if you appreciate musicals.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on November 11, 2004, 02:15:12 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/11/arafat.main/index.html

Arafat's body en route to funeral in Egypt
West Bank burial expected for Palestinian leader
Thursday, November 11, 2004 Posted: 3:01 PM EST (2001 GMT)



PARIS, France (CNN) -- Following a French military ceremony on Thursday, the body of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat departed for Egypt hours after the leader died of a lengthy and unknown illness at a Paris hospital.

News of the Cairo memorial service prompted national leaders and representatives from around the world to travel to Egypt for Friday's funeral.

The 75-year-old Arafat had spent his life seeking a homeland for his people but was seen by Israelis as a terrorist and roadblock to peace.

"The last two days were very painful, very difficult days," said Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, who confirmed Arafat's death Thursday morning. "And now, after these painful days of President Arafat, he is dead."

Arafat died at 3:30 a.m. (9:30 p.m. Wednesday ET), days after suffering a brain hemorrhage and coma. He was admitted to the hospital October 29, with a blood ailment and digestive problems that were never clearly described.

As word spread of Arafat's death, Palestinians gathered in the streets in the West Bank and Gaza and at his former headquarters in Ramallah.

Although his death leaves no clear successor in the often fractious world of Palestinian politics, Palestinian parliament speaker Rawhi Fattuh has been sworn in as interim president of the Palestinian Authority.

Fattuh praised Arafat's leadership, calling him "a man of peace," and promised to follow in his footsteps.

Elections to find a permanent replacement for Arafat are set to take place within 60 days.

During Arafat's illness, Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei was in charge of the Palestinian Authority, while Mahmoud Abbas led the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee.

Early Thursday, the PLO's executive committee unanimously approved Abbas, a former Palestinian prime minister, to replace Arafat as PLO chairman.

A military funeral is scheduled to take place near Cairo's airport Friday at 11 a.m. (4 a.m. ET), amid three days of official mourning in Egypt, according to a spokesman for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Arafat was born in Cairo in 1929.

Arafat's body is then expected to be taken for burial Friday to the West Bank city of Ramallah aboard an Egyptian military helicopter, the spokesman said.

Israel refused Arafat's request to be buried in Jerusalem, but agreed to allow his interment at his Ramallah compound, where he had been confined for nearly three years before falling ill.

Israel has ordered a general closure of the West Bank and Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces, as the region prepares for the burial.

Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, along with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for their work on the Oslo accords, seen at the time as a breakthrough that could lead to an independent Palestinian state and a permanent peace.

Erakat called it "heartbreaking" that Arafat died before achieving his goal of an independent Palestinian state, "and the Israeli occupation of our land has not finished yet."

But he said Arafat managed to preserve Palestinian national identity during decades without a state of their own.

Erakat vowed that the grave in Ramallah would be temporary.

"One day, we will have our own independent state with east Jerusalem as its capital," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responded to news of Arafat's death Thursday saying, "The recent events could be a historic turning point for the Middle East. Israel is a country that seeks peace and will continue in its efforts to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians without delay.

"I hope that the new Palestinian leadership ... will understand that the advancement of the relations ... depends first and foremost on them stopping terror."

In a statement, U.S. President Bush called Arafat's death "a significant moment in Palestinian history.

"We express our condolences to the Palestinian people. For the Palestinian people, we hope that the future will bring peace and the fulfillment of their aspirations for an independent, democratic Palestine that is at peace with its neighbors.

"During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace."

Across five decades, Arafat -- adorned with his trademark checkered kaffiyeh -- was the most prominent face of Palestinian opposition to Israel, first as the head of the PLO, which carried out terrorist attacks against Israeli targets, and later as the head of the quasi-governmental Palestinian Authority, after parts of the West Bank and Gaza were returned to Palestinian control.

Arafat is survived by his widow, Suha Tawil, whom he married in 1991, and their daughter, Zahwa, who was born in 1995.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: El Duderino on November 11, 2004, 06:51:47 PM
Quote from: Pubricki always come here thinking it's gonna be a real star.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on November 13, 2004, 09:03:50 PM
ODB is dead.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1493725/20041113/ol_dirty_bastard.jhtml?headlines=true

Rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard Dies
11.13.2004 7:56 PM EST

Sources close to ODB said he had been complaining of chest pains earlier in the day.

Ol' Dirty Bastard, a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, died of unknown causes on Saturday (November 13) in New York, according to his spokesperson. He was 35.

Sources close to the rapper (whose real name was Russell Tyrone Jones) said he had been complaining of chest pains earlier in the day, although no further details are available as of yet. ODB had been scheduled to perform with Wu-Tang Clan at a concert in New Jersey on Friday night, but missed the show.

Another source reported that ODB arrived in the New York area on a flight from Denver at 10:30 p.m. Friday. He went to a Manhattan studio (having missed the concert), and collapsed within an hour of arriving there.

A statement was released Saturday evening by ODB's mother, Cherry Jones. "This evening, I received a phone call that is every mother's worst dream," she said. "My son, Russell Jones, passed away. To the public, he was known as Ol' Dirty Bastard, but to me, he was known as Rusty, the kindest, most generous soul on earth. I appreciate all the support and prayers that I have received. Russell was more than a rapper, he was a loving father, brother, uncle, and most of all, son."

Damon Dash, who signed ODB to Roc-A-Fella Records last fall, also released a statement. "All of us in the Roc-A-Fella family are shocked and saddened by the sudden and tragic death or our brother and friend," Dash said. "Russell inspired all of us with his spirit, wit and tremendous heart. He will be missed dearly, and our thoughts, prayers and deepest condolences go out to his wonderful family. The world has lost a great talent, but we mourn the loss of our friend."

Dirty, easily the most eccentric of the nine Wu-Tang Clan rappers (if not in all of hip-hop), showed promise as a solo artist, but was hindered by a long series of clashes with the law, which ranged from shoplifting to making terrorist threats.

The rapper, who also went by several unusual aliases (including Osirus, Joe Bannanas [sic], Dirt McGirt, Dirt Dog, Unique Ason and Big Baby Jesus), was released from prison last year. He had served a two-year term for parole violation and drug charges.

After his release from prison and psychiatric care, ODB signed with the Roc and was recording as Dirt McGirt (see "Ol' Dirty Bastard Hits Campaign Trail With New Album"). Most recently, he collaborated with Macy Gray for the album (see "ODB Duets With Macy Gray On 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' ").

After several years apart, Wu-Tang reunited this summer for a concert in California. A recording of the show, titled Disciples of the 36 Chambers: Chapter 1, was released in September.

MTV News will have more on this story as it develops.

Ol' Dirty Rocks Like Elton John At First Post-Jail Live Show

Ol' Dirty Lays Down Track With Pharrell Before Turning Into A Pumpkin

Ol' Dirty Bastard Now Dirt McGirt, Signs To Roc-A-Fella

ODB Rejoins Society (Kind Of); Set To Drop New LPs, 'Ol' Dirty Drawers'
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on November 13, 2004, 09:14:14 PM
damn. i was listening to dogshit yesterday.. :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on November 13, 2004, 09:22:17 PM
that brought tears to my eyes.

i'm not joking.

OBD RIP :cry:  :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ghostboy on November 13, 2004, 09:26:00 PM
Damn. Time to pop in the the 36 Chambers and give it a reflective spin.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatwad on November 13, 2004, 09:55:32 PM
and i was hoping fot that one last really great wu tang album.

he will be missed
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on November 13, 2004, 10:49:32 PM
Quote from: Stefen"Russell inspired all of us with his spirit, wit and tremendous heart."

...was hindered by a long series of clashes with the law, which ranged from shoplifting to making terrorist threats....



:?


anyways RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on November 14, 2004, 04:02:53 AM
no!! :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on November 14, 2004, 12:37:02 PM
The weirdest part of all of this...

I was looking through some old CD's I hadn't listened to in a long time, so I tossed in one of their more recent CD's "Wu-Tang Clan - The W", and I was thinking about how it's sad that ODB wasn't in it, and I was about to look for some older Wu-Tang to listen to ODB because I always liked him, and I read this just after the thought crossed my mind.

Freaky.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 17, 2004, 01:31:20 PM
My condolences to SHAFTR:

Colombier, Who Scored 'Purple Rain,' Dies

Michel Colombier, who scored more than 100 movies and television productions including "White Nights," "Against All Odds," and "Purple Rain," has died. He was 65.

Colombier, who also composed chamber music pieces and more than 20 ballets, died Sunday of cancer at his home in Santa Monica.

Colombier was French-born and was often called the "godfather of French fusion" or, in Japan, "Fusion-sama."

He had the versatility to write classical phrases for Mikhail Baryshnikov's ballet steps in "White Nights," collaborate with Prince on futuristic rock sounds for "Purple Rain," and create gritty, rhythmic music for "New Jack City."

Colombier was classically trained as a pianist at the Paris Conservatory. He performed on the soundtracks of some of the films he scored, including "The Golden Child" a 1986 movie starring Eddie Murphy.

Other films with his music include "The Money Pit" with Tom Hanks, "Ruthless People" with Danny DeVito and Bette Midler, "Surrender" with Sally Field and Michael Caine, "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" with Angela Bassett and "Swept Away" with Madonna.

His television work included the "Desperado" series for NBC in the late 1980s and HBO's "Tales From the Crypt." He directed such top orchestras as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Paris Opera and the London Symphony.

His awards included the Cesar, the Edison Prize and a Tokyo Music Award.

Colombier is survived by his wife, Dana; six children, Christian, Agathe, David, Emily, Siena and Arabella; and a sister, Marie-Francoise Hoessler.

A memorial observance was being planned.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on November 30, 2004, 10:39:38 AM
Actor John Barrymore dead at 72

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- John Drew Barrymore, the sometimes troubled heir to an acting dynasty and absent father of movie star Drew Barrymore, died Monday. He was 72.

"He was a cool cat. Please smile when you think of him," Drew Barrymore said in a statement issued by her publicist's office.

No information was released about the cause of death or where in Los Angeles he died.

John D. Barrymore was part of an acting clan that included his father, the famed stage and early film actor John Barrymore, and his father's siblings, Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. Drew Barrymore was his daughter by his third wife, Ildiko Jaid Barrymore.

John D. Barrymore was born in Beverly Hills on June 4, 1932. His mother was actress Dolores Costello.

He started his career while a teenager, appearing professionally first as John Barrymore Jr. and then as John Drew Barrymore. He had movie roles in the 1950s in "The Sundowners," "High Lonesome," "Quebec," "The Big Night," "Thunderbirds" and "While the City Sleeps."

But along the way there were problems with drugs, drunken driving and violence, domestic and otherwise. By the early 1960s he had left Hollywood for Italy to work in European movies.

In a 1962 interview with The Associated Press in Rome he made no apologies for headline-grabbing street brawls there.

"I'm not a nice, clean-cut American kid at all," he said. "I'm just a human being. Those things just happen."

By 1964 he had been married twice, to Cara Williams and to Italian actress Gabriella Palazollo, and had returned to Hollywood after making more than a dozen films overseas -- none of them any good by his own estimation.

By then his billing had become John Drew Barrymore, perhaps to step out of his father's shadow.

"I don't mind if my acting is compared to him," he said in an AP interview. "The trouble is that people expect me to live like him."

Later, Barrymore had sporadic film and television roles.

As a teenage star battling alcoholism herself, Drew Barrymore wrote about her father in the memoir "Little Girl Lost." He was depicted as menacing, showing up only to abuse his daughter and former wife and ask for money.

"The little bit of relationship that there was was very abusive and just chaotic," Drew Barrymore told the AP in 1990.

Still, she said, "I had this fantasy in my mind, that I was going to have 'Father Knows Best' walk through the door. I wanted that so bad, and I wasn't going to face reality that it wasn't going to happen."

John D. Barrymore is also survived by a son, John Barrymore III, by his first wife.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on December 13, 2004, 03:49:34 PM
Scott Peterson sentenced to death. Owned.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on December 28, 2004, 05:34:53 PM
Somewhere in the world, there's a Godardian crying...


Author Susan Sontag dies at 71
Leading thinker wrote 'On Photography,' 'Notes on Camp'


NEW YORK (AP) -- Susan Sontag, the author, activist and self-defined "zealot of seriousness" whose voracious mind and provocative prose made her a leading intellectual of the past half century, died Tuesday. She was 71.

Sontag died at 7:10 a.m. Tuesday, said Esther Carver, a spokeswoman for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

The hospital declined to release a cause of death. Sontag had been treated for breast cancer in the 1970s.

Sontag called herself a "besotted aesthete," an "obsessed moralist" and a "zealot of seriousness." Tall and commanding, her very presence suggested grand, passionate drama: eyes the richest brown; thick, black hair accented by a bolt of white; the voice deep and assured; her expression a severe stare or a wry smile, as if amused by a joke only she could tell.

She wrote a best-selling historical novel, "The Volcano Lover," and in 2000 won the National Book Award for the historical novel "In America." But her greatest literary impact was as an essayist.

The 1964 piece "Notes on Camp," which established her as a major new writer, popularized the "so bad it's good" attitude toward popular culture, applicable to everything from "Swan Lake" to feather boas. In "Against Interpretation," this most analytical of writers worried that critical analysis interfered with art's "incantatory, magical" power.

She also wrote such influential works as "Illness as Metaphor," in which she examined how disease had been alternately romanticized and demonized, and "On Photography," in which she argued pictures sometimes distance viewers from the subject matter. "On Photography" received a National Book Critics Circle award in 1978. "Regarding the Pain of Others," a partial refutation of "On Photography," was an NBCC finalist in 2004.

She read authors from all over the world and is credited with introducing such European intellectuals as Roland Barthes and Elias Canetti to American readers.

"I know of no other intellectual who is so clear-minded with a capacity to link, to connect, to relate," Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist, once said. "She is unique."

Unlike many American writers, she was deeply involved in politics, even after the 1960s. From 1987-89, Sontag served as president of American chapter of the writers organization PEN. When the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Salman Rushdie's death because of the alleged blasphemy of "The Satanic Verses," she helped lead protests in the literary community.

Sontag campaigned relentlessly for human rights and throughout the 1990s traveled to the region of Yugoslavia, calling for international action against the growing civil war. In 1993, she visited Sarajevo and staged a production of "Waiting for Godot."

Reading and writing
The daughter of a fur trader, she was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York in 1933, and also spent her early years in Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles. Her mother was an alcoholic; her father died when she was 5. Her mother later married an Army officer, Capt. Nathan Sontag.

Susan Sontag remembered her childhood as "one long prison sentence." She skipped three grades and graduated from high school at 15; the principal told her she was wasting her time there. Her mother, meanwhile, warned if she did not stop reading she would never marry.

Her mother was wrong. At the University of Chicago, she attended a lecture by Philip Rieff, a social psychologist and historian. They were married 10 days later. She was 17, he 28. "He was passionate, he was bookish, he was pure," she later said of him.

By the mid-1960s, she and Rieff were divorced (they had a son, David, born in 1952), and Sontag had emerged in New York's literary society. She was known for her essays, but also wrote fiction, although not so successfully at first. "Death Kit" and "The Benefactor" were experimental novels few found worth getting through.

"Unfortunately, Miss Sontag's intelligence is still greater than her talent," Gore Vidal wrote in a 1967 review of "Death Kit."

"Yet ... once she has freed herself of literature, she will have the power to make it, and there are not many American writers one can say that of."

Her fiction became more accessible. She wrote an acclaimed short story about AIDS, "The Way We Live Now," and a best-selling novel, "The Volcano Lover," about Lord Nelson and his mistress Lady Hamilton.

In 2000, her novel "In America," about the 19th-century Polish actress Helena Modjeska, was a commercial disappointment and was criticized for the uncredited use of material from fiction and nonfiction sources. Nonetheless, Sontag won the National Book Award.

Unrestrained
Sontag's work also included making the films "Duet For Cannibals" and "Brother Carl" and writing the play "Alice in Bed," based on the life of Alice James, the ailing sister of Henry and William James. Sontag appeared as herself in Woody Allen's mock documentary, "Zelig."

In 1999 she wrote an essay for "Women," a compilation of portraits by her longtime companion, photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Sontag did not practice the art of restrained discourse. Writing in the 1960s about the Vietnam War she declared "the white race is the cancer of human history." Days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she criticized U.S. foreign policy and offered backhanded praise for the hijackers.

"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" she wrote in The New Yorker.

"In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."

Even among sympathetic souls, she found reason to contend. At a 1998 dinner, she was one of three given a Writers For Writers Award for contributions to others in the field. Sontag spoke after fellow guest of honor E.L. Doctorow, who urged writers to treat each other as "colleagues" and worried about the isolation of what he called "print culture."

"I agree with Mr. Doctorow that we are all colleagues, but there are perhaps too many of us," Sontag stated.

"Nobody has to be a writer. Print culture may be under siege, but there has been an enormous inflation in the number of books printed, and very few of these could be considered part of literature. ... Unlike what has been said here before, for me the primary obligation is human solidarity."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on December 29, 2004, 09:55:13 AM
NEW YORK - "Law & Order" star Jerry Orbach has died of prostate cancer at 69, a representative of the show said Wednesday.

Orbach died Tuesday night in Manhattan after several weeks of treatment, Audrey Davis of the public relations agency Lippin Group said.

When his illness was diagnosed, he had begun production on NBC's upcoming spinoff "Law & Order: Trial By Jury," after 12 seasons playing Detective Lennie Briscoe in the original series. His return to the new show had been expected early next year.

On Broadway, the Bronx-born Orbach starred in hit musicals including "Carnival," "Promises, Promises" (for which he won a Tony Award), "Chicago" and "42nd Street."

Among his film appearances were roles in "Dirty Dancing," "Prince of the City" and "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

:cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: El Duderino on December 29, 2004, 07:08:10 PM
sad. i'll miss him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 31, 2004, 12:30:45 AM
One of my dad's favorites:

Jazz Giant Artie Shaw Dies at Age 94

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw, famed for classic recordings of "Begin the Beguine" and "Oh, Lady Be Good" as well as turbulent marriages to movie stars Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, died on Thursday at age 94, his manager Will Curtis said.
 
Shaw, who died at his Los Angeles-area home, had been in ill health for several years since he fell and broke a hip while walking his dog, Curtis said.

"He was in tremendous pain," he added.

Born Arnold Jacob Arshawsky to a seamstress mother and photographer father in New York City on May 23, 1910, Shaw was about as restless a jazz star as one could find.

He formed and reformed bands, married and divorced eight times, gave up music for more than 30 years and put down his clarinet in 1954 never to play it in public again, quitting at age 44.

Critics dismissed his work at first. But soon they hailed him as a unique voice in swing-era jazz, especially for his beautiful tone and control of his instrument's top register.

The Down Beat critic Howard Mandel once wrote: "In Shaw's lips and hands the clarinet bent as pliantly as a blade of grass; it thrilled him to make glissandi, fast or sad melodies, and wonderful virtuosic turns."

Among his famous songs were a 1938 rendition of "Begin the Beguine," which made him a national star and chief rival to legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman, "Oh, Lady Be Good," "Stardust," "Indian Love Call" and "Frenesi."

He once said the success of "Begin the Beguine" was like an anchor around his neck.

As smooth as his tone was, Shaw was a man at war with himself. A crusty, self-declared perfectionist, Shaw gave up the clarinet because he said could not reach the level of artistry he desired.

In 1981, he ended a long musical intermission by reorganizing a band that bore his name and played his music -- but with another clarinetist, Dick Johnson, leading the orchestra and playing the solos Shaw made famous.

Shaw traveled with the orchestra as a guest host and sometime conductor of the band's signature opening number, "Nightmare."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on January 04, 2005, 11:18:24 PM
when the hell did p.j. soles die? she's listed over at the "imdb.com bids farewell" pages.

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/virtual/farewell04/35
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on January 04, 2005, 11:20:23 PM
musta been a typo.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 05, 2005, 12:11:11 AM
Quote from: mogwaiwhen the hell did p.j. soles die? she's listed over at the "imdb.com bids farewell" pages.

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/virtual/farewell04/35

The photo is from Rock N Roll High School, which she was in, but the farewell is for Johnny Ramone.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Cooper's son dies, 17

BOSTON -- Jess Lanier Cooper, the 17-year-old son of Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper, has died at the family's home in Kingston, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. The teenager died Monday of natural causes related to his cerebral palsy, family spokeswoman Cara Tripicchio said. A memorial service was scheduled for Saturday in Duxbury. Cooper's parents are advocates for children with special needs and insisted their son attend mainstream classes at Silver Lake Regional High School, where he earned a place on the honor roll. The teenager was the only child of Cooper and his wife, actress Marianne Leone, who has appeared on the HBO series, "The Sopranos." Chris Cooper, 53, won an Oscar for best supporting actor last year for his role as an orchid thief in the movie "Adaptation." (AP)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on January 05, 2005, 08:22:33 AM
oh, didn't see that. :oops:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Two Lane Blacktop on January 13, 2005, 03:26:27 PM
OBITUARIES
Thelma White, 94; Actress Known for 'Reefer Madness'
By Elaine Woo
Times Staff Writer

January 13, 2005

Thelma White, whose portrayal of a hard-boiled addiction queen in the 1936 movie "Reefer Madness" was largely forgotten until the film resurfaced in the 1970s as a cult classic, died of pneumonia Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills. She was 94.

Born in 1910, White was a carnival performer as a toddler, progressed to vaudeville, radio and movies, then worked as an agent and producer for many years. During her heyday as an actress, she appeared alongside such legendary performers as W.C. Fields, Will Rogers, Red Skelton and Jack Benny. What secured her place in Hollywood history, however, was a movie so awful that its memory still made her shudder 50 years later.

"Reefer Madness" was a low-budget propaganda film written by a religious group to broadcast the dangers of marijuana. It was relegated to the cinema waste heap for almost 40 years until 1972, when Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws discovered it in the Library of Congress archives and paid $297 for a print. He then screened it in New York as a benefit for the advocacy group, unwittingly launching it on the road to cult-film history.

The movie was seen by Robert Shaye, who recognized its appeal as a hilarious, if unintentional, parody. He re-released it through his then-fledgling company, New Line Cinema, holding midnight showings until the film became a high-camp hit, especially popular on college campuses. (Based on early successes such as "Reefer Madness," New Line grew into a force in the entertainment industry, responsible for "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and other hits.)

Today the film that critic Leonard Maltin calls "the granddaddy of all 'Worst' movies" still commands a loyal audience on the cult circuit. Amazon.com ranks it No. 35 on its list of 100 bestselling cult-movie videos, and it has been viewed free more than 19,000 times in recent years at http://www.archive.org/movies .

"I'm ashamed to say that it's the only one of my films that's become a classic," White, who made more than 40 movies and shorts during the 1930s and 1940s, told The Times in a 1987 interview.

"I hide my head when I think about it," she said, adding that it was "a dreadful film."

Born Thelma Wolpa in Lincoln, Neb., White was the daughter of itinerant carnival performers who traveled throughout the Midwest. She made her debut at age 2 when her parents stuck her in a line of dolls and at the appropriate moment cued her to start cooing and wiggling.

By 10 she was dancing and singing in vaudeville as the younger member of an act called "The White Sisters," even though she was unrelated to the other half of the duo. They were such a hit that White recalled her mother sewing $1,000 bills into her corset for safekeeping.

After stints with the Ziegfeld Follies and Earl Carroll revues, White turned to movies, signing in 1928 with RKO Studios, which cast her in B movies such as "A Night in a Dormitory," "Sixteen Sweeties" and "Ride 'Em Cowboy!"

In 1935, the musical and comedy actress, to her horror, was asked to star in a movie about teenagers lured into marijuana addiction. White was to play one of the adults who push the "demon weed" on unsuspecting youths. As a starlet still on contract to RKO, she had little choice but to accept the role of Mae, a tough blond who lures high school students to her apartment for back-parlor sex and marijuana orgies.

The characters come to dismal ends ? one of the addicted teenagers shoots his girlfriend when she comes to rescue him, while another victim of the "evil weed" runs over and kills a hapless pedestrian. The "ghastly menace" of marijuana sends other characters to the insane asylum and death by leaping out a window.

Rife with overacting and arch melodrama, the movie was a flop. Furthering the insult, the rights were sold to a producer of exploitation films, who screened it on the rural circuit after adding tawdry sex scenes.

Despite her unwholesome role in what became one of the most notorious exploitation movies of the 1930s, White continued to earn featured parts in traveling revues in the United States and abroad.

Misfortune struck at the end of World War II, when, as a USO performer in the Aleutian Islands, she contracted a crippling illness and was told she would never walk again. After several years, she recovered sufficiently to embark on a new career as an agent for such actors as Robert Blake, James Coburn, Ann Jillian, Dolores Hart and Robert Fuller.

In later years, White produced television and movie projects, including the 1969 feature "Tom Jones Rides Again," in which she also co-starred.

Wed three times, she said her third marriage, in 1957, to actor and costume designer Tony Millard was her happiest. Until his death in 1999, they lived in a modest Panorama City bungalow with a collection of 300 videotapes, including two copies of "Reefer Madness."

The movie also inspired an award-winning musical play by the same name that ran off-Broadway after opening in 1999 at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Hollywood.

White, despite her reliance on a wheelchair and oxygen tank, saw the show twice. Any discomfort caused by the notoriety of the movie was dispelled by the play, which unreservedly spoofed it.

The production "was campy and over the top, and she loved it," Michael Homeier, her godson and only survivor, said Wednesday.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on January 15, 2005, 11:21:13 AM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4166943.stm

Bollywood star Amrish Puri dies
Veteran Bollywood actor, Amrish Puri, has died at the age of 72 in Mumbai (Bombay) from a brain haemorrhage.

Puri was best known for playing the role of a villain in more than 200 Bollywood films spread over more than three decades.

He also acted in Hollywood, making his mark in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has joined Bollywood directors and stars in condoling Puri's death.

"Indian cinema and theatre will, without doubt, miss his commanding and endearing presence," Mr Singh said.

Didn't recover

A hospital administrator said he had been admitted to hospital because of a blood clot in his brain after falling in his home.

"He suffered a head injury due to the fall and didn't really recover," Anupam Verma of Mumbai's Hinduja hospital told the Associated Press.

His death has saddened the Bollywood fraternity who say he will be hard to replace.

"The film industry has lost a giant," said film director Govind Nihalani who had worked with Puri in 14 films spread over 25 years.

Other directors paid him rich tributes saying he was a "director's actor".

The younger brother of a Bollywood character actor, Madan Puri, Amrish Puri had a relatively late start in the industry at the age of 40, making his debut in 1971 with the film Reshma Aur Shera (Reshma and Shera).

He caught the attention of the box office with several hits in the 1980s and 90s including Vidhaata (God), Phool Aur Kaante (Flowers and Thorns), Mr India and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (Big Hearts Will Win Their Brides).

It was his role as the villain Mogambo in Mr India and his famous line, "Mogambo Khush Hua (Mogambo is pleased)" that raised Puri's profile and earned him recognition as one of Bollywood's best known character actors.

Hollywood

His last major hit was the film Hulchul (Uproar) which was released in December.

But it was Spielberg's second film in the Indiana Jones trilogy that won him international recognition when he played the bald-headed high priest Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Puri also had a minor role in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi playing the Indian independence leader's Muslim sponsor in South Africa.

He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 17, 2005, 11:16:23 PM
Actress Virginia Mayo Dead at 84

Virginia Mayo, a 1940s screen siren who co-starred opposite such greats as Danny Kaye and James Cagney, died near Los Angeles on Monday of pneumonia and heart failure, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site. She was 84.

Mayo, whose films included "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" "White Heat" and "The Best Years of Our Lives" died in a nursing home near her residence in Thousand Oaks, California, the newspaper quoted a family friend as saying.

Famed for her peaches-and-cream complexion and curvaceous figure, the St. Louis native appeared in more than 40 films during the 1940s and '50s, equally adept at comedies and dramas.

A former vaudeville performer, she made her Hollywood debut in the 1943 movie "Jack London," starring her future husband, Michael O'Shea.

She teamed with Kaye the following year in "Up in Arms," and they reunited over the next few years in "The Kid From Brooklyn" "A Song Is Born," and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

Perhaps her most memorable role was as the unscrupulous wife of Cagney's gangster character in the 1949 crime melodrama "White Heat."

"Jimmy was the master actor, the most dynamic star the screen ever had," Mayo told the Los Angeles Times in 1981. "His acting was so real that I was really scared half the time we were on the set."

Her other credits included "Captain Horatio Hornblower" with Gregory Peck; "The Silver Chalice" with Paul Newman; and "The Flame and the Arrow" with Burt Lancaster.

After her career faded in the early 1960s, she did stage and dinner theater work. She was married to O'Shea from 1947 until his death in 1973. She is survived by a daughter, Mary Johnston.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleuth on January 23, 2005, 01:19:44 PM
Johnny Carson, King of Late Night, Dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Johnny Carson, the "Tonight Show" TV host who served America a smooth nightcap of celebrity banter, droll comedy and heartland charm for 30 years, has died. He was 79.

"Mr. Carson passed away peacefully early Sunday morning," his nephew, Jeff Sotzing, told The Associated Press. "He was surrounded by his family, whose loss will be immeasurable. There will be no memorial service."

Sotzing would not give further details, including the time of death or the location.

The boyish-looking Nebraska native with the disarming grin, who survived every attempt to topple him from his late-night talk show throne, was a star who managed never to distance himself from his audience.

His wealth, the adoration of his guests - particularly the many young comics whose careers he launched - the wry tales of multiple divorces: Carson's air of modesty made it all serve to enhance his bedtime intimacy with viewers.

"Heeeeere's Johnny!" was the booming announcement from sidekick Ed McMahon that ushered Carson out to the stage. Then the formula: the topical monologue, the guests, the broadly played skits such as "Carnac the Magnificent."

But America never tired of him; Carson went out on top when he retired in May 1992. In his final show, he told his audience: "And so it has come to this. I am one of the lucky people in the world. I found something that I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it."

His personal life could not match the perfection of his career. Carson was married four times, divorced three. In 1991, one of his three sons, 39-year-old Ricky, was killed in a car accident.

Nearly all of Carson's professional life was spent in television, from his postwar start at Nebraska stations in the late 1940s to his three decades with NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."

Carson choose to let "Tonight" stand as his career zenith and his finale, withdrawing into a quiet retirement that suited his private nature and refusing involvement in other show business projects.

In 1993, he explained his absence from the limelight.

"I have an ego like anybody else," Carson told The Washington Post, "but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on January 23, 2005, 01:27:43 PM
I thought this was great, on CNN.com a few days ago:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/19/television.carson.reut/index.html
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on January 23, 2005, 01:39:47 PM
Quote from: Gamblor not so gone.I thought this was great, on CNN.com a few days ago:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/19/television.carson.reut/index.html
Yea, I was gonna mention that soon. Dave and Conan are in reruns this week so everyone better be tuned into Leno this monday night for something special (never thought i'd say that).

The only "good" that could come out of all this is better dvd releases of carson's great work, much like when the great Jack Paar passed on. Carson put everyone to shame as a host and as a person. While Conan will have no problem filling Leno's shoes in 2009, nobody will ever fill Johnny Carson's. :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on January 23, 2005, 06:33:25 PM
May he rest in peace.  :(

Dateline is running a special on him right now.  Cinephile tells me it'll be airing at 1:30 AM EST, too.  Good stuff.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on January 24, 2005, 02:35:09 AM
I hate Leno but will be watching on Monday night as well.

Carson was a genius.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Weird. Oh on January 26, 2005, 03:33:33 AM
It's always sad when someone who is this beloved dies. I feel depressed and somewhat deprived  for not having gotten to experience watching Carson in work. I was born in 1985, thus making me a bit past his time. I have seen infomercials and various other programs and witnessed his impeccable charm and  timing as a host. He definitely was the best and more than likely will always be.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on January 27, 2005, 02:12:07 PM
anybody read that fake thing in the associated press or whatever about john goodman being dead?  scared the shit out of me.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on January 27, 2005, 02:30:42 PM
It has some credibility only because he's been in much poorer health over the last year, with more weight gain.  It's been said sound men on his current show have to be very careful not to pick up his breathing because of it.  Really quite a shame.  Hope he gets in shape soon.  That show (Center of the Universe) was cancelled, too, so at least he'll have the free time.  Heh.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Two Lane Blacktop on January 27, 2005, 02:33:41 PM
Quote from: ewardanybody read that fake thing in the associated press or whatever about john goodman being dead?

It was apparently a joke played on some folks over at Live Journal, and took on a life of its own.  (So to speak.)

2LB
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on January 27, 2005, 04:41:50 PM
Quote from: wantautopia?That show (Center of the Universe) was cancelled, too, so at least he'll have the free time.

let us pray he uses it wisely.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 02, 2005, 04:06:39 PM
January 31, 2005 -- EVEN in death, Rodney Dangerfield gets no respect. The late comedy legend's longtime publicist, Kevin Sasaki, got a call from a booker at CNN last week asking him if "Rodney would be available to share his comments on the passing and legacy of Johnny Carson." Sasaki replied that unless CNN had a new way of linking up to the afterlife via satellite, that would be impossible. Dangerfield, of course, passed away last October. Ironically, his new DVD set, "Rodney Dangerfield — The Ultimate No Respect Collection," was posthumously released last month, and includes clips culled from his more than 70 appearances on "The Tonight Show."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on February 02, 2005, 09:06:38 PM
Quote from: MacGuffinJanuary 31, 2005 -- EVEN in death, Rodney Dangerfield gets no respect. The late comedy legend's longtime publicist, Kevin Sasaki, got a call from a booker at CNN last week asking him if "Rodney would be available to share his comments on the passing and legacy of Johnny Carson." Sasaki replied that unless CNN had a new way of linking up to the afterlife via satellite, that would be impossible. Dangerfield, of course, passed away last October. Ironically, his new DVD set, "Rodney Dangerfield — The Ultimate No Respect Collection," was posthumously released last month, and includes clips culled from his more than 70 appearances on "The Tonight Show."

Pretty embaressing..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 04, 2005, 08:40:27 AM
Actor John Vernon of 'Animal House' Dies

John Vernon, a stage-trained character actor who played cunning villains in film and TV and made his comedy mark as Dean Wormer in "National Lampoon's Animal House," has died. He was 72.

Vernon died at home in his sleep Tuesday following complications from Jan. 16 heart surgery, his daughter, Kate Vernon, said Thursday.

The Canadian-born actor found satisfaction in his varied career, his daughter said.

"He loved the comedy that he was able to do, but his training was in drama and he really enjoyed the dramatic roles," she said.

Movie fans may know him best for his role in "Animal House" as Dean Wormer, who is bent on expelling the hard-partying Delta fraternity house. The movie, starring John Belushi and Tim Matheson, is one of the most popular comedies ever made.

Born in 1932 in Montreal, Vernon studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He did repertory work in England and was heard off-screen as the voice of Big Brother in the 1956 film "1984."

He returned to Canada to appear on stage and on television, including the starring role in the 1960s drama "Wojeck," in which he played a coroner.

"John was superb. He really knew how to use the camera, and vocally he was just born to have a mike nearby," Ted Follows, his co-star in "Wojeck," told The Canadian Press.

After appearing on Broadway in "Royal Hunt of the Sun" he became a steady player in U.S. films, making his debut in director John Boorman's "Point Blank" (1967) as a turncoat tossed to his death by Lee Marvin.

Vernon went on to work with other celebrated filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock ("Topaz," 1969); Don Siegel ("Dirty Harry," 1971), and Clint Eastwood ("The Outlaw Josey Wales" 1976).

His deep, menacing voice was custom-made for the many bad guys he played.

He reprised his role in "National Lampoon's Animal House" in the TV spinoff "Delta House" (1979). Other comedy roles followed, including the part of Mr. Big in the film "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka" in 1988.

Vernon appeared in a DVD edition of "Animal House" as part of a satiric update on the characters. Wormer was portrayed as a curmudgeonly old man in a wheelchair.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 04, 2005, 01:54:51 PM
Actor Ossie Davis found dead in Miami hotel room

NEW YORK - Ossie Davis, the imposing, unshakable actor who championed racial justice on stage, on screen and in real life, often in tandem with his wife, Ruby Dee, has died. He was 87.

Davis was found dead Friday in his hotel room in Miami Beach, Fla., according to officials there. He was making a film called “Retirement,” said Arminda Thomas, who works in his office in suburban New Rochelle and confirmed the death.

Miami Beach police spokesman Bobby Hernandez said Davis’ grandson called shortly before 7 a.m. when Davis would not open the door to his room at the Shore Club Hotel. Davis was found dead and there does not appear to be any foul play, Hernandez said.

Davis, who wrote, acted, directed and produced for the theater and Hollywood, was a central figure among black performers for decades. He and Dee celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1998 with the publication of a dual autobiography, “In This Life Together.”

Their partnership called to mind other performing couples, such as the Lunts, or Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Davis and Dee first appeared together in the plays “Jeb,” in 1946, and “Anna Lucasta,” in 1946-47. Davis’ first film, “No Way Out” in 1950, was Dee’s fifth.

Both had key roles in the television series “Roots: The Next Generation” (1978), “Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum” (1986) and “The Stand” (1994). Davis appeared in three Spike Lee films, including “School Daze,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever.” Dee also appeared in the latter two; among her best-known films was “A Raisin in the Sun,” in 1961.

In 2004, Davis and Dee were among the artists selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Finn on February 04, 2005, 02:41:02 PM
He was a wonderful actor, but I'll always remember him as the Mayor.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 04, 2005, 02:52:39 PM
Da Mayor is dead  :(

He was a great, great actor.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ghostboy on February 04, 2005, 04:00:16 PM
And a great human being all around, too.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on February 11, 2005, 12:38:33 AM
Charlie Rose..

2/10/2005  

AND AN APPRECIATION OF
OSSIE DAVIS

(2nd half of the show..)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on February 11, 2005, 02:16:57 PM
I know he's not an actor, but this is the who's next to croak thread, so...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20050211/ap_on_en_ot/obit_miller_17

Playwright Arthur Miller Dies at 89

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, Associated Press Writer

ROXBURY, Conn. - Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman," came to symbolize the American Dream gone awry, has died. He was 89.

Miller, who had been hailed as America's greatest living playwright, died Thursday night at his home in Roxbury of heart failure, his assistant, Julia Bolus, said Friday. His family was at his bedside, she said.

His plays, with their strong emphasis on family, morality and personal responsibility, spoke to the growing fragmentation of American society.

"A lot of my work goes to the center of where we belong — if there is any root to life — because nowadays the family is broken up, and people don't live in the same place for very long," Miller said in a 1988 interview.

"Dislocation, maybe, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing is really permanent."

Playwright Edward Albee said Miller had paid him a compliment, saying "that my plays were `necessary.' I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are `essential.'"

Miller's career was marked by early success. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman" in 1949, when he was just 33 years old.

His marriage to Marilyn Monroe in 1956 further catapulted the playwright to fame, though that was publicity he said he never pursued.

In a 1992 interview with a French newspaper, he called her "highly self-destructive" and said that during their marriage, "all my energy and attention were devoted to trying to help her solve her problems. Unfortunately, I didn't have much success."

"Death of a Salesman," which took Miller only six weeks to write, earned rave reviews when it opened on Broadway in February 1949, directed by Elia Kazan.

The story of Willy Loman, a man destroyed by his own stubborn belief in the glory of American capitalism and the redemptive power of success, was made into a movie and staged all over the world.

"I couldn't have predicted that a work like `Death of a Salesman' would take on the proportions it has," Miller said in 1988. "Originally, it was a literal play about a literal salesman, but it has become a bit of a myth, not only here but in many other parts of the world."

In 1999, 50 years after it won the Tony Award as best play, "Death of a Salesman" won the Tony for best revival of the Broadway season. The show also won the top acting prize for Brian Dennehy (news), who played Loman.

Miller, then 83, received a lifetime achievement award.

"Just being around to receive it is a pleasure," he joked to the audience during the awards ceremony.

Miller won the New York Drama Critics' Circle's best play award twice in the 1940s, for "All My Sons" in 1947 and for "Death of a Salesman." In 1953, he received a Tony Award for "The Crucible," a play about mass hysteria during the Salem witch trials that was inspired by the repressive political environment of McCarthyism.

That play, still read by thousands of American high-school students each year, is Miller's most frequently performed work.

Miller and Monroe divorced after five years and in 1962 he married his third wife, photographer Inge Morath. That same year, Monroe committed suicide. Miller wrote the screenplay for the Monroe film "The Misfits," which came out in 1960, and reflected on their relationship in his 1963 play "After the Fall."

Reminiscing about Monroe in his 1987 autobiography, "Timebends: A Life," Miller lamented that she was rarely taken seriously as anything but a sex symbol.

"To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was," he wrote. "Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes."

Miller's success, so overwhelming in the 1940s and '50s, seemed to be on the wane during the next two decades. But the 1980s brought a renewal of interest, beginning with a Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman" starring Dustin Hoffman in 1984.

Enthusiasm for Miller's work was particularly strong in England, which marked his 75th birthday in 1990 with four major productions of his plays.

Miller also directed a Chinese production of "Death of a Salesman" at the Beijing Peoples' Art Theatre in 1983.

Those who saw the Beijing production may not have identified with Loman's career, Miller wrote, but they shared his desire, "which was to excel, to win out over anonymity and meaninglessness, to love and be loved, and above all, perhaps, to count."

In his later years, Miller became increasingly disillusioned with Broadway, and in 1991 he premiered a new play, "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan," in London — the first time he had opened a play outside of the United States.

Miller said at the time he opted for the London opening to avoid the "dark defeatism" of the New York theater scene.

"There is an open terror of the critics (in New York) and of losing fortunes of money," Miller said in an interview that year. "I have always hated that myself. All in all, it seemed like we ought to do the play in London."

He returned to Broadway in 1994 with "Broken Glass," a drama about a dysfunctional family that won respectful reviews and a Tony nomination, but no big audiences. In London, it won an Olivier award as best play.

Even in his later years, Miller continued to write.

"It is what I do," he said in a 1996 interview with The Associated Press.

"It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not?"

"Resurrection Blues" had its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in the summer of 2002 when Miller was 86. Set in an unnamed banana republic, the satire dealt with the possible televised execution of a revolutionary.

Last October, another new play, "Finishing the Picture," premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. It was based on an episode of his marriage to Monroe.

In recent years New York even rediscovered Miller's first Broadway play, "The Man Who Had All the Luck." It was a four-performance flop in 1944 but had a successful revival, starring Chris O'Donnell, nearly six decades later.

Miller's producer, David Reichenthal, said as recently as this week, he and Miller were working on a London revival of "Death of a Salesman." It will go on as planned in May, he said.

"His loss is a little like the Manhattan skyline," Reichenthal said. "I'm at a loss for words."

In accepting his lifetime achievement award at the 1999 Tony awards ceremony, Miller lamented that Broadway had become too narrow.

"I hope that a new dimension and fresh resolve will inspire the powers that be to welcome fiercely ambitious playwrights," Miller said. "And that the time will come again when they will find a welcome for their big, world-challenging plays, somewhere west of London and somewhere east of the Hudson River."

He was born Oct. 17, 1915, Miller was one of three children in a middle-class Jewish family. His father, a manufacturer of women's coats, was hard hit by the Depression in the 1930s, and could not afford to send Miller to college when the time came.

Miller worked as a loader and shipping clerk at a New York warehouse to earn tuition money and eventually attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1938.

He wrote his first plays in college, where they were awarded numerous prizes. He also published several novels and collections of short stories.

He wrote several screenplays, including "The Misfits" (1961), which became Monroe's last movie, and "Playing for Time," (1981) a controversial television movie about the women's orchestra at Auschwitz.

He also wrote a number of books with Morathmainly about their travels in Russia and China.

Miller had two children, Jane Ellen and Robert, by his first wife, Mary Slattery, and he and Morath, who died in 2002, had one daughter, Rebecca.

___
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: UncleJoey on February 11, 2005, 03:28:47 PM
That's really sad. Death of a Salesman is a masterpiece. Extremely moving play. Probably my favorite.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on February 11, 2005, 04:33:06 PM
The Crucible = great.  R.I.P.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Two Lane Blacktop on February 11, 2005, 07:15:13 PM
Quote from: MacGuffinhis new DVD set, "Rodney Dangerfield — The Ultimate No Respect Collection," was posthumously released last month, and includes clips culled from his more than 70 appearances on "The Tonight Show."

BTW, this DVD set is EXCELLENT.  We watched much of it on New Year's Eve...  he was such a brilliant comedian.  

2LB
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gloria on February 20, 2005, 02:25:43 PM
Sad news.   :cry:

Actress Sandra Dee dies at 63
From CNN.com

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Actress Sandra Dee is dead at 63, her son told CNN Sunday.

Dodd Darin, the son of the late singer Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, said his mother died at 6 a.m. (9 a.m. ET) in Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California, where she had been treated for 14 days for complications from kidney disease and pneumonia.

She was portrayed by actress Kate Bosworth last year in "Beyond the Sea," which starred Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on February 20, 2005, 11:02:53 PM
Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself

ASPEN, Colo. -  Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sunday night at his home, his son said. He was 67.

"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.  

Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death to the News. Sheriff's officials did not return calls to The Associated Press late Sunday.  

Juan Thompson found his father's body. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time.  

Besides the 1972 drug-hazed classic about Thompson's time in Las Vegas, he is credited with pioneering New Journalism — or "gonzo journalism" — in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story.  

An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson wrote such books as "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" in 1973 and the collections "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998.  

Other books include "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Raikus on February 20, 2005, 11:04:09 PM
Really fucking sad news. I can't think of much to say right now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on February 21, 2005, 01:13:57 AM
Neither can I.  There's no words that describe how I feel right now.  Just yesterday, I was telling someone about how Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is one of my favorite books and how they have to read it.  I lent him my DVD of the movie and I'm kind of wishing I hadn't as I would be watching Hunter's priceless commentary right now.  The human race is truly poorer today.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on February 21, 2005, 01:29:39 AM
i can't say i'm surprised.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleuth on February 21, 2005, 01:49:01 AM
Quote from: petewhy is everyone surprised?  'cause there was no prophet predicting the exact date of Marlon's death, and there was no website counting down to the day he kicks.  nobody knew it would be thursday or whatever, so obviously everyone's a little surprised.  you don't wake up in the morning and go, "hmm, feels like that fat ol' Marlon's finally gonna croak today!"  you weren't surprised?  if I said "hey dude, guess who died today?"  would you have been like "oh oh oh I know--hmmm--MARLON BARNDO right?!  am I right am I right am I right, check the papers am I right?"  people were surprised becuase this was new information to them.  so there's no need for pas rapport and jeremy blackman to act all savvy and clear-minded.  you were surprised too, you just didn't post about it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on February 21, 2005, 01:52:52 AM
no really, i hav a speech impediment that doesn't let me make the "pry" sound in surprised.

also.. it's a figure of speech. it's meant to imply that such an act is not out of character for him, as a way to go out, it is not unexpected. of course technically everyone should be surprised ALL THE TIME at everything unless they can predict the future at any given point. but that's just technical talk.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Redlum on February 21, 2005, 03:51:12 AM
Absolutely gutted about Hunter. I just bought kingdom of fear on saturday morning and this is a huge shock.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Just Withnail on February 21, 2005, 10:11:26 AM
Damn it! :yabbse-angry:  :cry: He was a fantastic writer, just amazing. I love the guy, and even rode in here as a newbie with his noggin in the avatar to represent me...Damn it.

Wonder if we'll get to see his double-thumb fist monument take off with his ashes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on February 21, 2005, 10:45:46 AM
You guys always beat me to it.

I was horrified and at the same time understood it was bound to happen sooner or later.

R.I.P. - Hunter S. Thompson
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on February 21, 2005, 11:54:34 AM
I'm supreesed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on February 21, 2005, 04:33:28 PM
the coincidence of withnail's current rank and av is kind of funny..

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xixax.com%2Ffiles%2Fcine%2Fwithnailsellout.jpg&hash=a8f0790815565379ff35a4a2ab78adccd3af69c5)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on February 21, 2005, 09:40:44 PM
I met Hunter and family in november when I went to visit my best buddy, who worked for him.  He called me last night as soon as it happened.  within the hour there were paparazzi cars parked in the driveway.  it was disgusting.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on February 23, 2005, 08:49:32 AM
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12350323%255E2703,00.html

Going out with a bang

LOS ANGELES: If Hunter S.Thompson gets his final wish, the self-inflicted gunshot that killed him this week will not be his last experience with firepower.

The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas author and "gonzo" journalism pioneer had requested that his ashes be fired from a cannon after his funeral, friend Troy Hooper said yesterday.

While no funeral or memorial service arrangements for the gun-toting writer have yet been announced, Hooper said he had made his last wishes clear before his death.

"I believe he wanted to be shot out of a cannon," said Hooper, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News, based near the Colorado home where Thompson, 67, shot himself.

"I understand it's in his will," he said. "That's Hunter's style. That's how he would want it.

"He was a big fan of bonfires and explosions and anything that went bang, and I'm sure he'd like to go bang as well."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Just Withnail on February 23, 2005, 09:40:41 AM
Quote from: Withnail & LoathingWonder if we'll get to see his double-thumb fist monument take off with his ashes.

I guess that post above is the answer.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: peaceisourprofession on February 23, 2005, 03:46:40 PM
he was too good for this sad, sober world.
I knew he was a sports writer for Rolling Stone for years, but I didn't know he worked for ESPN.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 24, 2005, 07:50:11 PM
French Film Star Simone Simon Dies at 93

French screen star Simone Simon, best known for her delicate beauty and lead role in the 1942 thriller "Cat People," has died. She was 93.

Simon, one of the few French starlets of her time to achieve success in Hollywood, died in the evening between Tuesday and Wednesday, her family said.

In Jacques Tourneur's "Cat People," Simon played a Serbian-born artist living in New York who is haunted by a fear that intimacy will prompt her to turn into a deadly panther. The film was remade in 1982 with Nastassja Kinski playing the lead.

"With Simone Simon, we have lost one the most seductive, most radiant actresses of French cinema in the first part of the 20th century," Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres said in a statement.

Born April 23, 1911, in the southern French city of Marseille, Simon started out as a model before becoming a stage actress, then turning to film.

Her first major role came in 1938 in Jean Renoir's "La bete humaine" (The Human Beast), a movie adaptation of the novel by Emile Zola. She starred opposite legendary French actor Jean Gabin, famously telling him: "Don't look at me that way, you're going to wear out your eyes."

It was Darryl Zanuck, co-founder of 20th Century Fox, who took Simon to America and launched her career in Hollywood.

The actress starred in about a dozen Hollywood pictures through the 1940s, including two Robert Wise films from 1944, "The Curse of the Cat People," a sequel of Tourneur's film, and "Mademoiselle Fifi," based on Guy de Maupassant stories.

Back in France in the 1950s, Simon starred in "La Ronde" and "Le Plaisir," before returning to the stage. She made her very last movie appearance in the 1973 film "La Femme en Bleu."

"Years have passed but have erased nothing of Simone Simon's charm," the culture minister said. "We will keep in memory for a long time the trace of that undefinable something that made this very beautiful actress so endearing."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 07, 2005, 12:47:58 PM
'Halloween' Writer-Producer Dies at 54

Debra Hill, who co-wrote the horror classic "Halloween" and was one of Hollywood's pioneering woman producers, died Monday, according to a family friend. She was 54.

The friend, Barbara Ligeti, said more information would be made available later Monday.

Hill's big break came in horror films when she and director John Carpenter co-wrote the genre's modern classic, "Halloween."

The 1979 film, also directed by Carpenter and produced by Hill, starred a 20-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis as the baby sitter terrorized by a murderous psychopath. Made on a modest $300,000 budget, it grossed $60 million worldwide, a record for an independent movie at the time, and launched a seemingly endless chain of sequels.

Hill, Carpenter and Curtis returned for "Halloween II," and Hill and Carpenter were involved in the writing of several later sequels, including "Halloween: Resurrection," "Halloween 5" and "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers." A "Halloween 9," also written by Hill and Carpenter, is reported by the Internet Movie Database to be in production.

After her "Halloween" run, Hill joined her friend Lynda Obst in forming an independent production company in 1986 that made "Adventures in Babysitting" and "Heartbreak Hotel," both directed by Chris Columbus, and Terry Gilliam's "The Fisher King" with Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges.

In 1988 she entered a contract with Walt Disney Pictures under which she produced the feature "Gross Anatomy," short films for the Walt Disney theme park and an NBC special for Disneyland's 35th anniversary.

Films she produced included "The Dead Zone" 1983; "Head Office," 1985; and "Clue," 1986.

"Back when I started in 1974, there were very few women in the industry, and everybody called me 'Honey,'" she recalled in 2003. "I was assumed to be the makeup and hair person, or the script person. I was never assumed to be the writer or producer. I took a look around and realized there weren't many women, so I had to carve a niche for myself."

Carpenter praised her as "a real pioneer in this business."

"Unlike many producers, she came from the crew ranks. I think they're the most under-appreciated people, and they work the hardest," he said. "She had experienced the ins and the outs and had a thorough understanding of what it took to make a picture."

Hill began as a production assistant on adventure documentaries, working up to films as a script supervisor, a job that required sitting beside the director and keeping a record of each scene.

From there she landed jobs as assistant director and second-unit director and became associated with Carpenter, who was then a rising young director.

The two also collaborated on 1980's "The Fog" and 1981's "Escape From New York."

When she was honored by Women in Film in 2003, Hill said, "I hope some day there won't be a need for Women in Film. That it will be People in Film. That it will be equal pay, equal rights and equal job opportunities for everybody."

Born in Haddonfield, N.J., Hill grew up in Philadelphia.


:yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 07, 2005, 01:04:50 PM
r.i.p.

:(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 08, 2005, 10:57:17 PM
Academy Award Winner Teresa Wright Dies

Teresa Wright, the willowy actress who starred opposite Gary Cooper and Marlon Brando and won a supporting Academy Award in 1942 for "Mrs. Miniver," has died. She was 86.

Wright died Sunday of a heart attack at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, her daughter, Mary-Kelly Busch, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Wright's career skyrocketed after her first film, "The Little Foxes" which brought her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress of 1941. The following year she was honored with two nominations: lead actress as the wife of Lou Gehrig in "The Pride of the Yankees" and supporting actress as Greer Garson's daughter-in-law in the wartime saga "Mrs. Miniver."

She also starred in three other classics: Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" in 1943; Brando's first film, "The Men" in 1950; and the multiple Oscar winner "The Best Years of Our Lives" in 1946.

Later generations saw her in an occasional character role, including the eccentric, warmhearted Miss Birdie in the 1997 film version of John Grisham's "The Rainmaker" starring Matt Damon, and in 1988's "The Good Mother" with Diane Keaton and Liam Neeson.

:yabbse-cry:

I'll always remember her as Charlie from "Shadow Of A Doubt."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on March 08, 2005, 11:48:01 PM
Me too, Mac.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 10, 2005, 09:55:52 AM
'Meet the Parents' Actress Dies After Two Misdiagnoses

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv720%2Fithica45%2Fnicole.jpg&hash=1b8b892ef0ed27fc661a6fa6351eccc00db8b9b7)

The actress who was famously smashed in the face by a volleyball in the Meet The Parents comedy died last month after two medics misdiagnosed her pneumonia. Nicole DeHuff, who played Teri Polo's sister in the hilarious 2000 movie, checked into three Los Angeles hospitals, but only when her problems became inoperable did doctors realize what was wrong with her. The actress' mother Patsie says, "By the time she reached the third hospital, it was too late. She was unconscious." The grieving mother reveals her daughter was rushed to hospital on February 12 but was sent home by medics and told to take painkiller Tylenol. Patsie DeHuff recalls, "The next day my daughter was worse." Again, the actress went to hospital, but this time medics prescribed antibiotics for bronchitis. Two days later, paramedics rushed to her home after she collapsed, gasping for breath. The tragic actress died on February 16.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 10, 2005, 10:46:49 AM
she was 31.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on March 10, 2005, 10:52:12 AM
lawsuit
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sigur Rós on March 10, 2005, 12:23:44 PM
Quote from: Myxomatosislawsuit

probably not gonna bring her back.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on March 10, 2005, 01:17:12 PM
Quote from: Sigur Rós
Quote from: Myxomatosislawsuit

probably not gonna bring her back.

Nope, but if she was misdiagnosed, the doctors involved need to be punished somehow. How the hell do you not recognize pneumonia if you're a doctor?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 10, 2005, 02:11:39 PM
The the thing about LA. If you are sick, the doctors there can't do shit for you. "Oh, you are sick? Uh, well. How about a new nose? Tummy tuck maybe? It'll make you feel better......about yourself" Fuck LA. That is seriously disturbing and tragic.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on March 21, 2005, 09:00:00 PM
Quote from: peteI met Hunter and family in november when I went to visit my best buddy, who worked for him.  He called me last night as soon as it happened.  within the hour there were paparazzi cars parked in the driveway.  it was disgusting.

Your report of this is just as disgusting as the paparazzis, you little snitch.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 21, 2005, 11:00:34 PM
what's the difference between meatball and the paparazzi?  the paparazzi are the douchebags who show up within the hour; meatball shows up a month later.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 21, 2005, 11:02:24 PM
so hes a period, who gives a shit. not him, cause of cramps.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 21, 2005, 11:03:50 PM
Quote from: Meatballpaparazzis
dude, paparazzi is already plural. what are u, from jersey?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on March 21, 2005, 11:11:46 PM
Quote from: petewhat's the difference between meatball and the paparazzi?  the paparazzi are the douchebags who show up within the hour; meatball shows up a month later.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmembers.iinet.net.au%2F%7Esosweet%2FMc-Own3d.jpg&hash=4606ae6c2764247b8bc53009e6ce679537e3aff4)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 21, 2005, 11:12:51 PM
hahaaha
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on March 22, 2005, 12:55:16 AM
Pete, I'm your period. Get used to it.

And grow a chin.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: atticus jones on March 22, 2005, 01:24:15 AM
Quote from: StefenThe the thing about LA. If you are sick, the doctors there can't do shit for you. "Oh, you are sick? Uh, well. How about a new nose? Tummy tuck maybe? It'll make you feel better......about yourself" Fuck LA. That is seriously disturbing and tragic.

...can you imagine temporary, or better yet, permanent bans for ignorant posts...or fines paid for stoopidity to keep xixax running strong...object to paying and you are no longer welcome...i will not go on the defensive and bore you with lenghty review or praise for the amazing ucla medical center or the world famous grossman burn center in sherman oaks but i will say this idiot is in desperate need of a brain transplant...maybe watching dr 90210 has led him to believe his idiotic comments are justified...when you insult my home you insult me...fuck l.a.?...only if l.a. stands for lame arguments...your comments make no sense...where nicole lived has nothing to do with why she no longer does...

once again...the same advice applies...

save it
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 22, 2005, 09:09:25 AM
Quote from: MeatballPete, I'm your period. Get used to it.

And grow a chin.

tell your mom I've got a chin; she just can't see it when I'm chowing her box.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 22, 2005, 01:16:22 PM
Quote from: atticus jones
Quote from: StefenThe the thing about LA. If you are sick, the doctors there can't do shit for you. "Oh, you are sick? Uh, well. How about a new nose? Tummy tuck maybe? It'll make you feel better......about yourself" Fuck LA. That is seriously disturbing and tragic.

...can you imagine temporary, or better yet, permanent bans for ignorant posts...or fines paid for stoopidity to keep xixax running strong...object to paying and you are no longer welcome...i will not go on the defensive and bore you with lenghty review or praise for the amazing ucla medical center or the world famous grossman burn center in sherman oaks but i will say this idiot is in desperate need of a brain transplant...maybe watching dr 90210 has led him to believe his idiotic comments are justified...when you insult my home you insult me...fuck l.a.?...only if l.a. stands for lame arguments...your comments make no sense...where nicole lived has nothing to do with why she no longer does...

once again...the same advice applies...

save it

Chill out, the post was a joke, like most my posts around here. i've never had to use the ucla medical center or the burn center in sherman oaks, so unlike you, i can't attest to how good the service is. face it, the stereotype of la is plastic surgery and unlikeable people, i'm just rolling with it.

tit for tat, thats that
don't call me a bum, fall back son.
now go to the fridge and get your father a beer.
wipe that tear.
and fear my new found prep school sneer. YOUNGIN.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: kotte on March 22, 2005, 01:23:21 PM
Quote from: atticus joneswhen you insult my home you insult me

Christ, this is an internet message board. Do you always get this offended by stuff you read online? If so, be careful out there!




He wasn't talking about your mom...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on March 22, 2005, 01:34:47 PM
It would have been funnier if you guys just totally ignored Atticus's post.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 22, 2005, 01:35:46 PM
don't even get me started on the south.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on March 22, 2005, 01:38:22 PM
Oh yeah?  Fuck Boston.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: kotte on March 22, 2005, 01:38:26 PM
Quote from: PwaybloeIt would have been funnier if you guys just totally ignored Atticus's post.

Funnier yes but he wouldn't have learned anything.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on March 22, 2005, 01:41:20 PM
Ha ha!  I'm sure he's limping home.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 22, 2005, 01:43:52 PM
Quote from: PwaybloeOh yeah?  Fuck Boston.

SHUT UP. I don't even live in Boston, or like it, but i'll stick up for it cause I don't like the south.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on March 22, 2005, 01:59:16 PM
Haha, why?  Hate sweet tea?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 22, 2005, 02:25:28 PM
probably. i dont know what it is though.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 22, 2005, 03:46:11 PM
The Who's Next To Croak thread died this morning in it's home forum. The eighteen month old thread suffered from massive attacks that rendered it senseless. Attempts to revive it failed. An xixax spokesperson, who wanted to remain nameless, said, "The thread served it's purpose in informing our members of those who have passed on. I never thought that the thread itself would die." Regular xixax vistor, Cinephile, paid tribute to the thread by making his rank, "in memory of." Close friends of the thread requested that in lieu of flowers, donations to xixax should be made instead. Said spokesperson, "xixax should live on. It's what the thread would have wanted." Private services are being planned.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: atticus jones on March 22, 2005, 04:32:33 PM
funny spin...mac wins

the other losers consolation prize is my rebuke...

stuffin...i agree your post was indeed a joke as are most of your contributions...but rest assured...one cant chill out when one chillin...fact is folks who "roll with stereotypes" scare me...by the way...your poem was horrendous...and that's being generous...parting thought..."the post was a joke" and "that is seriously disturbing and tragic" don't live in the same neighborhood...you shoulda jus stood by your man, mang...the only thang worse than inane comments are those who would contradict their own dicked diction...what a clock sucker...times up

kottex..."christ, this is an internet message board"...finally, someone who addresses me with some respect..."do you always get this offended by stuff you read online?"...only the awfulstoopidignorantlameantifunnyunoriginalgheyapologeticjuvenileshit...  "be careful out there!"...and who says sarcasm is difficult to detect online...thanks for your concern..."funnier yes but he wouldnt have learned anything"...i agree...open your mouth and you allow me access to the inner workings of your head...rest easy, the unemployment checks are on the whey...

poowayblow..."it would have been funnier if you guys just totally ignored atticus's post"...and this from a guy who feels the need to add a written laugh track to his posts...see the "haha" and "ha ha" that preceed this read...hillarious

i will add you tools to the box in case the whole thing falls apart and we need to rebuild the shit...i mean ship

toot toot chugga chugga big red car
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on March 22, 2005, 06:18:01 PM
everyone cool out.
cool out.

:yabbse-angry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 22, 2005, 08:05:21 PM
hahaha atticus has gone off the deep end. keep it coming, this is entertaining.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 22, 2005, 09:53:33 PM
how come stefen gets atticus but I only get meatball?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on March 22, 2005, 10:46:20 PM
Quote from: petehow come stefen gets atticus but I only get meatball?

Look down. I'm the red running down your legpits.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on March 22, 2005, 11:04:05 PM
:yabbse-angry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on March 22, 2005, 11:24:59 PM
Quote from: cronopio:yabbse-angry:

Jealous?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 22, 2005, 11:39:31 PM
i don't get how pete talking about hunter s was a bad thing to begin with..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on March 23, 2005, 03:43:24 AM
Quote from: PwaybloeI'm sure he's limping home.

Since the hospitals in LA aren't all that great.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on March 23, 2005, 01:49:34 PM
Quote from: Pubricki don't get how pete talking about hunter s was a bad thing to begin with..

Quote from: peteI met Hunter and family in november when I went to visit my best buddy, who worked for him.  He called me last night as soon as it happened.  within the hour there were paparazzi cars parked in the driveway.  it was disgusting.

No respect for the man's death. But the perfect opportunity to let us know that he met the guy and his friend worked for him. Classy.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on March 23, 2005, 01:52:18 PM
Quote from: Meatball
Quote from: Pubricki don't get how pete talking about hunter s was a bad thing to begin with..

Quote from: peteI met Hunter and family in november when I went to visit my best buddy, who worked for him.  He called me last night as soon as it happened.  within the hour there were paparazzi cars parked in the driveway.  it was disgusting.

No respect for the man's death. But the perfect opportunity to let us know that he met the guy and his friend worked for him. Classy.
It's called relaying an experience in remembrance of him.  Way to be a douchebag!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 23, 2005, 09:02:14 PM
meatball are you always this slow? i mean on xixax, yes you are but in your actual life.. do humans talk to you?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 23, 2005, 09:05:46 PM
haha i liked the part where meatball owned himself.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on March 23, 2005, 09:08:16 PM
The cockroaches crawl out of the woodwork.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 23, 2005, 09:10:23 PM
yeah i didn't think so.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 23, 2005, 09:10:25 PM
Quote from: MeatballThe cockroaches crawl out of the woodwork.

you mean me? i know you didn't, anyway, this is a good thread so i won't ruin it with shit talking, atticus was a prime poster and some good exercise for me, but he's scared so thats done. Go ahead meatball, bump a dumb thread noone uses and call me out in it, i dare you, i dare you motherfucker!!!!!  :yabbse-cool:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on March 23, 2005, 09:11:59 PM
Hah.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 23, 2005, 09:16:15 PM
LETS DO THIS SHIT YOU PRETEEN!!!!!!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 23, 2005, 09:51:18 PM
everybody be nice to each other.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 23, 2005, 11:28:12 PM
Quote from: Meatball
Quote from: petehow come stefen gets atticus but I only get meatball?

Look down. I'm the red running down your legpits.

dude, by reminding us twice that you've been owned by stefen won't convince atticus to stop dogging him. you've gotta beg harder.

ooh I guess I'm like 18 posts too slow 'cause everyone already collected owned you like 18 more times since then.  but you know what, I'm gonna do it anyways.  I guess you can say that I'm pulling a meatball.

WAIT A SECOND.  "legpits?"  HAHAHAHAHA.  

phone sex op: hey sexy, talk dirty to me.
meatball: I'd love to feel you up, starting from your leg-thigh, working up to your legpits, and then finally into your leg-hole.
phone sex op: dudes don't have leg-holes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 24, 2005, 07:37:59 PM
Barney Martin, 'Seinfeld' father, dead

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.a.cnn.net%2Fcnn%2F2005%2FSHOWBIZ%2FTV%2F03%2F24%2Fobit.martin.ap%2Fstory.martin.ap.jpg&hash=a22839a8f2582be92df01e96187068f5ff38a7c1)

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Barney Martin, a former New York City detective who went into show business and became best known for playing Jerry Seinfeld's father Morty on the comedian's hit television series, has died. He was 82.

Martin died of cancer Monday at his Studio City home, according to his publicist, Jennifer Glassman.

Born March 3, 1923, in the New York City borough of Queens, Martin served as a navigator in the Air Force during World War II before starting a 20-year career as a New York City police detective.

Martin showed a talent for making deputy police commissioners laugh during presentations. In the 1950s, he began writing on the side for comedy shows such as "Name That Tune" and "The Steve Allen Show."

Martin got his start in film when Mel Brooks featured him in "The Producers" in 1968. That role launched Martin into Broadway theater, where he appeared in several musicals, including "South Pacific," "The Fantasticks," All American" and "How Now Dow Jones."

He is credited with creating the role of Roxy's unappreciated husband, Amos Hart, in the musical "Chicago."

Martin also appeared in several television series in the 1990s, including "The Tony Randall Show," "US," "Sydney" and "Zorro and Son."

In "Seinfeld," Martin was the third actor to play the part of Seinfeld's father and became the one most identified with the role of the Florida retiree.

He said at the show's wrap party in 1998: "Playing Jerry's dad was like having whipped cream on top of a mountain of ice cream."

He is survived by his wife and son. A daughter died in 2002 of cancer.
___________________________________

it isn't in the article cause he's uncredited but here he is in his first film as a juror in Hitchcock's the Wrong Man:
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xixax.com%2Ffiles%2Fcine%2Fmartin4.jpg&hash=4b12c9ce50cf07863d9dfa98a6914e08fca58a35)

Goring in the Producers:
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xixax.com%2Ffiles%2Fcine%2Fmartin3.jpg&hash=a548df3f8487ace10b19ec7f35eeef43735c49bd)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 28, 2005, 05:37:58 AM
PAUL HESTER 1959-2005

CROWDED HOUSE's founding drummer has been found dead in a MELBOURNE park.

According to ambulance officers who discovered Paul Hester's body in Elsternwick park he had "attempted suicide" and died of strangulation believed to be caused by hanging. Police have said his death was not suspicious.

The drummer, 46, was last seen alive on Friday (March 25) when he took his dogs for a walk and friends say there had been no indication he was depressed.

Speaking to the Australia Daily Telegraph, Crowded House singer Neil Finn paid tribute to Hester, declaring "I'm devastated, I have lost one of my best mates".

Hester was born in 1959 in Melbourne, and was a member of Crowded House from the outset after he and Finn left new wave band Split Enz to begin the group in 1985. In 1994 he left Crowded House citing the pressures of touring and became a TV and radio presenter.

Hester lived in Melbourne and is survived by his partner Mardi Sommerfeld and two young daughters.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Thrindle on March 28, 2005, 12:46:21 PM
Quote from: mogwaifriends say there had been no indication he was depressed.
Yet again, I find this baffling.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 29, 2005, 05:26:21 PM
Famed Attorney Johnnie Cochran Dead At 67

LOS ANGELES -- Attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., best known for heading the defense team that defended O.J. Simpson against double murder charges, died Tuesday at age 67, MSNBC reported.

"He had had a brain tumor and he had gone through a long process of dealing with it," attorney Rikki Klieman, a former Court TV anchor and wife of Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton told MSNBC.

"His life is a life that should be celebrated for all the good he did for so many," said Klieman, a legal analyst for NBC's "Today" show and the Courtroom Television Network.

Last May, Cochran's law firm announced that he had been released from the hospital after being treated for an undisclosed neurological condition.

Cochran successfully defended Simpson against charges that he murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: atticus jones on March 30, 2005, 01:48:16 AM
...70 percent of america believe in the resurrection of jc

...30 percent of america believe in the innocence  of  oj

...10 percent of america believe oj may have killed jc
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sigur Rós on March 30, 2005, 04:31:31 AM
How many believe that oj will resurrect jc?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 30, 2005, 09:10:10 AM
jesus christ? no
jarvis coker? maybe
johnnie cochran? signs points to a yes
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 31, 2005, 07:58:14 AM
john cholmes
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Raikus on March 31, 2005, 09:48:57 AM
Stern's reporting that Mitch Hedberg has passed away. No other sources have reported it yet, but it seems like reliable info.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 31, 2005, 10:17:53 AM
Quote from: RaikusStern's reporting that Mitch Hedberg has passed away. No other sources have reported it yet, but it seems like reliable info.
sleuth has been sleuthing longer than you (http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?p=180343#180343) :cry:


mitch hedberg has definitely passed away of an OD. patton oswalt has confirmed it.. even one of the guys who was gonna be performing with him this weekend confirmed it.


:cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on March 31, 2005, 10:09:28 PM
Quote from: Cinephile
Quote from: RaikusStern's reporting that Mitch Hedberg has passed away. No other sources have reported it yet, but it seems like reliable info.
sleuth has been sleuthing longer than you (http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?p=180343#180343) :cry:


mitch hedberg has definitely passed away of an OD. patton oswalt has confirmed it.. even one of the guys who was gonna be performing with him this weekend confirmed it.


:cry:
Totally fucking sucks.

:cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on April 01, 2005, 03:24:57 PM
Wow, very sad that Mitch Hedberg died.  He was an incredible stand-up comedian.  Anyone know where the film he made is available?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on April 18, 2005, 10:25:03 AM
'Police Academy' Star Dies

Police Academy actress Debralee Scott has died at her home in Florida of natural causes. She was 52. Scott, who appeared as Mrs Fackler in the 1984 comedy and its third installment Police Academy 3: Back In Training in 1986, was also known to US TV audiences for her roles in 1970s shows Welcome Back, Kotter and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Scott also had bit parts in movie classics Dirty Harry and American Graffiti. Her policeman fiance John Levi was killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: kotte on April 18, 2005, 10:44:55 AM
Quote from: mogwainatural causes

Quote from: mogwaiShe was 52

:saywhat:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 21, 2005, 12:03:32 PM
Oscar-Nominated Actress Ruth Hussey Dies

Ruth Hussey, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as James Stewart's wise-cracking girlfriend in 1940's "The Philadelphia Story" has died. She was 93.

Hussey died Tuesday at a convalescent home in Newbury Park in Ventura County of complications from an appendectomy, according to her son, John Longnecker.

From the late 1930s through 1960 Hussey made dozens of films and appeared with such leading men as Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Melvyn Douglas and Robert Taylor.

She also was a stage actress, appearing on Broadway in 1945 in the hit "State of the Union" and in 1949 in the comedy "Goodbye, My Fancy."

Born Oct. 30, 1911, in Providence, R.I., Hussey graduated from Pembroke Women's College at Brown University and the drama school at the University of Michigan.

She began her show-business career as a local radio fashion commentator. Later, she moved to New York and became a model for the Powers agency. She toured with stage companies and won an MGM contract when she was spotted by a talent agent during a road production in Los Angeles.

Her first movie role, in the 1937 Tracy film "Big City," was uncredited. Three years later, she was Tracy's leading lady in "Northwest Passage."

She received an Oscar nomination for supporting actress for playing Elizabeth Imbrie, the sassy photographer who accompanies Stewart to cover a socialite's wedding in "The Philadelphia Story."

She lost to Jane Darwell, who was Ma Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath"

Her last feature film role was in 1960 in "The Facts of Life" playing Bob Hope's wife.

Hussey also had a long career in television, including guest appearances in "The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Time Out for Ginger."

She also played the love interest of Robert Young in the 1973 television movie "My Darling Daughters' Anniversary."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 28, 2005, 06:20:28 PM
'Rambo' director dead at 64

VICTORIA, British Columbia (AP) -- Director George P. Cosmatos, best known for box-office hits "Rambo" and "Tombstone," died last week. He was 64.

Cosmatos had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, his friend and fellow director Richard Donner said Saturday.

"George was just a wonderful, bigger-than-life character," Donner said. "You never forgot his entrance and hoped there would never be an exit."

Known for an ability to fix troubled projects and create blockbuster films, he delivered what many consider his finest achievement in 1993 -- "Tombstone," the film about legendary American lawman Wyatt Earp starring Val Kilmer and Kurt Russell.

Cosmatos dismissed criticism of violence in "Rambo," the 1985 film about a U.S. combat veteran who returns to Vietnam on a one-man mission to rescue soldiers missing-in-action.

"What's with these prejudiced people? They're for censorship, not a free society," Cosmatos said. "It's a psychological release for people to have a hero who can do the fighting and dirty work while we eat our popcorn."

Born in Florence, Italy and raised in Egypt and Cyprus, Cosmatos spoke six languages and was an avid bibliophile with a passion for cigars and film restoration.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SHAFTR on April 28, 2005, 07:21:29 PM
I love Tombstone...and Rambo II is one of the funnest movies around.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on May 10, 2005, 04:58:49 PM
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-grant10may10,1,4256727.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Joe Grant, 96; Disney Artist Helped Make Films That Became Classics
By Charles Solomon, Special to The Times

Joe Grant, one of Walt Disney's most talented artists and story men, whose career ran from the cartoon "Mickey's Gala Premiere" (1933) to the Oscar-nominated short "Lorenzo" (2004), died Friday at his home in Glendale from a heart attack while at his drawing table. He was 96.

Grant, who was working at the Disney studio the day before his death, was not an animator but a story man — an artist who helped develop the plot and dialogue of an animated film — and a designer. He worked on numerous shorts, including "Gulliver Mickey" (1934) and "Who Killed Cock Robin" (1935). For "Snow White," Disney's first feature, Grant designed the Queen and the Wicked Witch.

During work on "Snow White" in 1933, Walt Disney came up to Grant in a hallway of the Hyperion studio in Loz Feliz and asked, "What are we going to do for an encore?" That question led to the establishment of the Character Model Department, which Grant headed with his vast knowledge of art, illustration and literature. It served as a research and development department for animated films and generated many of the ideas that became classic Disney films. The artists worked out ideas for stories and characters, and made model sheets and three-dimensional figures that showed how to draw the characters.

After working on "Pinocchio" (1940), Grant helped select the music for "Fantasia" (1940) and led the story development for that landmark film. With his creative partner, Dick Huemer, he wrote "Dumbo" (1941). During World War II, Grant contributed story ideas, gags and designs to war-related shorts, including "Reason and Emotion" (1943), "The New Spirit" (1942) and the Oscar-winning "Der Fuehrer's Face" (1942).

When the Character Model Department disbanded in 1949, Grant left Disney to pursue other artistic ventures. He started several successful businesses, including a ceramics studio (Opechee Designs) and a greeting card company (Castle Ltd.).

"I think there was always a gentle sweetness to Joe and his work," said Roy E. Disney, head of Disney Feature Animation from 1983 to 2004 and nephew of Walt Disney. "There's a gentility in everything he touched. But there's also a great sophistication. He was one of the truly great craftsmen of our art, but he always saw his craft as a way to communicate ideas."

Forty years after he left Disney, Grant received a call from Disney's Feature Animation Department, inviting him to consult on "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). Grant was soon working at the studio full time, with a new generation of artists, contributing ideas to "Aladdin" (1992), "The Lion King" (1994), "Pocahontas" (1995) and "Hercules" (1997).

For "Fantasia/2000," Grant came up with the idea of flamingos with yo-yos for the "Carnival of the Animals" sequence, which Eric Goldberg animated and directed. In 1949, Grant began developing "Lorenzo," a story about an obnoxious Persian cat whose tail comes to life. Working with Grant, director Mike Gabriel made "Lorenzo" into a film that received an Oscar nomination for Animated Short earlier this year.

Grant also contributed to Pixar Animation Studios features and coined the title for "Monsters, Inc." (2001). "Monsters" director Peter Docter recalled, "Once when Joe and I were talking over some story concepts, he asked, 'What are you giving the audience to take home?' He meant, what part of the story will lodge in the audience's heart, that they'll remember for days or even years. I think about that every day, and I'll be thinking about him and his advice for a long, long time."

Grant was named a Disney Legend in 1992 and received the National Cartoonists Society's Ruben Award in 1996. In 1998, he was honored at the animation festival in Annecy, France, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. presented him with a special award for career achievement in 2002. More than 70 of his caricatures are included in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

Born in New York City on May 15, 1908, Grant became interested in drawing while watching his father, an art director for William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. In an interview in 2001, Grant recalled, "I was constantly looking over his shoulder — and being attacked by other members of the family who insisted art was a futile pursuit. But I stuck it out, because I saw the magic of his hand on the drawing board."

Grant came to Southern California as a boy. After attending the Chouinard Art Institute, he went to work as a caricaturist for the Los Angeles Record. Disney saw Grant's print work and invited him to design the movie star caricatures in the cartoon "Mickey's Gala Premiere." After a few other freelance assignments, Disney invited Grant to work at the studio full time.

"I was at the point of syndication at that time, doing caricatures through the Chicago Tribune, and I was a little unhappy about giving that up," Grant said. "But the idea of animation was overwhelming, the magic of it. I never lost sight of it. It was color, music, action — what more could you want?"

Reflecting on his long career, Grant once told animation historian John Canemaker, "I'm interested not in what happened back then, but what we're doing now and looking forward. Technology is running ahead of us right now. We've got to catch up with it with some good ideas."

Grant is survived by two daughters, Carol Eve Grubb and Jennifer Grant Castrup; two grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that donations be made to the Pasadena Humane Society and SPCA, 361 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105

Funeral services will be held Saturday at the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn in Glendale.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on May 14, 2005, 03:28:00 PM
Looks like Linday Lohan will be here soon enough

I used to be smart now im just skinny.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwizbangblog.com%2Fimages%2F2005%2Flohan_richie02-thumb.jpg&hash=503a8a5bd278f32fce6fa9b3e4fb89468f33a6f8)

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg65.echo.cx%2Fimg65%2F922%2Fnicolerichielindsaylohan136lt.jpg&hash=6e9a14503b5604ebca0c60a696220cc08caf5ff9)

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwizbangblog.com%2Fimages%2F2005%2Flohan_richie01.jpg&hash=47d94518905fd667d0775a842e5bcec2c49c61b3)

God, that's gross. And so are the freckles on her back. oghghgyggugu.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sigur Rós on May 14, 2005, 03:42:26 PM
eww

And her hand looks old. Reminds of the woman in the bathtub in 'The Shining'. Scary shit!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on May 14, 2005, 04:15:20 PM
Holy mother of God. I miss her Herbie: Fully Loaded days when she was slightly plump and overly tanned.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: w/o horse on May 14, 2005, 05:05:49 PM
Those girls are bad for each other.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on May 15, 2005, 01:16:04 AM
Yikes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ghostboy on May 15, 2005, 01:45:07 AM
Wow. Someone's been doing a shit ton of coke.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleuth on May 15, 2005, 03:20:24 AM
I feel liek this is my fault somehow!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on May 15, 2005, 03:32:33 AM
Jesus H. Christ on ice. That is really wild. I'm all of sudden really worried about her. Or maybe this new look will work for her in that it will get her more interesting, meaty parts.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on May 15, 2005, 04:06:15 AM
Quote from: SiliasRubymeaty
one can only hope.  :shock:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on May 15, 2005, 11:20:49 AM
haha.


But seriously, I don't think shes on a coke diet. She wouldn't lose weight like that. She looks like a tweaker, so she is probably doing meth. That stuff is bad bad bad bad news and probably worse than heroin or coke. I haven't tried either of them, but i've known people on all of them and the ones on meth always look like Lohan. Why would anyone want to be that skinny on purpose though? Who finds that attractive?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Thrindle on May 16, 2005, 02:48:15 AM
Quote from: StefenWho finds that attractive?
Seriously though, good question.  I find curves to be incredibly sexy...
What is the obsession with emaciation?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cowboykurtis on May 16, 2005, 03:05:41 AM
thats some sick shit - perfect role model for the young one's

Isn't it great that all the 16 yr old girls in america going through puberty are scrambling to get their 12 yr old bodies back that they so eagerly wanted gone just four years prior.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on May 16, 2005, 09:59:29 AM
Quote from: ThrindleWhat is the obsession with emaciation?

Personally, I think it's some guys' inability to cope with their attraction to young boys; so to rationalize it, they make women look like them.  I don't personally know a single man, gay or straight, that is attracted to anyone that damn thin.

A friend of mine teaches her younger siblings; I'll tell her to tell them to tell big sis to start keeping food down again.  Those pictures hurt.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: meatball on May 16, 2005, 10:16:21 AM
Quote from: Thrindle
Quote from: StefenWho finds that attractive?
Seriously though, good question.  I find curves to be incredibly sexy...
What is the obsession with emaciation?

Girls who are ashamed of their curves. And gay fashion designers who like their models androgynous.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Thrindle on May 16, 2005, 01:06:25 PM
Quote from: cowboykurtisIsn't it great that all the 16 yr old girls in america going through puberty are scrambling to get their 12 yr old bodies back that they so eagerly wanted gone just four years prior.
That was incredibly insightful, and so true.  I'm 21 and still yearning for the body I had when I was seventeen.  The one that didn't have hips...  
It's really shitty that our society sexualizes YOUTH so much.  And I think this sexualization of youth has something to do with our love of skinny women.
Hacksparrow, you were also right on the money about the gay male thing... but seriously, it's as though some guys don't want women, to actually be women.  Sigh.

Also, Lindsay Lohan has an incredibly cute nose... give it a while longer and the cartilage is gonna be falling out.  What a fucking waste.
Spoken by someone who hasn't touched coke in quite a while.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 16, 2005, 03:51:57 PM
god damn it.  that is fucking sad.  i just wanna hug her ... but what if i break a rib?  seriously, all women, show off your curves, celebrate your femininity.  don't hide it or flush it down the toilet every day. watch How to Marry a Millionaire - proof of just how radiant a woman with curves is.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cowboykurtis on May 16, 2005, 03:54:04 PM
Quote from: ewardHow to Marry a Millionaire - proof of just how radiant a woman with curves is.

Reality TV does have cream of the crop curves.

I think contestants on that show are even better idols for 16 yr old girls. They're ambitious and know how to use their body to get money.

right on!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 16, 2005, 03:55:15 PM
haha, I meant the marilyn monroe movie.  sorry, i dont watch very much tv.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleuth on May 16, 2005, 04:02:39 PM
Aw Cowboykurtis, at least your sarcasm was in the right place
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cowboykurtis on May 16, 2005, 04:04:40 PM
I try my best - to be sarcastic, and have sex with curvy women.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on May 16, 2005, 05:06:05 PM
Perhaps it's time to move this discussion to another thread?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on May 16, 2005, 08:22:03 PM
this thread has croaked.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on May 16, 2005, 08:41:35 PM
Quote from: matt35mmPerhaps it's time to move this discussion to another thread?

I was wondering that, myself... is Lindsay Lohan being ugly really making her close enough to death?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on May 18, 2005, 12:51:35 PM
Batman's Riddler, Frank Gorshin, dead
Talented impressionist played George Burns on B'way

BURBANK, California (AP) -- Actor Frank Gorshin, the impressionist with 100 faces best known for his Emmy-nominated role as the Riddler on the old "Batman" television series, has died. He was 72.

Gorshin's wife of 48 years, Christina, was at his side when he died Tuesday at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, his agent and longtime friend, Fred Wostbrock, said Wednesday.

"He put up a valiant fight with lung cancer, emphysema and pneumonia," Mrs. Gorshin said in a statement.

Despite dozens of television and movie credits, Gorshin will be forever remembered for his role as the Riddler, Adam West's villainous foil in the question mark-pocked green suit and bowler hat on "Batman" from 1966-69.

"It really was a catalyst for me," Gorshin recalled in a 2002 Associated Press interview. "I was nobody. I had done some guest shots here and there. But after I did that, I became a headliner in Vegas, so I can't put it down."

West said the death of his longtime friend was a big loss.

"Frank will be missed," West said in a statement. "He was a friend and fascinating character."

Gorshin earned another Emmy nomination for a guest shot on "Star Trek."

In 2002, Gorshin portrayed George Burns on Broadway in the one-man show "Say Goodnight Gracie." He used only a little makeup and no prosthetics.

"I don't know how to explain it. It just comes," he said. "I wish I could say, 'This is step A, B and C.' But I can't do that. I do it, you know. The ironic thing is I've done impressions all my life -- I never did George Burns."

Gorshin's final performance will be broadcast on Thursday's CBS-TV series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

:cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on May 18, 2005, 04:22:51 PM
That's pretty sad news.  I always liked him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on May 19, 2005, 03:39:29 PM
yes thats really sad.  he was a great riddler.  although he was looking pretty bad on that batman cbs thing that ran a year or two ago.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 25, 2005, 02:04:45 PM
Filmmaker Ismail Merchant dies at 68

LONDON (AP) -- Filmmaker Ismail Merchant, who with partner James Ivory became synonymous with classy costume drama in films such as "A Room With A View" and "Howards End," died Wednesday. He was 68.

Merchant died surrounded by family and friends at a hospital in London, Merchant Ivory Productions said.
 
Merchant, who was born in Bombay but spent most of his life in the West, had been unwell for some time and recently underwent surgery for abdominal ulcers, according to Indian television reports.

Merchant and Ivory, an American, made some 40 films together and won six Oscars since forming their famous partnership in 1961 with German-born screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

Their hits -- especially E.M. Forster adaptations like "A Room With a View" and "Howards End" -- helped revive the public's taste for well-made, emotionally literate period drama.

In an interview with The Associated Press last year, Merchant said Merchant-Ivory films worked because they captured great stories.

"It should be a good story -- speak about a time and place that is permanent," he said. "It should capture something wonderful with some great characters whether it's set in the past or in the future."

Merchant generally served as producer, the business mind behind the collaboration, while Ivory directed.

Merchant first traveled to the United States in 1958 to study for a business degree at New York University.

He met Ivory in a New York City coffee shop in 1961. Their first film together, "The Householder," was based on a novel by Prawer Jhabvala, and its 1963 premiere was held at the residence of then-U.S. Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith.

"When we first began, Ruth told us she had never written a screenplay," Merchant told AP. "That was not a problem since I had never produced a feature film and Jim had never directed one."

Merchant and Ivory departed in recent years from the flawlessly appointed period films for which they were famous.

They offered their take on French farce in 2003 with "Le Divorce," starring Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts.

They also were at work on "The Goddess," a musical about the Hindu goddess Shakti, starring a singing, dancing Tina Turner. Also to be released is "The White Countess," a period drama set in China and starring Ralph Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 07, 2005, 04:50:33 PM
Actress Anne Bancroft Dies at Age 73

NEW YORK - Anne Bancroft, who won the 1962 best actress Oscar as the teacher of a young Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker" but achieved greater fame as Mrs. Robinson, the seducer of her daughter's boyfriend in the 1967 movie "The Graduate," has died, a spokesman for her husband, producer Mel Brooks, said Tuesday. She was 73.

She died of cancer on Monday at Mount Sinai Hospital, spokesman John Barlow said.

Bancroft was awarded the Tony for creating the role on Broadway of poor-sighted Annie Sullivan, the teacher of Keller, who was born deaf and blind. She repeated her portrayal in the film version. Despite her Academy Award and four other nominations, "The Graduate" overshadowed her other achievements.

Dustin Hoffman delivered the famous line when he realized his girlfriend's mother was coming on to him in a hotel room: "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. ... Aren't you?"

Bancroft complained to a 2003 interviewer: "I am quite surprised that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about `The Miracle Worker.' We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world.... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet."

Her beginnings in Hollywood were unimpressive. She was signed by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1952 and given the glamour treatment. She had been acting in television as Anne Marno (her real name: Anna Maria Louise Italiano), but it sounded too ethnic for movies. The studio gave her a choice of names; she picked Bancroft "because it sounded dignified."

After a series of B pictures, she escaped to Broadway in 1958 and won her first Tony opposite     Henry Fonda in "Two for the Seesaw." The stage and movie versions of "The Miracle Worker" followed. Her other Academy nominations: "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964); "The Graduate" (1967); "The Turning Point" (1977); "Agnes of God" (1985).


:yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:
Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on June 07, 2005, 04:56:00 PM
Aw no.

My condolences to Mel Brooks and the rest of the family.

She's right, "The Miracle Worker" was fantastic.  She was especially fantastic in it, along with Patty Duke.  It was a really fascinating on-screen relationship that they developed.  That's why she won the Oscar.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Thrindle on June 07, 2005, 06:14:17 PM
Quote from: MacGuffinActress Anne Bancroft Dies at Age 73
No no no no no no.  :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on June 07, 2005, 07:43:18 PM
besides the graduate i thought she was great in Great Expectations.   :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on June 07, 2005, 10:06:27 PM
Quote from: MacGuffinDustin Hoffman delivered the famous line when he realized his girlfriend's mother was coming on to him in a hotel room: "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. ... Aren't you?"
?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on June 08, 2005, 08:26:33 AM
Quote from: 03
Quote from: MacGuffinDustin Hoffman delivered the famous line when he realized his girlfriend's mother was coming on to him in a hotel room: "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. ... Aren't you?"
?
Quote from: Anne BancroftWe're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world.... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet."
it would appear ppl finally are.. enuff to not even remember wtf the scene was. sheesh!

i'll remember her from her appearance with mel in curb on Opening Night.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on June 08, 2005, 10:48:03 AM
Graduate soundtrack fun facts:

- The song "Mrs. Robinson" was originally "Mrs. Roosevelt."

- In his 1967 review of the film, Roger Ebert called the soundtrack "instantly forgettable."

- The film's producers were completely opposed to a Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack. They allowed Mike Nichols to use the duo only if he agreed to cast Anne Bancroft instead of French (!) actress Jeanne Moreau.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Kal on June 11, 2005, 08:51:11 PM
'MacGyver' actor dies at 77

Dana Elcar played boss on adventure show

VENTURA, California (AP) -- Dana Elcar, the round-faced, balding actor whose real-life struggle with blindness was written into his role on the TV adventure series "MacGyver," has died. He was 77.

He died Monday of complications from pneumonia at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, his family said.

"MacGyver" ran on ABC from 1985 to 1992. Elcar played the best friend and boss of the crime-fighting title character, played by Richard Dean Anderson.

"At a time when I had very little business being called an actor, he made things so easy for me," Anderson said. "It was a learning experience that was very warm and loving for all seven years."

Elcar, who suffered from glaucoma, told producers he was going blind after four seasons with "MacGyver," so they adapted his character to match his medical condition. By the end of the show's run, he had become almost completely blind.

"The fact that you are losing your eyesight does not mean you have forgotten how to act," Elcar, in a speech to the National Federation of the Blind in 1991, recalled producers telling him.

Elcar's television career spanned 50 years. He played in other drama series, including "Baretta" opposite Robert Blake and the Robert Conrad series "Black Sheep Squadron."

Elcar also appeared in at least 40 films, including "The Sting," "2010," "All of Me" and "The Learning Tree."

He starred in off-Broadway plays, including the first American productions of Harold Pinter's "The Dumb Waiter" and "The Caretaker," Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood" and Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot."

Running away from home in Ferndale, Michigan, at age 13 may have led Elcar to an acting career, his son, Dane Elcar, said. He became separated from a friend in a town far from home, and spent the night watching "Citizen Kane" at an all-night theater.

"That kind of sparked him to be an actor. He watched it four or five times in one night," Dane Elcar said.

In addition to his son, Elcar is survived by three daughters, a stepdaughter, a sister, a half sister and longtime companion Thelma M. Garcia.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Find Your Magali on June 14, 2005, 08:08:38 PM
This is a sad one.

Actor Lane Smith, 69, Dies
By Myrna Oliver
Los Angeles Times


   LOS ANGELES -- Lane Smith, the actor who portrayed President Nixon in the 1989 docudrama "The Final Days" and apoplectic Daily Planet editor Perry White in the 1990s television series "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," has died. He was 69.
   Smith died Monday at his Los Angeles home of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease, his family said.
   A veteran stage actor with scores of character parts in film and television, Smith achieved instant fame when he took on the role of Nixon in the production based on the book "The Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Smith's performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
   Although he had been acting for three decades when he was cast as Nixon, Smith told Newsday when the show aired that he considered the role "a tremendous career break."
   "It's an actor's dream to play something like this," he said. "I consider this my masterwork."
   The program itself generated controversy with Nixon supporters labeling it a "smear," and Nixon critics saying it was too sympathetic to the fallen leader. But Smith won critical praise for capturing the physical gestures, mannerisms and what he considered the "Greek tragedy" of the only U.S. president forced to resign in disgrace.
   Newsweek called Smith's portrayal "a towering performance" and noted: "This docudrama is a one-man show, and perhaps the most incandescent ever to ignite the tube."
   And Newsday said Smith "is such a good Nixon that his despair and sorrow at his predicament become simply overwhelming."
   The program greatly enhanced Smith's reputation.
   "Playing Nixon gave me tremendous recognition," Smith told United Press International a year after the docudrama aired. "I'd long been known in the business, but it pulled everything together. Finally people could put the name Lane Smith with my face."
   In 1991, he landed regular roles in two short-lived television series, as cable television mogul R.J. Rappaport in "Good Sports" starring Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal, and as suitor for star Teri Garr's mother in "Good and Evil."
   In short order, he also played a hockey coach in the highly popular "The Mighty Ducks," a politician in Eddie Murphy's "The Distinguished Gentleman" and a lawyer in "My Cousin Vinny" all released in 1992.
   And then along came Superman.
   Smith had been a regular on other series, including the title character's mentor in the 1986 medical drama "Kay O'Brien" and a corrupt industrialist aiding menacing aliens in the 1985 sci-fi series "V." But "Lois and Clark," which starred Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher and ran on ABC from 1993 to 1997, would be his most enduring employer.
   In the updated take on the caped crusader from Krypton, White's favorite exclamation changed from "Great Caesar's Ghost!" to "Great shades of Elvis!" and the editor spewed Elvis trivia.
   Born in Memphis, Tenn., April 29, 1936, Smith grew up wanting to act. He studied drama for two years at what is now Carnegie-Mellon University before dropping out for a two-year Army hitch. . He later moved to New York to study at the Actors Studio.
   Smith made his off-Broadway debut in 1959 and acted in several plays on and off Broadway.
   .
   Notwithstanding the Nixon role, his real career break came in the late 1960s when he played Randle Patrick McMurphy for 650 off-Broadway performances of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next." Better roles followed, and he went on to play characters as diverse as Modigliani, Jack Kerouac and Adolf Hitler.
   Smith earned a Drama Desk Award for his role in David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross" in 1984.
   The actor made his motion picture debut in 1973 in "The Last American Hero" starring Jeff Bridges, and in 1978, he moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on film and television work. His first motion picture starring role came in 1988 when he played the warden in "Prison" with Viggo Mortensen.
   Smith is survived by his wife of four years, Debbie, and his son from a previous marriage, Robertson.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 28, 2005, 02:06:41 PM
Those of you who watched Ken Burns' Civil War know who this is.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8390848/

Historian, novelist Shelby Foote dies at 88
Worked for 20 years on three-volume Civil War history
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:34 p.m. ET June 28, 2005

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Novelist and historian Shelby Foote, whose Southern storyteller's touch inspired millions to read his multivolume work on the Civil War, has died. He was 88.

Foote died Monday night, his widow, Gwyn, said Tuesday.

Foote, a Mississippi native and longtime Memphis resident, wrote six novels but is best remembered for his three-volume, 3,000-page history of the Civil War and his appearance on the PBS series "The Civil War."

He worked on the book for 20 years, using a flowing, narrative style that enabled readers to enjoy it like a historical novel.

"I can't conceive of writing it any other way," Foote once said. "Narrative history is the kind that comes closest to telling the truth. You can never get to the truth, but that's your goal."

That work landed Foote a leading role on Ken Burns' 11-hour Civil War documentary, first shown on the Public Broadcasting Service in 1990.

"He was a Southerner of great intellect who took up the issue of the Civil War as a writer with huge sanity and sympathy," said Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford, a friend and fellow Mississippi native.

Foote's soft drawl and gentlemanly manner on the Burns film made him an instant celebrity, a role with which he was unaccustomed and, apparently, somewhat uncomfortable.

One volume became three

Foote attended the University of North Carolina for two years and served in World War II, though he never saw combat.

Foote's first novel, "Tournament," was started before the war and published in 1949. Then came "Follow Me Down" in 1950, "Love in a Dry Season" in 1951, "Shiloh" in 1952 and "Jordan County" in 1954.

That same year, Random House asked him to write a one-volume history of the Civil War. He took the job, but it grew into a three-volume project finally finished in 1974.

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative" as No. 15 on its list of the century's 100 best English-language works of nonfiction.

Reading, he said, was as much a part of his work as writing.

After finishing his sixth novel, "September, September," in 1978, he took off three years to read.

Though hardly a recluse, Foote had long been known around Memphis as having little interest in parties and public gatherings. And he was often outspoken about his likes and dislikes.

"Most people, if the truth be told, are gigantic bores," he once said. "There's no need to subject yourself to that kind of thing."

Writing with a dipped pen

Foote was born Nov. 7, 1916, in Greenville, a small Delta town with a literary bent. Walker Percy was a boyhood and lifelong friend, and Foote, as a young man, served as a "jackleg reporter" for Hodding Carter on The Delta Star. As a young man, he would also get to know William Faulkner.

During World War II, he was an Army captain of artillery until he lost his commission for using a military vehicle without authorization to visit a female friend and was discharged from the Army. He joined the Marines and was still stateside when the war ended.

"The Marines had a great time with me," he said. "They said if you used to be a captain, you might make a pretty good Marine."

He tried journalism again after World War II, signing on briefly with The Associated Press in its New York bureau.

"I think journalism is a good experience, having to turn in copy against deadline and everything else, but I don't think one should stay in it too long if what he wants to be is a serious writer," Foote said in a 1990 interview.

Early in his career, Foote took up the habit of writing by hand with an old-fashioned dipped pen, and he continued that practice throughout his life.

He kept bound volumes of his manuscripts, all written in a flowing hand, on a bookshelf in a homey bedroom-study overlooking a small garden at his Memphis residence.

Though facing a busy city street, the two-story house was almost hidden from view by trees and shrubs.

"If I were a wealthy man, I'd have someone on that gate," he said.

Foote said writing by hand helped him slow down to a manageable pace and was more personal that using a typewriter, though he often prepared a typed copy of his day's writing after it was finished.

Married three times, Foote has a daughter, Margaret Shelby, and a son, Huger Lee. He and Gwyn married in 1956, three years after he moved to Memphis.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: thadius sterling on June 30, 2005, 03:00:57 PM
Someone may have already suggested this but the thread is far too long for me to go scanning. I think Abe Bigota croaked 10 years ago but he's still showing up at Roasts
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on July 01, 2005, 06:00:26 PM
Luther Vandross Dies at 54

NEW YORK - Grammy award winner     Luther Vandross, whose deep, lush voice on such hits as "Here and Now" and "Any Love" sold more than 25 million albums while providing the romantic backdrop for millions of couples worldwide, died Friday. He was 54. Vandross died at John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, N.J., said hospital spokesman Rob Cavanaugh. He did not release the cause of death.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on July 01, 2005, 08:52:01 PM
I just read that not too long ago.

God Bless that man.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on July 02, 2005, 02:23:12 AM
he died of the stroke he suffered two years ago.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 05, 2005, 10:05:00 PM
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!


Famed screenwriter Ernest Lehman, 89

Ernest Lehman, the screenwriter whose adaptations of such high-profile Broadway plays and musicals as "West Side Story," "The Sound of Music" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" dominated movie screens during the 1960s, died Saturday at UCLA Medical Center after a lengthy illness. He was 89.

Lehman received six Academy Award nominations -- four for his screenplays and two in the category of best picture -- and also earned nine WGA Award nominations, winning the guild's top honor five times. In 2001, Lehman was recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when he became the first screenwriter awarded an honorary Oscar, for his "varied and enduring work."

"I accept this rarest of honors on behalf of screenwriters everywhere, but especially those in the Writers Guild of America," he said onstage. "We have suffered anonymity far too often. I appeal to all movie critics and feature writers to please always bear in mind that a film production begins and ends with a screenplay.

"A creative giant among writers and within the industry, Ernest possessed one of the most distinctive voices of the last half-century," WGAW president Daniel Petrie Jr. said Tuesday. "Adept at tackling a wide range of genres, his unforgettable contributions to the craft of screenwriting helped define what we've come to know as American film."
 
One of Hollywood's most critically and commercially successful screenwriters, Lehman served as president of the WGAW, elected in 1983 and serving until 1985. He also served several terms on the WGAW board -- in 1954-56, 1961-70, as vp of the screen branch in 1965-67, and in 1980-88. He also sat on many WGAW committees, as well as the Writers Guild Foundation board of directors.

He took home WGA Awards for "Sabrina," "The King and I," "West Side Story," "The Sound of Music," and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

In 1972, the WGA presented Lehman with its Screen Laurel Award.

The Academy nominated Lehman for his original screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" and "Sabrina," which he cowrote with Billy Wilder and Samuel A. Taylor. He received adapted screenplay noms for "West Side Story" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" which he also produced. In addition to his producing nom for "Woolf," he also picked up a nom in the best picture category for "Hello, Dolly!"

Lehman was brought to Hollywood in the early 1950s by Paramount Pictures and John Houseman just as the industry was beginning to fear the impact of TV. "It was like taking the last train from Berlin," Lehman said. "I was one of the last contract writers signed."

His writing credits also include "Executive Suite," "Somebody Up There Likes Me," "From the Terrace," and "The Prize," "Black Sunday" and "Family Plot."

Lehman was born Dec. 8, 1915 on Long Island, N.Y. His family was affluent until hit by the Depression. He graduated from the College of the City of New York with a degree that combined chemical engineering and English. He became a freelance writer, and his first sale was a profile of entertainer Ted Lewis to Colliers magazine. Freelancing was, he claimed, a "very nervous way to make a living," so Lehman went to work writing copy for a publicity firm specializing in theatrical productions and celebrities.

That experience later informed 1957's "The Sweet Smell of Success," which he scripted with Clifford Odets based on one of Lehman's novellas, "Tell Me About It Tomorrow." Starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, the movie focused on the relationship between a powerful gossip columnist and an unscrupulous press agent and has come to be considered a classic dissection of the underside of show business. In 2002, it served as the basis for a Broadway musical.

Enthralled by Broadway and its environs, the young Lehman wrote short stories and novellas. More than 50 of them were published by such publications as Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Colliers, Redbook and others.

Those credits prompted Paramount to offer Lehman a writing contract. His first movie credit was "Executive Suite," an insider's look at Wall Street. It was a success and Paramount called him to collaborate with Wilder on one of the studio's major productions, "Sabrina," the romantic comedy, starring Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn.

Although he became highly regarded as a adapter of stage plays, Lehman was in the distinct minority in Hollywood in his belief in the cinematic potential of Edward Albee's profane stage play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" While most considered the play too dark, Lehman found a supporter in Warner Bros. executive Jack Warner. With Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor starring as the hardrinking professor and his foul-mouthed materialistic wife and Mike Nichols making his theatrical directorial debut, the movie, shot in black-and-white, went on to receive 13 Academy Award nominations, more than any other film that year, including two for Lehman as producer and writer.

Lehman stumbled, though, with his next effort, "Hello, Dolly!," where he again functioned as producer-writer. One of the most lavish musicals ever produced by 20th Century Fox, it received seven Academy Award nominations, but was regarded as an elphantine boxoffice disappointment.

Lehman directed one film, "Portnoy's Complaint," based on Philip Roth's best-selling novel. For that production, starring Richard Benjamin, he adapted the screenplay, directed and produced under his Chenault Prods. banner for Warner Bros.

Lehman essentially retired from his scriptwriting in 1979, His last project was a TV miniseries adaptation of the novel "The French Atlantic Affair." "Sabrina" was remade in 1995.

Throughout his retirement, Lehman has been active with AMPAS activities.

Lehman is survived by his wife, Laurie, and their son, Jonathan, as well as his sons Roger and Alan from his marriage to his late first wife, Jackie; his daughter-in-law, Julie; and two grandchildren, Adele and Jack.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent to the Writers Guild Foundation or the Motion Picture and Television Fund. A private memorial service will be held this Friday in Los Angeles.


:yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:  :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Kal on July 05, 2005, 10:07:03 PM
RIP... amazing guy.

89, not bad at all anyways
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on July 06, 2005, 12:19:54 AM
retired for 25 years. this dude lived a full life. RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on July 06, 2005, 12:43:32 AM
Quote from: Pubrickretired for 25 years. this dude lived a full life. RIP.
not to mention he died "after a lengthy illness".

RIP, ernie.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on July 06, 2005, 12:47:21 AM
RIP, he accomplished alot.

But I know people who are still alive and are envious of him dead and all. He lived a long life and had many accomplishments, can't really feel sorry for him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on July 06, 2005, 12:55:02 AM
its too bad he died on the 2nd otherwise we could've called this a "black sunday"..  :yabbse-undecided:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on July 06, 2005, 11:14:26 AM
2005 is a horrible year for life.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on July 06, 2005, 11:17:32 AM
W, you misspelled Mitch Hedberg.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on July 06, 2005, 11:18:27 AM
Sorry.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 06, 2005, 05:50:12 PM
Wow, I only now realize how diverse Lehman's work is.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on July 06, 2005, 07:41:14 PM
Quote from: W2005 is a horrible year for life.
are u kidding me
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on July 07, 2005, 12:17:28 AM
2005 may be the year when Walrus has gone through puberty. I was the same way in my special year. "Hans, american bandstand is on" "who cares..."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on July 07, 2005, 09:32:21 AM
anybody got jerry lewis?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 07, 2005, 10:17:12 PM
Okay, who's killing Hitchcock's screenwriters? Is Joseph Stefano (Psycho) next?

Evan Hunter, aka Ed McBain, dies -- wrote 'Blackboard Jungle'

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Evan Hunter, a prolific writer whose gritty Ed McBain 87th Precinct detective series pioneered the police procedural genre and laid the groundwork for a generation of TV cop dramas, has died at the age of 78. Hunter, whose earlier work included "The Blackboard Jungle" and the script for "The Birds," died Wednesday of cancer of the larynx, said his agent. Writing as Ed McBain, his 87th Precinct series grew to more than 50 titles as it tracked a detective squad in a mythical city bearing a strong resemblance to Hunter's hometown of New York City. "Hill Street Blues," the first TV police procedural with a large ensemble cast, bore a strong resemblance to the 87th Precinct novels in form, tone and spirit.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on July 08, 2005, 11:49:22 AM
When I say it's a horrible year for life I mean so many great people are dying.

A lot of great CD's and movies are coming out this year, so it's a great year to be alive.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on July 08, 2005, 12:00:36 PM
Quote from: WA lot of great CD's ... are coming out this year
are u kidding me
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on July 08, 2005, 12:07:17 PM
Quote from: Pubrick
Quote from: WA lot of great CD's ... are coming out this year
are u kidding me

I haven't heard all of the ones I plan on hearing, and I'm being hopeful, OK?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on July 08, 2005, 01:50:12 PM
If anything music croaked this year (so far) lots of dissapointments. NIN, Foo Fighters, Lohans New Cd.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleuth on July 08, 2005, 03:31:11 PM
it's interesting how you tagged on TWO joke bands at the end
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on July 08, 2005, 03:33:34 PM
Hey, I expected something from the Foo Fighters, music wise. And at least some good liner notes from Lohan.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: NEON MERCURY on July 11, 2005, 09:45:33 AM
Quote from: StefenHey, I expected something from the Foo Fighters, music wise. And at least some good liner notes from Lohan.


the liner notes are actaully pretty inspiring...

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2FB00065JTB0.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg&hash=d24d0222636c0e8ded5c4b82d9c98d27adc1770c)

my dearest fans,

thanks for purchasing my new cd.  i speant three years writing these introspective lyrics.  they cover so many different aspects of my life.  like the time when growing up in new york.  mans, those were some ruff times.  but i new i had a connection with new york even before birth.  when i was evolving from a delicate fetus inside my mommy's womb-i could feel new york.  i new that through the minerals and good eats that my mommy shoved down her stomach i would become a star.   thats why i decided to put a "star" symbol on my album cover.  whats really trippy is that if you look at all those designs on the cover, each signifies something special in my life.  'hehe'. the skull bones brings a certian fear and respect or even a dangerous streak with in me.  but some theorists have also pointed out that the bones represent the fact that i am sexy super skinny now.  but ya'll know to stop speading those rumors!  we's rumor haterz on a 2005 click! head bob to my lyrics baby.  but i do get dangerous.  i am going to save that those for my horny male fans.  masterbate in secret and all will be revealed.  the rock guitar should be self explanetory  but in case some of you are pretty slow ['tee-hee'], i will drop some knowledge on you.  lets face it-I ROCK! i am sexy as hell.  who wouldn't want to look like me. touch me.  feel my body .  yeah, i getting cactus crazy on ya!  j-lo aint gots nothing on my ass.  feliz, spank that for me....ooooooooohhhh yeeeah......leave feliz!  [ahem...] the bird with wings is truly a sad story.  as some of ya'll rumor feeders know my daddy is not an upstanding citizen.  he go to jail  :cry: . so, the bird symbolizes my desire for my daddy to fly away from jail. break free!  but i wrote a poem to describe my anger.  this is actaully a sneak peek at my new song from my next ablum.  the song is intitled, "don't lock my soul away"

"my daddy is behind bars...what will become of daddy's little girl?...crying eyes cloud the truth...there are corporate haterz in the mist...check me out rolling in my hot pink camero...change stations cleer out...i layed that freak wilmer valdermama...i had dat motherfucker screaming MAMA!!!....but please judge of justice, bringer of the mallet, conceiver of malediction...don't lock my soul away...."

as you can see, its got future top 10 hit written all over it.   sorry to be gett'n off track but thems some deep emotions pouring out.  and ya'll got an inside edition-style sneak tip of my new material.  lastly, the pink lady descirbes the essence of my female body and friends.  my click comprises of paris and nicole.  we be flexing our sex appeal all over the new york and L A club scene.  paris taught me everything that a woman should possess and i learned through her tutelage what it takes to be  a real woman.  oh yeah nicole you ask?  she and i snort coaciane off of random peoples cocks.  but ya'll remeber we ons a rumor free kick!  thanks again for purchasing a 'window into my mind'.  i hope you guys think that these tracks and lyrics are first rate.  this is some nobel prize winning stuff right here.  um hum, you betcha. rolling out with the keys.  gots all the men dropping on their knees.  gots my ex-boyfriend holla'ring  'please'.   but no more sucking on these. smoking the finest trees.  sporting my curves out on the open seas.  i make all those rumors fall like the leaves.   i spit my rhymes like the fow of a gentle breeze.  everybody shouting 'hey what sup with lindsy?? ya'll just got to wait...and...see.

and we out.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on July 11, 2005, 02:22:30 PM
Why, Neon... why?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 20, 2005, 01:41:50 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4701167.stm

Star Trek's Scotty dies aged 85


Actor James Doohan, who played the chief engineer Montgomery Scott in Star Trek, has died at the age of 85.

Doohan, whose role was immortalised in the line "Beam me up, Scotty", had been suffering from pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, his agent said.

His wife of 28 years, Wende, was by his side, Steve Stevens added.

Doohan was a popular character actor when he auditioned for the part in 1966. When the series ended in 1969, he found himself typecast in the role.

The Canadian-born actor was a master of dialect, developed during his years on radio.

When asked what accent he thought his Star Trek character should have, he said: "I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding."

'Go with the flow'

Doohan's character Scotty manned the Star Trek enterprise with Captain James T Kirk, played by William Shatner, and Mr Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy.

They starred together for three seasons before US network NBC cancelled it because of weak ratings.

But the team was reassembled when the franchise hit the big screen. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in cinemas in 1979.

Doohan appeared in seven big screen episodes of Star Trek, and continued to voice the franchise's video games into the late 1990s.

Initially he was concerned about being typecast as Scotty.

In 1973, he complained to his dentist, who advised him: "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow.

"I took his advice and since then everything's been just lovely."

He came to embrace his Scotty character and attended Star Trek fan conventions into his 80s, before falling ill.

Doohan became a father again at the age of 80, when his wife Wende gave birth to daughter Sarah.

His last public appearance was in October 2004 when he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on July 20, 2005, 02:18:42 PM
Quote from: RaviDoohan became a father again at the age of 80, when his wife Wende gave birth to daughter Sarah.

Octogenarians fathering kids is so punk rock.  Way to go, Scotty.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on August 07, 2005, 11:04:43 PM
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1015438

Peter Jennings Dies at 67
'World News Tonight' Anchor Since 1983

Aug. 7, 2005 - ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings died today at his home in New York City. He was 67. On April 5, Jennings announced he had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

He is survived by his wife, Kayce Freed, his two children, Elizabeth, 25, and Christopher, 23, and his sister, Sarah Jennings.

In announcing Jennings' death to his ABC colleagues, News President David Westin wrote:

"For four decades, Peter has been our colleague, our friend, and our leader in so many ways. None of us will be the same without him.

"As you all know, Peter learned only this spring that the health problem he'd been struggling with was lung cancer. With Kayce, he moved straight into an aggressive chemotherapy treatment. He knew that it was an uphill struggle. But he faced it with realism, courage, and a firm hope that he would be one of the fortunate ones. In the end, he was not.

"We will have many opportunities in the coming hours and days to remember Peter for all that he meant to us all. It cannot be overstated or captured in words alone. But for the moment, the finest tribute we can give is to continue to do the work he loved so much and inspired us to do."

Reported World-Shaping Events

As one of America's most distinguished journalists, Jennings reported many of the pivotal events that have shaped our world. He was in Berlin in the 1960s when the Berlin Wall was going up, and there in the '90s when it came down. He covered the civil rights movement in the southern United States during the 1960s, and the struggle for equality in South Africa during the 1970s and '80s. He was there when the Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965, and on the other side of the world when South Africans voted for the first time. He has worked in every European nation that once was behind the Iron Curtain. He was there when the independent political movement Solidarity was born in a Polish shipyard, and again when Poland's communist leaders were forced from power. And he was in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania and throughout the Soviet Union to record first the repression of communism and then its demise. He was one of the first reporters to go to Vietnam in the 1960s, and went back to the killing fields of Cambodia in the 1980s to remind Americans that, unless they did something, the terror would return.

On Dec. 31, 1999, Jennings anchored ABC's Peabody-award winning coverage of Millennium Eve, "ABC 2000." Some 175 million Americans watched the telecast, making it the biggest live global television event ever. "The day belonged to ABC News," wrote The Washington Post, "&with Peter Jennings doing a nearly superhuman job of anchoring." Jennings was the only anchor to appear live for 25 consecutive hours.

Jennings also led ABC's coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks and America's subsequent war on terrorism. He anchored more than 60 hours that week during the network's longest continuous period of news coverage, and was widely praised for providing a reassuring voice during the time of crisis. TV Guide called him "the center of gravity," while the Washington Post wrote, "Jennings, in his shirt sleeves, did a Herculean job of coverage." The coverage earned ABC News Peabody and duPont awards.

Overseas, and at Home

Jennings joined ABC News on Aug. 3, 1964. He served as the anchor of "Peter Jennings with the News" from 1965 to 1967.

He established the first American television news bureau in the Arab world in 1968 when he served as ABC News' bureau chief for Beirut, Lebanon, a position he held for seven years. He helped put ABC News on the map in 1972 with his coverage of the Summer Olympics in Munich, when Arab terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage.

In 1975, Jennings moved to Washington to become the news anchor of ABC's morning program "A.M. America". After a short stint in the mornings, Jennings returned overseas to Rome where he stayed before moving to London to become ABC's Chief Foreign Correspondent. In 1978 he was named the foreign desk anchor for "World News Tonight." He co-anchored the program with Frank Reynolds in Washington, D.C., and Max Robinson in Chicago until 1983.

Jennings was named anchor and senior editor of "World News Tonight" in 1983. In his more than 20 years in the position he was honored with almost every major award given to television journalists.

His extensive domestic and overseas reporting experience was evident in "World News Tonight's" coverage of major crises. He reported from all 50 states and locations around the globe. During the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 War in Iraq, his knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs brought invaluable perspective to ABC News war in Iraq and the drug trade in Central and South America. The series also tackled important domestic issues such as gun control policy, the politics of abortion, the crisis in funding for the arts and a highly praised chronicle of the accused bombers of Oklahoma City. "Peter Jennings Reporting" earned numerous awards, including the 2004 Edward R. Morrow award for best documentary for "The Kennedy Assassination -- Beyond Conspiracy."

Jennings also had a particular interest in broadcasting for the next generation. He did numerous live news specials for children on subjects ranging from growing up in the age of AIDS, to prejudice and its effects on our society. After the events of September 11, and again on the anniversary, he anchored a town hall meeting for children and parents entitled, "Answering Children's Questions."

Jennings was honored with many awards for news reporting, including 16 Emmys, two George Foster Peabody Awards, several Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards and several Overseas Press Club Awards. Most recently, "World News Tonight" was recognized with two consecutive Edward R. Murrow awards for best newscast, based on field reporting done by Jennings on the California wildfires and the transfer of power in Iraq.

Jennings was the author, with Todd Brewster, of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller, "The Century." It featured first-person accounts of the great events of the century. In 1999, he anchored the 12-hour ABC series, "The Century," and ABC's series for The History Channel, "America's Time." He and Brewster also published "In Search of America," a companion book for the 6-part ABC News series.

Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on August 07, 2005, 11:08:58 PM
^^

God damn that is sad. :(

Peter Jennings (in my opinion) was the greatest. Whenever a major news event was breaking, I would always tune into ABC NEWS first. I'm really sad to here about this. Fucking cigarettes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 08, 2005, 12:24:41 AM
Quote from: MyxomatosisPeter Jennings (in my opinion) was the greatest.

My opinion, too.  The quality of American newscasting just dropped immeasurably.

:bravo:    :salute:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Brazoliange on August 08, 2005, 12:42:15 AM
America had quality newscasting?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 08, 2005, 01:09:42 AM
he was from canada.
I'm pretty saddened by this kinda sudden death too, but lets not kid ourselves, Peter Jennings was not that great of a journalist, maybe he was before my time--maybe he was like Jay Leno and I just caught him when he stopped trying, but for the last five or six years, he was not much of a journalist as he was actor; raising eyebrows on cue and looking glum when needed.  he never dug too deep and never asked that much.  at least ted koppel had sincerity in his empty newscasts.
Charlie Rose is the greatest TV journalist out there today.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 08, 2005, 01:13:50 AM
Quote from: BrazoliangeAmerica had quality newscasting?

Note that I separate the distinct concepts of "newscasting" and "journalism".  One is not the other, and in the unfortunate absence of the latter, at least in Peter Jennings we had a fine purveyor of the former.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on August 08, 2005, 04:49:07 AM
Jennings didn't need to be a great journalist. He did that for over twenty years. People like Ted Koppel at ABC NEWS have always been far better suited for field work. No, Peter Jennings was meant to be in front of the camera, inspiring Americans through anchoring an absolutely wonderful newscast.

..and I agree that Charlie Rose kicks ass by the way. However, for events like 9/11 and so forth, I'd take Jennings for my evening news in a second over anyone.

We're slowly losing the "great generation" of anchormen and women. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that baby boomers will be taking over for the next twenty years or so.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on August 08, 2005, 08:55:57 PM
sorry. searched "death" and  "jennings".

thanks for the redirect.

i like him a lot.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on August 08, 2005, 11:32:48 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4133644.stm


Singer Ferrer buried in Havana
By Stephen Gibbs
BBC News, Havana


A funeral has been held in Havana for the Cuban musician Ibrahim Ferrer.

Ferrer, who died on Saturday at the age of 78, was a lead singer with the Grammy award winning group the Buena Vista Social Club.

The band found international fame in the late 1990s, after being promoted by the US guitarist Ry Cooder, and featuring in a film by Wim Wenders.

Ibrahim Ferrer is the third elderly member of the band to die in the last two years.

A recording of the voice of Ibrahim Ferrer was heard at his own funeral for around 200 of his friends and family who had come to say a final goodbye.

It was a simple ceremony for the man who was described as having a voice like an angel.

His body was carried in a plain black coffin and placed in a large stone grave.

The unpretentious farewell was perhaps as he would have liked it.

Juan De Marcos, the Cuban musician who persuaded all the elderly members of the Buena Vista Social Club to get together and record an album, remembered the singer as the reluctant star.

"Ibrahim was always a shy guy," he said.

"He never wanted to be in front of the band. He thought that the proper place for him was in the back of the band because he never was in the front of any band in his life."

His death follows that in 2003 of Compay Segundo and Ruben Gonzalez, the two other key members of the group.

Together they all had an extraordinary second career in the final decade of their lives.

Their music, all but forgotten just 10 years ago, does now look set to live on.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on August 09, 2005, 12:59:21 AM
Quote from: Reinhold Messnersorry. searched "death" and  "jennings".

thanks for the redirect.
jennings and death would've given u this thread, specifically Ravi's initial report (http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?p=196986&highlight=jennings+death#196986) and Pete's reply (http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?p=197004&highlight=jennings+death#197004).

please spend time here: http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=7892 , together we can make it through this.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 10, 2005, 11:01:46 PM
Film, Stage Star Barbara Bel Geddes Dies

Barbara Bel Geddes, the winsome actress who rose to stage and movie stardom but reached her greatest fame as Miss Ellie Ewing in the long-running TV series "Dallas," has died. She was 82.

The San Francisco Chronicle said Bel Geddes, a longtime smoker, died Monday of lung cancer at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine. Jordan-Fernald Funeral Home in Mount Desert, Maine, confirmed the death Wednesday, but owner Bill Fernald said the family asked that no further information be given out.

Bel Geddes was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for the 1948 drama "I Remember Mama" and was the original Maggie the Cat on Broadway in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

But she was best known as the matriarch of the rambunctious Ewing oil family on "Dallas," which hurtled to the top of the ratings despite negative reviews. Bel Geddes won an Emmy in 1980 as best lead actress in a drama series and remains the only nighttime soap star to be so honored.

"She was the rock of 'Dallas,'" Larry Hagman, who played J.R. Ewing, told The Associated Press. "She was just a really nice woman and a wonderful actress. She was kind of the glue that held the whole thing together."

Bel Geddes called "Dallas "real fun," but it was also marked by tragedy. In 1981, Jim Davis, who played Miss Ellie's husband, Jock Ewing, died.

"It was like losing her own husband again," said "Dallas" producer Leonard Katzman. "It was a terribly difficult and emotional time for Barbara."

In March 1984, Bel Geddes was stricken with a major heart attack. Miss Ellie was played by Donna Reed for six months, then Bel Geddes returned to "Dallas," remaining until 1990, a year before CBS canceled the show.

Hagman said he had encouraged Bel Geddes to give up the smoking habit, but it was doctors who got her to quit after the heart attack, he said. He recalled the makeup room on the "Dallas" set as being so filled with her cigarette smoke that he would ask to be made up in his dressing room.

Of the lung cancer deaths of Peter Jennings and Bel Geddes, Hagman said: "I hope it's a wake-up call to a lot of people."

"Dallas" came late in her career. She had retired to take care of her husband, Windsor Lewis, after he fell ill with cancer in 1966. He died in 1972.

Her earnings depleted by his long illness, she found work scarce for a middle-aged actress and said she was "flat broke" in 1978 when she accepted the role as Miss Ellie.

In 1945, Bel Geddes made a splash on Broadway at 23 with her first important role in "Deep Are the Roots," winning the New York Drama Critics Award as best actress.

She announced to a reporter: "My ambition is to be a good screen actress. I think it would be much more exciting to work for Frank Capra, George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock or Elia Kazan than to stay on Broadway."

Hollywood was quick to notice. In 1946 she signed a contract with RKO that granted her unusual request to be committed to only one picture a year. In her first movie she costarred with Henry Fonda in "The Long Night," a disappointing remake of a French film.

Her second film was a hit playing a budding writer in George Stevens' "I Remember Mama," the touching story of an immigrant family in San Francisco starring Irene Dunne as Mama. With her delicate features and patrician manner, Bel Geddes became a popular leading lady in films.

"I went out to California awfully young," she remarked. "I remember Lillian Hellman and Elia Kazan telling me, 'Don't go, learn your craft.' But I loved films." After four movies, Howard Hughes, who had bought control of RKO in 1948, dropped her contract because "she wasn't sexy enough."

Bel Geddes was devastated. But it turned out to be a good happenstance. She had time to return to the stage, and she scored a triumph in 1955 as Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Yet her biggest Broadway success was "Mary, Mary," a frothy marital comedy by Jean Kerr, which opened in 1961 and ran for more than 1,500 performances.

In her film career, Bel Geddes was able to work with great filmmakers such as Kazan ("Panic in the Streets") and Alfred Hitchcock ("Vertigo"). She also costarred with Danny Kaye in "The Five Pennies" and with Jeanne Moreau in "Five Branded Women."

"By Love Possessed" in 1961 was her last film for 10 years. She made her final films in 1971 "Summertree" and "The Todd Killings"

Among Bel Geddes' other major theater credits were roles in Terence Rattigan's "The Sleeping Prince" (1956); Robert Anderson's "Silent Night, Holy Night" (1959), which co-starred Henry Fonda; and Edward Albee's "Everything in the Garden" (1967). She was born in New York City on Oct. 31, 1922, the daughter of renowned industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes.

"I didn't see much of my father," she said, "but I absolutely adored him." After her education in private schools, he found her a job at a summer theater and used his connections with stage people to help her get work.

Early in her stage career Bel Geddes married Carl Schreuer, an electrical engineer, and they had a daughter, Susan. The marriage ended after seven years in 1951, and that year she married director Lewis. They had a daughter, Betsy.



'Big Fish' 7-footer Matthew McGrory dies

Matthew McGrory, the deep-voiced 7-foot-plus actor who moved from appearances on Howard Stern's radio show to a high-profile role as a gentle giant in "Big Fish," has died. He was 32.

McGrory died Tuesday at his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, said director Drew Sky, who was working with him on his current movie, a biopic of wrestler-turned-actor Andre the Giant.

Paramedics determined he died of apparent natural causes, police said in a statement.

McGrory had size 29 1/2 shoes and for years held a world record for biggest feet not caused by elephantiasis. The title led to his appearances on Stern's show in the 1990s and other attention from the national media even before he became an actor. He attended law school and showed up in music videos before starting his career in Hollywood B-movies.

He played a human Sasquatch in 2001's "Bubble Boy," an alien in "Men In Black II" (2002) and Tiny in the Rob Zombie horror movies "House of 1000 Corpses" (2003) and its sequel released this year, "The Devil's Rejects."

His big break in Hollywood came in 2003 with Tim Burton-directed "Big Fish." Ewan McGregor's character refuses to be intimidated by the size of McGrory's Karl character, walking up to shake his hand.

McGrory's family and girlfriend declined immediate comment.

Sky said he first met McGrory at a bar in 2000 and had been filming "Andre: Heart of the Giant" on and off for six months. He said that McGrory, who was from West Chester, Pa., felt a connection with the man he was playing, wrestler and "The Princess Bride" actor Andre Rousimmoff, who died in 1993.

"He felt the same way, that he would do anything just to be a person of regular size one day a week, where people don't have to stare at him, where he could go see a regular movie and walk down the street," Sky said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on August 17, 2005, 05:43:18 PM
This is pretty sad.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/people/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001017139

Joe Ranft, Pixar Animation's head of story, 45

By Sheigh Crabtree and Cynthia Littleton

Joe Ranft, Pixar Animation Studios' head of story and a founding member of the animation company's creative team, died Tuesday afternoon in a car accident in Mendocino County, Calif. He was 45.

"Joe was an important and beloved member of the Pixar family, and his loss is of great sorrow to all of us and to the animation industry as a whole," Pixar said in a statement Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for the Mendocino County Sheriff-Coroner's Office confirmed Ranft was one of two people who died when their car veered off the road while traveling northbound on Highway 1.

According to the California Highway Patrol, the accident occurred at about 3 p.m. Tuesday as the driver of the 2004 Honda Element tried to regain control of the car after swerving when he headed into a tight left curve. The car plunged 130 feet over the side into the ocean, the CHP said.

The driver, identified by the coroner's office as Elegba Earl, 32, of Los Angeles, was also killed in the crash. The third person in the car, identified by the CHP as Eric Frierson, 39, of Los Angeles, survived by climbing through the car's sun roof. He was hospitalized with moderate injuries at Mendocino Coast Hospital, according to Officer Robert Simas of the CHP office in Ukiah, Calif.

Ranft worked in both story development and as a storyboard artist at Pixar for the past decade. He was a co-writer on 1995's "Toy Story," for which he earned an Oscar nomination, and 1998's "A Bug's Life." Before Pixar, Ranft was a leading member of the story department at Walt Disney Feature Animation, where he was a writer on 1991's "Beauty and the Beast" and 1994's "The Lion King."

Ranft also voiced key Pixar characters such as Heimlich in "Bug's" and Wheezy the Penguin in "Toy Story 2."

Born in Southern California in 1960, Ranft was a classmate of director John Lasseter's at the California Institute of the Arts in the 1970s. After two years at CalArts, he joined Disney in 1980. He joined Pixar in 1992.

"Joe was a big part of Pixar's soul," a Pixar spokesperson said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 22, 2005, 01:18:54 PM
Synthesizer innovator Robert Moog dies at 71

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Robert Moog, whose self-named synthesizers turned electric currents into sound, revolutionizing music in the 1960s and opening the wave that became electronica, has died. He was 71.

Moog died Sunday at his home in Asheville, according to his company's Web site. He had suffered from an inoperable brain tumor, detected in April.

A childhood interest in the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments, would lead Moog to a create a career and business that tied the name Moog as tightly to synthesizers as the name Les Paul is to electric guitars.

Despite traveling in circles that included jet-setting rockers, he always considered himself a technician.

"I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers," he said in 2000. "They use the tools."

As a Ph.D. student in engineering physics at Cornell University, Moog -- rhymes with vogue -- in 1964 developed his first voltage-controlled synthesizer modules with composer Herb Deutsch. By the end of that year, R.A. Moog Co. marketed the first commercial modular synthesizer.

The instrument allowed musicians, first in a studio and later on stage, to generate a range of sounds that could mimic nature or seem otherworldly by flipping a switch, twisting a dial, or sliding a knob. Other synthesizers were already on the market in 1964, but Moog's stood out for being small, light and versatile.

The arrival of the synthesizer came as just as the Beatles and other musicians started seeking ways to fuse psychedelic-drug experiences with their art. The Beatles used a Moog synthesizer on their 1969 album, "Abbey Road"; a Moog was used to create an eerie sound on the soundtrack to the 1971 film "A Clockwork Orange."

Keyboardist Walter (later Wendy) Carlos demonstrated the range of Moog's synthesizer by recording the hit album "Switched-On Bach" in 1968 using only the new instrument instead of an orchestra.

Among the other classics using a Moog: the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," and Stevie Wonder's urban epic, "Livin' for the City."

"Suddenly, there was a whole group of people in the world looking for a new sound in music, and it picked up very quickly," said Deutsch, the Hofstra University emeritus music professor who helped develop the Moog prototype.

"The Moog came at the right time," he said Monday.

The popularity of the synthesizer and the success of the company named for Moog took off in rock as extended keyboard solos in songs by Manfred Mann, Yes and Pink Floyd became part of the progressive sound of the 1970s.

"The sound defined progressive music as we know it," said Keith Emerson, keyboardist for the rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Along with rock, synthesizers developed since Moog's breakthrough helped inspire elements of 1970s funk, hip-hop, and techno.

Charles Carlini, a New York City concert promoter, staged Moogfest in May 2004 to mark a half-century since Moog founded his first company while still in college. Emerson, Rick Wakefield of Yes, and Bernie Worrell of Parliament/Funkadelic were among those who played, and a second Moogfest was held a year later.

Moog had "this absent-minded professorial way about him," Carlini said.

"He's like an Einstein of music," Carlini said. "He sees it like, there's a thought, an idea in the air, and it passes through him. Passing through him, he's able to build these instruments."

"A lot of people today don't realize what this man brought to the masses," Carlini said. "He brought electronic music to the masses and changed the way we hear music."

But the now-pervasive synthesizer's ability to mimic strings, horns, and percussion has also threatened some musicians.

In 2004, musicians extracted a promise from the Opera Company of Brooklyn to never again use an advanced kind of synthesizer, called a virtual orchestra machine, in future productions.

Born in 1934 in New York City, Moog paid for his studies at Queens College and Columbia University by building and marketing theremins, which are played by passing the hand through and around vibrating radio tubes. Theremins were used create the spooky "eww-woo-woo" sounds on the soundtracks of science fiction films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

He went on to attach his name to a long list of synthesizers developed over the years -- among them Micromoog, Minitmoog, Multimoog and Memorymoog.

Moog, who had set up shop in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., sold R.A. Moog in 1973 and moved five years later to a remote plot outside Asheville, a scenic Appalachian Mountain city and center for new-age pursuits that Rolling Stone magazine once dubbed "America's new freak capital."

A deliberate man with brushed-back white hair and a breast pocket packed with pens, Moog drove an aging Toyota painted with a snail, vines and a fish blowing bubbles.

"When I drive that thing around, people smile at me," he said. "I really feel I'm enhancing the environment."

He spent the early 1990s as a research professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Asheville before turning full-time to running his new instrument business, which was renamed Moog Music in 2002. The roster of customers includes Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Beck, Phish, Sonic Youth and Widespread Panic.

Moog is survived by his wife, Ileana; his children, Laura Moog Lanier, Matthew Moog, Michelle Moog-Koussa and Renee Moog; a stepdaughter, Miranda Richmond; and his former wife, Shireleigh Moog.

A public memorial is scheduled for Wednesday in Asheville.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 22, 2005, 07:15:09 PM
Wild... I always assumed "Moog" was an acronym for something.  I had no idea it was some guy's fucking name.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Garam on August 22, 2005, 11:04:45 PM
It's about time that Keith Richards keeled over and died.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on August 23, 2005, 05:37:03 AM
it's about time you go to the corner and hang your head in shame.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 23, 2005, 09:16:28 PM
'Mockingbird' actor Brock Peters dies at 78

Actor Brock Peters, best known for his heartbreaking performance as the black man falsely accused of rape in "To Kill a Mockingbird," died Tuesday at his home after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 78. Peters was diagnosed with the disease in January and had been receiving chemotherapy treatment, according to Marilyn Darby, his longtime companion. His condition became worse in recent weeks. He died peacefully in bed, surrounded by family, she said. Peters was born George Fisher on July 2, 1927 in New York. His long film career began in the 1950s with the landmark productions of "Carmen Jones" in 1954 and "Porgy and Bess" in 1959.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 23, 2005, 09:59:22 PM
All right!  He's dead, we get it!










:kiss:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on August 23, 2005, 10:14:31 PM
Yeah Mac, learn how to xixax. What the hell?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 23, 2005, 10:48:45 PM
Fuck.  And now he fixed it so it's not funny anymore and what we just wrote doesn't make any sense.

:yabbse-angry:

Screw it, I'm leaving it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on August 23, 2005, 11:23:18 PM
Aw fuck, and i missed it all, "Wha' hap' uh'..." :yabbse-huh:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 24, 2005, 12:12:42 AM
Quote from: 72teethAw fuck, and i missed it all, "Wha' hap' uh'..." :yabbse-huh:

Computer glitch. But I'm all better now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on September 04, 2005, 03:23:05 AM
According to The Washington Post: VHS, dead at the tender age of 29...
:salute:  (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/26/AR2005082600332.html)<---(click)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on September 04, 2005, 03:46:11 AM
I'm surprised no one posted this yet.

Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies of Cancer

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who oversaw the high court's conservative shift and presided over the impeachment trial of President Clinton, died Saturday evening. He was 80 years old and had spent 33 years on the Supreme Court.

Rehnquist's death opens a rare second vacancy on the nation's highest court and gives President Bush, whose election Rehnquist helped decide, an opportunity shape the makeup of the court for years to come.

"The Chief Justice battled thyroid cancer since being diagnosed last October and continued to perform his duties on the court until a precipitous decline in his health the last couple of days," court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in announcing his death.

Rehnquist was surrounded by his three children when he died at his home in suburban Arlington, Va. His wife died in 1991.

Rehnquist was appointed to the Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1971 by President Nixon and took his seat on Jan. 7, 1972. He was elevated to chief justice by President Reagan in 1986.

The death leaves Bush with his second court opening within four months and sets up what's expected to be an even more bruising Senate confirmation battle than that of John Roberts.

It was not immediately clear what impact Rehnquist's death would have on confirmation hearings for Roberts, scheduled to begin Tuesday.

The last time there were simultaneous vacancies at the court was 1971, when Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan retired in September, about a week apart. Rehnquist, then a Justice Department lawyer, urged the Nixon administration to move fast in replacing them and wound up being appointed to Harlan's seat himself.

Rehnquist presided over Clinton's impeachment trial in 1999, helped settle the 2000 presidential election in Bush's favor, and fashioned decisions over the years that diluted the powers of the federal government while strengthening those of the states.

Arberg said plans regarding funeral arrangements would be forthcoming.

Bush was notified of Rehnquist's death shortly before 11 p.m. EDT.

"President Bush and Mrs. Bush are deeply saddened by the news," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. "It's a tremendous loss for our nation." The president was expected to make a personal statement about Rehnquist on Sunday.

Many court watchers had expected the ailing chief justice to step down over the summer, which would have given the Senate a chance to confirm his successor while the court was out of session. Instead Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement to spend time with her ill husband. Bush chose Roberts, a former Rehnquist clerk and friend, to replace O'Connor.

Rehnquist said on July 14 he would remain on the bench as long as his health allowed.

The president could elevate to chief justice one of the court's conservatives, such as Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, but it's more likely he will choose someone from outside the court.

Possible replacements include Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and federal courts of appeals judges J. Michael Luttig, Edith Clement, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Michael McConnell, Emilio Garza, and James Harvie Wilkinson III. Others mentioned are former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, lawyer Miguel Estrada and former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson.

Rehnquist could be an enigmatic man. Stern and cold on the bench, he had a deep throaty laugh and warm side away from it.

In his courtroom is was not uncommon for the chief judge to snap at lawyers who exceeded their time. Behind large glasses he would peer down from the bench, sometimes raising his eyebrows to an exaggerated arch at their responses.

But when he set aside his court robes, Rehnquist emerged as a family man and beloved boss who remembered even the tiniest of details about those who worked for him in his many years at the Supreme Court.

He was a lifelong sports fan, trivia buff and a student of history who spoke often to local historical societies.

Rehnquist, who loved to play tennis well into his 70s, announced last October that he had thyroid cancer. He had a trachea tube inserted to help him breathe and underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments. He appeared frail at Bush's inauguration in January and missed five months of court sessions before returning to the bench in March.

On the court's final meeting day of the last term, June 27, Rehnquist appeared gaunt and had difficulty as he announced the last decision of the term — an opinion he wrote upholding a Ten Commandments display in Texas. His breathing was labored, and he kept the explanation short.

He had no public appearances over the summer, although he was filmed by television crews in July as he left the hospital following two nights for treatment of a fever.

Rehnquist had an extraordinary career, with many historic milestones.

In 1999, he presided over Clinton's impeachment trial from the presiding officer's chair seat in the Senate, something only one other chief justice had done. A year later he was one of five Republican-nominated justices who voted to stop presidential ballot recounts in Florida, effectively deciding the election for Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

Rehnquist, who championed states' rights and helped speed up executions, is the only member still on the court who voted on Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion. He opposed that decision, writing: "Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the `right' to an abortion is not so universally accepted as (Roe) would have us believe."

He believed there was a place for some religion in government. He wrote the 5-4 decision in 2002 that said parents may use public tax money to send their children to religious schools. Two years later, he was distressed when the court passed up a chance to declare that the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is constitutional.

"The phrase 'under God' in the pledge seems, as a historical matter, to sum up the attitude of the nation's leaders, and to manifest itself in many of our public observances," he wrote.

Rehnquist leaves without accomplishing the legal revolution he had hoped for as the nation's 16th chief justice. As Rehnquist read it, the Constitution lets states outlaw abortion and sponsor prayers in public schools but bars them from giving special, affirmative-action preferences to racial minorities and women. The court he led disagreed.

In 2003, for example, the court preserved affirmative action in college admissions and issued a landmark gay rights ruling that struck down laws criminalizing gay sex, both over Rehnquist's objections. And last year, Rehnquist disagreed when the court ruled that the government cannot indefinitely detain terrorism suspects and deny them access to courts

Rehnquist was somewhat of a surprise choice when Nixon nominated him to the court in 1971. He was a 47-year-old Justice Department lawyer with a reputation for brilliance and unbending conservative ideology when he was chosen to fill the seat of retiring Justice John Marshall Harlan. Rehnquist, who practiced law in Phoenix before moving to Washington, was the court's youngest member.

For years he was known as the "Lone Ranger" for his many dissents on a then-liberal court that left him ideologically isolated on the far right. Succeeding appointments of conservative justices and Rehnquist's elevation by President Reagan to the federal judiciary's top job in 1986 transformed his role into one of leading and nurturing an increasingly conservative Supreme Court.

Rehnquist was the force behind the court's push for greater states' rights. The chief justice has been the leader of five conservatives, sometimes called "the Rehnquist five," who generally advocate limited federal government interference.

Those five — Rehnquist and O'Connor, Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Thomas — have voted together to strike down federal laws intended to protect female victims of violent crime and keep guns away from schools, on grounds that those issues were better dealt with at the local level. They split, however, in a recent decision upholding the federal government's right to ban sick people from smoking marijuana even in states that have laws allowing the treatment.

The Rehnquist five were together in the Bush v. Gore decision, which critics predicted would tarnish the court's hard-won luster. The closing paragraph of a book Rehnquist wrote on the court's history may stand as his answer to criticism.

Rehnquist noted that the court makes "demonstrable errors" from time to time, but he added, "It and the country have survived these mistakes and the court as an institution has steadily grown in authority and prestige."

Rehnquist, a widower since 1991, dodged questions about his legacy in a March 2004 interview. He said that he tried to keep the court running smoothly and keep the peace among the justices.

Within the court, Rehnquist was a far more popular chief justice than his predecessor, Warren Burger. Liberal Justice John Paul Stevens said in 2002 that Rehnquist brought "efficiency, good humor and absolute impartiality" to the job. Some justices complained that Burger was heavy-handed and pompous.

Rehnquist's grandparents emigrated to the United States from Sweden in 1880 and settled in Chicago. His grandfather was a tailor, his grandmother a school teacher. Rehnquist grew up in Wisconsin, the son of paper salesman and a translator.

He at first had planned to be a college professor, but a test showed him suited to the legal field. In 1952, he graduated first in his class at Stanford University's law school, where he briefly dated O'Connor, the high court's first female justice.

Rehnquist caused great amusement when he departed from tradition by adding four shiny gold stripes to each sleeve of his black robe in 1995. The flourish was inspired by a costume in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.

Rehnquist has led a quiet social life outside the court. Until recently, he walked daily, as tonic for a chronic bad back, and played tennis with his law clerks. He enjoyed bridge, spending time with his eight grandchildren, charades and a monthly poker game with Scalia and a revolving cast of powerful Washington men. He liked beer, and smoked in private.

The only chief justice older than Rehnquist was Roger Taney, who presided over the high court in the mid-1800s until his death at 87. Rehnquist was also closing in on the record for longest-serving justice. Only four men were on the court 34 years or longer.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 06, 2005, 01:47:26 PM
Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan, Dead at 70

LOS ANGELES -     Bob Denver, whose portrayal of goofy first mate Gilligan on the 1960s television show "Gilligan's Island," made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers, has died, his agent confirmed Tuesday. He was 70.

Denver, who underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year, died at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina, according to agent Mike Eisenstadt.


R.I.P. Little Buddy.  :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 15, 2005, 04:10:51 AM
Robert Wise, Oscar-winning director of The Sound of Music and West Side Story, has died in Los Angeles.

The film-maker died on Wednesday of heart failure at the UCLA Medical Center, just five days after celebrating his 91st birthday.

Wise was nominated for seven Oscars and won four, in a career that spanned more than 50 years.

He directed 39 films in all, including the first Star Trek movie and sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.

More recently he served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Directors Guild of America.

Wise started in the film business at the age of 19, after one of his brothers got him a job at the RKO studios.

He began in the sound department before moving into editing.

He was drafted in to edit Citizen Kane in 1941, impressing director Orson Welles with his work, and gaining his first Oscar nomination.

Wise's first director job came when he was asked to take over The Curse of the Cat People.

This led to him working on a number of B-movie horror films before landing bigger budget projects.

His first Academy Award nomination for directing came for crime drama I Want to Live in 1958.

However, he did not win an Academy Award until 1962, when he shared the Oscar for best director with Jerome Robbins for West Side Story, a gritty musical based on the family warfare of Romeo and Juliet.

The film also went on to win 10 Oscars, including best film.

In 1965, Wise made a successful return to the musical genre with The Sound of Music, which once again won best director and best film at the Oscars.

He credited much of the movie's success to its lead actors, Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.

Wise received a further Oscar nomination for The Sand Pebbles in 1967.

In later years he took on fewer projects, including directing Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.

He made his final big screen movie 11 years later with Rooftops.

His longtime agent and family friend Lawrence Mirisch, said Wise had appeared in good health as he celebrated his birthday on Saturday.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on September 15, 2005, 12:25:16 PM
R.I.P

I loved 'Day the Earth Stood Still'.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 15, 2005, 04:50:57 PM
two lesser known works: i want to live!  and  the set-up, both quite good.

RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 26, 2005, 02:58:42 PM
Don Adams, TV's fumbling 'Get Smart' agent, dies at 82

Don Adams, who tickled the nation's funny bone with his secret-agent spoof performances as the fumbling Maxwell Smart on "Get Smart," died of a lung infection late Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 82.

Bruce Tufeld, Adams' friend and former agent, told the Associated Press that Adams had been in ill health since breaking his hip a year ago.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 26, 2005, 04:43:45 PM
inspector gadget is dead.  oh goodness.  rip.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on September 26, 2005, 06:59:39 PM
i used to love get smart.  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on October 03, 2005, 08:02:48 PM
August Wilson died...im trying to find more details...

Here we go:

August Wilson, 1945-2005: Playwright gave voice to black experience

By JOE ADCOCK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER THEATER CRITIC


August Wilson, whose cycle of plays capturing the African American experience in the 20th century made him one of the country's most admired playwrights, died Sunday at Swedish Medical Center surrounded by his family. He was 60.

Wilson, who had lived in Seattle for the past 15 years, was diagnosed with liver cancer in June.

Wilson's life ended shortly after he completed an immense task that he set for himself about 20 years ago -- writing 10 interconnected plays about the African American experience in the United States. Each play is set in a different decade of the 20th century.

The final work in the cycle, "Radio Golf," premiered last spring at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven and played late summer at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

Two of Wilson's plays, "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson," won Pulitzer Prizes -- in 1987 and 1990, respectively.[/i]

more here:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/theater/243163_wilsonobit03.html
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on October 16, 2005, 01:32:57 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.saturday-night-live.com%2Fimages%2Fweekendupdate%2Frocket.gif&hash=a5434fadbd82289e6c057d37d12b37850cd48b01)
Good evening, I'm Charles Rocket. Here now the news.

I committed suicide Oct. 7 in Connecticut. I was 56.

I was the Weekend Update anchor on "Saturday Night Live" in 1980 and 1981, and was fired from the show after saying "fuck" on the air. I went on to make numerous appearances on TV shows and in features.

Born Charles Claverie in Bangor, Maine, I attended the Rhode Island School of Design. I was active in the burgeoning RISD arts scene, where I formed the band the Fabulous Motels and then became a newscaster under the name Charles Kennedy. I worked on newscasts in Colorado Springs and Nashville before landing much more irreverent SNL gig, where I also performed my own "Rocket Reports" skits.

I appeared in feature films including "Earth Girls are Easy," "Dances with Wolves," "It's Pat" and "Dumb and Dumber." My last film role was in the 2003 Sylvester Stallone film "Shade." On TV, I appeared on shows including "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Cybill," "Touched by an Angel" and "thirtysomething."

I played accordion in many bands, performing (with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie) on a tribute album to Fellini composer Nino Rota.

I am survived by my wife, Beth and a son.

I'm Charles Rocket. Good night and watch out.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on October 16, 2005, 01:43:40 AM
oh...didnt see that one coming...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on October 17, 2005, 07:24:34 PM
he slit his throat! i wonder what could been so bad that it leads you to off yourself in such a painful way... It's Pat wasn't that bad...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on October 19, 2005, 10:28:44 PM
I know not many people here know the band, but Dallas Cook from Suburban Legends (played trombone) died last night.  He was in a motorcycle accident--a hit-and-run with an SUV.  I happened to be wearing a shirt with his signature when I found out this morning.  It's been an "aware of everyone's and my mortality" day.

Lots of people loved him.  He'll be missed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on October 24, 2005, 10:58:22 PM
R.I.P. - Rosa Parks

Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92
By BREE FOWLER, Associated


DETROIT - Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday evening. She was 92.

Mrs. Parks died at her home during the evening of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years.

Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."

At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.

The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the     National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.

Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said he felt a personal tie to the civil rights icon: "She stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her."

The Rev.     Al Sharpton called Mrs. Parks "a gentle woman whose single act changed the most powerful nation in the world. ... One of the highlights of my life was meeting and getting to know her."

Speaking in 1992, Mrs. Parks said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."

Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."

The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement.

The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.

After taking her public stand for civil rights, Mrs. Parks had trouble finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in the Detroit office of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) from 1965 until retiring in 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977.

Mrs. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit, where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache likeness of her was featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Mrs. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the struggle for civil rights.

"Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."

She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man March in October 1995.

In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Mrs. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999 appearance on CBS' "Touched by an Angel."

The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.

"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.

"No," Parks answered.

"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.

"You may do that," Parks responded.

Mrs. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments.

In 1994, Mrs. Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem.

The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The charity's principal activity — the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement — routinely cost more money than the institute could raise.

Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In 2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to auction Internet domain name rights to http://www.rosaparks.com.

After losing the OutKast lawsuit, attorney Gregory Reed, who represented Mrs. Parks, said his client "has once again suffered the pains of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was settled out of court.

She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP.

Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parks said she worried that black young people took legal equality for granted.

Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent attitude.

"We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today."

At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die — the dream of freedom and peace."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on October 25, 2005, 01:58:15 PM
It seems like no one cares about her death, and I almost got mad, then I thought about her accomplishment.

She was really just a tired woman, she wasn't doing something to put a ripple in history.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 25, 2005, 02:04:25 PM
when you mean that no one cares, is that here at xixax or the entire world? and by posting her death does that put you in a different light? no one of us was even alive when she did what made her famous. so quit acting like you knew her.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on October 25, 2005, 08:12:34 PM
Quote from: mogwaino one of us was even alive when she did what made her famous. so quit acting like you knew her.
haha, yeah. i don't think any black ppl even post at xixax. seriously. :|

i mean real black ppl.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on October 25, 2005, 09:40:54 PM
stefen is closest, i think.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on October 25, 2005, 09:43:19 PM
Quote from: Walrus of the PastIt seems like no one cares about her death, and I almost got mad, then I thought about her accomplishment.

She was really just a tired woman, she wasn't doing something to put a ripple in history.

yeah I remember a few years ago when that revisionist sentiment really caught on after she sued Outkast over their song.  But I also thought that was what was so great about her act of defiance.  I mean, why else should you sit down and refuse to get up?  But she did way more than most of them sit-in protestors who aimed to stir up history for their righteous causes.  Also, it would've been wicked self-important for her to say "I could've gotten up, but by sitting down I was standing up for all Americans".  Why did black people need an ideological reason to stay seated during that era when the white folks didn't?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on October 25, 2005, 09:50:22 PM
Quote from: Pubrick
Quote from: mogwaino one of us was even alive when she did what made her famous. so quit acting like you knew her.
haha, yeah. i don't think any black ppl even post at xixax.

I don't understand why you posted this in response to what mogwai said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on October 25, 2005, 09:55:58 PM
Quote from: mogwaiwhen you mean that no one cares, is that here at xixax or the entire world? and by posting her death does that put you in a different light? no one of us was even alive when she did what made her famous. so quit acting like you knew her.

I was only saying that because you post Ernest Lehman dies, James Doohan dies, people are like "R.I.P. Man... Scotty will be missed" and Rosa Parks dies, and it's pushed down by lists and Horror movies discussion.

I guess I just expected anyone to acknowledge it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on October 25, 2005, 09:56:21 PM
Quote from: Hedwig
Quote from: Pubrick
Quote from: mogwaino one of us was even alive when she did what made her famous. so quit acting like you knew her.
haha, yeah. i don't think any black ppl even post at xixax.

I don't understand why you posted this in response to what mogwai said.
it was an observation i hadn't made before. i think it was inspired by the thought that if there was anyone who could claim a personal resonance with the woman's action, african americans would be it. and now i'm thinking you are an african american, and that's cool.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on October 25, 2005, 10:32:09 PM
Quote from: Walrus of the PastI guess I just expected anyone to acknowledge it.
That Rosa... she sure had a sweet ass, and she knew how to use it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on October 25, 2005, 11:00:11 PM
Quote from: Walrus of the PastI was only saying that because you post Ernest Lehman dies, James Doohan dies, people are like "R.I.P. Man... Scotty will be missed" and Rosa Parks dies, and it's pushed down by lists and Horror movies discussion.

I guess I just expected anyone to acknowledge it.
well she should've thought about THAT before she died a week before halloween!  but seriously, how many good movies did she ever make?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on October 26, 2005, 12:36:16 AM
you're an asshole.

i like it
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on October 26, 2005, 12:55:39 AM
Quote from: HedwigAlso, about Rosa Parks, I agree with what pete wrote about the revisionist attitude toward what she did, its signifigance, etc. The misconception, that she was just a 'tired seamstress,' is simply ignorant. By endorsing this sentiment, you are either oblivious to or denying the importance of her political background prior to her arrest, like her involvement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The "she was just tired" angle sounds cute and humble at first, almost respectful, but it's pretty patronizing and insulting. She knew exactly what she was doing and had an understanding of civil disobedience, testing one's rights, being arrested, etc. People seem more concerned with the image than with the action.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 27, 2005, 10:23:01 AM
Pink Panther producer dies at 52

The producer of six Pink Panther films and the Dudley Moore comedy 10, Tony Adams, has died at the age of 52 following a stroke.


Dublin-born Adams died at Beth Israel Hospital, New York, on Saturday.

He produced most of his films for director Blake Edwards, including the Pink Panther movies, Victor/Victoria, The Man Who Loved Women and Blind Date.

Adams, who also produced theatre, is survived by his third wife, actress Anne Runolfsson, and four children.

He was a partner in Hello Entertainment, which develops and produces shows for New York's Broadway.

The 1995 stage version of Victor/Victoria that Adams co-produced, starring Julie Andrews and Tony Roberts, ran for more than 700 performances.

He also produced Julie, a short-lived TV series starring Andrews, in 1992.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on November 03, 2005, 04:56:17 AM
from imdb:

Lloyd Bochner Dies at 81
Dynasty star Lloyd Bochner has died at the age of 81. The Canadian actor, who played Cecil Colby in the epic US soap saga, lost his battle with cancer and passed away at his home in Santa Monica on Saturday. Bochner was also known for his roles in the Mission: Impossible television series, Columbo and Battlestar Galactica.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on November 03, 2005, 11:41:30 PM
oh man. Like last week or whatever the voice of The Green Giant died. You know, Green Giant foods? Anyway on Letterman they had a brilliant joke about it. They did one of those commercials about the guy and at the end it showed a casket and the voice over said, "He'll be buried in a HO HO HO HOle in the ground!"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 04, 2005, 12:05:19 AM
Quote from: 72teethfrom imdb:

Lloyd Bochner Dies at 81
Dynasty star Lloyd Bochner has died at the age of 81. The Canadian actor, who played Cecil Colby in the epic US soap saga, lost his battle with cancer and passed away at his home in Santa Monica on Saturday. Bochner was also known for his roles in the Mission: Impossible television series, Columbo and Battlestar Galactica.

...and one of the best episodes of Twilight Zone EVER... "To Serve Man... It's a cookbook!"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mutinyco on November 11, 2005, 11:09:44 AM
Halloween' Producer Akkad Dies in Jordan

By SHAFIKA MATTAR, Associated Press

AMMAN, Jordan - Moustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born filmmaker and producer of the "Halloween" horror movie franchise, died Friday from wounds sustained in the triple hotel bombings in Jordan. He was 75. His daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, 34, also was killed.

Akkad, who lived in Los Angeles, was in Jordan with his daughter to attend a wedding. He died in the Jordanian hospital where he was being treated.

The two were at the wedding celebration at the Radisson SAS Wednesday night when suicide bombers struck it, the Grand Hyatt and the Days Inn in downtown Amman, killing at least 59 people including the three attackers. Rima Akkad Monla, who lives in Beirut, Lebanon, was killed immediately.

Born in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in July 1930, the eldest of eight siblings, Akkad gained fame as a director and producer in the Arab world and West. After finishing his secondary studies in Syria, he left for America in 1950 to study film making, according to his sister.

He was best known for producing all eight "Halloween" films, starting with the 1979 "Halloween" directed by John Carpenter and starring then-unknown Jamie Lee Curtis. That movie — and the ones that followed — sparked the teen-slasher-horror genre that led to franchises including "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street."

Akkad also produced and directed "The Message" (1976), a film about Islam's prophet, Mohammed, and "Lion of the Desert" (1981), which tells the story of a Muslim rebel who fought against the Italy's World War II conquest of Libya. Both starred Anthony Quinn.

"The Message" was declared sacrilegious by a group of black American Muslims, who took hostages in three Washington, D.C. locations when the movie opened in the United States in March 1977, demanding it not be shown in America.

Akkad said he was baffled by the reaction to the movie, which he said cost $17 million to make. It also was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score.

"I did the film because it is a personal thing for me. ... Being a Muslim myself who lived in the West, I felt that it was my obligation, my duty to tell the truth about Islam.

"It (Islam) is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about, which surprised me. I thought I should tell the story that will bring this (history) to the West," he added.

Akkad said he turned to the horror genre because it was hard to raise money for religious-themed movies, according to a 1998 New York Times report.

A woman who answered the telephone at Akkad's Los Angeles home early Friday said she was too upset to talk. A telephone message left at the Los Angeles-area home of Akkad's ex-wife, Patricia, was not immediately returned. She left for Lebanon late Thursday.

The couple's daughter, Rima, grew up in Los Angeles an avid polo player who graduated from the University of Southern California in 1995 with a degree in international relations.

She pursued a master's degree in Middle East studies at the American University in Beirut, where she met her husband Ziad Monla, 35. Her husband's family owns the Monla Hospital in Tripoli, Lebanon. The couple, married for six years, has two sons, ages 2 and 4.

"Rima is a totally American girl," Patricia Akkad, 64, said Thursday in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "Here's an American who was over there and innocently killed for no reason."

She said her daughter loved living in Beirut.

"We all know the problems in the Middle East, and you never think it's going to touch you," she said.

Akkad's sister called for an end to terrorist attacks on civilians.

"I feel sad and the world feels sorrow with us. This kind of incident rarely happens, but it has happened with Moustapha Akkad," Leila Akkad told AP in a telephone interview. "These attacks are chaotic and do not differentiate an enemy from a friend. A solution must be found to this problem."

With the death of his daughter, Rima, Akkad is survived by three sons, Tarek, Malek and Zeido.

Funeral services for Rima Akkad Monla were scheduled for Friday in Tripoli. Services for Akkad were scheduled Sunday in his hometown of Aleppo, his sister.

___

Associated Press writers Shafika Mattar in Amman, Jordan, and Ian Gregor in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on November 11, 2005, 02:35:23 PM
may they rest in peace. :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 21, 2005, 02:06:21 PM
Guitarist Link Wray dies at 76

(AP)COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Guitar master Link Wray, the father of the power chord in rock 'n' roll who inspired such legends as Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and Pete Townshend, has died. He was 76.

Wray died Nov. 5 at his home in Copenhagen, his wife and son said on his Web site. No cause of death was given, but his family said his heart was "getting tired." He was buried Friday after a service at Copenhagen's Christian Church.

"While playing his guitar he often told the audience, 'God is playing my guitar, I am with God when I play,"' his wife, Olive, and son, Oliver Christian, wrote. "We saw you go with God, you were smiling."

Wray, who played in his trademark leather jacket, developed a style considered the blueprint for heavy metal and punk music. He is best known for his 1958 instrumental "Rumble," 1959 "Rawhide" and 1963 "Jack the Ripper." His music has been featured in movies including "Pulp Fiction," "Independence Day" and "Desperado."

Wray, who was born in North Carolina and is three-quarters Shawnee Indian, is said to have inspired many other rock musicians, including Townshend of the Who, Springsteen, Bowie, Bob Dylan and Steve Van Zandt. All have been quoted as saying that Wray and "Rumble" inspired them to become musicians.

"He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble,' I would have never picked up a guitar,"' Townshend wrote on one of Wray's albums. Neil Young once said: "If I could go back in time and see any band, it would be Link Wray and the Raymen."

The power chord -- a thundering sound created by playing fifths (two notes five notes apart, often with the lower note doubled an octave above) -- became a favorite among rock players. Wray claimed because he was too slow to be a whiz on the guitar, he had to invent sounds.

When recording "Rumble," he created the fuzz tone by punching holes in his amplifiers to produce a dark, grumbling sound. It took off instantly, but it was banned by some deejays in big cities for seeming to suggest teen violence.

"I was looking for something that Chet Atkins wasn't doing, that all the jazz kings wasn't doing, that all the country pickers wasn't doing. I was looking for my own sound," Wray told The Associated Press in 2002.

He was born Frederick Lincoln Wray Jr. in 1929 in Dunn, N.C. His two brothers, Vernon and Doug, were also musicians. The three became a country hit as "Lucky Wray and the Palomino Ranch Hands." Later, after "Rumble," they became "Link Wray and the Raymen," or Wraymen, as it was sometimes spelled. Later, the brothers' relationship soured after a dispute about the rights to "Rumble."

In 1978, he moved to Denmark and married Olive Julie Povlsen. They raised their son in a three-story house on an island where Hans Christian Andersen once lived.

Though he went out of style in the '60s, he was rediscovered by later generations. He toured the United States and Canada since the mid-1990s, playing 40 shows this year. In 2002, Guitar World magazine elected Wray one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 25, 2005, 09:20:33 AM
Actor Pat Morita Dies at 73

(AP) Actor Pat Morita, whose portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid" earned him an Oscar nomination, has died. He was 73.

Morita died Thursday at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes, said his wife of 12 years, Evelyn. She said in a statement that her husband, who first rose to fame with a role on "Happy Days," had "dedicated his entire life to acting and comedy."

In 1984, he appeared in the role that would define his career and spawn countless affectionate imitations. As Kesuke Miyagi, the mentor to Ralph Macchio's "Daniel-san," he taught karate while trying to catch flies with chopsticks and offering such advice as "wax on, wax off" to guide Daniel through chores to improve his skills.

Morita said in a 1986 interview with The Associated Press he was billed as Noriyuki "Pat" Morita in the film because producer Jerry Weintraub wanted him to sound more ethnic. He said he used the billing because it was "the only name my parents gave me."

He lost the 1984 best supporting actor award to Haing S. Ngor, who appeared in "The Killing Fields."

For years, Morita played small and sometimes demeaning roles in such films as "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and TV series such as "The Odd Couple" and "Green Acres." His first breakthrough came with "Happy Days," and he followed with his own brief series, "Mr. T and Tina."

"The Karate Kid," led to three sequels, the last of which, 1994's "The Next Karate Kid," paired him with a young Hilary Swank.

Morita was prolific outside of the "Karate Kid" series as well, appearing in "Honeymoon in Vegas," "Spy Hard," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "The Center of the World." He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie "Mulan" in 1998.

Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II.

"One day I was an invalid," he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. "The next day I was public enemy No. 1 being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece."

After the war, Morita's family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons.

Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time.

"Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did," he commented. "If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons. "

Morita was to be buried at Palm Green Valley Mortuary and Cemetery.

He is survived by his wife and three daughters from a previous marriage.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on November 25, 2005, 12:52:03 PM
I mourn this loss greatly.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on November 25, 2005, 03:22:11 PM
I guess Mickey Rooney is working again.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on November 25, 2005, 10:05:45 PM
R.I.P
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on November 25, 2005, 10:48:00 PM
Quote from: pete on November 25, 2005, 03:22:11 PM
I guess Mickey Rooney is working again.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi5.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy154%2Fpubrick%2Fjiminyrooney.gif&hash=447473451f7830c2129a76e8bfe1802170f33368)

jiminy jillikers, jiminy jillikers, jiminy jillikers!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on November 28, 2005, 03:50:30 AM
imdb:

Keith Andes Dies

Tora! Tora! Tora! star Keith Andes was found dead in his Santa Clarita, California home earlier this month. He was 85. The Los Angeles County coroner's office has ruled the actor's death was suicide by asphyxiation. His longtime friend Marshall LaPlante confirmed the New Jersey-born actor had been suffering from cancer of the bladder. The New Jersey-born actor launched his film career after Hollywood studio head Darryl F. Zanuck saw him performing in the Broadway, New York production of Winged Victory and offered him a role in the film version of the play in 1944. Andes spent four decades on the big screen, with roles as Marilyn Monroe's leading man in 1952's Clash By Night, The Farmer's Daughter in 1947 and Tora! Tora! Tora! in 1970. On the small screen, he starred opposite Glynis Johns in the 1963 Sitcom Glynis and police drama The Man Dawson. Andes is survived by his two sons Mark and Matt and his grandson Ryan. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Brazoliange on November 29, 2005, 01:15:59 PM
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Stan Berenstain, who with his wife created the popular children's books about the Berenstain Bears, has died.

:yabbse-thumbdown:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 30, 2005, 10:10:56 PM
Actress Sperber Loses Breast Cancer Fight

Actress Wendie Jo Sperber, who starred opposite Tom Hanks on TV's "Bosom Buddies" and who in his words became "a walking inspiration" after she contracted cancer, has died. She was 46.

Sperber died at home Tuesday after an eight-year battle with breast cancer, publicist Jo-Ann Geffen said Wednesday.

A Los Angeles native, Sperber appeared in dozens of television shows and movies, including all three "Back to the Future" films.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997, the actress became an advocate for cancer care. In 2001, she founded the weSPARK Cancer Support Center, which provides free emotional support, information and social activities for individuals and families affected by cancer.

Sperber helped unveil and promote a breast cancer stamp for the U.S. Postal Service in 1998, Geffen said.

"The memory of Wendie Jo is that of a walking inspiration," Hanks said in a statement. "She met the challenges of her illness with love, cheer, joy and altruism. We are going to miss her as surely as we are all better for knowing her."

Sperber is survived by a son and daughter, her parents, two sisters and a brother.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on December 10, 2005, 03:20:22 PM
Ouch.

From CNN.com:

BREAKING NEWS:   Comedian Richard Pryor has died. He was 65.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on December 10, 2005, 03:24:12 PM
Rest in Peace
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on December 10, 2005, 04:05:38 PM
fuck.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on December 10, 2005, 04:51:08 PM
yup...and then he'd say, "Your the best Garam!"...too bad he's dead....
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on December 10, 2005, 05:01:59 PM
Garam, shut the fuck up.

You called him "Superman III's Richard Pryor" in that other thread.

This is a sad day indeed.  One of the greatest comics to ever live.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Garam on December 10, 2005, 05:04:19 PM
Quote from: RegularKarate on December 10, 2005, 05:01:59 PM
Garam, shut the fuck up.

You called him "Superman III's Richard Pryor" in that other thread.

Yes, I did. It's called a joke. I was highlighting the worst thing he's ever been in as the pinnacle of his fantastic career. Joke.


Jesus, you people are uptight.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on December 10, 2005, 06:09:22 PM
Quote from: Garam on December 10, 2005, 05:04:19 PM
Quote from: RegularKarate on December 10, 2005, 05:01:59 PM
Garam, shut the fuck up.

You called him "Superman III's Richard Pryor" in that other thread.

Yes, I did. It's called a joke. I was highlighting the worst thing he's ever been in as the pinnacle of his fantastic career. Joke.


Jesus, you people are uptight.

no garam, you tried to justify him having his own tribute thread, yet all you did was mock superman 3. so you looked like an idiot making the thread. but thats okay, you are an idiot.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on December 10, 2005, 06:28:49 PM
Quote from: Cinephile on December 10, 2005, 06:09:22 PMno garam, you tried to justify him having his own tribute thread, yet all you did was mock superman 3.
i think he also tried to justify him having his own tribute thread.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on December 10, 2005, 11:47:16 PM
dudes, chill out and mourn richard's death in relative peace.  garam made an unfunny joke, but all that jumping on him was kinda unnecessary.
my favorite pryor joke was when he talked about fighting with his wife and he said "Imma go out and find myself some new pussy" to which his wife replied"a few more inches of dick you can find some new pussy right here."  that was just amazing.
most moving pryor moment was when he retired the N word.  what a tremendous moment.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on December 11, 2005, 03:38:19 AM
imago get some milk and cookies.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on December 13, 2005, 11:18:34 AM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666063,00.html

Gang killer 'Tookie' is executed

Tuesday December 13, 2005

The former Crips gang leader and convicted murderer Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed by lethal injection in California today.
Last-minute appeals by his lawyers and a clemency petition to the state's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, were unsuccessful. Amnesty International today condemned the execution as a "travesty of justice."

Williams, 51, was convicted in 1981 of murdering four people during robberies carried out in 1979.

He has always maintained he did not commit the murders, but did apologise for founding the Crips gang in Los Angeles in 1971. The gang has been blamed for hundreds of deaths during decades of fighting with rival gangs.

Mr Schwarzenegger said he could not justify overturning the decision of the courts.
"Stanley Williams insists he is innocent, and that he will not and should not apologise or otherwise atone for the murders of the four victims in this case," Mr Schwarzenegger wrote in his published decision.

"Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption."

Officials at San Quentin state prison said Williams was composed and cooperative before being taken for execution. He did not request a final meal.

Guards struggled for about 12 minutes to place the needle in a vein in Williams' left arm; "Still can't find it?" he joked at one point.

Williams often raised his head to look at his supporters, particularly Barbara Becnel, the editor of his anti-gang books. As he died, Ms Becnel and other supporters gave what appeared to be black power salutes.

"The state of California just killed an innocent man," they said. He was pronounced dead at 12.35am local time (0835 GMT).

The stepmother of one of Williams' victims also attended his execution. "I believe it was a just punishment long overdue," Lorna Owens told ABC television.

The high-profile case has generated renewed rows over the death penalty.

Williams wrote a number of anti-gang books for children and dedicated his 24 years on death row to educating young people about the dangers of gang life. His supporters said this showed he had changed his views, but Mr Schwarzenegger did not agree.

Amnesty International today condemned Williams' execution.

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, said: "This is yet another sad milestone in the history of the US justice system.

"Williams' violent past was well known but he had become a textbook version of rehabilitation and his execution was a travesty of justice."

At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI's top official for justice matters denounced the death penalty for going against redemption and human dignity.

"We know the death penalty doesn't resolve anything," Cardinal Renato Martino told Associated Press. "Even a criminal is worthy of respect, because he is a human being. The death penalty is a negation of human dignity."

Around 2,000 death penalty protesters gathered outside the prison today where the Rev Jesse Jackson, a supporter of Williams, addressed the crowd and folk singer Joan Baez performed on a temporary stage.

"Tonight is planned, efficient, calculated, antiseptic, cold-blooded murder and I think everyone who is here, is here to enlist the morality and soul of this country," said Baez.

Williams' cause also attracted supporters such as rap star Snoop Dogg, a former Crips member; actor Jamie Foxx, who played Williams in a film, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Mr Jackson met Williams yesterday, and told protesters outside the prison that he thanked them for their support.

"He said 'Don't cry, let's remain strong,'" Mr Jackson told Reuters. "He smiled, you know, with a certain strength, a certain resolve. I think he feels a comfort in his new legacy as a social transformer."

Mr Schwarzenegger has rejected three appeals for clemency by death row prisoners.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on December 13, 2005, 11:29:31 AM
What Would Tyler Durden Do had a really funny response to celebrities clamoring for clemency: http://www.wwtdd.com/index.php?type=one&i=367
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Find Your Magali on December 16, 2005, 05:14:56 PM
LOS ANGELES — John Spencer, who played vice presidential candidate Leo McGarry on NBC's "The West Wing," died of a heart attack Friday, his publicist said.

Spencer, 58, died at a Los Angeles hospital, said publicist Ron Hofmann.

Hofmann released no other immediate details.

Spencer's work on the show earned him an Emmy Award for supporting actor in a drama series in 2002, as well as a Golden Globe nomination.

Before appearing on the hit political drama, Spencer played the quirky and charismatic New York attorney Tommy Mullaney on "L.A. Law."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ProgWRX on December 17, 2005, 10:32:12 AM
man that sucks :(  Even though i havent seen the newer seasons (only up to season 5) Leo was one of my favorite characters from The West Wing. Spencer had so much charisma and for some reason he reminded me a lot of my dad. RIP

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on December 17, 2005, 09:20:53 PM
Fuck. I'm only on season 4 myself, but Leo is such a father figure and Spencer is such a great actor. He was always solid, I remember how they described his audition for the West Wing, they said you couldn't tell if it was Spencer or the manager for the Yankees. This really is sad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on December 26, 2005, 12:40:00 PM
Character actor Vincent Schiavelli dead

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.a.cnn.net%2Fcnn%2F2005%2FSHOWBIZ%2FMovies%2F12%2F26%2Fobit.schiavelli.ap%2Fstory.schiavelli.ap.jpg&hash=f4b94f3229023b669797327bd86e11a2e5b95a37)

'Ghost,' 'Cuckoo's Nest' actor claimed by lung cancer

ROME, Italy (AP) -- Droopy-eyed character actor Vincent Schiavelli, who appeared in scores of movies, including "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Ghost," died Monday at his home in Sicily. He was 57.


He died of lung cancer, said Salvatore Glorioso, mayor of Polizzi Generosa, the Sicilian village where Schiavelli resided.

Schiavelli, whose gloomy look made him perfect to play creepy or eccentric characters, made appearances in some 150 film and television productions, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Among the movies: "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Amadeus," "Batman Returns," and "The People vs. Larry Flynt." He was selected in 1997 by Vanity Fair as one of America's best character actors.

Schiavelli, who was born and raised in New York, studied acting at New York University's School of the Arts.

He also wrote three cookbooks and many food articles for magazines and newspapers, possibly inheriting his love for cooking from his grandfather, who had been a cook for an Italian baron before moving to the United States, according to IMDb.

"He was a great friend, a great chef and a great talker," Glorioso, who has known Schiavelli for almost four years, said in a telephone interview.

"With a smooth, witty conversation, he would make everything look more colorful. I've lost a brother," he said.

Schiavelli also had worked in Italy, including in 2001 when he directed a theater piece in Sicily based on nine fables.

A funeral service will be held Tuesday in Polizzi Generosa, Glorioso said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on January 03, 2006, 09:06:48 PM
"Blue" from old school died....and somewhere in the world, "Dust in the Wind" is on....
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on January 05, 2006, 09:39:40 AM
that guy was from Bartlesville, Oklahoma. His funeral was there recently. I wonder if any assholes showed up to play dust in the wind and yell "You're my boy blue!"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on January 14, 2006, 03:22:02 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4613660.stm

Oscar winner Shelley Winters dies

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnewsimg.bbc.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F41217000%2Fjpg%2F_41217392_bbc203bodyshelley.jpg&hash=abbdac3db86a5dbdcd1ef1c05a0bdc88ee0197d7)

Two-time Oscar winner Shelley Winters has died of heart failure at the age of 85, her publicist Dale Olson has said.

She died at a Beverly Hills nursing home early on Saturday, having suffered a heart attack in October.

Winters, who won Oscars for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue, was best known for her role in 1972 disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure.

She was equally famous for her romances with some of Hollywood's leading men including Errol Flynn and Clark Gable.

Monroe's roommate

Winters' career spans six decades, beginning with an uncredited part in 1943's What a Woman!

A roommate of the young Marilyn Monroe, her ex-husbands include the actors Anthony Franciosa and Vittorio Gassman, with whom she had a daughter Vittoria.

Her other films include Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, Alfie with Michael Caine and The Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum.

Her last film appearance was in 1999's La Bomba.

But she continued working well into her 70s, starring as Roseanne's grandmother on the 1990s TV programme "Roseanne".

In the 1980s Winters wrote two autobiographies "Shelley, Also Known as Shirley" and "Shelley II: The Middle of My Century" in which she detailed her relationships with a string of Hollywood A-listers including, Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster and William Holden.

The books became bestsellers, but her trademark frankness meant that talk show hosts "only want to know about my love affairs," Winters later said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on January 15, 2006, 10:14:02 PM
lou rawls died.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on January 16, 2006, 04:29:53 AM
Quote from: permanent username on January 15, 2006, 10:14:02 PM
lou rawls died.
lou rawls lived.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on January 16, 2006, 01:22:44 PM
Quote from: Pubrick on January 16, 2006, 04:29:53 AM
Quote from: permanent username on January 15, 2006, 10:14:02 PM
lou rawls died.
lou rawls lived.

Great, now he's a zombie. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on January 18, 2006, 02:52:24 PM
Just like Jesus!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on January 18, 2006, 03:03:25 PM
Hrm.  No. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on January 18, 2006, 06:26:41 PM
Quote from: Pwaybloe on January 18, 2006, 03:03:25 PM
Hrm.  No. 

Are you calling Jesus a vampire, then?  Because that's sacrilegious, you dirty son of a bitch.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on January 18, 2006, 07:46:23 PM
Quote from: polkablues on January 18, 2006, 06:26:41 PM
Quote from: Pwaybloe on January 18, 2006, 03:03:25 PM
Hrm.  No. 

Are you calling Jesus a vampire, then?  Because that's sacrilegious, you dirty son of a bitch.
if anything, i was offended by the shittiness of the joke.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on January 22, 2006, 10:25:21 PM
Just like Jesus!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on January 22, 2006, 10:35:13 PM
Hrm.  No.






seriously, stick to your day job
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 24, 2006, 08:23:46 PM
Actor Chris Penn Has Died

SANTA MONICA (AP) - Actor Chris Penn died in Santa Monica. The brother of Sean Penn was 43.

Santa Monica police say there is no sign of foul play in the death of Actor Chris Penn. The actor and brother of Sean Penn was found dead in a Santa Monica residence.

Chris Penn was seen in many movies - including "Reservoir Dogs" "Footloose," "Corky Romano" and "Mulholland Falls." Santa Monica police are currently on the scene investigating the circumstances.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on January 24, 2006, 09:00:14 PM
thats terrible.  he wasnt looking too good recently. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: JG on January 24, 2006, 09:01:06 PM
whoa.  that'a shame.   
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: soixante on January 24, 2006, 10:31:39 PM
Just found out that Chris Penn was found dead in Los Angeles.  He was 43.

He was a great actor.  Not just in Tarantino's films, but even in 80's movies like Footloose and All The Right Moves.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on January 24, 2006, 10:57:44 PM
and in Short Cuts
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Find Your Magali on January 24, 2006, 10:59:58 PM
He was terrific in "At Close Range"

The scene where Walken kills him sends chills down my spine.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on January 24, 2006, 11:08:09 PM
strange enough, reservoir dogs wasn't the first movie i remember seeing him in..i was a huge fan of the Best of the Best movies when i was a kid..and was a little disappointed to see him die in the first 10 minutes of the sequel

damn shame i haven't seen him in anything recently
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on January 24, 2006, 11:40:45 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on January 24, 2006, 08:23:46 PM
The brother of Sean Penn was 43.

Santa Monica police say there is no sign of foul play in the death of Actor Chris Penn.

How do you die at the age of 43 without foul play?  Or does foul play mean murder and doesn't include drug use?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on January 25, 2006, 04:01:39 AM
Yeah, I'm pretty sure foul play means murder.  It means that at this point, police have no reason to suspect anyone other than Chris Penn as having any involvement in his death.

I found the news shocking, myself.  I probably shouldn't have been, though.  It's strange--I rarely am shocked and I'm hyper-aware of our mortality, so I don't know why I was shocked.  I guess even though death can happen to anyone at any time, there are many cases where it's just unexpected.  Chris Farley and Phil Hartman were two such cases for me.  Hartman especially.  I just never thought about them dying.  I guess I must confess that I do think of most people dying, and what that would mean, and how that would feel... it makes me appreciate life more in my own odd way, I guess.  I don't live in fear of death befalling anyone, but just the knowledge that they will someday die allows me to appreciate that they are currently alive, that I am currently alive.

These celebrities that aren't directly in my life, then, I don't really think much about.  Their deaths can end up being the most shocking because of that.  We all disconnect celebrities from reality.  We know them, not as a person but as an image, since we don't physically know them.  It makes for a sort of unreal aspect to their deaths.  It does in my mind, anyway.  The idea of them ever really being here, and now being gone, is more abstract.  It's less emotional, since I don't really know these people, but more shocking, because "man, what if Chris Penn died" was just about the last thing on my mind.

Eh, these things get me all thinky, but this isn't really worth going on about.  I'm speaking only of my thoughts, though, and not making any statements about anything else.  I only intended to state that it's a particularly strange feeling to me, is all.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on January 25, 2006, 01:05:56 PM
you guys think he was dabbling in the nose candy for too long?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on January 25, 2006, 02:48:30 PM
 :yabbse-huh:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on January 25, 2006, 05:35:57 PM
Quote from: pozer on January 25, 2006, 02:48:30 PM
:yabbse-huh:

"nose candy" means "cocaine"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on January 25, 2006, 06:18:01 PM
yeah and "transmitter rectangle" means "monolith".   :roll:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 25, 2006, 07:40:04 PM
Penn autopsy indicates natural death

Investigators have found no sign of foul play or suicide in the death of actor Christopher Penn, officials said Wednesday.

Medical examiners conducted an autopsy Wednesday on the 40-year-old actor, who was found dead by a housekeeper in his Santa Monica home, according to Lt. Cheryl MacWillie, a watch commander for the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office.

"It appears to be a natural death," MacWillie said. "He died in bed." Examiners were trying to determine if weight was an issue because Penn weighed over 270 pounds, she said.

Penn was the younger brother of Sean Penn.

MacWillie said there were no signs of foul play or suicide and that further tests were being conducted to determine the exact cause of death.

Santa Monica Police Department spokesman Lt. Frank Fabrega also said the death was not being investigated as a homicide.

A family spokeswoman issued a statement Tuesday night saying the Penn family "would appreciate the media's respect of their privacy during this difficult time."

Penn was a character actor who specialized in blue-collar, tough-guy roles and appeared in dozens of films, including "Reservoir Dogs," "Mulholland Falls" and the 2004 film "Starsky & Hutch." He also co-starred in the short-lived CBS television drama "The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire."

His latest film, "The Darwin Awards," was scheduled to premiere on Wednesday at the Sundance Film Festival.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on January 25, 2006, 08:10:43 PM
Quote from: modage on January 25, 2006, 06:18:01 PM
yeah and "transmitter rectangle" means "monolith".   :roll:

point taken. i even watched it again today.  :oops:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Tictacbk on January 25, 2006, 11:25:23 PM
Tom Cruise did it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on January 26, 2006, 02:12:20 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on January 25, 2006, 07:40:04 PM
Examiners were trying to determine if weight was an issue because Penn weighed over 270 pounds

I'm giving out 7 to 1 odds on "yes".
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on January 26, 2006, 02:48:57 PM
Quote from: permanent username on January 25, 2006, 05:35:57 PM
Quote from: pozer on January 25, 2006, 02:48:30 PM
:yabbse-huh:

"nose candy" means "cocaine"
Um, yeah, I know.  I meant that as "who knows, dude?" to his pointless question.  Shouldn't have posted anything.  No one answering it would have been suffice.   
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on January 26, 2006, 05:27:33 PM
 :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on January 26, 2006, 07:46:09 PM
just another reason for sean penn to be pissed off.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on January 31, 2006, 06:46:17 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4665820.stm

Widow of Martin Luther King dies



Coretta Scott King, the widow of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, has died aged 78.

Mrs King had carried on her husband's work for racial equality after he was assassinated in 1968.

She fought successfully for a national holiday in memory of him and founded The King Center in Atlanta to preserve his legacy.

President Bush called Mrs King a "great civil rights leader" and said he was fortunate to have known her.

News of the mother of four's death was reported by former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young to US network NBC television.

Mr Young, also a civil rights campaigner, said Mrs King had died in her sleep on Monday night. Mrs King had been in poor health in recent years.

She suffered a serious stroke and heart attack in 2005, and earlier this month missed the public marking of her husband's birthday for the first time in two decades.

Mrs King, who met her husband in Boston and married him in 1953, supported him in his civil rights work.

After his death, she raised their four children while at the same time working to secure his legacy.

'Courageous leader'

She recalled in her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr, how she had felt compelled to carry on the civil rights movement.

"Because his task was not finished, I felt that I must re-dedicate myself to the completion of his work," she wrote.

In 1969 she founded the Martin Luther King Jr Centre for Non-violent Social Change in Atlanta and in 1986 saw the establishment of a national holiday to mark her husband's January birthday.

President George Bush said in a statement that Mrs King was a "remarkable and courageous woman, and a great civil rights leader".

"Mrs King's lasting contributions to freedom and equality have made America a better and more compassionate nation," he said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 01, 2006, 07:56:50 PM
Ballerina-actress Moira Shearer, 'Red Shoes' star, dies at 80

LONDON -- Moira Shearer, the ballerina and actress whose debut film, "The Red Shoes," created an international sensation in 1948, has died, her husband said Wednesday. She was 80.

Shearer died Tuesday at the John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford, said her husband, Ludovic Kennedy. He said she had become weak since her birthday last month, but did not reveal the cause of death.

Shearer, born in Dunfermline, Scotland, became principal dancer at London's famous Sadler's Wells in 1942 and won her first major role in 1946, playing Sleeping Beauty at London's Royal Opera House.

A stunning redhead, she won her the role as the doomed dancer Victoria in "The Red Shoes," directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It was a huge international hit and was nominated for the Oscar for best picture; it won Oscars for best art direction and best music.
 
The film, loosely based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, is celebrated for its rich use of color and the intimate view of backstage life in the world of ballet. Shearer's character becomes a great star but is torn between her love for a young composer and her career, which is guided by a jealous impresario. The film contained a complete ballet danced by Shearer and others.

Though she took roles in later films -- including Powell and Pressburger's "The Tales of Hoffmann" in 1951 and Powell's 1960 thriller, "Peeping Tom" ---- Shearer remained ambivalent toward films, preferring to focus her efforts on dance.

"The ballet was the thing to which she was really committed -- the film industry was a bit of a distraction," Kennedy said.

Alistair Spalding, artistic director of Sadler's Wells, said members of the company were saddened by news of her death.

"She was deeply connected with the history of Sadler's Wells. She started her career here and danced and toured with the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet," said Spalding.


:yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 04, 2006, 03:17:34 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/04/lewis.obit.ap/index.html

Grandpa 'Munster' dies at age 95
Al Lewis was also a basketball scout, political candidate
Saturday, February 4, 2006; Posted: 3:28 p.m. EST (20:28 GMT)


NEW YORK (AP) -- Al Lewis, the cigar-chomping patriarch of "The Munsters" whose work as a basketball scout, restaurateur and political candidate never eclipsed his role as Grandpa from the television sitcom, died after years of failing health. He was 95.

Lewis, with his wife at his bedside, passed away Friday night, said Bernard White, program director at WBAI-FM, where the actor hosted a weekly radio program. White made the announcement on the air during the Saturday slot where Lewis usually appeared.

"To say that we will miss his generous, cantankerous, engaging spirit is a profound understatement," White said.

Lewis, sporting a somewhat cheesy Dracula outfit, became a pop culture icon playing the irascible father-in-law to Fred Gwynne's ever-bumbling Herman Munster on the 1964-66 television show. He was also one of the stars of another classic TV comedy, playing Officer Leo Schnauzer on "Car 54, Where Are You?"

But Lewis' life off the small screen ranged far beyond his acting antics. A former ballplayer at Thomas Jefferson High School, he achieved notoriety as a basketball talent scout familiar to coaching greats like Jerry Tarkanian and Red Auerbach.

He operated a successful Greenwich Village restaurant, Grandpa's, where he was a regular presence -- chatting with customers, posing for pictures, signing autographs.

Just two years short of his 90th birthday, a ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green Party candidate against incumbent Gov. George Pataki. Lewis campaigned against draconian drug laws and the death penalty, while going to court in a losing battle to have his name appear on the ballot as "Grandpa Al Lewis."

He didn't defeat Pataki, but managed to collect more 52,000 votes.

Lewis was born Alexander Meister in upstate New York before his family moved to Brooklyn, where the 6-foot-1 teen began a lifelong love affair with basketball. He later became a vaudeville and circus performer, but his career didn't take off until television did the same.

Lewis, as Officer Schnauzer, played opposite Gwynne's Officer Francis Muldoon in "Car 54, Where Are You?" -- a comedy about a Bronx police precinct that aired from 1961-63. One year later, the duo appeared together in "The Munsters," taking up residence at the fictional 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

The series, about a family of clueless creatures plunked down in middle America, was a success and ran through 1966. It forever locked Lewis in as the memorably twisted character; decades later, strangers would greet him on the street with shouts of "Grandpa!"

Unlike some television stars, Lewis never complained about getting typecast and made appearances in character for decades.

"Why would I mind?" he asked in a 1997 interview. "It pays my mortgage."

Lewis rarely slowed down, opening his restaurant and hosting his WBAI radio program. At one point during the '90s, he was a frequent guest on the Howard Stern radio show, once sending the shock jock diving for the delay button by leading an undeniably obscene chant against the Federal Communications Commission.

He also popped up in a number of movies, including the acclaimed "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and "Married to the Mob." Lewis reprised his role of Schnauzer in the movie remake of "Car 54," and appeared as a guest star on television shows such as "Taxi," "Green Acres" and "Lost in Space."

But in 2003, Lewis was hospitalized for an angioplasty. Complications during surgery led to an emergency bypass and the amputation of his right leg below the knee and all the toes on his left foot. Lewis spent the next month in a coma.

A year later, he was back offering his recollections of a seminal punk band on the DVD "Ramones Raw."

He is survived by his wife, Karen Ingenthron-Lewis, three sons and four grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on February 05, 2006, 12:50:20 AM
Quote from: Ravi on February 04, 2006, 03:17:34 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/04/lewis.obit.ap/index.html

Grandpa 'Munster' dies at age 95

wow, CNN really goofed that one up.. 82 now! : http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/04/lewis.obit.ap/index.html

to top it off, the image caption says he died at 83  :shock:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on February 09, 2006, 10:17:47 PM
Two held in Curious George author's Florida death
Thu Feb 09, 9:45 PM ET

Two men have been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Alan J. Shalleck, 76, who co-wrote "Curious George" books and helped bring the very curious little monkey to television.

Rex Spears Ditto, 29, and Vincent Puglisi, 54, were arrested shortly before midnight on Wednesday and confessed to a home invasion, murder and robbery of Shalleck, Sgt. Gladys Cannon of the Boynton Beach police said on Thursday.

Shalleck's bloodied body was discovered on Tuesday under a pile of plastic garbage bags in a driveway at Royal Manor Estates by a maintenance supervisor who went to haul away what appeared to be a pile of trash, police said.

The body may have been in the driveway for more than a day. Crime scene investigators found stab wounds and, once inside the home, several pools of blood leading to the master bathroom which was splattered with blood. Investigators found several knives and broken glass in the house.

Ditto and Puglisi made full confessions, according to Cannon, who said the men robbed Shalleck of jewelry and money from his checking account. Charges include first-degree murder, armed home invasion, aggravated battery of a person 65 years or older, and dealing in stolen property.

ADVERTISEMENT

Shalleck began his collaboration with "Curious George" co-creator Margaret Rey nearly three decades ago, helping write sequels to the stories Rey originally produced with her late husband H.A. Rey and bringing the monkey to television.

Shalleck's death came just days before a big-screen version of "Curious George" debuts in movie theaters on Friday.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on February 09, 2006, 10:24:05 PM
Quote from: permanent username on February 09, 2006, 10:17:47 PM
Crime scene investigators found stab wounds and, once inside the home, several pools of blood leading to the master bathroom which was splattered with blood. Investigators found several knives and broken glass in the house.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.synapticblur.com%2Fpics%2Ftop5monkeys03.jpg&hash=56f95490b3fa0eef39afd833f40206c3774395a4)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 10, 2006, 12:01:23 AM
Quote from: permanent username on February 09, 2006, 10:17:47 PM
Two held in Curious George author's Florida death

Worst marketing move ever.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on February 10, 2006, 02:13:29 AM
I like to think that if someone were to slaughter Maurice Sendak, we'd all show a little more respect.

I'd also like to say that, judging from the looks of the Curious George movie, this was a mercy killing.








I feel dirty.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 12, 2006, 08:12:35 PM
"Jaws" author Peter Benchley dead at 65

Peter Benchley, author of the bestseller "Jaws" that was the basis for the blockbuster movie that terrified beachgoers and kept many out of the water for years, died at his home at age 65, his family said on Sunday.

Benchley, well-known for other water-based suspense fiction including "The Deep" and "The Island" which also spawned films, died of complications from pulmonary fibrosis, his son-in-law Chris Turner told Reuters.

Benchley was diagnosed with the condition last autumn and his health had been diminishing, but his death at this time had not been expected, according to Turner.

"It was peaceful," he said, adding that the writer's wife Wendy and other family members were by his side at their Princeton, New Jersey home.

In addition to the fame he achieved as a novelist, Benchley was a reporter for the Washington Post and Newsweek, wrote for magazines and a speechwriter for President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1967 until January, 1969.

The Harvard graduate, who grew up in New York City and went to prep school in New Hampshire, was also the grandson of writer and humorist Robert Benchley, member of the renowned Algonquin Round Table that included personalities such as Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Robert Sherwood and Alexander Wolcott.

But it was the 1974 novel "Jaws," about a series of gruesome shark attacks that cause panic in a placid beach resort, that Benchley won the kind of fame rarely accorded any writer of popular fiction.

The book has sold more than 20 million copies, and Benchley even had a cameo as a reporter in the 1975 Steven Spielberg film, which spawned a series of inferior sequels.

Benchley said he had been interested in sharks since his childhood days spent on the island of Nantucket off Massachusetts. Then, in 1964, he read about a fisherman who caught a 4,550-pound great white shark off Long Island.

"I thought to myself, 'What would happen if one of those came around and wouldn't go away?' That was the seed idea of 'Jaws,"' he said in an interview on his Web site.

But he didn't pursue the idea until 1971. By the time the book, his first novel, came out in early 1974, it had earned more than $1 million before the first press run, including $575,000 for the paperback rights and from sales to books clubs and the film's producers.

Benchley continued his lifelong fascination with the sea and its potential terrors with "The Deep," about divers looking for treasure, and "The Island," in which sailors are terrorized by modern-day pirates. Among his latest books was "Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks and the Sea," which was published only last year.

"Everything I've written is based on something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about," Benchley said.

"In 'Jaws' I knew a great deal about sharks. In 'The Deep' I had been lucky enough to learn about Bermuda and to meet Teddy Tucker, a great Bermudan treasure diver, while doing a story for the National Geographic, and I learned about shipwrecks in Bermuda," he added.

But, he noted, he was never injured by any sea creature other than jellyfish stings or sea urchin spines, although he was nearly bitten by sharks a few times.

Other books included "White Shark," "Beast," about a giant squid, and "Rummies," about an alcoholic's journey through recovery and rehabilitation.

Besides his wife Benchley is survived by two grown children. Funeral arrangements have not been formalized.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 13, 2006, 07:59:28 PM
Coroner: Chris Penn Died Accidentally

Actor Chris Penn died accidentally from an enlarged heart and the effects of a mix of multiple medications, the county coroner's office said Monday.

"There is absolutely no indication that this is anything but an accident," chief coroner investigator Craig Harvey said.

Penn, 40, the younger brother of Sean Penn, was found dead in his Santa Monica condominium on Jan. 24, but the results of his autopsy and toxicology tests were not released until Monday.

The primary cause of death was "nonspecific cardiomyopathy," an oversized heart, with the "effects of multiple medication intake," according to a statement issued by the coroner's office.

"We know he had several prescriptions, including promethazine with codeine, which featured predominantly in his death," Harvey said.

Promethazine with codeine is known as a highly addictive prescription medication. Promethazine is an antihistamine that prevents vomiting, while codeine suppresses coughing and relieves pain, Harvey said.

"We don't know how much he ingested or when," Harvey said. "There are a lot of 'what ifs' to be factored in."

A full coroner's report with further details will be available in a few weeks, Harvey said.

Penn's heart weighed 700 grams, a few hundred grams more than an average heart. Harvey said Penn was not taking heart medication at the time of his death.

Penn appeared in such films as "Reservoir Dogs," "Rush Hour," "Starsky & Hutch" and "Corky Romano."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 25, 2006, 05:00:07 PM
Don Knotts, TV's Lovable Nerd, Dies at 81

Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show," has died. He was 81.

Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs "The Andy Griffith Show," and another Knotts hit, "Three's Company."

Unspecified health problems had forced him to cancel an appearance in his native Morgantown in August 2005.

The West Virginia-born actor's half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmies.

The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are "I Love Lucy" and "Seinfeld." The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and have spawned a large, active network of fan clubs.

As the bug-eyed deputy to Griffith, Knotts carried in his shirt pocket the one bullet he was allowed after shooting himself in the foot. The constant fumbling, a recurring sight gag, was typical of his self-deprecating humor.

Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn't mind being remembered that way.

His favorite episodes, he said, were "The Pickle Story," where Aunt Bea makes pickles no one can eat, and "Barney and the Choir," where no one can stop him from singing.

"I can't sing. It makes me sad that I can't sing or dance well enough to be in a musical, but I'm just not talented in that way," he lamented. "It's one of my weaknesses."

Knotts appeared on six other television shows. In 1979, Knotts replaced Norman Fell on "Three's Company," playing the would-be swinger landlord to John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt.

Early in his TV career, he was one of the original cast members of "The Steve Allen Show," the comedy-variety show that ran from 1956-61. He was one of a group of memorable comics backing Allen that included Louis Nye, Tom Poston and Bill "Jose Jimenez" Dana.

Knotts' G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. In most, he ends up the hero and gets the girl — a girl who can see through his nervousness to the heart of gold.

In the part-animated 1964 film "The Incredible Mr. Limpet," Knotts played a meek clerk who turns into a fish after he is rejected by the Navy.

When it was announced in 1998 that Jim Carrey would star in a "Limpet" remake, Knotts responded: "I'm just flattered that someone of Carrey's caliber is remaking something I did. Now, if someone else did Barney Fife, THAT would be different."

In the 1967 film "The Reluctant Astronaut," co-starring Leslie Nielsen, Knotts' father enrolls his wimpy son — operator of a Kiddieland rocket ride — in NASA's space program. Knotts poses as a famous astronaut to the joy of his parents and hometown but is eventually exposed for what he really is, a janitor so terrified of heights he refuses to ride an airplane.

In the 1969 film "The Love God?," he was a geeky bird-watcher who is duped into becoming publisher of a naughty men's magazine and then becomes a national sex symbol. Eventually, he comes to his senses, leaves the big city and marries the sweet girl next door.

He was among an army of comedians from Buster Keaton to Jonathan Winters to liven up the 1963 megacomedy "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." Other films include "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966); "The Shakiest Gun in the West," (1968); and a few Disney films such as "The Apple Dumpling Gang," (1974); "Gus," (1976); and "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo," (1977).

In 1998, he had a key role in the back-to-the-past movie "Pleasantville," playing a folksy television repairman whose supercharged remote control sends a teen boy and his sister into a TV sitcom past.

Knotts began his show biz career even before he graduated from high school, performing as a ventriloquist at local clubs and churches. He majored in speech at West Virginia University, then took off for the big city.

"I went to New York cold. On a $100 bill. Bummed a ride," he recalled in a visit to his hometown of Morgantown, where city officials renamed a street for him in 1998.

Within six months, Knotts had taken a job on a radio Western called "Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders," playing a wisecracking, know-it-all handyman. He stayed with it for five years, then came his series TV debut on "The Steve Allen Show."

He married Kay Metz in 1948, the year he graduated from college. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1969. Knotts later married, then divorced Lara Lee Szuchna.

In recent years, he said he had no plans to retire, traveling with theater productions and appearing in print and TV ads for Kodiak pressure treated wood.

The world laughed at Knotts, but it also laughed with him.

He treasured his comedic roles and could point to only one role that wasn't funny, a brief stint on the daytime drama "Search for Tomorrow."

"That's the only serious thing I've done. I don't miss that," Knotts said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on February 25, 2006, 08:59:59 PM
He was a funny, beautiful man, and shall be missed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on February 25, 2006, 11:11:58 PM
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Darren McGavin at approximately 7:10 A.M. Pacific time today, Saturday 25, 2006. Darren was just three months short of his 84th birthday. While we suspect none of us can imagine a world without the beloved, feisty little red-head, it is time to reflect, give thanks for his life and hold in reverence his memory. Darren is gone, but in many respects he will always be with us: as Carl Kolchak, fighting authority and battling monsters; the grumpy Old Man sending curses over Lake Michigan; as David Ross, the outsider, Grey Holden, captain of the Enterprise, the irascible detective Mike Hammer or any number of memorable guest star appearances, most notably as Joe Bascome on GUNSMOKE and as the washed-up old actor from "Distant Signals."
Please take a moment in your sadness to reflect upon all the ways Darren touched your lives, say a prayer and raise a glass to toast a career which spanned over fifty years and affected us all in ways too numerous to count.

www.darrenmcgavin.net
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on February 26, 2006, 12:19:52 AM
"Some men are Baptists, other Catholics... my father was an Oldsmobile man."

I miss him already.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on February 26, 2006, 09:59:41 AM
yes, yesterday was a really crappy day. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on February 27, 2006, 12:36:54 PM
http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=22580

"uncle bill" from Jackie Chan movies is dead.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on February 27, 2006, 02:24:49 PM
r.i.p. dennis weaver, you were the bomb in "duel".  :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on February 27, 2006, 03:06:40 PM
It's been a shitty couple of days for character actors... Ernest Borgnine and Robert Vaughn had better watch out!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 03, 2006, 01:42:26 PM
Quote from: mogwai on February 27, 2006, 02:24:49 PM
r.i.p. dennis weaver, you were the bomb in "duel".  :yabbse-cry:

don't forget touch of evil.  rip
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on March 04, 2006, 02:19:00 AM
Jackson 5 Drummer Slain
source (http://entertainment.tv.yahoo.com/entnews/eo/20060303/114143448000.html)
Fri Mar 03, 5:08 PM ET

Johnny Jackson, the man who kept the beat for the Jackson 5, and cousin to Michael, Janet, Tito et al., was found stabbed to death in his Gary, Indiana, home Wednesday.

According to local police, officers were called to Johnny Jackson's house at approximately 11:30 p.m. after a neighbor phoned in a noise complaint. The caller, who lived above Jackson, reported that the musician and an unidentified woman were having a heated exchange on the first floor of the building.

The police entered Jackson's home and found the 54-year-old unconscious with a stab wound to his chest. Less than an hour later, the Lake County coroner's office pronounced him dead.

The person who placed the emergency call told cops she went downstairs after hearing the commotion and found her neighbor lying in living room. It was then she contacted the police.

Police have no details on the woman Jackson was supposedly arguing with, including how she knew the drummer, although the neighbor described the woman as an acquaintance of Jackson's.

No arrests have been made. The case is being treated as a homicide investigation.

Jackson joined his famous cousins' singing troupe in the late 1960s, replacing the group's original drummer, Milford Hite. While Motown sessions musicians played on most of the group's greatest cuts, including "I Want You Back," "ABC," "I'll Be There" and "Never Can Say Goodbye," Johnny Jackson was the band's concert drummer. After the group disbanded, he joined an outfit called the White Doves.

There has always been some debate as to whether or not Johnny Jackson was a blood relative or legitimate cousin of the hit-making family; however, it is believed that he was a nephew of patriarch Joe Jackson.

It's not immediately known whether Johnny Jackson had ever married or had children; he was living alone at the time of his death.

"It hurts me so bad," Jackson's childhood friend and White Doves bandmate Anthony Acoff told the Associated Press. "I called him that night. We were supposed to go to a jam session."

"He was a show drummer," said another old friend, Gordon Keith (who has sued the Jackson 5 over some early recordings). "There were times that he would outshine Michael at their shows."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 04, 2006, 02:44:06 AM
damn, my hopes for a jackson 5 reunion are horribly crushed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on March 05, 2006, 10:48:21 PM
that article seemed really weirdly written. did it strike anybody else?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 06, 2006, 12:02:18 AM
the neighbor seems highly suspicious.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jigzaw on March 06, 2006, 12:10:06 AM
i dont' know, i dont' want to talk about this
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on March 06, 2006, 10:55:40 AM
Quote from: jigzaw on March 06, 2006, 12:10:06 AM
i dont' know, i dont' want to talk about this
hmm, how suspicious....
exactly what a murderer would say.... :ponder:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 07, 2006, 03:52:41 PM
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-03-07-voa57.cfm

Superman Widow Dana Reeve Dies of Lung Cancer
By Rosanne Skirble
Washington, D.C.
07 March 2006

Dana Reeve - widow of Superman actor Christopher Reeve and advocate for victims of spinal cord injuries - died late Monday of lung cancer at the age of 44. Dana Reeve is among a growing group of non-smoking women who contract and die from the disease.

Dana Reeve had a nagging cough for about a year. It started in 2004, a few months after her husband's death. In an interview after she got the diagnosis she expressed surprise considering the risk factors for the disease. "I don't live in the city," she said on ABC television. "I don't work in a high-risk environment, and I am not a smoker. So it was never anything that would occur to me that I would get lung cancer, but the more I have learned about lung cancer is that it is becoming much more random, and it is striking women who are under fifty and are non-smokers and not in a risk environment."

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States and a major killer throughout the world. Nearly 90 % of the cases are linked to smoking. The other ten-plus percent of the victims are - like Dana Reeve - non-smokers. And for reasons not yet well understood, a greater proportion of women who develop lung cancer are non-smokers compared to men who get the disease.

Derek Raghavan is the director of the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center.  He says second-hand smoke is a major threat. "Many of the people who list themselves correctly as never having smoked a cigarette have actually inhaled a lot of passive smoke." These are people, he says, "in the entertainment business," adding, "If they worked in clubs, particularly in the days when there was smoking allowed, they have been inhaling smoke for years. I think in truth at least half the cases of lung cancer in non-smokers are the sad situation where their parents smoked or their loved ones smoked or they worked in a smoky environment."

Raghavan says researchers are looking at other factors too. "For example, there is a gas called radon that sometimes accumulates in basements and when people go down to the basement in the winter, that is a risk factor," he says. "There is a lot of rubbish in the air that we breathe in. And, then there are unexpected and funny things. In China some of the women who cook their evening meal using a wok use some oils that are cancer-causing, and they have a higher chance of getting lung cancer."

Asbestos - a fibrous industrial material whose use is now limited or banned in many countries, including the United States - is also linked to the disease.

Lung cancer symptoms - shortness of breath, chest pain and coughing up blood - occur in only about one-quarter of the cases. The cancer claims its victims quickly. Only fifteen percent of those diagnosed with the disease survive as long as five years.

Some researchers recommend people at high risk have a special CT scan. However, other experts are awaiting the results of a large-scale clinical trial of such imaging tests which is currently underway.

Until early diagnosis is possible, American Cancer Society official Len Lichtenfeld advises people not to start smoking, and if you do to stop. "If there is some good that comes out of the situation with Ms. Reeve," he says, "it is a reminder that this is a disease that for many people can be prevented and unfortunately as in Ms. Reeve's case it is a situation where that was not the case."

174,000 new cases of lung cancer are predicted in the United States this year. One bit of good news: The death rate among men is declining, a development Dr. Lichtenfeld says is linked to the decreased use of tobacco products.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 07, 2006, 10:39:59 PM
Black American Filmmaker Gordon Parks dies

Gordon Parks, the former magazine photographer who became a leading black American filmmaker with movies such as "Shaft," died on Tuesday in New York City, his nephew Charles Parks said.

Parks, 93, had been in failing health, said the nephew, who lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

Parks, born in Fort Scott, Kansas, took up photography during the Great Depression in the late 1930s and became Life magazine's first black staff photographer in 1948. He stayed until 1968.

He turned to filmmaking in the late 1960s, and in 1971 directed the hit movie "Shaft," which was one of the first of a wave of movies known as "blaxploitation" films that spoke directly to disenfranchised black Americans.

Parks' first movie, 1969's "The Learning Tree" was adapted from a novel he wrote about growing up poor and black in 1920s Kansas
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 07, 2006, 11:35:58 PM
Comedian and writer John Junkin has died at the age of 76.

Junkin, who was in the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night and appeared in TV shows such as The Goodies, had been suffering from lung cancer.

He died at 0130 GMT at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, said his friend and former BBC Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis.

Five years ago, Junkin made a TV comeback in EastEnders, playing Ernie, a stranger who came into the Queen Vic.

The Ealing-born comedian had also had emphysema and asthma.

Junkin's film roles included Shake, who was one of the road managers in the Beatles' 1964 comedy adventure, A Hard Day's Night.

He also appeared in classic British comedy The Plank, with Tommy Cooper and Eric Sykes.

Talented

He was also a prolific writer. His credits include the Morcambe and Wise show and ITV's Hark at Barker, which starred Ronnie Barker as Lord Rustless alongside Josephine Tewson as Mildred Bates.

Junkin also wrote and appeared in Marty, which starred Marty Feldman.

More recently, Junkin was on the writing team of The Crazy World of Joe Pasquale and The Impressionable John Culshaw.

He also appeared in sitcoms Terry and June and Till Death Us Do Part.

His radio credits include Hello Cheeky! alongside Tim Brooke-Taylor and Barry Cryer, which was later turned into a TV series.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 13, 2006, 12:48:28 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060313/ap_en_mo/obit_stapleton

Actress Maureen Stapleton Dies at 80

LENOX, Mass. - Maureen Stapleton, the Oscar-winning character actress whose subtle vulnerability and down-to-earth toughness earned her dramatic and comedic roles on stage, screen, and television, died Monday. She was 80.

Stapleton, a longtime smoker who had been living in Lenox, died from chronic pulmonary disease, said her son, Daniel Allentuck.

Stapleton, whose unremarkable, matronly appearance belied her star personality and talent, won an Academy Award in 1981 for her supporting role as anarchist-writer Emma Goldman in Warren Beatty's "Reds," about a left-wing American journalist who journeys to Russia to cover the Bolshevik Revolution.

To prepare for the role, Stapleton said she tried reading Goldman's autobiography, but soon chucked it out of boredom.

"There are many roads to good acting," Stapleton, known for her straightforwardness, said in her 1995 autobiography, "Hell of a Life." "I've been asked repeatedly what the 'key' to acting is, and as far as I'm concerned, the main thing is to keep the audience awake."

Stapleton was nominated several times for a supporting actress Oscar, including for her first film role in 1958's "Lonelyhearts"; "Airport" in 1970; and
Woody Allen's "Interiors" in 1978.

Her other film credits include the 1963 musical "Bye Bye Birdie" opposite Ann-Margret and Dick Van Dyke, "Johnny Dangerously," "Cocoon," "The Money Pit" and "Addicted to Love."

In television, she earned an Emmy for "Among the Paths to Eden" in 1967. She was nominated for "Queen of the Stardust Ballroom" in 1975; "The Gathering" in 1977; and "Miss Rose White" in 1992.

Brought up in a strict Irish Catholic family with an alcoholic father, Stapleton left home in Troy, N.Y., right after high school. With $100 to her name, she came to New York and began studying at the Herbert Berghof Acting School and later at the Actor's Studio, which turned out the likes of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Julia Roberts.

Stapleton soon made her Broadway debut in Burgess Meredith's 1946 production of "The Playboy of the Western World."

At age 24, she became a success as Serafina Delle Rose in Tennessee Williams' Broadway hit "The Rose Tattoo," and won a Tony Award. She appeared in numerous other stage productions, including Lillian Hellman's "Toys in the Attic" and Neil Simon's "The Gingerbread Lady," for which she won her second Tony in 1971.

She starred opposite Laurence Olivier in Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Stapleton's friendship with Williams was well-known and he wrote three plays for her, but she never appeared in any of them.

Along the way, she led a chaotic personal life, which her autobiography candidly described as including two failed marriages, numerous affairs, years of alcohol abuse and erratic parenting for her two children.

She often said auditioning was hard for her, but that it was just a part of acting, a job "that pays."

"When I was first in New York there was a girl who wanted to play 'St. Joan' to the point where it was scary. ... I thought 'Don't ever want anything that bad," she recalled. "Just take what you get and like it while you do it, and forget it."

Cast throughout her career in supporting roles, Stapleton was content not playing a lead character, Allentuck said.

"I don't think she ever had unrealistic aspirations about her career," he said.

Beside Allentuck, Stapleton is survived by a daughter, Katharine Bambery, of Lenox and a brother, Jack Stapleton, of Troy, N.Y.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: sheshothim on March 13, 2006, 03:15:05 PM
Quote from: Xidentity Crixax on March 05, 2006, 10:48:21 PM
that article seemed really weirdly written. did it strike anybody else?

QuoteThe person who placed the emergency call told cops she went downstairs after hearing the commotion and found her neighbor lying in living room. It was then she contacted the police.
(from the Jackson 5 murder)

I think that line most specifically is suspicious. "The person"? I mean c'mon! Are you a reporter or what? If anyone is supposed to put any trust in this reporter, they should have gotten the names of more witnesses, etc. The only name you get is Johnny Jackson. Where are all the sources? Who the hell wrote this shit? They should be FIRED!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on March 13, 2006, 03:23:35 PM
Quote from: sheshothim on March 13, 2006, 03:15:05 PM
Where are all the sources? Who the hell wrote this shit? They should be FIRED!

that's it, I'm writing a LETTER.  :yabbse-angry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: sheshothim on March 13, 2006, 03:39:47 PM
Quote from: Hedwig on March 13, 2006, 03:23:35 PM
Quote from: sheshothim on March 13, 2006, 03:15:05 PM
Where are all the sources? Who the hell wrote this shit? They should be FIRED!

that's it, I'm writing a LETTER.  :yabbse-angry:

And when you do, please give the newspaper my name and number, and tell them I'm a MUCH better reporter than the person they should be firing. My hours are very flexible. I'm not afraid to move away from home. Hehe.  :wink:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 26, 2006, 01:47:07 AM
'20,000 Leagues' Director Fleischer Dies

Richard Fleischer, who directed several memorable films from sci-fi classics such as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" to war movies as "Tora! Tora! Tora!", has died. He was 89.

Fleischer died Saturday of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his son, Mark.

Mark Fleischer said he remembered his father as a gentle man who always put family first.

"My parents made a great effort to insulate their children from the craziness of Hollywood," he said. "They made sure our lives were as normal as possible."

The director's father, Max Fleischer, and his uncles Dave and Louis, pioneered animated shorts in New York, starting in 1920 with the innovative "Out of the Inkwell" series. In the 1930s, they became rivals to Walt Disney with their popular Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor comedy shorts.

A quiet-spoken but firm-minded director, Richard Fleischer never achieved the recognition of his more flamboyant contemporaries, but his name was on a wide variety of well-known films, including "Fantastic Voyage" (1966); "Doctor Dolittle" (1967); "The Boston Strangler" (1968); "Che!" (1969); "The New Centurions" (1972); "Soylent Green" (1973); "Mr. Majestyk" (1974); "Mandingo" (1975); "Conan the Destroyer" (1984) and "Red Sonja" (1985).

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who starred in "Conan the Destroyer," praised Fleischer as "a true Hollywood legend."

"He was a man of great talent and an extraordinary director who leaves behind a legacy of amazing films," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on April 22, 2006, 07:46:38 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4935322.stm

Italian actress Alida Valli dies

Italian actress Alida Valli, who starred in films by Alfred Hitchcock and Luchino Visconti, has died at the age of 84.

She made her cinema debut at the age of 15 and appeared in over 100 films.

They included Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947) with Gregory Peck, The Miracle of the Bells (1948) and Carole Reed's classic The Third Man (1949).

Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said her passing was "a great loss for Italian cinema, theatre and culture".

Rome's Mayor Walter Veltroni praised her "incredible talent" and said Italy had "lost one of its most beautiful faces".

Born Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger in 1921 in Pola, now Pula in Croatia. She was discovered by US producer David Selznick, who awarded her a film contract thinking he had found a new Ingrid Bergman.

Her English-speaking career did not last long because of her thick accent, but she continued to act in Italian and French films, as well as theatre.

Valli won Italy's top David film prize in 1982 for a supporting role in Marco Tullio Giordana's La Caduta degli Angeli Ribelli and another for her career in 1991.

She was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice Film festival in 1997 for her contribution to Italian cinema.

Her funeral will take place in Rome's city hall on Monday.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 27, 2006, 08:59:25 PM
Henry Bumstead, 91; Veteran Film Production Designer

Henry Bumstead, the veteran Hollywood production designer who won Academy Awards for his work on "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Sting" and whose longtime association with actor-director Clint Eastwood kept him on the job into his 90s, has died. He was 91.

Bumstead, who reportedly had prostate cancer, died Wednesday in Pasadena, his family said.

In a nearly 70-year career that began when he was a draftsman in the art department at RKO in the late 1930s, Bumstead's first picture as an art director was the 1948 Paramount drama "Saigon," starring Alan Ladd.

Bumstead received his Academy Awards for his depiction of 1930s rural Alabama in director Robert Mulligan's 1962 drama "To Kill a Mockingbird" and for re-creating Depression-era Chicago in George Roy Hill's 1973 comedy-drama "The Sting."

He also received Oscar nominations for his work on Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 romantic thriller "Vertigo" and for Eastwood's 1992 western "Unforgiven."

Bumstead, who was affectionately known as Bummy, had more than 100 films to his credit, including "Come Back, Little Sheba," "Cinderfella," "The Great Waldo Pepper," "Slap Shot," "The Front Page," "Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here," Martin Scorsese's 1991 version of "Cape Fear," "Mystic River" and "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

Bumstead recently completed work on Eastwood's companion movies "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Red Sun, Black Sand," the last of a 13-film collaboration.

"Bummy was one of a kind," Eastwood said in a statement Friday. "He seamlessly bridged the gap between what I saw on the page and what I saw through the camera lens. He is a legend in his field and a cherished friend. We will all miss him terribly."

Bumstead once described his job as a production designer by saying, "In a nutshell, my job is to break down the script, find the best possible locations, make a budget and design the appropriate sets that correspond to the story."

For Eastwood's 2002 crime thriller "Blood Work," which was shot in and around Los Angeles and Long Beach, he built the elaborate interior of an old freighter with a flooded engine room.

"That was a big set, and I got to do some wonderful aging," Bumstead told The Times in 2002. "I'm a stickler for aging — the rust and the dirt. It was just a beautiful set."

The tall and bearish Bumstead was an unpretentious, down-to-earth survivor of the old Hollywood studio system.

"I love doing films," he said in a 2002 interview with the Dallas Morning News in which he made note of his career longevity and said, "I've never been laid off, I've never been fired and I've never looked for a job."

In the same interview, Bumstead added: "I wouldn't be working now at my age if it weren't for Clint Eastwood."

Their professional relationship began on the 1972 western "Joe Kidd," directed by John Sturges and starring Eastwood. That was followed by the Eastwood-directed 1973 western "High Plains Drifter."

While working on "Million Dollar Baby," Eastwood's Oscar-winning 2004 drama about a female boxer starring Eastwood and Hilary Swank, Bumstead learned that he had prostate cancer.

"Clint furnished me with a car and driver and a wheelchair," he told Daily Variety last year. "I went through radiation and chemotherapy, but I was still able to work for him."

"What really makes him invaluable is that he has a great reservoir of memory and technique of working with everybody from Hitchcock to [Billy] Wilder," Eastwood told Variety. "Of that era, he's the last man standing."

Lloyd Henry Bumstead was born in Ontario on March 17, 1915.

He received a scholarship to USC, where he briefly played football and studied architecture.

:yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on May 27, 2006, 10:01:11 PM
Such a talented man.  And such an extraordinary legacy he leaves behind.  So glad to hear that he completed the back to back Eastwood films as his finale.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on May 28, 2006, 07:16:26 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060528/ap_en_mo/obit_gleason

'Breakfast Club' principal Gleason dies
1 hour, 23 minutes ago

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BURBANK, Calif. - Paul Gleason, who played the go-to bad guy in "Trading Places" and the angry high school principal in "The Breakfast Club," has died. He was 67.

Gleason died at a local hospital Saturday of mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer linked to asbestos, said his wife, Susan Gleason.

"Whenever you were with Paul, there was never a dull moment," his wife said. "He was awesome."

A native of Miami, Gleason was an avid athlete. Before becoming an actor, he played Triple-A minor league baseball for a handful of clubs in the late 1950s.

Gleason honed his acting skills with his mentor Lee Strasberg, whom he studied with at the Actors Studio beginning in the mid-1960s, family members said.

Through his career, Gleason appeared in over 60 movies that included "Die Hard," "Johnny Be Good," and "National Lampoon's Van Wilder." Most recently, Gleason made a handful of television appearances in hit shows such as "Friends" and "Seinfeld."

Gleason's passions went beyond acting. He had recently published a book of poetry.

"He was an athlete, an actor and a poet," said his daughter, Shannon Gleason-Grossman. "He gave me and my sister a love that is beyond description that will be with us and keep us strong for the rest of our lives."

Actor Jimmy Hawkins, a friend of Gleason's since the 1960s, said he remembered Gleason for a sharp sense of humor.

"He just always had great stories to tell," Hawkins said.

Gleason was survived by his wife, two daughters and a granddaughter. Funeral plans were pending.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 06, 2006, 01:44:23 PM
Singer-songwriter Billy Preston dead at 59

Billy Preston, the exuberant keyboardist who landed dream gigs with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and enjoyed his own series of hit singles, including "Outta Space" and "Nothing From Nothing," died Tuesday at 59.

Preston's longtime manager, Joyce Moore, said Preston had been in a coma since November in a care facility and was taken to a hospital in Scottsdale Saturday after his condition deteriorated.

"He had a very, very beautiful last few hours and a really beautiful passing," Moore said by telephone from Germany. "He went home good."

Preston had battled chronic kidney failure, and he received a kidney transplant in 2002. But the kidney failed and he has been on dialysis ever since, Moore said earlier this year.

Known for his big smile and towering Afro, Preston was a teen prodigy on the piano and organ, and lent his gospel-tinged touch to classics such as the Beatles' "Get Back" and the Stones' "Can't You Hear Me Knocking?"

He broke out as a solo artist in the 1970s, winning a best instrumental Grammy in 1973 for "Outta Space," and scoring other hits with "Will It Go 'Round In Circles," "Nothing From Nothing" and "With You I'm Born Again," a duet with Syreeta Wright.

He also wrote Joe Cocker's weeper, "You Are So Beautiful," and co-wrote with Quincy Jones the score for 1970 movie "They Call Me Mr. Tibbs." Other achievements included being a musical guest on the 1975 debut of "Saturday Night Live," and having a song named after him by Miles Davis. Among his film credits: "Blues Brothers 2000" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Preston's partnership with the Beatles began in early 1969 when friend George Harrison recruited him to play on "Let It Be," a back-to-basics film and record project that nearly broke down because of feuding among band members. Harrison himself quit at one point, walking out on camera after arguing with Paul McCartney.

Preston not only inspired the Beatles to get along — Harrison likened his effect to a feuding family staying on its best behavior in front of a guest — but contributed a light, bluesy solo to "Get Back," performing the song with the band on its legendary "roof top" concert, the last time the Beatles played live. He was one of many sometimes labeled "The Fifth Beatle."

Preston remained close to Harrison and performed at Harrison's all-star charity event, "The Concert for Bangladesh" and at the "Concert for George," a tribute to Harrison, who died of cancer in 2001. He played on solo records by Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon.

Preston also toured and recorded extensively with the Rolling Stones, playing on such classic albums as "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile on Main Street." In the mid-'70s, he parted from the Stones, reportedly unhappy over not getting proper credit for "Melody" and other songs. He reunited with the band in 1997 on its "Bridges to Babylon" record.

His sessions credits included Aretha Franklin's "Young, Gifted and Black," Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" and Sly and Family Stone's "There's a Riot Goin' On," three of the most acclaimed albums of the past 35 years.

The Houston native earned his performance chops at age 10 playing the keyboard for gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and at 12 portraying a young W. C. Handy in the 1958 biopic "St. Louis Blues." He toured with mentors and fellow piano greats Ray Charles and Little Richard in the early 1960s, first encountering the Beatles while on the road in Germany.

Preston had numerous personal troubles in recent years. In 1992, he was given a suspended jail sentence, but ordered incarcerated for nine months at a drug rehabilitation center for his no-contest pleas to cocaine and assault charges. Five years later, he was sentenced to three years in prison for violating probation. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to insurance fraud and agreed to testify against other defendants in an alleged scam that netted about $1 million.

:yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: sheshothim on June 07, 2006, 05:25:57 PM
I don't like coming here. I feel like I'm at work all over again (I write obits for the local paper!)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on June 07, 2006, 05:47:25 PM
I don't like coming here either. I feel like I'm at work all over again (I'm an assassian!)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 07, 2006, 06:09:14 PM
That would have been funny if you had spelled "assassin" correctly.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 07, 2006, 06:21:15 PM
Here's the difference:

Assassin
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi35.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fd179%2Fpolkablues%2FTom_Cruise_i_Collate_23197c.jpg&hash=ec0540384234b61ccada9cd4bdbbe8bd2257ff5f)


Assassian
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi35.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fd179%2Fpolkablues%2Fcyf.jpg&hash=a6f0ef834bc74e6ab83f7e4f14a90b71f8af7ac2)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 07, 2006, 06:27:37 PM
666 strikes again...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060607/en_nm/photographer_newman_dc

Photographer Arnold Newman dies at age 88
By Arthur Spiegelman Wed Jun 7, 1:14 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Photographer Arnold Newman, whose portraits of artists like Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso aimed to capture their souls, not just their faces, died on Tuesday at age 88 at a New York hospital, friends said.

Newman, whose work appeared frequently in Life magazine, was famed for pioneering a style called "environmental portraiture" in which an artist and his or her craft were aligned in a pose that could stay with a viewer forever. Often a painter would be set against his or her works until they seemed a part of it.

One of the most famous examples of the style was his portrait of composer Stravinsky, sitting off to the side of a grand piano, his head tiny and in the corner of the picture dominated by the piano's huge, open kidney-shaped sounding board.

His portrait of Picasso showed a pensive artist whose own face might pass for a Picasso painting. His photograph of actress Marilyn Monroe with disheveled hair and seemingly lost in sad thoughts hinted at the dark tragedy that was yet to come.

Jonathan Klein, the chief executive of photo agency Getty Images and a friend of Newman's, called him "a true pioneer who advanced the art of portraiture throughout his career."

"He captured the defining images of many of the most notable figures of the 20th century and greatly influenced the generation of photographers who carry on this tradition today," Klein said.

In a career lasting 65 years, Newman photographed hundreds of famed figures in politics, business, arts and letters.

In an interview with Apogee Photo Magazine, Newman recalled that sometimes he was at a loss on how to take a picture as when he photographed Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, the teenage Dutch girl who came to symbolize the victims of the Holocaust.

"How could I ask this man to pose? I couldn't. Instead I just waited and Otto went into a deeply pensive mood. It was then I took the photograph," Newman said. He recalled that the two men embraced and cried when the photo shoot ended, according to interviewer Ysabel de la Rosa.

Newman was born on March 3, 1918, in New York City and raised in New Jersey and Florida. He studied art at the University of Miami and began photography in 1938 in chain portrait studios.

In 1941, he was discovered by Beaumont Newhall of the Museum of Modern Art and famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz and given an exhibit.

His work has been the subject of several books and exhibitions.

Reuters/VNU
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 12, 2006, 12:21:26 PM
'Space Odyssey' composer Ligeti dies

Composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who survived the Holocaust and fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution, then won acclaim for his opera "Le Grand Macabre" and his work on the soundtrack for "2001: A Space Odyssey," died Monday. He was 83.

Ligeti, celebrated as one of the world's leading 20th century musical pioneers, died in Vienna after a long illness, said Christiane Krauscheid, a spokeswoman for his publisher, Germany-based Schott Music. Details were unavailable, but Austrian media said he spent the last three years in a wheelchair.

Ligeti (pronounced lig'-ih-tee) was born in 1923 to Hungarian parents in the predominantly ethnic Hungarian part of Romania's Transylvania region. His father and brother later were murdered by the Nazis. He took Austrian citizenship in 1967 after fleeing his ex-communist homeland.

He began studying music under Ferenc Farkas at the conservatory in Cluj, Romania, in 1941, and continued his studies in Budapest. But in 1943, he was arrested as a Jew and sentenced to forced labor for the rest of World War II.

"My life in the Nazi era and under communist rule was full of risks, and I believe I still reflect this feeling," he once told the Austria Press Agency in an interview.

After the war, Ligeti resumed his studies with Farkas and Sandor Veress at Budapest's Franz Liszt Academy. After graduation in 1949, he did research on Romanian folk music and then returned to the academy as an instructor in harmony, counterpoint and formal analysis.

Ligeti attracted wide atttention for "Macabre," which he wrote in 1978.

Ligeti's early work was heavily censored by Hungary's repressive regime, but his arrival in Vienna in 1956 opened up new possibilities. In the Austrian capital, he met key players in Western Europe's avant-garde music movement such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gottfried Michael Koenig and Herbert Eimert, who invited him to join an electronic music studio at West Germany's state radio in Cologne in 1957.

He won early critical acclaim for his 1958 electronic composition "Artikulation" and the orchestral "Apparitions." He gained notoriety for a technique he called "micropolyphony," which wove together musical color and texture in ways that transcended the traditional borders of melody, harmony and rhythm.

Ligeti spoke at least six languages, including his native Hungarian, German, French, and English, said Stephen Ferguson, who worked as his assistant and editor at Schott Music from 1992-96.

"He was one of the few avant-garde composers who found his way into the modern program," Ferguson said. "He was fascinated by patterns, but at the same time created wonderful atmospheres, such as in the music used in '2001: A Space Odyssey,' or in 'Clocks and Clouds.'

"He reintroduced techniques of polyphony out of the tradition of Bach and Palestrina with a playful and innovative sense of sound. He developed a new sound — cluster sound — which fascinated director Stanley Kubrick and propelled Ligeti to the top of the great composers of the second half of the 20th century."

Excerpts of his "Atmospheres," a requiem and 1966's "Lux Aeterna" were used on the bestselling soundtrack for Kubrick's "Space Odyssey." Although the music was not the film's well-known fanfare, which was composed by Richard Strauss, it won Ligeti a global audience.

Kubrick returned to Ligeti in 1999, using the composer's Musica Ricercata II (Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale), as the theme for what turned out to be his final film, "Eyes Wide Shut."

Ligeti, who for a time also lived in Germany and San Francisco and was a visiting professor at the Stockholm Academy of Music for many years, was known for striking a playful note with his music, epitomized by a piece he wrote for 100 metronomes.

Sir Simon Rattle was a fan of Ligeti and led many performances of his works during his tenure at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra before taking over the Berlin Philharmonic.

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel hailed Ligeti on Monday as "the greatest Austrian in the 20th century music world," and the city of Vienna said it would offer a special grave site in honor of its adopted composer.

Ligeti is survived by his wife, Vera, and a son, Lukas, a percussionist who lives in New York. Funeral arrangements were incomplete.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on June 12, 2006, 01:05:11 PM
Quote from: Pubrick on September 04, 2005, 01:16:51 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi5.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy154%2Fpubrick%2Fligeti.jpg&hash=516fc26cf683a08f3f7bee0b68338f2cd4457bc3)
it was a knife in pubrick's heart.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 12, 2006, 01:14:01 PM
Sad day indeed.  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 20, 2006, 12:01:15 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060620/ap_en_ot/obit_sherman

Hollywood director Sherman dies at 99
By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 8 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - Vincent Sherman, who directed — and romanced — Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth and Joan Crawford during his heyday as a leading Hollywood filmmaker in the 1940s and '50s, has died. He would have been 100 on July 16.

His death Sunday night of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital was announced Monday by his son, Eric Sherman.

"Vince was in good condition until two months ago," said actress Francine York, his companion for the last nine years. "In January he had appeared on a documentary about Humphrey Bogart, and he told a lot of good stories. He was the last of the gentlemen, a real Southern gentleman."

Sherman, whose film career was seriously damaged by Hollywood's communist "red scare," later became a successful director of such television series as "The Waltons," "Doctors Hospital," "Baretta," "Trapper John, M.D." and "77 Sunset Strip."

He had begun as an actor, appearing on Broadway and in a handful of movies, among them 1933's "Counselor at Law," in which he had a small but memorable role as a young anarchist opposite John Barrymore. He also wrote several screenplays, including "Crime School," which starred Bogart and the Dead End Kids.

Because of his ability to evoke powerful performances from strong-willed female stars — he also directed Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan and Patricia Neal — Sherman became known as a woman's director, a title he hated. He was quick to point out that he also directed Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Don Juan," Paul Newman in "The Young Philadelphians," Bogart in "All Through the Night," Richard Burton in "The Ice Palace" and Ronald Reagan in "The Hasty Heart."

Sherman also gained a reputation for romancing many of his famous actresses, and he wrote about them in his 1996 autobiography, "Studio Affairs."

Though both were married at the time, he and Davis had an affair that began during the filming of 1943's "Old Acquaintance" and continued through "Mr. Skeffington," which was released the following year. His dalliance with Crawford lasted through three movies, and another with Hayworth happened during "Affair in Trinidad," after she had divorced Aly Khan.

Sherman's wife, Hedda, tolerated his extramarital adventures, and their marriage lasted 53 years. She died in 1984.

During the early 1950s, his thriving career foundered as he was dropped without explanation by Warner Bros. A federal agent had told the studio Sherman was suspected of communist ties.

"I wasn't a communist," he remarked in 1997, "but I knew people like John Garfield who'd been blacklisted, and I stood beside them."

Other studios shunned him, and he was caught in "a Kafkaesque situation."

After five years, he became employable again but never recovered his knack for skillful melodrama. His last major feature was a lame western comedy, "The Second Time Around," with Debbie Reynolds and Andy Griffith in 1961.

"My strong points were my relationships with actors; I got good performances from people," he said in a 1997 interview. "My weak points were in accepting assignments when I should have said no."

Turning to television, he worked well into the 1980s.

Born Abram Orovitz to one of the only two Jewish families in Vienna, Ga., in 1906, Sherman learned at an early age to defend himself against the taunts of his schoolmates.

After graduating from Oglethorpe University, he sought an acting career in New York, joining the left-wing Group Theater. Since ethnic names for actors were unfashionable, he changed his to Vincent Sherman. Squarely built with black hair and a ruggedly handsome face, he quickly began appearing on Broadway.

In the late 1940s Warner Bros. hired Sherman under an acting-writing-directing contract, and he was assigned to the studio's B-picture unit, adapting old movies into remakes.

He broke out as a director in 1942 with a gripping melodrama "The Hard Way."

Although he would go on to direct many important projects, he never rose to the level that would afford him consideration for an Academy Award.

"Of the 30 pictures that I made, I really liked only 10 or 12 of them," he said in 1997. "The rest were what we called bread-and-butter pictures."

Besides his son, Sherman is survived by a daughter, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 20, 2006, 12:16:39 AM
Quote from: Ravi on June 20, 2006, 12:01:15 AM
His dalliance with Crawford lasted through three movies, and another with Hayworth happened during "Affair in Trinidad," after she had divorced Aly Khan.

I've never wanted to be a dead 99-year-old dude more than at this moment.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 23, 2006, 11:05:39 PM
Aaron Spelling dies at age 83; built TV dynasty

Aaron Spelling, a onetime movie bit player who created a massive number of hit series, from the vintage "Charlie's Angels" and "Dynasty" to "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place," died Friday, his publicist said. He was 83.

Spelling died at his mansion in Los Angeles after suffering a stroke on June 18, according to publicist Kevin Sasaki.

Spelling's other hit series included "Love Boat," "Fantasy Island," "Burke's Law," "The Mod Squad," "Starsky and Hutch," "T.J. Hooker," "Matt Houston," "Hart to Hart" and "Hotel." He kept his hand in 21st-century TV with series including "7th Heaven" and "Summerland."

He also produced more than 140 television movies. Among the most notable: "Death Sentence" (1974), Nick Nolte's first starring role; "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" (1976), John Travolta's first dramatic role; and "The Best Little Girl in the World" (1981), which starred Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on June 26, 2006, 11:20:23 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.timeinc.net%2Fpeople%2Fi%2F2006%2Fnews%2F060710a%2Fmoose.jpg&hash=82a9692aba82d5d15edb928c1818ae88a8810ba6)

Frasier's Best Friend 'Eddie' Dies

Moose, the feisty Jack Russell terrier who played Eddie for 10 years on TV's Frasier, has died, his trainer Mathilde Halberg tells PEOPLE.

"He was 16-and-a-half years old, and he just had an incredible charisma and was a such a free spirit," said Halberg. Moose, considered the Lassie of the '90s, died Thursday night of old age at Halberg's Los Angeles-area home.

Moose retired from showbiz when he was 10, and, although he also played a starring role in the 2000 Frankie Muniz-Kevin Bacon feature My Dog Skip (as the older Skip), he was best known for stealing scenes from Kelsey Grammer on the long-running Emmy-winning NBC sitcom.

"He was always trying to put Frasier in uncomfortable circumstances," said his trainer, who had rescued him in the early 1990s.

"I saved him from the pound. His owners called me as a last resort," Halberg recalled. "He was extremely mischievous, always escaping, chewing up things and running off. When he killed a neighbor's cat and chased some horses, that was it."

Not that anyone who owns a Jack Russell would find such behavior surprising. "But then," remembered his trainer, "he began his career, and he will never be forgotten."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 26, 2006, 11:30:07 PM
I always preferred the dog on "Mad About You", myself.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on July 05, 2006, 09:54:34 AM
Kenneth Lay, former chairman of Enron, has died at the age of 64

Lay, who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy for his part in the Houston-based company's collapse into bankruptcy in 2001, died of a heart attack at his vacation home in Colorado, a Houston television station reported on Wednesday.

Lay and Enron's former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling were found guilty earlier this year in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history.

Both men were free on bail, each having managed to secure a $5-million US bond.

Lay was convicted on all six counts against him, including conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, and faced up to 45 years in prison. He was due to appear for sentencing on Sept. 11.

Skilling was found guilty of 19 out of 28 counts of conspiracy, fraud, insider trading and making false statements. Combined, these carry a maximum sentence of 185 years. He was not convicted on the remaining nine criminal counts.

Both were accused of repeatedly lying to investors and employees about Enron's finances before its spectacular December 2001 collapse into bankruptcy.

Lay and Skilling denied any wrongdoing and attributed the former energy giant's failure to bad publicity and lost market confidence.

In a separate trial, Lay was also convicted of illegally using money from $75 million US in personal loans to buy stock. He faced a maximum of 120 years in prison for that conviction, in addition to the 45 years for the corporate trial.

"We fought a good fight and some things work, some things don't," Skilling said in a brief statement outside court during which he thanked his family and his lawyer.

"We're going to have to go back and think this thing through. Obviously I'm disappointed but that's the way the system works."

Lay made a separate statement, saying he was "shocked" by the jury's decision and denied any wrongdoing.

"I firmly believe I'm innocent of the charges against me as I have said from day one, and I still firmly believe that to this day," Lay told reporters outside the court.
----------------------------------------------------------

The man is dead, but it just feels like he's beaten the system.  I would love to die at my Colorado vacation home.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on July 05, 2006, 10:05:10 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on July 05, 2006, 09:54:34 AM
I would love to die at my Colorado vacation home.

that can be arranged.  :yabbse-cheesy:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on July 05, 2006, 10:16:32 AM
Quote from: Pubrick on July 05, 2006, 10:05:10 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on July 05, 2006, 09:54:34 AM
I would love to die at my Colorado vacation home.

that can be arranged.  :yabbse-cheesy:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg406.imageshack.us%2Fimg406%2F9431%2Fhooray3jl.jpg&hash=1b358818f97c5df756f5329c86d07e721f800800)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on July 05, 2006, 10:58:08 AM
man, that was so a suicide.  but it's alright.  as a christian, I can find comfort in knowing that he's in hell.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on July 05, 2006, 06:34:37 PM
I can see one of two possibilities here:

1) Death faked, living under assumed identity in South American resort town.

2) Planned to name names, was exterminated by George Sr.'s old CIA buddies.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 10, 2006, 05:26:13 PM
June Allyson, 'Perfect Wife,' Dies at 88

June Allyson, the sunny, cracked-voiced "perfect wife" of James Stewart, Van Johnson and other movie heroes, has died, her daughter Pamela Allyson Powell said Monday. She was 88.

Allyson died Saturday at her home in Ojai, with her husband of nearly 30 years, David Ashrow, at her side, Powell said. She died of pulmonary respiratory failure and acute bronchitis after a long illness.

During World War II, American GIs pinned up photos of Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable, but June Allyson was the girl they wanted to come home to. Petite, blond and alive with fresh-faced optimism, she seemed the ideal sweetheart and wife, supporting and unthreatening.

"I had the most wonderful last meeting with June at her house in Ojai. We had gotten lost in the car. She told me: `I could wait for you forever.' We were such dear friends. I will miss her," lifelong friend Esther Williams said.

With typical wonderment, Allyson expressed surprise in a 1986 interview that she had ever become a movie star:

"I have big teeth. I lisp. My eyes disappear when I smile. My voice is funny. I don't sing like Judy Garland. I don't dance like Cyd Charisse. But women identify with me. And while men desire Cyd Charisse, they'd take me home to meet mom."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on July 11, 2006, 09:54:29 AM
Syd Barrett dies aged 60

Syd Barrett, one of the original members of legendary rock group Pink Floyd, has died at the age of 60, the band's spokeswoman has confirmed.

He was born Roger Barrett in Cambridge and met future bandmates Roger Waters and David Gilmour at school there.

The guitarist was invited to join Pink Floyd by Waters in 1965 but left three years later after only one album with his mental state affected by drugs.

"He died very peacefully a couple of days ago," said the spokeswoman.

"There will be a private family funeral."

He had suffered from diabetes in recent years and had not been recording music.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 11, 2006, 02:03:57 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5169798.stm

Commodores musician dies aged 58

One of the founding members of soul group The Commodores, Milan B Williams, has died of cancer aged 58.

Williams wrote the Motown band's first single, an instrumental called Machine Gun, and played keyboards on songs such as Easy and Three Times A Lady.

"He was once, twice, three times a brother and we love him," said band member Walter Orange.

The musician died on Sunday in Texas. He is survived by a wife, Melanie, and two sons from previous marriages.

Williams met the other members of the Commodores in 1967 while they were freshmen at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, USA.

The band was fronted by Lionel Richie and signed to Motown records after touring with the Jackson Five in 1972.

After a string of chart hits, Richie left the group in 1983.

They struggled to recover from the loss, and Williams also quit in 1989.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 13, 2006, 03:04:05 PM
Comedian Red Buttons Dies in L.A. at 87

Red Buttons, the carrot-topped burlesque comedian who became a top star in early television then went dramatic to win the 1957 Oscar as supporting actor in "Sayonara," died Thursday. He was 87.

Buttons died of vascular disease at his home in the Century City area of Los Angeles, publicist Warren Cowan said. He had been ill for some time, and was with family members when he died, Cowan said.

With his eager manner and rapid-fire wit, Buttons excelled in every phase of show business, from the Borscht Belt of the 1930s to celebrity roasts in the 1990s.

His greatest achievement came with his "Sayonara" role as Sgt. Joe Kelly, the soldier in the occupation forces in Japan whose romance with a Japanese woman (Myoshi Umeki, who also won an Academy Award) ends in tragedy.

Josh Logan, who directed the James Michener story that starred Marlon Brando, was at first hesitant to cast a well-known comedian in such a somber role.

"The tests were so extensive that they could just put scenery around them and release the footage as a feature film," Buttons remarked.

Buttons' Academy Award led to other films, both dramas and comedies. They included "Imitation General," "The Big Circus," "Hatari!" "The Longest Day" "Up From the Beach," "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" "The Poseidon Adventure" "Gable and Lombard" and "Pete's Dragon."

A performer since his teens, Buttons was noticed by burlesque theater owners and he became the youngest comic on the circuit. He had graduated to small roles on Broadway before being drafted in 1943.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 17, 2006, 05:43:50 PM
Mike Hammer creator Mickey Spillane dies

Mickey Spillane, the macho mystery writer who wowed millions of readers with the shoot-'em-up sex and violence of gumshoe Mike Hammer, died Monday. He was 88.

Spillane's death was confirmed by Brad Stephens of Goldfinch Funeral Home in his hometown of Murrells Inlet. Details about his death were not immediately available.

After starting out in comic books Spillane wrote his first Mike Hammer novel, "I, the Jury," in 1946. Twelve more followed, with sales topping 100 million. Notable titles included "The Killing Man," "The Girl Hunters" and "One Lonely Night."

Many of these books were made into movies, including the classic film noir "Kiss Me, Deadly" and "The Girl Hunters," in which Spillane himself starred. Hammer stories were also featured on television in the series "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer" and in made-for-TV movies. In the 1980s, Spillane appeared in a string of Miller Lite beer commercials.

Besides the Hammer novels, Spillane wrote a dozen other books, including some award-winning volumes for young people.

Nonetheless, by the end of the 20th century, many of his novels were out of print or hard to find. In 2001, the New American Library began reissuing them.

As a stylist Spillane was no innovator; the prose was hard-boiled boilerplate. In a typical scene, from "The Big Kill," Hammer slugs out a little punk with "pig eyes."

"I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone," Spillane wrote. "I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel ... and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling."

Mainstream critics had little use for Spillane, but he got his due in the mystery world, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers of America.

Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on an old manual Smith Corona, always claimed he didn't care about reviews. He considered himself a "writer" as opposed to an "author," defining a writer as someone whose books sell.

"This is an income-generating job," he told The Associated Press during a 2001 interview. "Fame was never anything to me unless it afforded me a good livelihood."

Spillane was born Frank Morrison Spillane on March 9, 1918, in the New York borough of Brooklyn. He grew up in Elizabeth, N.J., and attended Fort Hayes State College in Kansas where he was a standout swimmer before beginning his career writing for magazines.

He had always liked police stories — an uncle was a cop — and in his pre-Hammer days he created a comic book detective named Mike Danger. At the time, the early 1940s, he was scribing for Batman, SubMariner and other comics.

"I wanted to get away from the flying heroes and I had the prototype cop," Spillane said.

Danger never saw print. World War II broke out and Spillane enlisted. When he came home, he needed $1,000 to buy some land and thought novels the best way to go. Within three weeks, he had completed "I, the Jury" and sent it to Dutton. The editors there doubted the writing, but not the market for it; a literary franchise began. His books helped reveal the power of the paperback market and became so popular they were parodied in movies, including the Fred Astaire musical "The Band Wagon."

He was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil. He was also a rare political conservative in the book world. Communists were villains in his work and liberals took some hits as well. He was not above using crude racial and sexual stereotypes.

Viewed by some as a precursor to Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Spillane's Hammer was a loner contemptuous of the "tedious process" of the jury system, choosing instead to enforce the law on his own murderous terms. His novels were attacked for their violence and vigilantism_ one critic said "I, the Jury" belonged in "Gestapo training school" — but some defended them as the most shameless kind of pleasure.

"Spillane is like eating takeout fried chicken: so much fun to consume, but you can feel those lowlife grease-induced zits rising before you've finished the first drumstick," Sally Eckhoff wrote in the liberal weekly The Village Voice.

The Hammer novels had a couple of recurring characters: Pat, the honest, but slow-moving cop, and Velda, Mike's faithful secretary. Like so many women in Hammer's life, Velda was a looker, and burning for love.

"Velda was watching me with the tip of her tongue clenched between her teeth," Spillane wrote in "Vengeance is Mine!", an early Hammer novel.

"There wasn't any kitten-softness about her now. She was big and she was lovely, with the kind of curves that made you want to turn around and have another look. The lush fullness of her lips had tightened into the faintest kind of snarl and her eyes were the carnivorous eyes you could expect to see in the jungle watching you from behind a clump of bushes."

While the Hammer books were set in New York, Spillane was a longtime resident of Murrells Inlet, a coastal community near Myrtle Beach.

He moved to South Carolina in 1954 when the area, now jammed with motels and tourist attractions, was still predominantly tobacco and corn fields.

Spillane said he fell in love with the long stretches of deserted beaches when he first saw the area from an airplane.

The writer, who became a Jehovah's Witness in 1951 and helped build the group's Kingdom Hall in Murrells Inlet, spent his time boating and fishing when he wasn't writing. In the 1950s, he also worked as a circus performer, allowing himself to be shot out of a cannon and appearing in the circus film "Ring of Fear."

The home where he lived for 35 years was destroyed by the 135 mph winds of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Married three times, Spillane was the father of four children.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 21, 2006, 04:13:31 PM
Veteran actor Jack Warden dies, 85

Oscar-nominated character actor Jack Warden, best known for starring alongside Warren Beatty in "Shampoo" and "Heaven Can Wait," has died at 85, his longtime business manager said Friday. Warden, who appeared in dozens of films and won an Emmy award as the star of the 1980s TV series "Crazy Like a Fox," died on Wednesday in New York, business manager Sidney Pazoff said. Warden, who was born John Lebzelter in New Jersey and began acting after serving in World War Two, had a breakthrough role in "Twelve Angry Men" in 1957. Pazoff said the veteran character actor had retired several years ago and had been suffering from medical problems in recent years.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 24, 2006, 12:28:59 PM
He Would Have Been the Voice of Splinter...
Source: Variety

TMNT writer-director Kevin Munroe announced on Thursday at the San Diego Comic-Con that Asian-American actor Mako was going to voice Splinter in the CG animated film. Now, by a very sad coincidence it is being reported that Mako died a day later, on Friday.

Japanese-American actor Mako, who was Oscar-nominated for his supporting role in "The Sand Pebbles" and who co-founded the nation's first Asian-American theater company, died Friday of esophageal cancer at his home in Somis. He was 72.

In an acting career spanning more than four decades, Mako appeared in TV series including "MASH," "I Spy," "Quincy" and "Frasier," as well as films ranging from "Conan the Barbarian" to "Seven Years in Tibet," "Pearl Harbor" and last year's "Memoirs of a Geisha."

He also voiced characters in animated series including "Dexter's Laboratory," "Samurai Jack" and "Avatar: The Last Airbender."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 15, 2006, 08:55:52 PM
'City Slickers' actor Bruno Kirby dies

LOS ANGELES - Bruno Kirby, a veteran character actor who costarred in "When Harry Met Sally," "City Slickers" and many other films, has died at age 57, his wife said Tuesday.

Kirby died Monday in Los Angeles from complications related to leukemia, according to a statement from his wife, Lynn Sellers. He had recently been diagnosed with the disease.

"We are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support we have received from Bruno's fans and colleagues who have admired and respected his work over the past 30 years," his wife said. "Bruno's spirit will continue to live on not only in his rich body of film and television work but also through the lives of individuals he has touched throughout his life."

Kirby was perhaps best known for his roles opposite Billy Crystal in 1989's "When Harry Met Sally" and 1991's "City Slickers."

Other film credits included "Good Morning, Vietnam," "The Godfather: Part II" and "Donnie Brasco." More recently, he played Phil Rubenstein on the HBO series "Entourage."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on August 15, 2006, 09:18:27 PM
wow  he seemed really young.  thats terrible.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: children with angels on August 16, 2006, 06:10:31 AM
Man, that's really really sad - I loved that guy in When Harry Met Sally and City Slickers and Basketball Diaries. He's such a dependable periphary figure from my youth - kind of like if Steve Guttenburg died... That really sucks.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on August 30, 2006, 10:53:18 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060831/en_nm/glennford_dc

Film star Glenn Ford dead at 90
47 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor
Glenn Ford, a handsome and quiet character actor who made his mark in big films like "Gilda" and "The Big Heat," died on Wednesday in his Beverly Hills home, police said. He was 90.

Beverly Hills Police Department said in a statement that paramedics were called to Ford's home in the afternoon and found the actor dead.

The cause of his death was not immediately known.

Ford was an actor who never quite attained the superstar status he sought, but nevertheless won the hearts of millions of cinemagoers in a wide variety of roles.

Many critics thought he was underrated and one, David Shipmann, wrote, "He is a good -- if not the best -- example of that second-string group, the dependable and efficient actor."

Ford made his mark on Hollywood with low-key appearances in more than 200 movies, and became one of the most enduring stars of the silver screen.

Away from the cameras, Ford led an intensely private life, shunning nightspots in favor of a quiet home life.

Although most frequently appearing in Westerns, Ford played a variety of quietly intense heroes and villains and is best remembered for his non-Western roles.

His career began in 1939 and was highlighted by starring roles in "The Big Heat" in 1953, in which he played a cop out to avenge his wife's murder; "The Blackboard Jungle" in 1955, in which he played a teacher; and "The Teahouse of the August Moon" in 1956, in which he played a U.S. soldier in Japan.

After his first movie, "Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence," Ford made a number of low-budget dramas before joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942.

After returning from World War Two, he starred in his first big budget film, the romance "Gilda," with Rita Hayworth in 1946. The movie was a hit and Bette Davis confirmed his leading-man status by picking him to star with her in "A Stolen Life," released the same year.

Ford teamed with Hayworth again for "The Loves of Carmen" (1948) and "Affair in Trinidad" (1958) and played one of his best villains, a sadistic lawman, in "The Man From Colorado"

(1948).

POPULAR DESPITE CAREER DECLINE

Ford remained a top box-office draw through the 1950s but even when his career declined in the 1960s, his popularity with audiences remained as fixed as his reserved screen personality and wry smile.

The unsuccessful remake of "Cimarron" in 1960 started his career slide into B-movies and low-budget productions such as

"A Pocketful of Miracles" (1961), "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (1962), "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" (1963) and "The Money Trap" (1964).

Ford himself compared his enduring popularity to that of other strong-but-quiet stars of his generation, such as Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda.

"It's the way we say our lines," Ford said. "We don't memorize them, but take the sense and alter the lines to fit our own personalities."

Ford was born Gwyllyn Ford in Quebec, Canada, on May 1, 1916. At age 7, he moved with his family to Santa Monica, California, where he worked as a stable boy for cowboy humorist and actor Will Rogers. After high school, he drove buses and worked as a salesman while planning an acting career.

Ford was married four times -- most notably to actress Eleanor Powell, from 1943 to 1960.

He is survived by his son Peter, 61, also an actor.

(Additional reporting by Mary Milliken)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 31, 2006, 02:19:07 AM
Quote from: Ravi on August 30, 2006, 10:53:18 PM
The cause of his death was not immediately known.

Quote from: Ravi on August 30, 2006, 10:53:18 PM
He was 90.

No need to call Columbo in on this one.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 31, 2006, 03:47:11 AM
'Psycho' screenwriter Joseph Stefano dies

Joseph Stefano, who wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and was co-creator of television's science-fiction anthology series "The Outer Limits," has died. He was 84.

Stefano died Aug. 25 at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, funeral director Elaine Munoz of Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks said Wednesday. The cause of death wasn't disclosed.

Stefano graduated in 1940 from South Philadelphia High School for Boys and he went to New York as an aspiring entertainer. He played piano, sang, danced and wrote music and lyrics.

He toured with a modern dance troupe and worked temporary jobs as a typist. He met his future bride, Marilyn Epstein, in a bar in Manhattan in 1953.
 
"I was trying to make a choice on the jukebox and this great-looking man in black jacket, jeans and boots said, 'Play that one, I wrote it,' " she told the Philadelphia Inquirer. They soon married.

Stefano's big television break came in the 1950s when he was hired as a writer for the "Ted Mack Family Hour." He also wrote a number of scripts, including "The Black Orchid," which was made into a 1958 movie starring Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn.

Stefano then became a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox in 1960, and he moved to Hollywood. Hitchcock soon had him adapt a Robert Bloch pulp novel for the screen. The movie became "Psycho."

"Bloch's novel started with Marion Crane arriving at the motel and immediately being killed. My feeling was that, since I did not know anything about this girl, I wasn't going to care about her when she was killed. So we backed the story up a bit and learned something about her so that when she was killed, it would have more impact," Stefano once told the Los Angeles Times.

Stefano had her stealing $40,000 from her boss and stopping at the Bates Motel while on the run. Though she has a change of conscience about the money, Crane is knifed to death in a memorable shower sequence.

He wrote several other screenplays, including "The Naked Edge" with Gary Cooper, but Stefano and screenwriter Leslie Stevens turned to TV to produce and write "The Outer Limits," which ran from 1963 to 1965.

Stefano later wrote the 1969 thriller "Eye of the Cat" and co-wrote the comedy "Futz!" that same year with Rochelle Owens.

In the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote TV movies, including "Home for the Holidays" in 1972 and "Snowbeast " in 1977.

Besides his wife, who lives in Agoura Hills, Stefano is survived by his son Dominic. The funeral was private.

:yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on August 31, 2006, 08:10:58 AM
Quote from: Ravi on August 30, 2006, 10:53:18 PM
Film star Glenn Ford dead at 90

What's messed up is that I thought he had been dead for years until I looked it up on imdb about 2 months ago. 

This happens to me a lot where I think certain actors are dead and then they pop up in something and it freaks me out.  Like when Paul Mazursky was on Curb Your Enthusiasm, I swear I had heard he died in the late 90s sometime.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on September 03, 2006, 11:41:48 PM
This is realy sad and horrible

Steve Irwin killed by stingray

THE Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, is dead. It is believed he was killed by a stingray barb that went through his chest. He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary when it happened. Ambulance officers confirmed they attended a reef fatality today at Batt Reef off Port Douglas. It is understood Irwin was killed around noon, Eastern Australian time. 

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 04, 2006, 12:18:26 AM
Quote from: edison on September 03, 2006, 11:41:48 PM
Steve Irwin killed by stingray

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060904/ap_en_tv/obit_irwin

Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin killed

BRISBANE, Australia - Steve Irwin, the Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition, Australian media said. He was 44.

Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when the accident occurred, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said Irwin was diving near Low Isles near the resort town of Port Douglas, about 1,260 miles north of Brisbane.

A helicopter carrying paramedics flew to the island, but he died from a stingray barb to the heart, ABC reported on its Web site.

Telephone calls to Australia Zoo, Irwin's zoo in southern Queensland, were not immediately answered.

Irwin is famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchcry "Crikey!" in his television program "Crocodile Hunter," which was first broadcast in Australia in 1992 and has aired around the world on the Discovery channel.

He rode his image into a feature film, and developed the Australia Zoo as a tourist attraction.

Irwin had received some negative publicity in recent years. In January 2004, he stunned onlookers at his Australia Zoo reptile park by carrying his 1-year-old son into a crocodile pen during a wildlife show. He tucked the infant under one arm while tossing the 13-foot reptile a piece of meat with the other.

Authorities declined to charge Irwin for violating safety regulations.

Later that year, he was accused of getting too close to penguins, a seal and humpback whales in Antarctica while making a documentary. Irwin denied any wrongdoing, and an Australian Environment Department investigation recommended no action be taken against him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 04, 2006, 07:57:14 AM
Quote from: Ravi on September 04, 2006, 12:18:26 AM

Steve Irwin killed by stingray

i was sad to hear that, he was a cool guy.

it wasn't exactly a Grizzly Man situation but i thought about it anyway, i think the main difference is Steve Irwin was rich and not crazy.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on September 04, 2006, 11:09:08 AM
that is really sad and horrible.   :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sigur Rós on September 04, 2006, 01:54:50 PM
yeah really sad. He was a cool guy ...actually saw him perform one of his crocodile-shows in Brisbane....still can't help but think that this had to happen sometime. I heard that his death was captured on film...seems like the right way to burn out for good old Stevee
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Redlum on September 04, 2006, 03:35:37 PM
Upon reading the headline my initial reaction was just disbeleif and sadness but then I thought God, don't let him have died some mundane, ordinary death crossing the road. He was one of the few people where there had to be more than just statistics at play in determining his fate. Thinking of Steve Irwin, the man with the most advanced immune system in the world, will always bring a smile to my face.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 05, 2006, 12:47:42 AM
Quote from: Sigur Rós on September 04, 2006, 01:54:50 PMI heard that his death was captured on film...

Irwin pulled barb from chest before death

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Fatally injured by a stingray, Australian "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin pulled its serrated barb out of his chest before losing consciousness and dying, the world-famous naturalist's manager said on Tuesday.

Video footage of the attack shows Irwin swimming above the stingray on the Great Barrier Reef on Monday when it lashed out and speared him in the heart with its barbed tail, manager John Stainton told reporters.

"It shows that Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him here (in the chest)," Stainton said after watching the footage.

"He pulled it out and the next minute he's gone. The cameraman had to shut down," he said.

"It's a very hard thing to watch because you're actually witnessing somebody die ... it's terrible."

Irwin, 44, the quirky naturalist who won worldwide acclaim as TV's khaki-clad "Crocodile Hunter," was filming a new documentary off Australia's northeastern coast when he was attacked.

Marine experts say stingrays can deliver horrific, agonizing injuries from the toxin-laden barbs, which can measure up to 20 cm (8 in) in length and cause injuries like a knife or bayonet.

"The strongly serrated barb is capable of tearing and rendering flesh," said Dr Bryan Fry, deputy director of the Australian Venom Research Unit.

"It's not the going in that causes the damage, it's the coming out where those deep serrations kind of pull on the flesh, and you end up with a very jagged tear which is quite a pronounced injury," Fry said.

News of Irwin's death shocked Australians and Irwin's millions of fans around the world. Prime Minister John Howard interrupted parliament on Tuesday to pay tribute.

"He was a genuine, one-off, remarkable Australian individual and I am distressed at his death," Howard told parliament.

"We mourn his loss, we're devastated by the tragic circumstances in which he has been taken from us and we send our love and prayers to his grieving family," he said.

"CRIKEY"

Environmental documentary maker Ben Cropp said video of the attack showed Irwin swimming alongside a bull stingray, probably weighing around 100 kg (220 lb). His cameraman was filming in front of the ray, which became frightened and lashed out.

Stingrays are usually placid and only attack in self-defense.

Stainton said the cameraman only became aware of the attack when he noticed Irwin bleeding.

Millions had seen Irwin flirt with death many times as he stalked and played with crocodiles, sharks, snakes and spiders. Stainton said he was struggling to come to terms with the fact that a stingray had killed his friend.

"There's been a million occasions where both of us held our breath and thought we were lucky to get out of that one," Stainton said. "But he just seemed to have a charmed life."

Police said they had examined the footage and would prepare a report for the coroner appointed to determine the cause of death.

Film star Russell Crowe called Irwin the "ultimate wildlife warrior," adding: "He was the Australian we all aspire to be. He touched my heart. I believed in him. I'll miss him."

Known for his catchphrase "Crikey" during close encounters with animals, Irwin made almost 50 documentaries which appeared on the cable TV channel Animal Planet.

U.S.-based television company Discovery Communications, which produces Animal Planet, said it would set up a conservation fund in honor of Irwin, dubbed in one tribute a "modern-day Noah," and planned a marathon showing of his programs.

Discovery said the footage of Irwin's fatal dive might never be broadcast.

Australian newspapers paid tribute to Irwin on Tuesday, while fans including American tourists laid wreaths outside his Australia Zoo in tropical Queensland state.

"We thought he was Superman, that he was indestructible," said an editorial in Sydney's The Daily Telegraph.

"We were wrong"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on September 05, 2006, 01:32:05 AM
This has bummed me out a little more than I would have expected, since I never really watched his shows.

I caught some stuff they were re-running on Animal Planet tonight, and it further bummed me out.  His kids, his wife... He was a passionate man with good ideas, and I believe he knew everything about what he was doing.  Most of what he did, including swimming over the stingray, was probably safer than something like driving while talking on a cell phone.  He could have died doing what he did, or just driving down the road, so even though there will be inevitable "See?  It was bound to happen!" talk, I don't see it that way.  But still, ultimately, it's his wife and kids that gets me the most.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 05, 2006, 09:13:22 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on September 05, 2006, 01:32:05 AM
This has bummed me out a little more than I would have expected
that seems to be the general reaction among everyone i've talked to.

i've avoided TV since yesterday cos of the countless tributes, i don't think any of them are reflecting the guy as everyone really thought of him here.. that is as some dude who was way more famous overseas than in his home country, and therefore was significant to us for reasons of national identity and practical run-offs like tourism. we all just thought "well that's what the world thinks of us, fine. it could be worse, we could be German."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on September 05, 2006, 09:55:58 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on September 05, 2006, 01:32:05 AM
This has bummed me out a little more than I would have expected, since I never really watched his shows.

I caught some stuff they were re-running on Animal Planet tonight, and it further bummed me out.  His kids, his wife... He was a passionate man with good ideas, and I believe he knew everything about what he was doing.  Most of what he did, including swimming over the stingray, was probably safer than something like driving while talking on a cell phone.  He could have died doing what he did, or just driving down the road, so even though there will be inevitable "See?  It was bound to happen!" talk, I don't see it that way.  But still, ultimately, it's his wife and kids that gets me the most.

My thoughts exactly.

I saw too those shows on AP yesterday and I'll only add that besides what you said about his wife and kids it also got me that the guy was full of life and happiness, and that I didn't knew anything about him at all, maybe because I always associate the word hunter with killing, which he clearly never did, by the contrary he was a full time environmentalist. I miss him already.  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on September 05, 2006, 10:51:14 AM
I'm with matt35mm on this one.  The more I think about it, the more it really makes me sad.  It's almost like when Jim Henson died.  It's really awful to see people who do so much good die not of natural causes after living 100 years.  I really liked the Croc Hunter and not in an ironic kind of a way.  I found him thoroughly entertaining though I haven't watched his show in a couple of years.  And to know now how much of an environmentalist he was makes it suck that much more that he's gone.

One of my friends put it perfectly on his blog.

Steve "the croc hunter" Irwin has died but the creators of JACKASS are still alive. WTF?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 05, 2006, 11:13:12 AM
Quote from: hackspaced on September 05, 2006, 10:51:14 AM
One of my friends put it perfectly on his blog.

Steve "the croc hunter" Irwin has died but the creators of JACKASS are still alive. WTF?

that's just horse puckey. oh wait i see the irony now, i thought he was dissing jackass.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on September 06, 2006, 08:26:10 PM
Irwin video may surface (http://www.tv.com/story/story.html&story_id=6192?tag=gumballs;title;0)

Experts says it's just a matter of time before grisly video of Steve Irwin's death hits the Web.

Steve Irwin was shooting footage for his TV series Crocodile Hunter early Monday when he was killed by a giant bull stingray. Now, those familiar with the digital media world say it's only a matter of time before the grisly footage surfaces.

"Once there's something on film, it's impossible to keep it contained," Paul Levinson, chairman of Fordham University's Department of Communication and Media Studies, told the Associated Press.

Appearing on Larry King Live, Irwin's manager John Stainton told King he hopes the video is destroyed.

"I would never want that tape shown," Stainton said to King. "It should be destroyed."

Irwin may have felt differently.

British gossip Web site Contact Music UK says Irwin once said, "My number one rule is to keep that camera rolling... Even if a big old alligator is chewing me up I want to go down and go, 'Crikey!' just before I die. That would be the ultimate for me."

In a 2002 Associated Press interview, Irwin said, "If I'm going to die, at least I want it filmed... We could have gone to MGM and gone, 'Hey, look at this tape.'"

Media analyst Martin Kaplan, of the Annenberg School of Communication at University of Southern California, said there is no compelling reason the tape should be shown.

"The only remote justification for publicizing this would be accident prevention," said Kaplan. "But that argument is a stretch."

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism professor Samuel G. Freedman agrees.

"The lay person is not going into the water trying to have encounters with stingrays," Freedman said. "It would be purely titillation and necrophilia if anyone were to show this."

Kaplan said that just because the tape shouldn't be seen doesn't mean it won't be.

"There's a race for the bottom in our culture."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 06, 2006, 08:55:56 PM
'Man Bites Dog' director Belvaux dies

DEAUVILLE, France -- Belgian director, screenwriter and actor Remy Belvaux, whose debut film "Man Bites Dog" became a cult hit, has died, his family announced Wednesday. He was 38. A family statement said he died Monday night in Orry-la-Ville, north of Paris, but no cause of death was given. Shot on a micro budget, "Man Bites Dog" purported to be a fly-on-the-wall TV documentary about the life of a cynically jovial serial killer. The movie walks a dangerous line between black humor and abject horror as the TV crew gradually becomes more implicated in the killer's gruesome crimes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 12, 2006, 11:29:30 PM
10 stingrays killed since Irwin's death

SYDNEY, Australia - At least 10 stingrays have been killed since "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was fatally injured by one of the fish, an official said Tuesday, prompting a spokesman for the late TV star's animal charity to urge people not take revenge on the animals.

Irwin died last week after a stingray barb pierced his chest as he recorded a show off the Great Barrier Reef.

Stingray bodies since have been discovered on two beaches in Queensland state on Australia's eastern coast. Two were discovered Tuesday with their tails lopped off, state fisheries department official Wayne Sumpton said.

Sumpton said fishermen who inadvertently catch the diamond-shaped rays sometimes cut off their tails to avoid being stung, but the practice was uncommon. Stingrays often are caught in fishing nets by mistake and should be returned to the sea, Sumpton said.

Michael Hornby, the executive director of Irwin's Wildlife Warriors conservation group, said he was concerned the rays were being hunted and killed in retaliation for Irwin's death.

"It may be some sort of retribution, or it may be fear from certain individuals, or it just may be yet another callous act toward wildlife," he said.

He said killing stingrays was "not what Steve was about."

"We are disgusted and disappointed that people would take this sort of action to hurt wildlife," he said.

Stingrays are usually shy, unobtrusive fish that rummage the sea bottom for food or burrow into the sand.

They have a serrated spine up to 10 inches long on their tails, which they can lash when stepped on or otherwise frightened.

The spines emit toxins that can kill many small creatures and cause excruciating pain in humans. Few people have died from the poison, but the spines can badly tear flesh and the wounds are prone to infections, including tetanus.

Hornby said people should treat stingrays with caution, but "there is still no need to ... kill or mutilate these important animals."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 20, 2006, 01:56:54 PM
Cinematographer Sven Nykvist Dies at 83

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sven Nykvist, who was legendary director Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer of choice, died Wednesday after a long illness, his son said. He was 83.

Nykvist died at a nursing home where he was being treated for aphasia, a form of dementia, said his son, Carl-Gustaf Nykvist.

Nykvist won Academy Awards for best cinematography for the Bergman films "Cries and Whispers" in 1973 and "Fanny and Alexander" in 1982.

Nykvist's sense of lighting and camera work made him a favorite of Bergman's after their first collaboration on the 1954 movie "Sawdust and Tinsel," which began a partnership that lasted nearly 30 years.

"Together with Ingmar, he created movie history with those lighting arrangements," said Carl-Gustaf Nykvist, who directed the 2000 documentary "Light Keeps Me Company" about his father.

"He was called 'the master of light' because of the moods and atmospheres he could create with light. It was a near impossibility to create the moods he created."

Nykvist also worked on fellow Swede Lasse Hallstrom's "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and did several movies with Bergman fan Woody Allen. His last film was "Curtain Call" in 1999.

"Sven Nykvist was somewhat of a father figure for me," Hallstrom told Swedish news agency TT. "He taught me very much during the movies we made together. He was the one who got Americans and the world to realize that lighting could be simple and realistic."

Nykvist's wife, Ulrika, died in 1982. In addition to his son, he is survived by his daughter-in-law, Helena Berlin, and grandchildren Sonia Sondell and Marilde Nykvist.

Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on September 20, 2006, 03:43:18 PM
He was a great talent, certainly, and he made some beautiful films.

I confess that I thought he was already dead since he hadn't shot anything in a long time and Ingmar Bergman used a different cinematographer on Saraband.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 13, 2006, 11:11:54 AM
Director Gillo Pontecorvo Dies at 86

Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo, who directed the black-and-white classic "The Battle of Algiers," has died in Rome at age 86, hospital officials said Friday.

Pontecorvo died Thursday night, said hospital spokesman Nicola Cerbino. The cause of the death was not given, but reports said he had suffered a heart attack months ago.

Pontecorvo directed only a handful of feature movies in a career that spanned decades, earning the nickname of "lazy director." But he remained involved in the world of cinema, directing documentaries and heading the Venice Film Festival for several years.

A former resistance fighter during World War II, Pontecorvo maintained strong political passions that were reflected in his movies.

His 1959 film "Kapo" told the story of a Jewish girl trying to escape from a concentration camp, and "Qeimada" in 1969 starred Marlon Brando in a tale against colonialism.

But it was "The Battles of Algiers" that made his name.

The 1966 epic depicts the Algerian uprising against the French in the 1950s in a documentary-like style, with a cast of mostly untrained actors. The film was banned in France for years.

The film won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film festival, as well as Oscar nominations for best director, best screenplay and best foreign film.

"The movie is surprising every time one watches it for its power, honesty, depth, political intelligence, capacity to raise emotions: Something that only great cinema can provide," Irene Bignardi, a leading movie critic and author of a book on Pontecorvo, wrote in Friday's La Repubblica.

Born Gilberto Pontecorvo on Nov. 19, 1919, in Pisa to a wealthy Jewish family, he moved to France to escape the Fascist regime's 1938 racial laws, supporting himself as a tennis instructor. In his early 20s, he started shuttling between Milan and France to keep contacts between anti-Fascist movements, La Repubblica said. He then came back to Milan and headed a Resistance brigade.

He studied chemistry and worked as a journalist before taking up directing, starting with documentaries.

His first feature-length movie in 1957 was a tale of a fishing community starring Yves Montand and Alida Valli, called "La Grande Strada Azzurra," ("The Wide Blue Road").

His last movie, "Ogro," in 1980, was set in Spain in the years of dictator Francisco Franco.

Pontecorvo served as director of the Venice Film Festival from 1992-94.

News of the death came as Rome was preparing to open the first edition of its film festival, and hundreds of movie executives, celebrities and industry VIPS were told as they gathered for a ceremony to honor Sean Connery.

"It's a great personal pain and huge loss for Italian cinema," Mayor Walter Veltroni said. "We are already thinking about how to honor him during the festival."

Pontecorvo is survived by his wife, Picci, and three children. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Chest Rockwell on October 14, 2006, 07:49:29 AM
That's a bummer. I love Battle of Algiers tremendously.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 03, 2006, 02:13:02 AM
Actress Adrienne Shelly Dead in New York

Adrienne Shelly, an actress best known for her roles in the Hal Hartley films "Trust" and "The Unbelievable Truth" was found dead in her office by her husband, her agent said Thursday.

Shelly was found about 6 p.m. Wednesday. Police said Thursday night that they are awaiting autopsy results before deciding whether to investigate the case as foul play.

An autopsy was performed Thursday, but the medical examiner's office did not have a cause of death.

Shelly, who was 40, appeared as Jerry in the 2005 film "Factotum" with Matt Dillon. She starred as Audry Hugo in the 1989 film "The Unbelievable Truth" and as Maria Coughlin in the 1990 film "Trust." She worked steadily during her career in film, theater and television but later turned to writing and directing, making her directorial debut with "Sudden Manhattan" in 1996.

Shelly was married to Andy Ostroy and had a 3-year-old named Sophie, according to her agent of about a decade, Rachel Sheedy. Ostroy is not in the movie business.

Born Adrienne Levine in Queens and raised on Long Island, Shelly lived in lower Manhattan with her family and had been focusing more lately on writing, directing and caring for her daughter, Sheedy said.

Shelly recently wrote and directed a film called "Waitress," which starred Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion.

"She was so psyched about the film," Sheedy said. "She gathered an amazing cast, and she was really happy and excited to hear back from Sundance about it."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on November 03, 2006, 08:49:08 AM
No cause of death given=suicide.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on November 05, 2006, 12:07:57 AM
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/15931348.htm

Leonard Schrader, wrote "Kiss of the Spider Woman," dies at 62


ROBERT JABLON
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Leonard Schrader, who wrote the Academy Award-nominated film "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and co-wrote the critically praised "Mishima," has died. He was 62.

Schrader, who lived in Los Angeles, died Thursday of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his brother, "Taxi Driver" screenwriter Paul Schrader, said Saturday from New York.

Schrader had suffered from a number of ailments, including cancer, his brother said.

Schrader was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., to a family of Dutch Calvinists who forbade the brothers to see any movies.

"That was a church edict," Paul Schrader said. "What they called worldly amusements were prohibited."

Schrader didn't see his first film until he was in college in the 1960s.

"Revolt was everywhere around us in the counterculture," his brother said. "Other kids had to vandalize government buildings. All we had to do is go to movies."

Schrader attended local Calvin College and received a master's degree at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop, where according to his Web site he studied with luminaries such as Kurt Vonnegut and Jorge Luis Borges.

Screenwriting came naturally to the brothers, who were raised in a culture without TV or film but a lot of talk.

"We came from a background of storytellers and we were very good at that," Paul Schrader said.

His brother was drawn to other cultures.

"He felt like a stranger in the place where he grew up and he was naturally attracted to strangers elsewhere," Paul Schrader said. "He gravitated to stories set in Japan and South America."

In 1969 and the early 1970s, Schrader lived in Japan, where he taught American literature at universities and became interested in Japanese Yakuza gangster culture.

His first film was "The Yakuza," co-written in the 1970s with his brother and starring Robert Mitchum. Sydney Pollack directed.

Schrader wrote or co-wrote about a dozen movies, including 1978's "Blue Collar" and three Japanese-language movies.

They included 1985's "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters," based on the life of the famed Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, whom Schrader had met before his 1970 ritual suicide. Schrader co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Chieko, and his brother. Paul Schrader directed the movie, while George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola were executive producers.

Schrader's adaptation of a novel by Argentinian novelist Manuel Puig became "The Kiss of the Spider Woman." It earned him a 1985 Oscar nomination and won William Hurt the award for best actor.

Schrader also directed the 1991 independent movie "Naked Tango," filmed in Argentina and starring Vincent D'Onofrio.

Schrader taught film and screenwriting at USC and at Chapman College. In 2003 he became senior filmmaker-in-residence at the American Film Institute, where he chaired the Screenwriting Department and taught a graduate class.

"I believe at heart he was a teacher," his brother said. "He was very good at inspiring people, including me, when we were growing up ... His greatest pleasure came from teaching."

Schrader is survived by his wife and brother.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 06, 2006, 07:55:23 PM
Quote from: othersparrow on November 03, 2006, 08:49:08 AM
No cause of death given=suicide.

Brooklyn Man Charged With Murdering Actress

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK Prosecutors have charged a man with murdering actress Adrienne Shelly, who was found hanging from a shower rod in her West Village office last Wednesday, CBS 2 News has learned. Sources tell CBS 2's Ti-Hua Chang a construction worker has allegedly confessed to the crime.

Police have charged 19-year-old Diego Pillco, of the 300-block of Prospect Avenue in Brooklyn, with second degree murder.

Sources tell CBS 2's Ti-Hua Chang that Pillco, a construction worker, apparently confessed to the crime.

Pillco allegedly punched the 5-foot-2 actress after she complained about the noise he was making in the West Village apartment building where her office is located, killing her.

He then allegedly admitted to dragging the body up to her office, and positioning her in the shower to make her death look like a suicide.

The medical examiner's office had not yet ruled whether the death of the petite actress best known for her roles in the Hal Hartley films "Trust" and "The Unbelievable Truth" was a homicide or a suicide.

Police had been hesitant to label the case a suicide after no suicide note was found and sneaker prints that didn't match Shelly's shoes were found in the bathtub.

Shelly, whose birth name was Adrienne Levine, was found by her husband, Andy Ostroy, Wednesday evening hanging from a shower rod in the bathtub of a Greenwich Village apartment which she uses as her office.

Ostroy released a statement to the media on Monday night:

"My wife's senseless death is devastating to me, our families and friends. We are incredibly grateful to the New York City Police Department for their dedication, professionalism and tenacity in following up on every lead in this case.

"We appreciate the outpouring of support we've received. Her fans and the film community knew Adrienne as an award-winning actor, screenwriter and director, but her most enduring legacy is our wonderful daughter. To those closest to her, she was the best mother and step-mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend anyone could ask for.

"My comfort is now our young daughter and my other children who have been incredibly supportive. We hope everyone will respect that this is a difficult and private time for our family."

Shelly, who was born in Queens and grew up on Long Island, also had a 3-year-old daughter Sophie.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 09, 2006, 01:41:12 AM
Composer Basil Poledouris Passes Away at 61
Source: Reuters

Emmy-winning composer Basil Poledouris, best known for his powerful music for action-adventure films of the 1980s and '90s, died of cancer in Los Angeles on Wednesday, says Reuters. He was 61.

Poledouris worked on the scores for the early Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicles Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), and his orchestral-and-choral compositions came to be considered high points in the genre of music for fantasy films.

His other feature credits included The Blue Lagoon (1980), RoboCop (1987), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and Free Willy (1993). He won an Emmy in 1989 for his folk-based Western score for the miniseries "Lonesome Dove."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 10, 2006, 04:45:19 PM
Oscar-Winning Actor Jack Palance Dies

Jack Palance, the craggy-faced menace in "Shane," "Sudden Fear" and other films who turned to comedy at 70 with his Oscar-winning self-parody in "City Slickers," died Friday.

Palance died of natural causes at his home in Montecito, Calif., surrounded by family, said spokesman Dick Guttman. Palance was 85 according to Associated Press records, but his family gave his age as 87.

When Palance accepted his Oscar for best supporting actor he delighted viewers of the 1992 Academy Awards by dropping to the stage and performing one-armed push-ups to demonstrate his physical prowess.

"That's nothing, really," he said slyly. "As far as two-handed push-ups, you can do that all night, and it doesn't make a difference whether she's there or not."

That year's Oscar host, Billy Crystal, turned the moment into a running joke, making increasingly outlandish remarks about Palance's accomplishments throughout the night's awards presentations.

:yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on November 10, 2006, 05:25:36 PM
aw thats terrible.  Jack Palance was a guy who woke up one day in the 70's and  his hair had turned grey.  and for the next 35 years he looked exactly the same.  "And remember.  Jack, you....are my number one.....guy."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on November 10, 2006, 10:50:57 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/11/09/obit.bradley/index.html

Ed Bradley of '60 Minutes' dies of leukemia

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Ed Bradley, the longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent whose probing questions and deceptively relaxed interviewing manner graced some of that show's most notable reports, has died. He was 65.

Bradley died Thursday at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital of leukemia, according to staff members at the CBS program.

Bradley joined "60 Minutes" during the 1981-82 season after two years as White House correspondent for CBS News and three years at "CBS Reports." His reporting over the years won him a Peabody Award, 19 Emmys and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, among many others. He was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

His most recent Emmy was for a segment about the reopening of the 1950s racial murder case of Emmett Till in Mississippi.

Katie Couric, in announcing the death of Bradley on CBS, described him as "smooth, cool, a great reporter, beloved and respected by all of his colleagues here at CBS News." (Watch as Couric gives the details of Bradley's death -- 1:22Video)

"Bradley could cover any kind of a story," said Bradley's "60 Minutes" colleague Mike Wallace, singling out a profile of Lena Horne as "one of the most entertaining profiles I've ever seen."

"He traveled the world. He was in the White House. Bradley was just a damn good reporter," Wallace said.

CNN correspondent and former CBS reporter John Roberts said the newsman was "always a person you could sit down with and he could keep you intrigued for hours at a time with the stories he could tell."

Roberts called Bradley a "first-rate" journalist.

"He clearly was a field reporter," said Howard Kurtz, media reporter for The Washington Post. "He did not want to be chained to a desk." Kurtz also hosts CNN's "Reliable Sources."

"He was somebody who liked being out there on the story, whether it was in the Vietnam War or whether it was doing investigative work or bringing alive the plight of families who were dealing with illnesses or violence or other issues he covered," Kurtz added.

'You can be anything you want, kid'

Bradley was known for his thoughtful, mellifluous voice and often laid-back approach, a style that often prompted unexpected emotion in his subjects.

In 2000, he conducted the only television interview with condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who described his anger and bitterness after fighting in the Gulf War. Three years later, Bradley interviewed Michael Jackson, who said he had been "manhandled" when arrested on child molestation charges a few weeks earlier.

Roberts, who said he didn't know about Bradley's illness, described his former co-worker's excitement and awe at being able to interview heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali after the boxer put him off for a while.

Bradley told Roberts he felt Ali was playing a kind of game with him.

According to Roberts, Bradley told him, "He [Ali] said he didn't want to talk. Maybe today, maybe not today. I don't know."

"Bradley told me Ali had this twinkle in his eye that said, 'Yes, I do want to talk to you. I just want to do it on my own time.' And I think for Ed, that was probably one of the most memorable interviews that he's ever done."

Bradley, a great music lover, also interviewed Miles Davis, Lena Horne and Paul Simon, among other performers. He once moonlighted as a disc jockey, earning $1.50 an hour spinning records while working as a teacher by day. In his later years, he hosted the radio show "Jazz at Lincoln Center."

"The idea that I could go to a station and open the cabinet doors of what we called the library and pull out music present and past and play what I liked to play, music I liked to hear, and that there were people out there listening to my taste in music -- man, it just didn't get better than that," he told the online publication All About Jazz in 2004.

Bradley was born June 22, 1941. He grew up in a tough section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he once recalled that his parents worked 20-hour days at two jobs apiece, according to The Associated Press. "I was told, 'You can be anything you want, kid,' " he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

Bradley began his career in radio at WDAS in his hometown in 1963. In 1967, he moved to New York and radio station WCBS, and then joined CBS News as a stringer in the Paris, France, bureau in 1971.

After a stint in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam, he came to Washington in 1974. He covered Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in 1976, then became CBS' first African-American White House correspondent.

CNN's David Fitzpatrick, a former CBS producer who worked with Bradley, said there were tears in the halls of CBS News after word came of his passing.

"He was gracious," Fitzpatrick said. "He would always have a smile."

Bradley is survived by his wife, Patricia Blanchet.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 19, 2006, 09:45:45 PM
Gary Graver, 68; maverick cinematographer tried to complete Orson Welles' final film

Gary Graver, who was Orson Welles' final cinematographer and waged a decades-long campaign to complete the celebrated director's final film, "The Other Side of the Wind," has died. He was 68.

Graver died Thursday at his Rancho Mirage home after a long battle with cancer, said his wife, Jillian Kesner-Graver.

"He was a maverick cameraman who could do anything," Curtis Harrington, a director who made "Usher" (2002) with Graver, told The Times on Saturday. "He also was very close to Orson, who recognized his wonderful qualities as a human being."

Welles, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest American filmmakers, "was like a father to him," Kesner-Graver said. "To finish that film was the most important thing in his life, and Gary passed away without having that chance."

When Welles died in 1985, the film about a gifted director's slide toward mediocrity had been in the works for 15 years. Shooting was completed, but there was only about 40 minutes of edited footage.

Graver's camera work on "The Other Side of the Wind" was "wonderfully gifted in the use of color," said Kevin Thomas, a longtime movie critic for The Times who is now a freelance contributor. "Gary's career unfolded almost entirely in the independent realm, so he had to be tremendously resourceful."

Since "Wind" had to be pieced together from the script and editing notes Welles left behind, Graver had estimated that $3.5 million was needed to complete the project.

"That's not much money for the film that book-ends 'Citizen Kane,' " Graver told Thomas for a 2004 article in The Times.

The rights to "Wind" — which featured John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich and Welles' longtime companion and collaborator Oja Kodar — had recently been untangled, and Graver was trying to complete a deal with Showtime, said Todd McCarthy, chief film critic for Variety, who was making a documentary with Graver.

Graver's relationship with Welles dated to 1970, when he called the director at the Beverly Hills Hotel to say he wanted to work with him. Welles replied that the last cinematographer who had called him out of the blue was Gregg Toland, who worked on "Citizen Kane" (1941), Kesner-Graver said.

Welles invited him to visit that day and, surprisingly, asked him to shoot tests for "Wind."

"I called Orson because I knew we would have the same sense of humor and that we would get along," Graver said in the 2004 interview. "I knew how to make a movie without much money, and he liked that."

They worked on 15 projects together, including the documentaries "F For Fake" (1975), "Filming Othello" (1978) and "It's All True" (1993), released after Welles died, according to a 1998 Hollywood Reporter article.

Often Graver had to drop everything to rush off to Europe to film, and he lived off and on with Welles and Kodar. He still managed to amass dozens of other credits, including filming "Grand Theft Auto," (1977) Ron Howard's directorial debut, and shooting several movies for Roger Corman.

Graver was born July 20, 1938, in Portland, Ore. By the time he was in high school, he was producing and starring in a weekly radio show and had built a theater in his basement.

He came to Hollywood at 19 as a prospective actor, but by the late 1960s he was a cameraman. He had developed the skill in 1965 as a member of the Navy Combat Camera Group in Vietnam, his wife said.

Upon returning, he made documentaries before shooting low-budget biker films, including "Satan's Sadists," which displayed "excellent, appropriately edgy camera work," The Times review by Thomas noted in 1970.

Almost until the end of his life, Graver traveled the world trying to keep Welles' legacy alive, including screening a collection of film clips called "The Unseen Welles."

In addition to his wife of 25 years, Graver is survived by two sons from earlier marriages, Sean of Tacoma, Wash., and Chris of Los Angeles; his mother, Frances Bolen of Rancho Mirage; and a brother, Geoff, of Austin, Texas.

Services are pending.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on November 21, 2006, 10:39:59 AM
Holy shit!  My girlfriend works in news and she JUST got an alert that Robert Altman has died!

EDIT:  http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=9363.msg236088#msg236088



admin edit: fixed link
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on November 22, 2006, 01:41:06 PM
The link is off limits or missing.

Horrible news, though.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 01, 2006, 12:52:57 AM
Walker, film, TV composer, dies at 61

Composer Shirley Walker, who wrote prolifically for film and TV, died Wednesday of complications following a stroke in Reno, Nev. She was 61.

Walker had recently completed work on the feature "Black Christmas" and had scored all three of the "Final Destination" horror series. She won a Daytime Emmy for her work on the animated "Batman" series.

It is believed Walker was the first woman to receive sole composing credit on a Hollywood studio picture, on "Memoirs of an Invisible Woman" in 1992.

According to fellow composer and friend Laura Karpman, Walker was among the few female composers who managed to make her mark in the highly competitive world of Hollywood scoring.

"She's one of a tiny little group, and was the first one to poke through," Karpman said. "She's been an incredible mentor to a lot of men and women in Hollywood. She was an important role model."

Before beginning her film career, Walker was a piano soloist with the San Francisco Symphony. Her first credit was as a synthesizer player on Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now." She went on to work as a conductor and orchestrator for Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer, working on such features as "Scrooged," "Batman," "Dick Tracy" and "Edward Scissorhands."

Walker bowed as a composer on the 1982 feature "The End of August." She wrote robust themes for action and superhero series, including "Batman Beyond," "The New Batman Adventures," "Spawn" and "Superman." In 1996, she scored John Carpenter's futuristic action film "Escape From L.A."

She is survived by son Ian and Colin Walker.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 04, 2006, 02:11:44 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogsmithmedia.com%2Fwww.cinematical.com%2Fmedia%2F2006%2F12%2Fjadeandleaud.jpg&hash=55468fc92ef069651cc033cc2ca27ce8d1748fd0)

Claude Jade (1948-2006) - French actress (pictured, with Jean-Pierre Léaud) who played the character Christine Darbon (Doinel) in Truffaut's Stolen Kisses, Bed & Board and Love on the Run. She also starred in Hitchcock's Topaz and in My Uncle Benjamin, Tegeran-43 (Teheran 43: Spy Ring) and The Boat on the Grass. In 1968, she was engaged to Truffaut, but she ended up marrying a diplomat named Bernard Coste instead. She died of eye cancer December 1, in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 13, 2006, 10:57:02 AM
Actor Peter Boyle dead at 71

Peter Boyle, the actor known for playing everything from a tap-dancing monster in "Young Frankenstein" to the curmudgeonly father in the long-running TV sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," has died. He was 71.

Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, said his publicist, Jennifer Plante.

Boyle was beginning to gain notice playing hard-bitten, angry types when he took on the role of the hulking, lab-created monster in Mel Brooks' 1974 send-up of horror films. The movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience. Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' On the Ritz."

It showed another side of the Emmy-winning actor, one that would be exploited in countless other films and perhaps best in "Everybody Loves Raymond," in which he played incorrigible paterfamilias Frank Barone for 10 years.

"He's just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs," he said of the character in a 2001 interview. "It's a very sweet experience having this happen at a time when you basically go back over your life and see every mistake you ever made."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 19, 2006, 05:06:24 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6191999.stm

Cartoon legend Barbera dies at 95

Joseph Barbera, one half of the team behind such cartoon classics as The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo and Huckleberry Hound, has died, aged 95.

He died of natural causes at home with his wife, Sheila, at his side.

With William Hanna, Barbera founded Hanna-Barbera in the 1950s, after the pair had earlier worked on the Tom and Jerry cartoons at MGM studios.

"Joe will live on through his work," said Warner Brothers chairman and chief executive Barry Meyer.

"The characters he created with his late partner, William Hanna, are not only animated superstars but also a very beloved part of American pop culture," Mr Meyer said.

Cat and mouse collaboration

Barbera grew up in Brooklyn, New York and started to pursue a career in banking.

But his amateur sketches soon became the raw material for cartoons which were published in Collier's magazine, a breakthrough which then took him into animation.

He met Hanna at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio, where they collaborated on a 1937 cartoon called Puss Gets the Boot, which led to the creation of cat-and-mouse duo Tom and Jerry.

Their 17-year partnership on the Tom and Jerry series resulted in seven Academy Awards and 14 nominations in total.

Extended format

The pair left MGM and formed Hanna-Barbera Studios in 1957, where they created numerous classic characters, including The Jetsons and The Flintstones.

Hanna-Barbera extended cartoons beyond the traditional six-minute slots.

The Flintstones, featuring two modern-minded couples living in the stone age, was the first animated series to be broadcast on prime-time television.

In the decades that followed, Hanna-Barbera produced 300 cartoon series, with more than 3,000 half-hour shows.

Scooby-Doo, a Great Dane who leads a group of teenagers in ghost-hunting adventures, made his debut in 1969 and the series ran for 17 years, a record for a TV animated series.

"They were able to bring top quality cartoon shows to television," said actor Casey Kasem, the voice of Shaggy, Scooby-Doo's unkempt sidekick.

"When they came along and they did it, they made it profitable for people who were big investors," he told the BBC.

"It's a legacy that he has that has touched people around the world with what I call magic, they just kept producing one great show after another."

Following Hanna's death in 2001, Joseph Barbera remained active as an executive producer for Warner Brothers Animation on TV series such as What's New, Scooby-Doo? and Tom and Jerry Tales.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 21, 2006, 08:45:43 PM
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/oscar-nominee-kills-hubby-self/29042-8.html

Oscar nominee kills husband, self
Associated Press

Los Angeles: An Oscar-nominated makeup artist shot her photographer-husband and then killed herself in the couple's bedroom, authorities said.

Sixty-four-year-old Hallie D'Amore, and her 65-year-old husband, Richard, were found dead on Friday by her co-workers who were concerned when she failed to show up for work, police Department Mike DePasquale said on Wednesday.

One worker climbed to a second-story window and saw two bodies inside, DePasquale said. Authorities said there was no sign of a struggle or forced entry. A gun was found at the scene.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office has ruled the deaths a murder-suicide.

DePasquale said Hallie D'Amore left a "disjointed" note of several pages but it did not mention a specific motive.

"They'd been having marital problems," he said. "That's what the neighbours and family were telling us - and maybe monetary problems that created stress."

The couple recently celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary.

Hallie D'Amore was nominated for an Academy Award for her work with two others on the 1994 movie Forrest Gump. She won an Emmy in 2003 for her work on the HBO movie Normal.

Richard D'Amore was a photographer popular among celebrities, including Michelle Pfeiffer and Dolly Parton, according to his Web site.

The couple was survived by two daughters and four grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 25, 2006, 02:04:50 AM
Singer James Brown dies at 73

ATLANTA - James Brown, the legendary singer known as the "Godfather of Soul," has died, his agent said early Monday. He was 73.

Brown was hospitalized Sunday at Emory Crawford Long Hospital with pneumonia and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side, Copsidas said.

The agent said Brown's family was being notified of his death and that the cause was still uncertain. "We really don't know at this point what he died of," Copsidas said.

:yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on December 25, 2006, 02:12:48 AM
James Brown died on Christmas.  Damn.

Then again, lots of people die on Christmas (it's just like any other day as far as death is concerned).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Garam on December 25, 2006, 04:40:45 AM
I'm scouring his tracklists for possible puns to use in the next couple of days. I'm gonna avoid the obvious 'get on ups' and 'stay on the scenes'.


I don't actually own any James Brown albums. Now's as good a time as any to start, I suppose. Suggestions?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 25, 2006, 08:06:26 AM
Quote from: Garam on December 25, 2006, 04:40:45 AMI don't actually own any James Brown albums. Now's as good a time as any to start, I suppose. Suggestions?

This is the one I have:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fec2.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2FB000001DUP.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg&hash=73f8ded4acd44732a30c5200a8bf31e6102b9e53)


1. I Got You (I Feel Good)   
2. Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine, Pt.1   
3. I Got The Feelin'
4. Mother Popcorn, Pt.1   
5. Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose   
6. Make It Funky, Pt.1
7. Papa's Got A Brand New Bag, Pt.1   
8. Think   
9. It's A Man's Man's Man's World   
10. Try Me   
11. Night Train   
12. Cold Sweat, Pt.1   
13. Get On The Good Foot 
14. Papa Don't Take No Mess, Pt.1   
15. The Payback   
16. Say It Loud (I'm Black And I'm Proud), Pt.1   
17. Super Bad, Pts.1&2   
18. Hot Pants, Pt.1   
19. Get Up Offa That Thing   
20. Please, Please, Please


The first thing I thought of when I heard the news was this techno song from '91:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr_6q9DcSiM
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on December 25, 2006, 08:37:18 AM
This album would actually be more appropriate today.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fec3.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2FB000001EFD.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V1115399248_.jpg&hash=3b99e9d07fe7b534bbb033e7c58c4db4585c037a)

This really upsets me.  He was one of those guys I was hoping to get a chance to see play live before he died but every time he came around New York, something would get in the way.

Shitty start to Christmas.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on December 25, 2006, 11:33:52 AM
mac's suggestion is definitely where to start with James Brown.  its an essential collection thats actually essential.  i actually saw him live 7 years ago and he was pretty incredible. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on December 25, 2006, 12:54:36 PM
i listened to funky president just last night. this is a sad sad day for my old music teacher.

here's a good thing to watch if you haven't seen it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=k-cbiYzlHOk
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: bonanzataz on December 25, 2006, 10:57:37 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTaDk_P91ao
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 26, 2006, 11:08:50 PM
Former President Ford dead at 93

Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments -- including an angioplasty -- in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

Ford was an accidental president, Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared "our long national nightmare is over." But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal.

He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.

Even after two women tried separately to kill him, the presidency of Jerry Ford remained open and plain.

Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.

Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Richard Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process -- despite the fact that it occurred without an election.

After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president -- and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.

They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy -- in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.

And she remained one of the country's most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and admitted to having become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.

Ford slowed down in recent years. He had been hospitalized in August 2000 when he suffered one or more small strokes while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

The following year, he joined former presidents Carter, Bush and Clinton at a memorial service in Washington three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In June 2004, the four men and their wives joined again at a funeral service in Washington for former President Reagan. But in November 2004, Ford was unable to join the other former presidents at the dedication of the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.

In January, Ford was hospitalized with pneumonia for 12 days. He wasn't seen in public until April 23, when President Bush was in town and paid a visit to the Ford home. Bush, Ford and Betty posed for photographers outside the residence before going inside for a private get-together.

The intensely private couple declined reporter interview requests and were rarely seen outside their home in Rancho Mirage's gated Thunderbird Estates, other than to attend worship services at the nearby St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 28, 2006, 01:05:46 AM
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/22/obit.evans.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Mike Evans, original Lionel Jefferson, dead
POSTED: 3:02 p.m. EST, December 22, 2006

TWENTYNINE PALMS, California (AP) -- Actor Mike Evans, best known as Lionel Jefferson in the TV sitcoms "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons," has died. He was 57.

Evans died of throat cancer December 14 at his mother's home in Twentynine Palms, said his niece, Chrystal Evans.

Evans, along with Eric Monte, also created and wrote for "Good Times," one of the first TV sitcoms that featured a primarily black cast.

Michael Jonas Evans was born November 3, 1949, in Salisbury, North Carolina. His father, Theodore Evans Sr., was a dentist while his mother, Annie Sue Evans, was a school teacher.

The family moved to Los Angeles when Evans was a child.

He studied acting at Los Angeles City College before getting the role of Lionel Jefferson in 1970s situation comedy "All in the Family."

Evans kept the role of Lionel when "The Jeffersons" launched in 1975. The hit show was a spinoff featuring bigoted Archie Bunker's black neighbors in Queens who "move on up to the East Side" of Manhattan.

Evans was replaced by Damon Evans (no relation) for four years, then he returned to the series from 1979 to 1981.

He also acted in the 1976 TV miniseries "Rich Man, Poor Man" and made guest appearances on the TV series "Love, American Style" and "The Streets of San Francisco." His last role was in a 2000 episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger."

In recent years he had invested in real estate in Southern California.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on January 07, 2007, 02:30:53 AM
USC Kicker Found Dead at Bottom of Cliff
By Associated Press
1 hour ago

LOS ANGELES - Southern California kicker Mario Danelo was found dead Saturday about 120 feet down a rocky cliff near Point Fermin lighthouse in the city's San Pedro section.

The body was reported by a passer-by at about 4:30 p.m., said Martha Garcia of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Danelo, the 21-year-old son of former NFL kicker Joe Danelo, made 15 of 16 field goals this season and led the Trojans in scoring with 89 points. The junior made two field goals in the Rose Bowl on Monday to help USC beat Michigan 32-18.

Speaking on behalf of Trojans coach Pete Carroll, USC spokesman Tim Tessalone said: "We were stunned to hear about this tragedy. This is a great loss. Mario was a wonderful young man of high character.

"He was one heck of a kicker. He was a key ingredient in our success the past two years. The thoughts and prayers of the entire Trojan family go out to the Danelo family on this sad, sad day."

The family declined to comment.

A former San Pedro High School linebacker and soccer player, Danelo made the Trojans as a walk-on in 2003. In 2005, he received a scholarship and earned the starting kicking job.

He only missed two field goals in his career, going 26-for-28, and was 127-of-134 on extra points. In 2005, he set NCAA single-season records with 83 extra points and 86 attempts
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on January 10, 2007, 03:22:03 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070110/ap_en_tv/obit_de_carlo

'Munsters' star Yvonne De Carlo dies
By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES - Yvonne De Carlo, the beautiful star who played Moses' wife in "The Ten Commandments" but achieved her greatest popularity on TV's slapstick comedy "The Munsters," has died. She was 84.

De Carlo died of natural causes Monday at the Motion Picture & Television facility in suburban Los Angeles, longtime friend and television producer Kevin Burns said Wednesday.

De Carlo, whose shapely figure helped launch her career in B-movie desert adventures and Westerns, rose to more important roles in the 1950s. Later, she had a key role in a landmark Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim's "Follies."

But for TV viewers, she will always be known as Lily Munster in the 1964-1966 horror-movie spoof "The Munsters." The series (the name allegedly derived from "fun-monsters") offered a gallery of Universal Pictures grotesques, including Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, in a cobwebbed gothic setting.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on January 10, 2007, 04:10:55 PM
carlo ponti died and it was top news 5 hours ago, now this munster story has pushed him further underground in the headlines. jerry lewis must be rolling in his bed.


http://entertainment.tv.yahoo.com/entnews/ap/20070110/116846124000.html

Movie Producer Carlo Ponti Dies

Italian producer Carlo Ponti, who discovered a teenage Sophia Loren, launched her film career and later married her despite threats of bigamy charges and excommunication, has died in Geneva. He was 94.

Ponti died Tuesday night at a Geneva hospital, his family said Wednesday. He had been hospitalized about 10 days earlier for pulmonary complications, it said.

He produced more than 100 films, including "Doctor Zhivago," "The Firemen's Ball," and "The Great Day," which were nominated for Oscars. Other major films included "Blow-Up," "The Cassandra Crossing," "Zabriskie Point" and "The Squeeze."

In 1956, "La Strada," which he co-produced, won the Academy Award for best foreign film, as did "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" in 1964.

But it was his affair with the young ingenue Loren that captivated the public, rather than his work with top filmmakers such as Dino De Laurentiis, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Ustinov, David Lean and Roman Polanski.

"I have done everything for love of Sophia," he said in a newspaper interview shortly before his 90th birthday in 2002. "I have always believed in her."

Born near Milan in the small town of Magenta on Dec. 11, 1912, Ponti studied law and worked as a lawyer before moving into film production in the late 1930s.

He was married to his first wife, Giuliana, when he met Loren then Sofia Lazzaro about 1950. At the time she was only 15 a quarter-century younger than Ponti.

They tried to keep their relationship a secret despite huge media interest, while Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce from his first wife.

Ponti and Loren were married by proxy in Mexico in 1957 two male attorneys took their place and the happy couple only found out when the news was broken by society columnist Louella Parsons.

But they were unable to beat stringent Italian divorce laws and the wrath of the Roman Catholic church. Ponti was charged with bigamy.

...[read the rest of the article at yahoo, it's interesting]
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 08, 2007, 02:58:55 PM
Anna Nicole Smith has died, news reports say

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Anna Nicole Smith, the former Playboy model and reality television star, collapsed in her hotel room in Florida, was rushed to a hospital and has died, various media reported.

Smith, 39, was found unconscious in her hotel room at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Fla., according to CNN and CBS television reports.

CNN reported that Smith had collapsed at a casino and CPR was performed at the scene.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on February 08, 2007, 03:38:44 PM
I know that this is probably entirely morally reprehensible and all that, but my first thought was:

"Trimspa, baby!"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on February 08, 2007, 04:20:19 PM
Quote from: matt35mm on February 08, 2007, 03:38:44 PM
I know that this is probably entirely morally reprehensible

that doesn't matter.. you just have to ask yourself one thing "Is it funny?"

The answer: no





shame on you
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 08, 2007, 07:21:47 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/21/carey.obit.ap/index.html

'Barney Miller' actor Ron Carey dead at 71

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Ron Carey, an actor best known for his work as a cocky, height-challenged policeman on the 1970s TV comedy "Barney Miller," has died. He was 71.

Carey died of a stroke Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said Michael Ciccolini, an extended relative and family spokesman.

Carey had a recurring role on "Barney Miller" from 1976 to 1982 as Officer Carl Levitt, who yearned for a promotion to detective in the New York squad room run by Capt. Barney Miller (Hal Linden).

Carey also appeared in several Mel Brooks movies, including "High Anxiety" and "History of the World Part I."

"Ron Carey was truly talented, very funny and one of the dearest men I've ever worked with," Brooks said in a statement. (Watch the Hollywood Minute remember Ron CareyVideo)

Carey played a Boston cab driver in the 1970 Jack Lemmon comedy "The Out of Towners." He also appeared in scores of commercials, and took pride in being a supporting player and a character actor.

"Stars are stars," he told Newsday in 1989. "But without us, the show wouldn't go on."

Carey was born Ronald Joseph Cicenia on December 11, 1935, in Newark, New Jersey.

He launched his stand-up comedy career in New York after earning a bachelor's degree in communications from Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, in 1956. He made his first national television appearance a decade later on "The Merv Griffin Show." Appearances on "The Tonight Show" and the "Ed Sullivan Show" followed.

Carey is survived by his wife, Sharon, and his brother, Jimmy Cicenia.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on February 14, 2007, 08:28:47 AM
unless somebody can find a obituary written in english about this person, i'd like to write a few words about this...

an swedish actress by the name of johanna sällström passed away today. she was only 32 years old. her breakthrough came by the swedish movie "beneath the surface" (under ytan). she was awarded a guldbagge (a swedish oscar) for her portrayal of a troubled junkie.

i found a tribute video at youtube (made before her death):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOUPymhqTmE
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on February 14, 2007, 09:08:39 AM
Quote from: mogwai on February 14, 2007, 08:28:47 AM
unless somebody can find a obituary written in english about this person, i'd like to write a few words about this...

an swedish actress by the name of johanna sällström passed away today. she was only 32 years old. her breakthrough came by the swedish movie "beneath the surface" (under ytan). she was awarded a guldbagge (a swedish oscar) for her portrayal of a troubled junkie.

i found a tribute video at youtube (made before her death):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOUPymhqTmE

how did she die? wikipedia says she died at her home and link to this article (http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,1000242,00.html) which only you can understand.  :saywhat:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on February 14, 2007, 11:37:43 AM
various sources (swedish forums) says she committed suicide. but i will see what the official cause of death was.

it's such a shame because she was kind of the sweden's chloë sevigny in a way. she always picked roles that suited her persona (no offence to chloë, if that makes any sense). she always worked hard and it shows on screen. :yabbse-sad:

she was in thailand when the tsunami struck in 2004. she was in the news after that and talked about coping with her experience. maybe that had something to do with it, i don't know.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 18, 2007, 11:26:13 PM
Quote from: mogwai on February 14, 2007, 08:28:47 AM
unless somebody can find a obituary written in english about this person

http://www.thelocal.se/6403/20070214/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on February 22, 2007, 11:11:49 PM
Dutch director Rademakers dies

Oscar-winning Dutch film director Fons Rademakers has died, aged 86.

He died of emphysema in a Geneva hospital after doctors turned off life-support machines at his request.

Rademakers won an Oscar in 1987 for best foreign-language film with De Aanslag, or The Attack, the high point of career in which he made 11 features.

Based on a novel by Harry Mulisch, it tells the story of a young boy whose family is killed by Germans during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

With Village on the River, his 1958 debut feature, Rademakers became the first Dutch filmmaker to be nominated for an Oscar.

He was also known for Max Havelaar, made in 1976, about corruption during the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on February 23, 2007, 12:15:49 AM
I am a goddamned idiot.  my favorite poiltical journalist, molly ivins, died on january 31st and I didn't even discover it until today.  this made me doubly sad.  she was such a sweet and angry lady, most famously warned this nation about George W way back then when he was just a governor.  She had a sweet way of depicting the most ridiculous and foul of political crimes, and made us laugh at their absurdity while enlightening us on the suffering of millions.  She really was a remarkable lady.  When Bill O'reilly pounded Al Franken, she was the one that stepped him and schooled him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on February 23, 2007, 12:54:53 AM
oh god, that is really tragic. i loved molly ivins. her writing was so funny and informative and personal. man.

here's my mini-tribute:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popmatters.com%2Fimages%2Fnews_art%2Fu%2Fus-news-ivins-obit-1-ft.jpg&hash=6cd02b9609f9e25ff4993b852eb91a083937bc92)
MOLLY IVINS -- August 30, 1944 – January 31, 2007
"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was." -ms ivins


this is really awful. i'm shocked i didn't hear about it til today either. RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on March 06, 2007, 08:25:29 PM
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=e4a18c18-d094-4555-81d0-d6d783fa8d96&k=69183

French philosopher and social theorist Jean Baudrillard dies

PARIS (AP) - Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and social theorist known for his provocative commentaries on consumerism, excess and what he said was the disappearance of reality, died Tuesday, his publishing house said. He was 77.
Baudrillard died at his home in Paris after a long illness, said Michel Delorme, of the Galilee publishing house.
The two men had worked together since 1977, when "Oublier Foucault" (Forget Foucault) was published, one of about 30 books by Baudrillard, Delorme said by telephone.
Among his last published books was "Cool Memories V," in 2005.
Baudrillard, a sociologist by training, is perhaps best known for his concepts of "hyperreality" and "simulation."
Baudrillard advocated the idea that spectacle is crucial in creating our view of events - what he termed "hyperreality." Things do not happen if they are not seen to happen.
He gained fame, and notoriety, in the English-speaking world for his 1991 book "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place." In the first Gulf War, he claimed, nothing was as it appeared.
The public's - and even the military's - view of the conflict came largely through television images; Saddam Hussein was not defeated; the U.S.-led coalition scarcely battled the Iraqi military and did not really win, since little was changed politically in Iraq after all the carnage. All the sound and fury signified little, he argued.
The Sept. 11 attacks, in contrast, were the hyper-real event par excellence - a fusion of history, symbolism and dark fantasy, "the mother of all events."
His views on the attacks sparked controversy. While terrorists had committed the atrocity, he wrote, "It is we who have wanted it. . . . Terrorism is immoral, and it responds to a globalization that is itself immoral."
Although many Americans were puzzled by his views, Baudrillard was a tireless enthusiast for the United States - though he once called it "the only remaining primitive society."
"Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise," he wrote. "Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other."
French Education Minister Gilles de Robien said "We lose a great creator."
"Jean Baudrillard was one of the great figures of French sociological thought."
Born west of Paris in Reims on June 20, 1929, Baudrillard, the son of civil servants, began a long teaching career instructing high school students in German. After receiving a doctorate in sociology, he taught at the University of Paris in Nanterre.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on March 07, 2007, 11:49:07 AM
Death to 'America': Comic-book hero killed off (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17499797/)
Sniper's bullet dispatches 65-year-old 'Captain America' in latest edition

NEW YORK - Captain America has undertaken his last mission — at least for now. The venerable superhero is killed in the issue of his namesake comic that hit stands Wednesday, the Daily News reported.

On the new edition's pages, a sniper shoots down the shield-wielding hero as he leaves a courthouse, according to the newspaper.

It ends a long run for the stars-and-stripes-wearing character, created in 1941 to incarnate patriotic feeling during World War II. Over the years, an estimated 210 million copies of "Captain America" comic books, published by New York-based Marvel Entertainment Inc., have been sold in a total of 75 countries.

But resurrections are not unknown in the world of comics, and Marvel Entertainment editor in chief Joe Quesada said a Captain America comeback wasn't impossible.

Still, the character's death came as a blow to co-creator Joe Simon.

"We really need him now," said Simon, 93, who worked with artist Jack Kirby to devise Captain America as a foe for Adolf Hitler.

According to the comic, the superhero was spawned when a scrawny arts student named Steve Rogers, ineligible for the army because of his poor health but eager to serve his country, agreed to a "Super Soldier Serum" injection. The substance made him a paragon of physical perfection, armed only with his shield, his strength, his smarts and a command of martial arts.

In the comic-book universe, death is not always final. But even if Captain America turns out to have met his end in print, he may not disappear entirely: Marvel has said it is developing a Captain America movie.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek237 on March 07, 2007, 04:16:48 PM
Long live Captain Cunuck, then.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 08, 2007, 02:34:54 AM
and Captain Planet.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 08, 2007, 08:36:00 AM
and captain muffy.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 08, 2007, 11:13:47 AM
and Cap'n Crunch.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 08, 2007, 11:48:02 AM
captain EO.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on March 08, 2007, 12:24:11 PM
Captain & Tennille
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 08, 2007, 12:41:03 PM
Captain Sparrow.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on March 08, 2007, 12:59:07 PM
Captain Solo.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on March 08, 2007, 01:37:54 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.internationalhero.co.uk%2Fc%2Fcaveman.jpg&hash=f4ac5b36fc50046dd35c0c649a2ace0774d264e1)

(and son)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on March 08, 2007, 01:47:41 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotjobs.com%2Fimages%2Fext%2Fcaptain_morgan.jpg&hash=de792535986d0395744e69525564b3d99bfe312d)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on March 08, 2007, 02:09:52 PM
Caption Thread
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 08, 2007, 02:31:18 PM
captain haddock
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on March 09, 2007, 01:54:37 AM
captain picard.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 09, 2007, 02:16:35 AM
caps lock
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on March 09, 2007, 02:54:06 AM
Kate Capshaw
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 09, 2007, 03:02:03 AM
Caspian Sea
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on March 09, 2007, 08:05:18 AM
capsular contracture
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on March 09, 2007, 08:55:03 AM
Cappadonna
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 09, 2007, 10:18:36 AM
Frank Capra
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on March 09, 2007, 10:31:53 AM
salmon of Capistrano
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on March 09, 2007, 10:46:18 AM
Salman Rushdie
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 09, 2007, 10:53:59 AM
captain solomon solomon
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 09, 2007, 11:02:27 AM
cap in your ass
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on March 09, 2007, 01:29:53 PM
Captain Obvious
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek237 on March 09, 2007, 02:22:26 PM
Jesus, this went real weird real fast.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 09, 2007, 02:49:18 PM
Jesus Quintana
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on March 09, 2007, 03:10:06 PM
Jesus Shuttlesworth
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 09, 2007, 03:37:13 PM
big baby jesus
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on March 09, 2007, 03:53:55 PM
Jesus Christ, we forgot Captain Kangaroo.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on March 09, 2007, 05:48:29 PM
Captain Koons in Kangaroo Jack
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on March 09, 2007, 06:20:58 PM
Jackie Coogan as Skippy in 1 episode of McCoy (1975)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 10, 2007, 01:52:39 AM
captain pozer and pete for best caps, and minus captain derek237.. may he walk the plank for trying to mutiny this great vessel.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 11, 2007, 09:33:32 PM
Comic Richard Jeni dead in apparent suicide

Stand-up comedian and actor Richard Jeni, a regular on NBC's "The Tonight Show," has died in an apparent suicide, police said on Sunday.

Los Angeles police spokeswoman Norma Eisenman said a woman called police on Saturday morning from the West Hollywood area and said: "My boyfriend just shot himself in the face."

Jeni, 45, was found alive and taken to hospital but was pronounced dead about an hour later, Eisenman said.

Jeni appeared in movies including as "The Mask" and in the TV show "Everybody Hates Chris," and was named in 2004 in the Comedy Central list of 100 great stand-up comedians.

He was a regular guest on "The Tonight Show" when Johnny Carson hosted the late-night talk and variety show and also after Jay Leno took over as host in 1992.

Born in Brooklyn, he also appeared in the HBO Comedy Hour and wrote material for the 2005 Academy Awards show.

Authorities have scheduled an autopsy for Monday to determine the exact cause of death.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 11, 2007, 11:12:35 PM
man hows leno gonna joke his wait outta this one..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on March 12, 2007, 09:24:10 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on March 11, 2007, 09:33:32 PM
Authorities have scheduled an autopsy for Monday to determine the exact cause of death.
It was probably the gunshot to the face, Captain.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on March 12, 2007, 05:54:42 PM
Betty Hutton died of colon cancer. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on March 13, 2007, 02:16:16 PM
Colonel Sanders
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 13, 2007, 10:52:29 PM
It's like trying to start the wave again after it already died.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on March 13, 2007, 11:57:29 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn-emotions.org%2Femotions%2Fanimated_emoticons%2F3d%2F3d_emoticon_wave.gif&hash=04402b62dae034d63734dac4cd7f007310e1e0b3)(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn-emotions.org%2Femotions%2Fanimated_emoticons%2F3d%2F3d_emoticon_wave.gif&hash=04402b62dae034d63734dac4cd7f007310e1e0b3)(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn-emotions.org%2Femotions%2Fanimated_emoticons%2F3d%2F3d_emoticon_wave.gif&hash=04402b62dae034d63734dac4cd7f007310e1e0b3)(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn-emotions.org%2Femotions%2Fanimated_emoticons%2F3d%2F3d_emoticon_wave.gif&hash=04402b62dae034d63734dac4cd7f007310e1e0b3)(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn-emotions.org%2Femotions%2Fanimated_emoticons%2F3d%2F3d_emoticon_wave.gif&hash=04402b62dae034d63734dac4cd7f007310e1e0b3)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 19, 2007, 12:09:16 PM
`Amityville' Director Rosenberg Dies

Stuart Rosenberg, a prolific director of series television and theatrical films who partnered with Paul Newman on the widely popular prison drama "Cool Hand Luke" and several other movies, has died at 79.

Rosenberg, who also directed "The Amityville Horror," died of a heart attack Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills, according to his son, Benjamin.

Rosenberg's first film was "Cool Hand Luke," the 1967 drama starring Newman as an inmate on a chain gang who becomes an unlikely hero.

"He was as good as anybody I ever worked with," Newman said in a statement.

"Cool Hand Luke" was nominated for four Academy Awards, with George Kennedy taking home a statute for best supporting actor. The film also spawned the famous line delivered by Strother Martin as a guard captain: "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

Rosenberg was nominated for a Directors' Guild Award for the film, but lost to Mike Nichols, who made "The Graduate" the same year.

After "Cool Hand Luke," Rosenberg directed Jack Lemmon and French actress Catherine Deneuve in "The April Fools" He worked with Newman again on "WUSA," "Pocket Money," and "The Drowning Pool"

Rosenberg also directed Robert Redford in the 1980 prison film "Brubaker" and Mickey Rourke in 1984's "The Pope of Greenwich Village." "Amityville Horror" in 1979 was probably his most financially successful film; it has inspired seven sequels to date.

His last film was "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" in 1991.

Rosenberg had started out by directing episodes of television series in the 1950s, starting with "Decoy," which starred Beverly Garland as a New York City policewoman.

He collected more than 300 TV directing credits for such dramatic series' as "The Untouchables," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Twilight Zone," and won an Emmy Award in 1963 for an episode of "The Defenders."

Rosenberg is survived by his wife, Margot, and son Benjamin, an assistant editor who worked with his father on many of his later films.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 21, 2007, 02:55:34 PM
Cinematographer Francis dies at 89
Filmmaker won Oscar for 'Glory'

Freddie Francis, who won Academy Awards for cinematography for "Sons and Lovers" in 1961 and "Glory" in 1989, died Saturday in west London. He was 89.

Although he received his greatest acclaim as a lenser, with numerous nominations and prizes for his work on films such as "The Straight Story," "The Elephant Man," "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and "Cape Fear," he also had a successful career as a director of horror movies in the 1960s and '70s for cult British studios Hammer and Amicus.

Francis was born in Islington, London. Starting out as a still photographer, he entered the film business as a clapper boy, camera loader and focus puller. He gained experience with army film units during WWII, and, after the war, he worked as a camera operator on classic British films including "The Elusive Pimpernel," "The Small Back Room," "Gone to Earth," "The Tales of Hoffmann," "Beat the Devil" and "Moby Dick."

He made his debut as a cinematographer with "A Hill in Korea" in 1956, moving on to shoot some of the pics in the new wave of realist working-class dramas, such as "Room at the Top" and "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning."

Francis stopped working as a cinematographer in the mid-1960s, when his directing career started to take off with genre pics such as "Nightmare," "Hysteria," "The Evil of Frankenstein" and "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave."

He returned to cinematography in 1980 with David Lynch's "The Elephant Man," working subsequently with Lynch on "Dune" in 1984 and "The Straight Story" in 1999, his last film. His last film as a director was "Dark Tower" in 1986.

Francis won the lifetime achievement award from the British Society of Cinematographers in 1997 and the international award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 1998. He was nominated for four BAFTAs but never won.

He had just completed his autobiography, co-written by Tony Dalton, when he suffered a stroke in late December.

Francis is survived by his wife, Pamela Mann; sons Kevin, a producer, and Gareth; daughter Susanna; and six grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 21, 2007, 09:34:00 PM
Letterman sidekick Calvert DeForest dead at 85

Calvert DeForest, the roly-poly character actor with the black-framed glasses and seemingly clueless delivery who developed a cult following as Larry "Bud" Melman on "Late Night with David Letterman" in the 1980s, has died. He was 85.

DeForest, who continued appearing with Letterman under his own name after the late-night comedian moved to CBS in the early 1990s and last appeared on the show in 2002, died Monday in a hospital in Babylon, Long Island, N.Y. after a long illness, said a spokesman for Worldwide Pants, which produces "The Late Show With David Letterman."

"Everyone always wondered if Calvert was an actor playing a character, but in reality he was just himself--a genuine, modest and nice man," Letterman said in a statement Wednesday. "To our staff and to our viewers, he was a beloved and valued part of our show, and we will miss him."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 04, 2007, 09:04:44 PM
Director Clark, son killed in L.A. crash

Bob Clark, best known as the director of the seasonal favorite "A Christmas Story," was killed along with his son Ariel early Wednesday, when their car was struck by a vehicle whose driver was suspected of being intoxicated.

In addition to his 1983 classic, Clark directed about two dozen movies, including the "Porky's" comedies.

The crash was reported at about 2:20 a.m. on southern California's Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, authorities said. The road was closed for several hours afterward.

Clark, 67, lived in the Palisades, and his 22-year-old son resided in nearby Santa Monica. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.

Los Angeles police investigators said Clark was driving a 1997 Infiniti Q-30 sedan south on PCH when the driver of a GMC Yukon allegedly swerved and hit the Clark vehicle head-on.

The driver, Hector Velazquez-Nava, 24, of Los Angeles, remained hospitalized and will be booked for investigation of gross vehicular manslaughter after being treated, police Lt. Paul Vernon said. A female passenger in his car also was taken to the hospital with minor injuries, police said.

"Christmas Story" tells the tale of 9-year-old Ralphie Parker, who dreams of getting a Red Ryder air rifle from Santa Claus. He ignores, then nearly fulfills, warnings from a series of adults who tell him, "You'll shoot your eye out, kid." The sappily sweet comedy has become a Christmas staple on the order of "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street."

Clark specialized in horror movies and thrillers early in his career, directing "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things," "Murder by Decree," "Breaking Point" and "Black Christmas" in the 1970s.

He enjoyed major success with 1981's "Porky's," which spawned the sequel "Porky's II: The Next Day" two years later.

In recent years, Clark made such family comedies as "Karate Dog," "Baby Geniuses" and its sequel, "Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2."

Among Clark's other movies were Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton's "Rhinestone," Timothy Hutton's "Turk 182!" and Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd's "Loose Cannons."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on April 05, 2007, 12:23:56 AM
Christmas Story will never be the same  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on April 11, 2007, 10:43:09 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?_r=3&hp&oref=login&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and '70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?

He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. "Mark Twain," Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, "Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage," "finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died."

Not all Mr. Vonnegut's themes were metaphysical. With a blend of vernacular writing, science fiction, jokes and philosophy, he also wrote about the banalities of consumer culture, for example, or the destruction of the environment.

His novels — 14 in all — were alternate universes, filled with topsy-turvy images and populated by races of his own creation, like the Tralfamadorians and the Mercurian Harmoniums. He invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism (based on the books of a black British Episcopalian from Tobago "filled with bittersweet lies," a narrator says).

The defining moment of Mr. Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. "The firebombing of Dresden," Mr. Vonnegut wrote, "was a work of art." It was, he added, "a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany."

His experience in Dresden was the basis of "Slaughterhouse-Five," which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, "so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age."

To Mr. Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," summed up his philosophy:

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' "

Mr. Vonnegut eschewed traditional structure and punctuation. His books were a mixture of fiction and autobiography, prone to one-sentence paragraphs, exclamation points and italics. Graham Greene called him "one of the most able of living American writers." Some critics said he had invented a new literary type, infusing the science-fiction form with humor and moral relevance and elevating it to serious literature.

He was also accused of repeating himself, of recycling themes and characters. Some readers found his work incoherent. His harshest critics called him no more than a comic book philosopher, a purveyor of empty aphorisms.

With his curly hair askew, deep pouches under his eyes and rumpled clothes, he often looked like an out-of-work philosophy professor, typically chain smoking, his conversation punctuated with coughs and wheezes. But he also maintained a certain celebrity, as a regular on panels and at literary parties in Manhattan and on the East End of Long Island, where he lived near his friend and fellow war veteran Joseph Heller, another darkly comic literary hero of the age.

Mr. Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922, a fourth-generation German-American and the youngest of three children. His father, Kurt Sr., was an architect. His mother, Edith, came from a wealthy brewery family. Mr. Vonnegut's brother, Bernard, who died in 1997, was a physicist and an expert on thunderstorms.

During the Depression, the elder Vonnegut went for long stretches without work, and Mrs. Vonnegut suffered from episodes of mental illness. "When my mother went off her rocker late at night, the hatred and contempt she sprayed on my father, as gentle and innocent a man as ever lived, was without limit and pure, untainted by ideas or information," Mr. Vonnegut wrote. She committed suicide, an act that haunted her son for the rest of his life.

He had, he said, a lifelong difficulty with women. He remembered an aunt once telling him, " 'All Vonnegut men are scared to death of women.' "

"My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside," he wrote.

Mr. Vonnegut went east to attend Cornell University, but he enlisted in the Army before he could get a degree. The Army initially sent him to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon) in Pittsburgh and the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering.

In 1944 he was shipped to Europe with the 106th Infantry Division and shortly saw combat in the Battle of the Bulge. With his unit nearly destroyed, he wandered behind enemy lines for several days until he was captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp near Dresden, the architectural jewel of Germany.

Assigned by his captors to make vitamin supplements, he was working with other prisoners in an underground meat locker when British and American war planes started carpet bombing the city, creating a firestorm above him. The work detail saved his life.

Afterward, he and his fellow prisoners were assigned to remove the dead.

"The corpses, most of them in ordinary cellars, were so numerous and represented such a health hazard that they were cremated on huge funeral pyres, or by flamethrowers whose nozzles were thrust into the cellars, without being counted or identified," he wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death." When the war ended, Mr. Vonnegut returned to the United States and married his high school sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox. They settled in Chicago in 1945. The couple had three children: Mark, Edith and Nanette. In 1958, Mr. Vonnegut's sister, Alice, and her husband died within a day of each other, she of cancer and he in a train crash. The Vonneguts adopted their children, Tiger, Jim and Steven.

In Chicago, Mr. Vonnegut worked as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. He also studied for a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago, writing a thesis on "The Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales." It was rejected unanimously by the faculty. (The university finally awarded him a degree almost a quarter of a century later, allowing him to use his novel "Cat's Cradle" as his thesis.)

In 1947, he moved to Schenectady, N.Y., and took a job in public relations for the General Electric Company. Three years later he sold his first short story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect," to Collier's magazine and decided to move his family to Cape Cod, Mass., where he wrote fiction for magazines like Argosy and The Saturday Evening Post. To bolster his income, he taught emotionally disturbed children, worked at an advertising agency and at one point started an auto dealership.

His first novel was "Player Piano," published in 1952. A satire on corporate life — the meetings, the pep talks, the cultivation of bosses — it also carries echoes of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." It concerns an engineer, Paul Proteus, who is employed by the Ilium Works, a company similar to General Electric. Proteus becomes the leader of a band of revolutionaries who destroy machines that they think are taking over the world.

"Player Piano" was followed in 1959 by "The Sirens of Titan," a science fiction novel featuring the Church of God of the Utterly Indifferent. In 1961 he published "Mother Night," involving an American writer awaiting trial in Israel on charges of war crimes in Nazi Germany. Like Mr. Vonnegut's other early novels, they were published as paperback originals. And like "Slaughterhouse-Five," in 1972, and a number of other Vonnegut novels, "Mother Night" was adapted for film, in 1996, starring Nick Nolte.

In 1963, Mr. Vonnegut published "Cat's Cradle." Though it initially sold only about 500 copies, it is widely read today in high school English classes. The novel, which takes its title from an Eskimo game in which children try to snare the sun with string, is an autobiographical work about a family named Hoenikker. The narrator, an adherent of the religion Bokononism, is writing a book about the bombing of Hiroshima and comes to witness the destruction of the world by something called Ice-Nine, which, on contact, causes all water to freeze at room temperature.

Mr. Vonnegut shed the label of science fiction writer with "Slaughterhouse-Five." It tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an infantry scout (as Mr. Vonnegut was), who discovers the horror of war. "You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves," an English colonel says in the book. "We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. My God, my God — I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.' "

As Mr. Vonnegut was, Billy is captured and assigned to manufacture vitamin supplements in an underground meat locker, where the prisoners take refuge from Allied bombing.

In "Slaughterhouse-Five," Mr. Vonnegut introduced the recurring character of Kilgore Trout, his fictional alter ego. The novel also featured a signature Vonnegut phrase.

"Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round," Mr. Vonnegut wrote at the end of the book, "was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.

"Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes."

One of many Zen-like words and phrases that run through Mr. Vonnegut's books, "so it goes" became a catchphrase for opponents of the Vietnam war.

"Slaughterhouse-Five" reached No.1 on best-seller lists, making Mr. Vonnegut a cult hero. Some schools and libraries have banned it because of its sexual content, rough language and scenes of violence.

After the book was published, Mr. Vonnegut went into severe depression and vowed never to write another novel. Suicide was always a temptation, he wrote. In 1984, he tried to take his life with sleeping pills and alcohol.

"The child of a suicide will naturally think of death, the big one, as a logical solution to any problem," he wrote. His son Mark also suffered a breakdown, in the 1970s, from which he recovered, writing about it in a book, "Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity."

Forsaking novels, Mr. Vonnegut decided to become a playwright. His first effort, "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," opened Off Broadway in 1970 to mixed reviews. Around this time he separated from his wife, Jane, and moved to New York. (She remarried and died in 1986.)

In 1979 Mr. Vonnegut married the photographer Jill Krementz. They have a daughter, Lily. They survive him, as do all his other children.

Mr. Vonnegut returned to novels with "Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday" (1973), calling it a "tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." This time his alter ego is Philboyd Sludge, who is writing a book about Dwayne Hoover, a wealthy auto dealer. Hoover has a breakdown after reading a novel written by Kilgore Trout, who reappears in this book, and begins to believe that everyone around him is a robot.

In 1997, Mr. Vonnegut published "Timequake," a tale of the millennium in which a wrinkle in space-time compels the world to relive the 1990s. The book, based on an earlier failed novel of his, was, in his own words, "a stew" of plot summaries and autobiographical writings. Once again, Kilgore Trout is a character. "If I'd wasted my time creating characters," Mr. Vonnegut said in defense of his "recycling," "I would never have gotten around to calling attention to things that really matter."

Though it was a bestseller, it also met with mixed reviews. "Having a novelist's free hand to write what you will does not mean you are entitled to a free ride," R. Z. Sheppard wrote in Time. But the novelist Valerie Sayers, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote: "The real pleasure lies in Vonnegut's transforming his continuing interest in the highly suspicious relationship between fact and fiction into the neatest trick yet played on a publishing world consumed with the furor over novel versus memoir."

Mr. Vonnegut said in the prologue to "Timequake" that it would be his last novel. And so it was.

His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, "A Man Without a Country." It, too, was a best seller.

In concludes with a poem written by Mr. Vonnegut called "Requiem," which has these closing lines:

When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the Grand Canyon,

"It is done."

People did not like it here.



:(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on April 12, 2007, 12:38:45 AM
It's too bad that he's not still here for other people to enjoy alive, but I think he's been ready for quite a while now.

he was a saint.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on April 12, 2007, 01:12:12 AM
now i can't read his books for at least 5 years! or risk being branded a necro-hipster.

a sad day indeed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on April 12, 2007, 01:15:27 AM
Quote from: Palm SundayINTERVIEWER: You went to Cornell University after Shortridge?

VONNEGUT: I imagine.

INTERVIEWER: You imagine?

VONNEGUT: I had a friend who was a heavy drinker. If somebody asked him if he'd been drunk the night before, he would always answer off-handedly, "Oh, I imagine." I've always liked that answer. It acknowledges life as a dream.

One of the rare, great minds of our lifetime has been extinguished.  I'm going to be depressed for a week now.  So it goes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on April 12, 2007, 01:54:19 AM
i was just reading all of this. Vonnegut's work has shaped who i am since 7th grade (i'm 22 now). I'm crying and i'm crying and I don't think its enough

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on April 12, 2007, 07:27:43 AM
I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke. -- kurt vonnegut, Man Without a Country.



kurt is up in heaven now. RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on April 12, 2007, 09:05:58 AM
Quote from: Pubrick on April 12, 2007, 01:12:12 AM
now i can't read his books for at least 5 years! or risk being branded a necro-hipster.

a sad day indeed.

It's more hipster-y to not read his books for fear of being branded a hipster if you do. 


This was some terrible news to wake up to this morning.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on April 12, 2007, 11:57:10 AM
Quite a loss for humanity.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 26, 2007, 06:55:07 PM
Film lobbyist Jack Valenti dies at 85

Jack Valenti, the former White House aide and film industry lobbyist who instituted the modern movie ratings system and guided Hollywood from the censorship era to the digital age, died Thursday. He was 85.

Valenti had a stroke in March and was hospitalized for several weeks at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore.

He died of complications from the stroke at his Washington, D.C., home, said Seth Oster of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Valenti was a special assistant and confidant to President Lyndon Johnson when he was lured to Hollywood in 1966 by movie moguls Lew Wasserman and Arthur Krim. A lifelong film lover, he once cited the 1966 film "A Man for All Seasons" as his all-time favorite.

When he took over as president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Valenti was caught between Hollywood's outdated system of self-censorship and the liberal cultural explosion taking place in America.

Valenti abolished the industry's restrictive Hays code, which prohibited explicit violence and frank treatment of sex, and in 1968 oversaw creation of today's letter-based ratings system.

"While I believe that every director, studio has the right to make the movies they want to make, everybody else has a right not to watch it," Valenti told The Associated Press shortly before his retirement in 2004. "All we do is give advance cautionary warnings and say this is what we think is in this movie."

Dan Glickman, his successor at the MPAA, said Thursday that Valenti embodied the "theatricality" of the industry.

"Jack was a showman, a gentleman, an orator, and a passionate champion of this country, its movies, and the enduring freedoms that made both so important to this world," Glickman said in a statement.

The white-haired Valenti was familiar to movie fans through his frequent appearances at the Academy Awards, when frequent Oscar host Johnny Carson would poke fun at his speeches. But Valenti was a showman, equally animated whether testifying at a congressional hearing, hobnobbing with celebrities at the Cannes Film Festival, or previewing films for Washington's elite in his office's private theater.

His friends ranged from actors Kirk Douglas and Sidney Poitier to, more improbably, Sen. Jesse Helms, a conservative often at odds with Hollywood.

In Valenti's later years he handled tricky new challenges from the Internet and technologies that allow movies to be illegally reproduced and distributed in an instant. Valenti also traveled worldwide seeking to thwart movie piracy and boost film exports to reluctant countries such as China.

Valenti's Washington career was born from tragedy. As a Texas-based political consultant working for then-Vice President Johnson, Valenti was riding in the presidential motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Valenti, six cars behind the president, initially didn't know what happened.

"Without a trace of warning, the car in front of us accelerated from eight miles an hour to eighty," he wrote in his memoir, "This Time, This Place," to be published in June. "The whole spectacle turned bizarre, like an arcade game run amok, as we drove madly toward or away from some unnamed terror."

In an Associated Press interview, he said in 2003 that the assassination "is so seared in my memory I literally, sometimes at night — not often, but once or twice a year — I relive that day."

Oliver Stone's 1991 film "JFK" angered Valenti. Stressing he wasn't speaking for the MPAA, he said the film's implication that LBJ was involved in the assassination was "quackery" plucked from a "slag heap of loony theories."

Hurried aboard Air Force One for Johnson's historic flight back to Washington, Valenti was instantly drafted as a special assistant to the new president.

His duties grew to include congressional relations, diplomacy and speech editing, and he attended Cabinet and National Security Council meetings. Valenti became known for his loyalty, likening Johnson to Lincoln for his civil rights efforts and declaring, to widespread ridicule, "I sleep each night a little better" knowing Johnson was in charge.

Yet Valenti resigned in 1966, over Johnson's objections, to accept the movie post. He became one of the highest-paid and best-known trade association executives, with a salary topping $1 million and his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The ratings program that featured labels such as "G" for general audiences remained his greatest legacy, even as social mores evolved even further, creating new criticism over Hollywood's attempts to protect its audience.

The ratings system has met with recent disapproval from many film critics, cinema fans and moviemakers, especially directors of independent films who say the system is stacked in favor of big studio productions and against edgier, low-budget fare. Critics also say the system is overly prudish on sex while allowing excessive violence. Recently, tobacco opponents have even sought to add smoking to the list of activities deemed too sensitive for younger viewers.

Director Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" depicted the system as a secretive and inconsistent process that did not provide adequate methods to appeal decisions.

The system did undergo changes over the decades. A PG-13 rating (parental guidance strongly recommended) was added in the 1980s. The X rating for adult films was transformed into the NC-17 rating in the 1990s.

But the format Valenti laid out in the late 1960s generally has remained intact. Valenti was always quick to rebut critics, saying frequent MPAA surveys found that parents with young children felt the ratings system was a helpful guide.

Without the ratings system, Valenti said, Hollywood could be faced with a labyrinth of local censorship boards with conflicting standards.

Born in Houston, the grandson of Sicilian immigrants, Valenti swept floors and made popcorn in a local theater as a boy. He never lost his wonder at what he called the "miraculous, unfathomable alchemy" of moviemaking.

After earning the Distinguished Flying Cross for piloting bombing missions over Italy in World War II, he worked his way through night school at the University of Houston, then earned a master's in business administration from Harvard.

In 1952, he co-founded an advertising and political consulting agency. He was introduced to Senate Majority Leader Johnson three years later and was "mesmerized," Valenti recalled. "I felt a primal force was in my presence."

He met his future wife, Mary Margaret Wiley, through his budding friendship with the senator — she was Johnson's longtime secretary. They had three children.

Valenti wrote a handful of books, including one on Johnson, "A Very Human President," and a novel, "Protect and Defend," published in 1992 by Doubleday with the help of one of its senior editors, Jacqueline Kennedy.

By the time he retired, the movie business had been on a growth spurt for more than a decade, with admissions climbing to their highest level since the late 1950s.

"I'm the luckiest guy in the world, because I spent my entire public working career in two of life's classic fascinations, politics and Hollywood," he said in 2004. "You can't beat that."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on April 27, 2007, 08:04:54 AM
Today's top story: Underage demons suddenly prohibited from patronizing the lower circles of Hell.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on April 27, 2007, 02:19:18 PM
Quote from: sparrowhoff on April 27, 2007, 08:04:54 AM
Today's top story: Underage demons suddenly prohibited from patronizing the lower circles of Hell.

i wasn't exactly overcome with grief, but that was cold.





:salute:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on April 27, 2007, 03:10:31 PM
underage angels suddenly prohibited from visiting the sexier parts of Heaven?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on April 27, 2007, 07:57:55 PM
Quote from: picolas on April 27, 2007, 03:10:31 PM
underage angels suddenly prohibited from visiting the sexier parts of Heaven?

dig it.


the salute was to Sparrow, though.

*edit.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on April 28, 2007, 08:35:39 PM
he had a great name.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on May 01, 2007, 02:36:38 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on April 26, 2007, 06:55:07 PM
Film lobbyist Jack Valenti dies at 85

I'm sure its no coincidence that IFC is showing This Film is Not Yet Rated right now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on May 01, 2007, 09:51:19 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070501/ap_en_tv/obit_poston

'Newhart' sidekick Tom Poston dies at 85
By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer Tue May 1, 7:27 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - Tom Poston, the tall, pasty-faced comic who found fame and fortune playing a clueless everyman on such hit television shows as "Newhart" and "Mork and Mindy," has died. He was 85.

Poston, who was married to Suzanne Pleshette of "The Bob Newhart Show," died Monday night at home after a brief illness, a family representative, Tanner Gibson, said Tuesday. The nature of his illness was not disclosed.

Bob Newhart remembered Poston as a "versatile and veteran performer and a kindhearted individual."

"Tom was always the `go-to guy' on `Newhart' in addition to being a good and longtime friend," Newhart said in a statement Tuesday.

Billy Crystal, who starred in the 1978 film "Rabbit Test" in which Poston also appeared, was another admirer.

"How rare that a gentle, sweet person could be so incredibly funny," Crystal said in a statement. "I grew up watching Tom on 'The Steve Allen Show' as a kid. What an incredible gift to become friends with him and to learn about comedy from a true professional. He was a combination of Stan Laurel and Jack Benny. We will all miss him."

Poston's run as a comic bumbler began in the mid-1950s with "The Steve Allen Show" after Allen plucked the character actor from the Broadway stage to join an ensemble of eccentrics he would conduct "man in the street" interviews with.

Don Knotts was the shaky Mr. Morrison, Louis Nye was the suave, overconfident Gordon Hathaway and Poston's character was so unnerved by the television cameras that he couldn't remember who he was. He won an Emmy playing "The Man Who Can't Remember His Name."

But when Allen moved the show from New York to Los Angeles in 1959, Poston stayed behind.

"Hollywood's not for me right now; I'm a Broadway cat," he told a reporter at the time.

When he did finally move west, he quickly began appearing in variety shows, sitcoms and films.

His movie credits included "Cold Turkey," "The Happy Hooker," "Rabbit Test" and, more recently, "Christmas With the Kranks," "Beethoven's 5th" and "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement."

On "Mork and Mindy," which starred Robin Williams as a space alien, Poston was Franklin Delano Bickley, the mindless boozer with the annoying dog. On "Newhart," he was George Utley, the handyman who couldn't fix anything at the New England inn run by Newhart's character. And on Newhart's show "Bob," he was the star's dim-bulb former college roommate.

"These guys are about a half-step behind life's parade," Poston commented in a 1983 interview. "The ink on their instruction sheets is beginning to fade. But they can function and cope and don't realize they are driving people up the walls.

"In ways I don't like to admit, I'm a goof-up myself," Poston continued. "It's an essential part of my character. When these guys screw up it reminds me of my own incompetence with the small frustrations of life."

Goof-up or not, Poston was a versatile actor who made his Broadway debut in 1947 playing five roles in Jose Ferrer's "Cyrano de Bergerac."

One role called for him to engage in a duel, fall 10 feet, roll across the stage and vanish into the orchestra pit. Other actors had auditioned and failed but Poston, who in his youth had been an acrobat with the Flying Zepleys, did the stunt perfectly.

He went on to play secondary roles in Broadway comedies and starred at regional theaters in such shows as "Romanoff and Juliet" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." For 10 years he was also a panelist on the popular TV quiz show "To Tell the Truth."

He made guest appearances on scores of television shows, including "Studio One," "The Phil Silvers Show," "The Defenders," "Get Smart," "The Bob Newhart Show," "The Love Boat," "St. Elsewhere," "The Simpsons," "Coach," "Murphy Brown," "Home Improvement," "Touched by an Angel," "Will & Grace," "Dream On," "Just Shoot Me!" and "That '70s Show."

Poston and his first wife, Jean Sullivan, had a daughter, Francesca, before their marriage ended in divorce. He married his second wife, Kay Hudson, after they met while appearing in the St. Louis Light Opera, and they had a son, Jason, and daughter, Hudson.

Poston and Pleshette, who had appeared together in the 1959 Broadway play "The Golden Fleecing," had had a brief fling before marrying other people. Both now widowed, they reunited in 2000 and married the following year.

Their paths had crossed on "The Bob Newhart Show" in the 1970s. Poston made several guest appearances on the sitcom in which Pleshette played Newhart's wife.

In 2006, Pleshette underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer that her agent said was caught at an early stage.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, on Oct. 17, 1921, Thomas Poston moved from city to city as a child as his father hunted for work during the Depression. As a teenager, he made money as a boxer.

Following two years at Bethany College he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and flew troops to the European war zone during World War II.

Hunting for a postwar occupation, Poston read an interview with Charles Jehlinger, creative head of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was inspired to sign up for a two-year course at the Academy.

Besides Pleshette, 70, Poston is survived by his children, Francesca Poston of Nashville, Tenn., Jason Poston of Los Angeles and Hudson Poston of Portland, Ore.

A private service was planned for immediate family. Details of a public memorial service were to be announced later.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on May 03, 2007, 10:44:42 AM
Quote from: cronopio on April 28, 2007, 08:35:39 PM
he had a great name.

i'll save my tears for Rip Torn.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on May 15, 2007, 01:08:18 PM
http://www.knbc.com/news/13323326/detail.html (http://www.knbc.com/news/13323326/detail.html)

Rev. Jerry Falwell Dies At 73

LYNCHBURG, Va. -- A Liberty University executive said the Rev. Jerry Falwell has died.

Falwell, 73, had been hospitalized earlier Tuesday in "gravely serious" condition after being found unconscious in his office Tuesday.

Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of Falwell's Liberty University, said Falwell was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but "he has a history of heart challenges."

"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine and they found him unresponsive."

Falwell, a television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority, became the face of the religious right in the 1980s. He later founded the conservative Liberty University and served as its president.

Falwell survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest.

Liberty University

Falwell founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., in 1971. The school offers 38 undergraduate and 15 graduate programs. The 4,400-acre campus serves more than 20,000 resident and external students. Individuals from all 50 states and more than 70 nations make up the student body.

Liberty University is nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and located on the south bank of the historic James River.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on May 15, 2007, 06:23:12 PM
i feel like watching The People vs Larry Flynt.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on May 17, 2007, 01:44:08 AM
Quote from: pozer on May 15, 2007, 01:08:18 PM
Rev. Jerry Falwell Dies At 73

Christopher Hitchens tears Falwell a new one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkAPaEMwyKU)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on May 17, 2007, 02:10:29 AM
England seems to have the market cornered on witty, outspoken atheists.  Really, I can only think of the two (Hitchens and Richard Dawkins) offhand, but sadly, that seems to be the whole market.  Politically active atheists in America tend to be unbearable for some reason, like the mom and daughter behind the Freedom From Religion Foundation, or those obnoxious Rational Response Team kids.  Really, the best we've got is James Randi (not that there's anything wrong with James Randi).

But anyway, back on topic, Jerry Falwell's pinching his chubby little flanks in Heaven now, and I couldn't possibly be sadder about it.   
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 13, 2007, 03:51:57 PM
Daniel Robert Epstein died. (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=116444)  A lot of his interviews have been posted here.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on June 13, 2007, 09:37:45 PM
yeah but how many ppl actually read them?

i did. and that post.

damn that's young.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: JG on June 13, 2007, 10:24:53 PM
he is the one interviewer i always made sure to read.  he was great.  thats really terrible. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 14, 2007, 11:03:36 AM
R.I.P. Dan Robert Epstein

by Garth Franklin

The world got a little smaller today as 31-year-old Daniel Robert Epstein suddenly passed away. Dan's great work remains posted in the archives at SuicideGirls, Newsarama, UGO and FilmStew. I urge you to check them out when you get a chance.

Despite protests to the contrary, there's more of a community in the field of online entertainment journalism than many other professions. Like any industry though there are plenty of hangers on just filling in time, opportunists solely in it for the money or credit, blowhards stroking their own egos, and recluses who wrap themselves comfortably in anonymity to keep their social and work lives as separate as possible.

Every now and then though you'll find a real person - someone with a real passion for it and the drive to push themselves further, but someone who also can sit back at the end of a day and have a good laugh and drink about it with you. Dan was one of those, an increasingly rare lot these days which makes it so much harder to grasp that he's gone.

Here was a man who embraced life with both arms. A man several years older than I am, but without the years of cynicism that all of us who've been in it for the long-haul become saddled with. He went after interviews with such vigor and landed some of the most fascinating articles you'll ever read. He didn't pursue celebrities or sensationalism, he talked to people whose work had a cultural impact and whom he admired. The result were candid, honest and conversational interviews filled with real intelligence and wit.

I've gotten to know Dan over the years over the course of about a dozen film set visits, and always considered him one of our group's equivalent of the old guard. He was one of a dozen or so online journalists or publicists that, if they were on a set visit, would turn it from being the dull chore they can often be into a grand experience.

On a few occasions these visits become real cathartic experiences and gave rise to friendships that last for years. Dan was often present when they did, a real catalyst that helped get the ball rolling. Consequently the two of us and various others have had assorted adventures together in locales across the U.S. and Europe, the scenery may have changed frequently but Dan did not. He was someone whom everyone adored.

Memories are what I'll keep - like a great night out at some college dive bar in Louisiana, getting lost in a taxi somewhere in a New Mexico housing project with a gorgeous publicist and a near passed out JoBlo correspondent, or simultaneously checking out what was behind Superman's cape on a back lot in Sydney. Most of all I'll miss the laughter, the man had one of the best senses of humor of anyone I know and the banter one could share with him was gold.

To his friends and family, of which there are many, my deepest thoughts and condolences to you all, especially to his wife Andrea. I never have gotten the chance to meet Dan's special lady, but he has regaled me with stories over time and one day I hope to do just that. To her and all his family, you have the sympathies of all of us in this somewhat odd little community. To Dan mate, wherever you are, I hope the energy which you brought to your life will continue long on and inspire others as it has me.

Farewell my friend.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on June 14, 2007, 11:06:34 AM
for all those that read Suicide Girls for the articles, he will be missed.

:cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 14, 2007, 12:37:04 PM
There are articles?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on June 14, 2007, 09:24:32 PM
Quote from: polkablues on June 14, 2007, 12:37:04 PM
There are articles?

there are great articles, actually.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 15, 2007, 04:25:33 AM
They must be behind the naked girls.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 27, 2007, 09:26:48 PM
Fashion company founder Liz Claiborne dies at 78

Liz ClaiborneFashion designer Liz Claiborne, whose styles became a cornerstone of career women's wardrobes in the 1970s and 1980s, has died, the company she founded said today. She was 78.

Claiborne died Tuesday at the New York Presbyterian Hospital after suffering from cancer for a number of years, said Gwen Satterfield, personal assistant to Claiborne.

Claiborne founded Liz Claiborne Inc. in 1976 along with her husband Art Ortenberg and Leonard Boxer. Their goal was to create a collection of fashions aimed at the growing number of women entering the work force.

The new approach to dressing revolutionized the department store industry, which had only focused on stocking pants in one department and skirts in another.

The clothes became an instant hit, and the company went public in 1981. By 1985, Liz Claiborne Inc. was the first company founded by a woman to be listed in the Fortune 500, according to the company's Web site. The company, whose brands now include Ellen Tracy, Dana Buchman and Juicy Couture, generated sales of almost $5 billion last year.

Liz Claiborne retired from the day-to-day operations in 1989.

"In losing Liz Claiborne, we have not only lost the founder of our company, but an inspirational woman who revolutionized the fashion industry 30 years ago," said Bill McComb, CEO of Liz Claiborne, in a statement. "Her commitment to style and design is ever present in our thinking and the way we work. We will remember Liz for her vision, her entrepreneurial spirit and her enduring compassion and generosity."

Of the original founders, Boxer retired from the company in 1985 and Claiborne and her husband retired in 1989. There have been a number of changes since then. Jerry Chazen, the fourth original partner, became the company's chairman in 1989.

Paul R. Charron succeeded Chazen in the mid-1990s, and spearheaded an aggressive campaign to acquire different labels to diversify beyond the company's namesake brands, which struggled with increased competition.

Last November, McComb joined the company as CEO, succeeding Charron, and is planning to overhaul the business again to meet the demands of the consolidated department store industry.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on June 29, 2007, 07:15:21 PM
Good Morning America movie critic Joel Siegel dies from cancer

NEW YORK -- Joel Siegel, a longtime movie critic for WABC-TV and "Good Morning America" who racked up five New York Emmy Awards for his insightful work, died Friday, the television station said. He was 63.

The station said Siegel, who was famous for his weekly reviews, had been battling colon cancer.

"Joel was an important part of ABC News and we will miss him," ABC News President David Westin said in a release. "He was a brilliant reviewer and a great reporter. But much more, he was our dear friend and colleague. Our thoughts and prayers are with Joel's family."

Siegel was known for his sense of humor, movie acumen and sharp judgment. He never let an actor off the hook if the performance was lackluster.

"The appeal of Matthew McConaughey has long evaded me both as a pinup and as an actor," Siegel opined in his review of "We are Marshall," a 2006 film. "His constant ticks, bad hair and strained syntax as a coach fumble what should have been the tragic and inspirational story of the rebuilding of Marshall University's football team after a devastating plane crash."

Dave Davis, president and general manager of WABC-TV, said the critic loved to poke at uninspiring movies.

"No one had more fun writing about a bad movie than Joel," Davis said.

ABC anchor Charles Gibson said Siegel knew how to tell a story.

"He had an inexhaustible supply of stories _ most funny, many poignant, all with a point or a punch line," Gibson said.

Born in Los Angeles on July 7, 1943, Siegel graduated cum laude from UCLA. After college, he started writing for The Los Angeles Times, where he reviewed books.

He landed in the Big Apple in 1972 and worked as a reporter for WCBS-TV. He also hosted "Joel Siegel's New York" on WCBS Radio. Four years later, he jumped to WABC-TV, cementing his reputation as a film critic over the next three decades.

In 1981, he joined "Good Morning America" and became a regular as the network's entertainment editor, easily recognizable by his thick mustache and glasses.

In addition to Emmy Awards, he also received a public service award from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith; and the New York State Associated Press Broadcasters Association Award for general excellence in individual reporting.

He survived by his son, Dylan, and wife, Ena Swansea.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 29, 2007, 11:06:05 PM
Quote from: Ginger on June 29, 2007, 07:15:21 PM
Good Morning America movie critic Joel Siegel dies from cancer

Kevin Smith is currently being interrogated.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on July 01, 2007, 12:01:29 PM
Taiwanese Director Yang Dies at 59

HONG KONG -- Edward Yang, who won best director in 2000 at the Cannes Film Festival and was known for his realistic portrayals of modern Taiwan, has died of complications from colon cancer, a film industry consultant said Sunday. He was 59.

Yang, an American citizen, died at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. on Friday, Norman Wang told The Associated Press. Wang said Yang's family asked him to release the information to the media.

Yang had been battling colon cancer for seven years but kept his illness private, Wang said.

Born in Shanghai in 1947, his family moved from mainland China to Taiwan amid civil war waged by the communists following the retreat by the ruling Nationalists, according to his biography in the book "Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers."

The multitalented Yang took a convoluted path to filmmaking.

Pursuing what was considered a prestigious career in Taiwan, he studied engineering on the island, received a master's degree at the University of Florida and worked as a computer engineer before becoming a filmmaker.

"On my 30th birthday, I suddenly said to myself, 'Damn, I'm getting old!' I realized that I had to change my life. I needed to start doing something that I could enjoy and through which I could feel fulfilled," he once said in an interview.

Yang favored stories set in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei. Among his works are "A Brighter Summer Day," a 1991 film set in 1950s Taipei about Elvis-worshipping teenage boys who get involved with gangsters.

The film was viewed as a major incubator of Taiwanese movie talent and an important documentation of the island's history under authoritarian Nationalist rule. One character is shown being questioned by Taiwanese police in the middle of the night, common treatment at the time for locals suspected of communist sympathies.

Among the many first-time movie professionals who worked on "A Brighter Summer Day" was Taiwanese actor Chang Chen who went on to star in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," the Ang Lee kung fu hit.

"He was my inspirational teacher in performance and one of the directors I respect the most," Chang was quoted as saying on Sunday by the Chinese news Web site Sina.com.

Yang won best director at Cannes in 2000 for "Yi Yi (A One and a Two)," about a Taiwanese family that copes with the serious illness of their elderly mother.

He is survived by his wife, concert pianist Kaili Peng, his 6-year-old son Sean, a younger sister and a brother.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on July 01, 2007, 10:00:36 PM
I cannot even begin to explain how utterly crushed I am by this.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sunrise on July 02, 2007, 06:28:10 PM
I saw this last night...just an absolute tragedy.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: bonanzataz on July 22, 2007, 12:29:07 AM
RALEIGH, N.C. - Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire and then watched it collapse in disgrace, has died. She was 65.
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Messner had battled colon cancer since 1996 that more recently spread to her lungs. She died peacefully Friday at her home near Kansas City, Mo., said Joe Spotts, her manager and booking agent.

A family service was held Saturday in a private cemetery, where her ashes were interred, he said.

She had frequently spoken about her medical problems, saying she hoped to be an inspiration to others. "Don't let fear rule your life," she said. "Live one day at a time, and never be afraid." But she told well-wishers in a note on her Web site in May that the doctors had stopped trying to treat the cancer.

In an interview with CNN's Larry King two months later, an emaciated Messner — still using her trademark makeup — said, "I believe when I leave this earth, because I love the Lord, I'm going straight to heaven." Asked if she had any regrets, Messner said: "I don't think about it, Larry, because it's a waste of good brain space."

For many, the TV image of then-Mrs. Bakker forgiving husband Jim's infidelities, tears streaking her cheeks with mascara, became a symbol for the wages of greed and hypocrisy in 1980s America.

She divorced her husband of 30 years, with whom she had two children, in 1992 while he was in prison for defrauding millions from followers of their PTL television ministries. The letters stood for "Praise the Lord" or "People that Love."

Jim Bakker said in a statement that his ex-wife "lived her life like the song she sang, 'If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade.'"

"She is now in Heaven with her mother and grandmother and Jesus Christ, the one who she loves and has served from childbirth," he said. "That is the comfort I can give to all who loved her."

Messner's second husband also served time in prison. She married Roe Messner, who had been the chief builder of the Bakkers' Heritage USA Christian theme park near Fort Mill, S.C., in 1993. In 1995, he was convicted of bankruptcy fraud, and he spent about two years in prison.

Through it all, Messner kept plugging her faith and herself. She did concerts, a short-lived secular TV talk show and an inspirational videotape. In 2004, she cooperated in the making of a documentary about her struggle with cancer, called "Tammy Faye: Death Defying."

"I wanted to help people ... maybe show the inside (of the experience) and make it a little less frightening," she said.

More recently, Tammy Faye kept in the public eye via her Web site.

"I cry out to the Lord knowing that many of you are praying for me," Messner wrote in a July 16 post in which she indicated she weighed 65 pounds. "In spite of it all, I get dressed and go out to eat. ... I crave hamburgers and french fries with LOTS of ketchup! When I can eat that again, it will be a day of victory!"

In 2004, she appeared on the WB reality show "The Surreal Life," co-starring with rapper Vanilla Ice, ex-porn star Ron Jeremy and others. She told King in 2004 that she didn't know who Jeremy was when they met and they became friends.

Messner was never charged with a crime in connection with the Bakker scandal. She said she counted the costs in other ways.

"I know what it's like to hit rock bottom," she said in promotional material for her 1996 video "You Can Make It."

In the mid-1980s, the Bakkers were on top, ruling over a ministry that claimed 500,000 followers. Their "Jim and Tammy Show," part TV talk show, part evangelism meeting, was seen across the country. Heritage USA boasted a 500-room hotel, shopping mall, convention center, water-amusement park, TV studio and several real-estate developments. PTL employed about 2,000 people.

Then in March 1987, Bakker resigned, admitting he had a tryst with Jessica Hahn, a 32-year-old former church secretary.

Tammy Faye Bakker stuck with her disgraced husband through five stormy years of tabloid headlines as the ministry unraveled.

Prosecutors said the PTL organization sold more than 150,000 "lifetime partnerships" promising lodging at the theme park but did not build enough hotel space with the $158 million in proceeds. At his fraud trial, Jim Bakker was accused of diverting $3.7 million to personal use even though he knew the ministry was financially shaky. Trial testimony showed PTL paid $265,000 to Hahn to cover up the sexual encounter with the minister.

Jim Bakker was convicted in 1989 of 24 fraud and conspiracy counts and sentenced to 45 years. The sentence was later reduced, and he was freed in 1994. He said that his wife's decision to leave him had been "like a meat hook deep in my heart. I couldn't eat for days."

While not charged, his then-wife shared during the 1980s in the public criticism and ridicule over the couple's extravagance, including the reportedly gold-plated bathroom fixtures and an air-conditioned doghouse.

There was even a popular T-shirt satirizing her image. The shirt read, "I ran into Tammy Faye at the shopping mall," with the lettering on top of what look like clots of mascara, traces of lipstick and smudges of peach-toned makeup.

In a 1992 letter to her New Covenant Church in Orlando, Fla., she explained why she finally was seeking a divorce.

"For years I have been pretending that everything is all right, when in fact I hurt all the time," she wrote.

"I cannot pretend anymore."

In the end, there wasn't any property to divide, her attorney said. The Bakkers lost their luxury homes in North Carolina, California and Tennessee, their fleet of Cadillacs and Mercedeses, and their vintage Rolls-Royce.

Her autobiography, "I Gotta Be Me," recounts a childhood as Tammy Faye LaValley, one of eight children of a poor family in International Falls, Minn. Her biological father walked out. She was reticent about her age, but a 2000 profile of her in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis said she was born in March 1942.

She recalled trying eye makeup for the first time, then wiping it off for fear it was the devil's work. Then she thought again.

"Why can't I do this?" she asked. "If it makes me look prettier, why can't I do this?"

She married Bakker in 1961, after they met at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. Beginning with a children's puppet act, they created a religious show that brought a fundamentalist Protestant message to millions.

A secular TV talk program, the "Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show" with co-host Jim J. Bullock, lasted just six weeks in early 1996. Shortly after it went off the air, she underwent surgery for colon cancer.

She said afterward that she endured bleeding for a year because she was embarrassed to go to a male doctor. And she wore her makeup even in surgery.

"They didn't make me take it off," she said. "I had wonderful doctors and understanding nurses. I went in fully made up and came out fully made up."

Survivors include her husband and her two children, Jamie Charles Bakker of New York City and Tammy Sue Chapman of Charlotte.

Spotts said that the family is considering a public memorial service for the coming weeks, but that nothing had been finalized Saturday.







sad...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on July 22, 2007, 01:23:45 PM
I remember watching her on that surreal life tv show with Ron Jeremy and Vanilla Ice. She seemed like just a really nice, sweet, caring person.

That's too bad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 23, 2007, 02:02:59 PM
Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs dies at 74

Laszlo Kovacs, one of Hollywood's most influential and respected directors of photography, died Saturday night in his sleep. He was 74.

Kovacs lensed the landmark cinematic achievement "Easy Rider" and compiled about 60 credits including "Five Easy Pieces," "Shampoo," "Paper Moon," "New York, New York," "What's Up, Doc," "Ghostbusters," "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "Miss Congeniality."

The Hungary-born cinematographer also carried during his career a remarkable story of courage that occurred 50 years ago during his country's revolution.

Kovacs was born and raised on a farm in Hungary when that country was isolated from the Western world, first by the Nazi occupation and later during the Cold War. Kovacs was in his final year of school in Budapest when a revolt against the communist regime started on the city streets.

He and his lifelong friend Vilmos Zsigmond made the daring decision to document the event for its historic significance. To do this, they borrowed film and a camera from their school, hid the camera in a paper bag with a hole for the lens and recorded the conflict.
 
The pair then embarked on a dangerous journey during which they carried 30,000 feet of documentary film across the border into Austria. They entered the U.S. as political refugees in 1957.

Their historic film was featured in a CBS documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite.

Against the odds, Kovacs and Zsigmond went on to become two of Hollywood's most influential directors of photography.

Kovacs was an active member of the American Society of Cinematographers, and in 2002, he received the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award, the organization's highest honor.

In 1998, he received two lifetime achievement awards for cinematography: one at the Hawaii International Film Festival and one at CamerImage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography, in Torun, Poland.

Kovacs was a member of the ASC's board of directors and demonstrated a deep commitment to education by leading the ASC Education Committee.

The 2008 ASC Student Awards will be known as the Laszlo Kovacs Student Heritage Award.

Kovacs is survived by his wife, Audrey, and two daughters, Jullianna and Nadia.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on July 30, 2007, 07:13:31 PM
Film Legend Ingmar Bergman Dies at 89

All Things Considered, July 30, 2007 ·

At the beginning of Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal, the figure of Death stands on a rocky beach and presents himself to a knight just returned from the Crusades. Death is entirely cloaked and hooded in black, in stark contrast to his doughy white face. The image is still one of the most haunting pictures ever put on a movie screen.

Bergman, who died Monday at the age of 89, took on the biggest subjects — life, death, the existence and the silence of God.

"Ingmar Bergman was probably the nearest equivalent to a Shakespeare or a Rembrandt that the cinema has produced," said film historian and critic Peter Cowie, who is also Bergman's biographer.

"He uniquely was able to produce tragedies, comedies, historical works and chamber works which really delved deeply into the human condition. He really was able to get below the surface of the human mask."

Cowie said that like many great artists, Bergman also had a unifying theme in his work: humanity's need for metaphysical belief.

"It started as orthodox Lutheranism, in some of the films," Cowie said. "But over the years that changed to a much wider, nagging concern about man's place in the universe — why we're here, and if we're here, why aren't we better behaved with each other?"

Bergman often used events and images from his life, and his difficult childhood led him to look at how families malfunction. In a rare television interview with Dick Cavett in 1971, Bergman described a beautiful early childhood of making puppets and living in his imagination.

"Suddenly I didn't know if I had dreamt things, or if they existed," he said. "Sometimes life could be very strange, very hard and very cruel. And suddenly, you know, the parents came to me and said, in a very strange way, 'Why did you do that?' Or — and I didn't know why — or 'You have been lying.'

"That was most difficult thing. I didn't know I had been lying, because I mixed things."

One of the most beautiful examples of mixing dreams and reality comes in Bergman's Wild Strawberries, a film from 1957 that many consider his best. After a hard day of memories and self-evaluation, an aging doctor dreams of seeing his parents across a pond. The scene ends with a close-up of the doctor, played by the venerable Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjostrom. The outdoor light was perfect, but Sjostrom was angry about working overtime. Bergman was sure the shot would be a catastrophe, but it turned out to be his favorite close-up.

"We didn't rehearse — we didn't try it, you know, we didn't press it out," he said. "It was not created under pressure. It just came, suddenly. And that is, that face has so much about experience, about tenderness, about an old man's sadness for life's going away."

Bergman directed some of the greatest films ever made — Summer with Monica, The Virgin Spring, Persona, Cries and Whispers and Scenes from a Marriage were among his other titles. He directed his first film in 1945, and first gained international attention with 1955's Smiles of a Summer Night, a romantic comedy that inspired the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music.

And although he "officially" retired from theatrical filmmaking in 1984, he continued to make movies for television, to work in the theater — he was also a prominent stage director and the onetime head of Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theater — and to write, until recently.

He was "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," director Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988.

Devoted viewers agree that for the past six decades, Bergman's films have defined the possibilities of the art of film.

From NPR reports and The Associated Press




Why Bergman was an artistic giant

Bergman made more than 50 films in a career spanning six decades
Film historian Geoffrey Macnab reflects on the surprisingly versatile career of director Ingmar Bergman, who has died aged 89.

Internationally, Ingmar Bergman is known almost exclusively for his films, but in Sweden he's a huge cultural figure.

He may have made more than 50 films, but he was also extremely active in writing and directing radio plays, he did a lot of work for television, he wrote novels, he wrote scripts.

You could say he has covered every base. On that level alone, that's why he is important.

Bergman's theatre career and film career ran more or less in tandem, and there was a period in the 1950s where he'd be doing theatre work in the winter months, and he would go off in the summer to make films.

It seems as though he had an extraordinary work ethic.

Outside Sweden, people have a vision of Bergman as a very austere figure who made melancholic Scandinavian films about death and doom.

But ironically, his breakthrough film internationally was a comedy - Smiles of a Summer Night.

That was a quintessential summer house farce, which directly influenced Woody Allen's Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy.

You could loosely describe something like The Hour of the Wolf as a horror film - with an artist going mad on an island as he's preyed upon by weird, grotesque aristocratic figures who live in a castle.

And, because of his messy private life, he had to direct a whole bunch of soap advertisements in the 1950s to support his ex-wives and children.

So he was much more versatile than his reputation would suggest.

In Sweden, he found his audience with two films.

There was Scenes From a Marriage, which apparently almost every Swedish couple watched, and which fomented a huge debate on marriage and divorce in Sweden.

It appealed to an older generation who maybe thought his films were too experimental and avant-garde.

For younger viewers, his production of The Magic Flute was the film they loved.

It was shown on Swedish television in the mid-'70s and around half the population watched it.

But, to my mind, he did some of his absolute best work in the 1960s.

Persona is an extraordinary film. It's really an experimental film. It has a lot of weird silent cinema imagery and a distressing montage before the main action begins.

But his reputation was such that even an avant-garde film like that was able to get a mainstream reception.

He made 54 films and it would be more or less impossible for a European director today to work anything as like as quickly - because the finance isn't there.

In that sense, he's the last of a breed. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6922552.stm
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 31, 2007, 12:50:51 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070730/ap_en_ot/obit_snyder

Broadcaster Tom Snyder dies at 71

SAN FRANCISCO - Tom Snyder, whose smoke-filled interviews were a staple of late night television and an inspiration for Dan Aykroyd on "Saturday Night Live," has died after a struggle with leukemia. He was 71.

Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco from complications associated with leukemia, his longtime producer and friend Mike Horowicz told The Associated Press on Monday.

Known for his improvised, casual style and robust laughter, Snyder conducted a number of memorable interviews as host of NBC's "The Tomorrow Show." Among his guests were John Lennon, Charles Manson and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.

Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in Milwaukee in the 1960s, then moved into local television news. He anchored newscasts in Philadelphia and Los Angeles before moving to late night.

"He loved the broadcast business," said Marciarose Shestack, who co-anchored a noontime newscast with Snyder at KYW-TV in Philadelphia in the 1960s. "He was very surprising and very irreverent and not at all a typical newscaster."

In 1972, Snyder left news to host "The Tomorrow Show," which followed "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.

His catch phrase for the show was: "Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air." Snyder smoked throughout his show, the cigarette cloud swirling around him during interviews.

He gained more fame when Ackroyd lampooned him in the early days of "Saturday Night Live."

In 1995, he returned to late night television as the host of "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder" on CBS. The program followed David Letterman's "Late Show" until 1998, when Snyder was replaced by Craig Kilborn.

Snyder announced on his Web site in 2005 that he had chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

"When I was a kid leukemia was a death sentence," he wrote then. "Now, my doctors say it's treatable!"

Horowicz met Snyder in 1982 and worked with him at WABC in New York before producing the "Tom Snyder" television show.

"He was a great guy and very talented," Horowicz said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on July 31, 2007, 01:36:06 AM
I know not too many people here are fans of sports, especially football in America. But this is as significant of a death as anyone for the game. If anyone here has any recollection of the game in the 60s and 70s, they know it was dominated by strict running offenses. Today it is more passing offenses. Bill Walsh was the man who bridged the gap between the old and the modern in football. He innovated the game on both the college and professional level. I hate the 49ers, but I have a lot of respect for what he did. 

Former 49ers coach Bill Walsh dead at 75

By JANIE MCCAULEY, AP Sports Writer
9 minutes ago



SAN FRANCISCO - Bill Walsh took great chances on the football field and with the people who worked for him. Take Jerry Rice, the superstar receiver he plucked from tiny Mississippi Valley State in the first round back in 1985.

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And Tyrone Willingham, the man he mentored during Willingham's Stanford coaching days and one of the first participants in Walsh's minority fellowship program.

Nicknamed "The Genius" for his creative schemes that became known as the West Coast offense, Walsh died at his Woodside home Monday morning following a long battle with leukemia. He was 75.

"He gave me the opportunity to come to a winner, San Francisco out of Mississippi Valley State University," Rice said. "I was the 16th player taken in the first round. It was all because of Bill Walsh and what he stood for. I think that was very unique for him, because he could see talent."

Walsh changed the NFL with his innovative offense and a legion of coaching disciples, breaking new ground and winning three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers along the way.

"This is just a tremendous loss for all of us, especially to the Bay Area because of what he meant to the 49ers," said Joe Montana, San Francisco's Hall of Fame quarterback. "Outside of my dad he was probably the most influential person in my life. I am going to miss him."

Walsh didn't become an NFL head coach until 47, and he spent just 10 seasons on the San Francisco sideline. But he left an indelible mark on the nation's most popular sport, building the once-woebegone 49ers into the most successful team of the 1980s.

The soft-spoken Californian also produced an army of proteges. Many of his former assistants went on to lead their own teams, handing down Walsh's methods to dozens more coaches in a tree with innumerable branches.

"The essence of Bill Walsh was that he was an extraordinary teacher," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. "If you gave him a blackboard and a piece of chalk, he would become a whirlwind of wisdom."

Walsh went 102-63-1 with the 49ers, winning 10 of his 14 postseason games along with six division titles. He was the NFL's coach of the year in 1981 and 1984.

Few men did more to shape the look of football into the 21st century. His cerebral nature and often-brilliant stratagems earned him his nickname well before his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.

He visited with friends until the end, and attended basketball games at Stanford all winter. Willingham, now at Washington, and Stanford donor and alumnus John Arrillaga went to see Walsh on Sunday, presenting him with the Stagg Award for his outstanding service to football.

Walsh created the Minority Coaching Fellowship program in 1987, helping minority coaches get a foothold in a previously white-dominated profession. Willingham and Marvin Lewis were among those who went through the program, later adopted as a league-wide initiative.

"The world lost a great man in Bill Walsh. He had a tremendous impact on me, both personally and professionally," said Willingham, who replaced Walsh as Stanford's head coach in 1994. "Bill's development of the minority coaching program at the collegiate and professional levels literally changed the face of football."

Raiders owner Al Davis and Hall of Famer John Madden stopped by to see Walsh on Saturday, and Montana on Friday and also last Wednesday along with Ronnie Lott. Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young was headed to see Walsh on Monday when he received the sad news instead.

"He knew me well before I knew myself and knew what I could accomplish well before I knew that I could accomplish it," Young said. "That's a coach. That's the ultimate talent anyone could have. I said in my Hall of Fame speech that he was the most important person in football in the last 25 years, and I don't think there's any debate about that."

Walsh twice served as the 49ers' general manager, and coach George Seifert led San Francisco to two more Super Bowl titles after Walsh left the sideline. Walsh also coached Stanford during two terms over five seasons.

Even a short list of Walsh's adherents is stunning. Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Dennis Green, Sam Wyche, Ray Rhodes and Bruce Coslet all became NFL head coaches after serving on Walsh's San Francisco staffs, and Tony Dungy played for him. Most of his former assistants passed on Walsh's structures and strategies to a new generation of coaches, including Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick, Andy Reid, Pete Carroll, Gary Kubiak, Steve Mariucci and Jeff Fisher.

In 2004, Walsh was diagnosed with leukemia — the disease that also killed his son, former ABC News reporter Steve Walsh, in 2002 at age 46. He underwent months of treatment and blood transfusions, and publicly disclosed his illness in November 2006.

Born William Ernest Walsh on Nov. 30, 1931 in Los Angeles, Walsh's family moved to the Bay Area when he was a teenager.

He was a self-described "average" end at San Jose State in 1952-53. He married his college sweetheart, Geri Nardini, in 1954 and started his coaching career at Washington High School in Fremont, leading the football and swim teams.

Walsh was coaching in Fremont when Marv Levy, then the coach at the University of California, hired him as an assistant.

Walsh did a stint at Stanford before beginning his pro coaching career as an assistant with the AFL's Oakland Raiders in 1966, forging a friendship with Al Davis that endured through decades of rivalry. Walsh joined the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 to work for legendary coach Paul Brown, who gradually gave complete control of the Bengals' offense to his assistant.

Walsh built a playbook that included short dropbacks and novel receiving routes, as well as constant repetition of every play in practice. Though it originated in Cincinnati, it became known many years later as the West Coast offense — a name Walsh never liked or repeated, but which eventually grew to encompass his offensive philosophy and the many tweaks added by Holmgren, Shanahan and others.

"He was a perfectionist," said Keena Turner, a linebacker with the Niners for 11 years before going on to coach. "When writing his script, he didn't believe that running the football was the way to get there. It had to be prettier than that — beautiful in some way."

By the 1990s, much of the NFL was running some version of the West Coast offense, with its fundamental belief that the passing game can set up an effective running attack, rather than the opposite conventional wisdom.

Walsh also is widely credited with inventing or popularizing many of the modern basics of coaching, from the laminated sheets of plays held by coaches on almost every sideline, to the practice of scripting the first 15 offensive plays of a game.

After a bitter falling-out with Brown in 1976, Walsh left for stints with the San Diego Chargers and Stanford before the 49ers chose him to rebuild the franchise in 1979.

The long-suffering team had gone 2-14 before Walsh's arrival. They repeated the record in his first season. Walsh doubted his abilities to turn around such a miserable situation — but earlier in 1979, the 49ers drafted Montana from Notre Dame.

Walsh turned over the starting job to Montana in 1980, when the 49ers improved to 6-10 — and improbably, San Francisco won its first championship in 1981, just two years after winning two games.

Championships followed in the postseasons of 1984 and 1988 as Walsh built a consistent winner. He also showed considerable acumen in personnel, adding Lott, Charles Haley, Roger Craig and Rice to his rosters after he was named the 49ers' general manager in 1982 and then president in 1985.

"I came to San Francisco, and I found another father, Bill Walsh," Rice said. "

Walsh left the 49ers with a profound case of burnout after his third Super Bowl victory in January 1989, though he later regretted not coaching longer.

He spent three years as a broadcaster with NBC before returning to Stanford for three seasons. He then took charge of the 49ers' front office in 1999, helping to rebuild the roster over three seasons. But Walsh gradually cut ties with the 49ers after his hand-picked successor as GM, Terry Donahue, took over in 2001.

He is survived by his wife, Geri, and two children, Craig and Elizabeth.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: bonanzataz on July 31, 2007, 12:57:51 PM
Michelangelo Antonioni: 1912-2007

Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian film director whose modernist style created such haunting, enigmatic films as L'Avventura and Blow Up, died Monday at his home in Italy; he was 94. Antonioni had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1985 which gave him limited speech capabilities and curtailed his directing abilities, though he continued to work, most notably on 1995's Beyond the Clouds, after his stroke. Born in Ferrara, Italy, Antonioni graduated from the University of Bologna with a degree in economics but went to work for a local newspaper as a film writer and critic. Moving to Rome during World War II, he collaborated with Roberto Rossellini on A Pilot Returns and began making short documentaries. His first full-length film, Story of a Love Affair, was released in 1950, and he found his breakthrough with 1957's The Outcry, where he met actress Monica Vitti, who would go on to star in his famed film trilogy of emotional alienation: L'Avventura, La Notte, and L'Eclisse, released from 1960-1962. With these austere black-and-white films, seductive and amazing to some and puzzling and mysterious to others (L'Avventura and L'Eclisse both won the Jury prizes at Cannes), Antonioni established himself as one of the premier international filmmakers of the time, alongside fellow countryman Federico Fellini and other emerging directors of the 60s such as Roman Polanski and Ingmar Bergman; he was considered such a fixture of the time that he was even mentioned in lyrics (alongside Fellini and Polanski) in the seminal musical of the 60s, Hair.

In 1966, Antonioni found box office as well as critical success with Blow Up, the story of a London photographer (David Hemmings) who believes he may have accidentally captured a murder on film. The quintessential portait of the swinging 60s, the film featured a luminous Vanessa Redgrave and, most notoriously, an imaginary, silent tennis game played between two sets of white-faced mimes. While some shrugged, others continued to celebrate his success, and Antonioni received two Academy Award nominations for writing and directing Blow Up. That film was followed by the notorious flop Zabriskie Point, an existentialist rumination in Death Valley featuring amateur actors, but Antonioni then rebounded with The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson as a journalist researching a documentary in the Sahara, now considered one of his best films. Antonioni made only a handful of films following The Passenger, and worked only in a limited fashion after his stroke, though he surprised critics and audiences with 1995's Beyond the Clouds, which producers would only back with the stipulation that director Wim Wenders follow the filming in case Antonioni faltered. Though he was only able to speak a few words, the director was able to communicate effectively with his crew and actors; the same year Beyond the Clouds was released, he received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement. Antonioni is survived by his wife, Enrica, whom he married in 1986.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on July 31, 2007, 01:54:20 PM
who's next?!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on July 31, 2007, 02:27:35 PM
Quote from: cronopio on July 31, 2007, 01:54:20 PM
who's next?!

brett ratner, just to ease the pain.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on July 31, 2007, 05:07:13 PM
unfortunately, the title of this thread is more relevant than ever.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on July 31, 2007, 06:08:14 PM
alright, WHO LET THE CAT OUT!? (http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070725/D8QJRTNG1.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 31, 2007, 07:42:49 PM
The cat doesn't cause the deaths.  He just predicts them.


...as far as we know
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on July 31, 2007, 08:22:54 PM
i should get a ratner flick on netflix... my last two were antonioni and bergman
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 02, 2007, 12:13:33 AM
I bet bunel is going to be next.  that's my prediction.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on August 02, 2007, 01:26:42 AM
Yeah and Dali will hear the news and die the day after. that's my prediction.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 13, 2007, 10:43:16 AM
Merv Griffin dead at 82

Merv Griffin, the former talk-show host who became a Hollywood billionaire by investing in real estate and creating the popular game shows "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune," died of prostate cancer early on Sunday, his family said. He was 82.

Griffin's first success came from singing the 1950 novelty hit "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts," and he spent 23 years hosting a talk show that bore his name. For years it was the most successful syndicated U.S. television program.

Griffin owned 17 hotels at his peak, according to Rolling Stone magazine, as well as casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the Bahamas. "If it's not broke, fix it anyway," he once said.

His family announced the death in a statement, saying that the recurrence of prostate cancer, which he had beaten more than a decade ago, progressed swiftly and unexpectedly after a routine examination uncovered it earlier this year.

He went to the hospital in mid-July.

The entertainer's list of friends included some of the most famous people in the world.

Former U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan said she had known him for 50 years and had been comforted by him during President Ronald Reagan's illness and death. "He was a dear, dear friend," she said in a statement.

Friends and associates described Griffin as a savvy businessman whose good nature and charm masked a fierce determination and toughness.

"I'd rather play "Jeopardy!" than live it," Griffin joked in a statement as he went to the hospital last month.

"We take solace in knowing that until the end he had his two favorites by his side -- his family and his work," his son, Tony, said in the family statement.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on August 14, 2007, 10:06:21 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on August 13, 2007, 10:43:16 AM
Merv Griffin dead at 82

The citizens of Vienna can finally rest easy knowing that the infamous Elevator Killer has died.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX_VvOJmr3I

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 04, 2007, 12:40:43 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070904/ap_en_mu/people_musician_shot

Member of New Bohemians fatally shot
By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer

DALLAS - Jeffrey Carter Albrecht, a keyboard player for the band Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, was shot to death early Monday while trying to kick in the door of his girlfriend's neighbor, police said.

The neighbor believed a burglar was trying to break in and fired a shot through the door around 4 a.m., Dallas police spokesman Sgt. Gil Cerda said.

Albrecht, 34, died at the scene. It was not clear why Albrecht went to the house and the case is under investigation. No arrests have been made.

"He was at his girlfriend's house last night," said Danny Balis, Albrecht's roommate. "He left the house and went next door and — for whatever reason, which we don't know — he knocked on the neighbor's door. And from what I understand, he was persistent. I don't know if there was a verbal exchange, but the person panicked and fired a shot through the door."

The death of Albrecht, who also played keyboard and guitar and sang in the Dallas rock band Sorta with Balis, stunned friends and those who knew him in the North Texas music community.

"He is not a violent person," said Carrie Garcia, Sorta's manager. "He is cool as a cucumber, shy, always wanted to make a joke in a situation that may be a little tense."

Albrecht, who went by his middle name, had been with the New Bohemians since 1999, according to the band's Web site. Albrecht played several times with Brickell's husband, Paul Simon, Garcia said. He also played with Texas musician Charlie Sexton, a renowned guitarist.

Albrecht was working on a solo album that Balis called "the best thing he has ever done."

"He was the best musician I've ever played with — no question," Balis said. "He could play anything. It's a shame not enough people outside of Dallas heard him."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 05, 2007, 04:06:02 PM
the reaper man is taking luciano pavarotti slowly away from us. :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 06, 2007, 01:15:08 AM
Quote from: mogwai on September 05, 2007, 04:06:02 PM
the reaper man is taking luciano pavarotti slowly away from us. :yabbse-sad:

Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti dies at 71

Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti, hailed by many as the greatest tenor of his generation, died early on Thursday after a long battle with cancer, his manager Terri Robson said.

"The great tenor Luciano Pavarotti died today at 5 a.m. at his home in Modena," Robson said in a statement. He was 71.

"The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life.

"In fitting with the approach that characterized his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness."

The rotund, black-bearded tenor known as "Big Luciano" helped bring opera to the masses and performed to vast stadium audiences round the world.

He shot to fame with a stand-in appearance at London's Covent Garden in 1963 and had soon had critics gushing about his voluminous voice.

His last public singing performance was at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin in February 2006.

In July last year, Pavarotti underwent surgery in New York for pancreatic cancer and retreated to his villa in Modena. He had to cancel his first planned public reappearance a few months later.

Pavarotti was taken to a hospital in Modena last month and treated for more than two weeks. He was released on August 25, and spent his final hours at home with family and friends nearby, the statement said.

A Modena television station reported on Wednesday that Pavarotti had lost consciousness and suffered kidney failure towards the end of his life.

Perhaps Pavarotti's biggest gift to the music world was when he joined forces with Spanish stars Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras at the 1990 soccer World Cup and introduced operatic classics to an estimated 800 million people around the globe.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on September 06, 2007, 03:03:55 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on September 06, 2007, 01:15:08 AM
Quote from: mogwai on September 05, 2007, 04:06:02 PM
the reaper man is taking luciano pavarotti slowly away from us. :yabbse-sad:

Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti dies at 71

Holy Shit! You killed him, didn't you mog?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 06, 2007, 05:01:40 PM
Quote from: 72teeth on September 06, 2007, 03:03:55 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on September 06, 2007, 01:15:08 AM
Quote from: mogwai on September 05, 2007, 04:06:02 PM
the reaper man is taking luciano pavarotti slowly away from us. :yabbse-sad:

Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti dies at 71

Holy Shit! You killed him, didn't you mog?

are you saying he predicted it?

it's been on the news for a while, especially here and europe i guess. they were practically reporting from his deathbed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on September 06, 2007, 05:08:28 PM
oh.

yeah, i thought he had just took a shot in the dark... anyway, my turn:

Don Rickles!!!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 06, 2007, 05:11:02 PM
GODARD
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on September 06, 2007, 05:15:23 PM
72TEETH
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 06, 2007, 05:19:15 PM
dakota fanning
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 06, 2007, 05:20:54 PM
owen wilson.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 06, 2007, 05:25:08 PM
Quote from: Stefen on September 06, 2007, 05:20:54 PM
owen wilson.

you cruel son of a bitch.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 06, 2007, 06:08:41 PM
owen wilson = off limits.

But 12 year old girls and other posters can still be wished death upon.

GOT IT.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on September 06, 2007, 06:13:17 PM
nobody was wishing death upon anyone.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 06, 2007, 06:16:12 PM
Fine. Predicting deaths.

And sorry if im competitive. I got a competition in me. I'm in it to win it and theres a better chance of Owen Wilson dying than there is of Dakota Fanning or 72Teeth.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on September 06, 2007, 06:25:19 PM
i actually have a gun in my mouth... :waving:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on September 06, 2007, 06:26:38 PM
i called it, folks.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 06, 2007, 06:31:02 PM
Dibs on his DVDs.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on September 06, 2007, 06:32:19 PM
all out of Frisbees, Mac?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 06, 2007, 06:41:09 PM
Quote from: 72teeth on September 06, 2007, 06:32:19 PMall out of Frisbees, Mac?

Coasters, actually.

Now suck the muzzle and pull the trigger so we can call you Only2teethleft.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on September 06, 2007, 06:50:28 PM
Oh shit, i missed and hit Owen Wilson!

Stefen Wins!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 06, 2007, 07:31:34 PM
Owen Wilson has nothing of value I could have won.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 10, 2007, 02:34:25 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6987974.stm

Oscar-winner Wyman dies aged 93

Jane Wyman, one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the 1940s and '50s and the first wife of former US President Ronald Reagan, has died at 93.

She was nominated for four Oscars, winning once for her role as the deaf rape victim in 1948's Johnny Belinda.

Wyman, who also appeared in TV soap opera Falcon Crest, died on Monday at her home in Palm Springs in California.

She married Reagan, then a fellow actor, in 1940. They had two children and divorced eight years later.

Wyman had appeared alongside Reagan in two of her early hits - the 1938 comedy Brother Rat and its sequel Brother Rat and a Baby.

Her popularity rose after the war, and her first Oscar nomination came in 1947 for her role opposite Gregory Peck in The Yearling.

She won two years later for her moving performance as a woman who could not speak or hear in Johnny Belinda.

Her success continued in the 1950s, and she established herself as one of the finest dramatic actresses of her time with The Glass Menagerie, Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright and Here Comes the Groom with Bing Crosby.

Further Oscar nominations came her way for The Blue Veil and Magnificent Obsession.

Her film career ended in 1969 when she co-starred with Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason in How to Commit Marriage.

From 1981 to 1990, she was best known as Angela Channing, the Napa Valley winery owner who ruled the roost on Falcon Crest.

Married five times in all, Wyman rarely discussed her split from Reagan, but did say they split because "politics built a barrier between us".

"I tried to make his interests mine, but finally there was nothing to sustain our marriage," she said.

The couple had a daughter, Maureen, who died in 2001, and adopted a son, Michael, now a talk show host.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 23, 2007, 07:47:24 AM
French mime artist Marceau dies (source: bbc news)

The French mime artist Marcel Marceau has died at the age of 84, his family has announced.

The performer was known around the world for his portrayal of a white-faced clown with battered hat.

Born in Strasbourg in 1923, Marceau studied under mime master Etienne Decroux in Paris.

His daughter Camille said he died on Saturday evening, adding that details of the burial at Paris's Pere Lachaise cemetery would be given out later.

Silent films

Marceau, whose real name was Marcel Mangel, became world famous for his 1947 creation of Bip, the sad, white-faced clown in a striped jumper and a battered silk opera hat.

Mime artist Corinne Soum-Wasson, who was a friend of Marceau's, told the BBC he was an "extraordinary person".

"He trained with an extraordinary master, and due to his wonderful witty personality he was able to put that into practice. He was able to captivate people," she said.

"I was lucky enough to have known him very well, I was teaching at his school in Paris, and was just a generally funny, nice human being."

Ms Soum-Wasson said Marceau had created Bip early in his career: "He always told me the idea of Bip came to him very early on, when he was a student... he suddenly had the idea in class one day then developed it."

Marceau was credited with single-handedly reviving the art of mime after World War II, after two decades of being eclipsed by the silent movie.

Marceau was inspired to become a mime by the great US actors of the silent era such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon.

His Compagnie Marcel Marceau was the only mime troupe in the world in the 1950s and 1960s - it enjoyed as much acclaim abroad as at home.

From 1969 to 1971 he directed the Ecole Internationale de Mime before founding his Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame in Paris in 1978.

He also made several films including Un Jardin Public, and Barbarella, with Jane Fonda.

In 2001 he was chosen to be a United Nations goodwill ambassador for the older generation.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on September 23, 2007, 01:38:25 PM
aw man this is sad.  I saw him about three years ago performing at a theater in Harvard.  He was great.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on September 23, 2007, 03:00:04 PM
to quote the man himself: "NOOO!"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 30, 2007, 05:16:00 AM
Bond star Lois Maxwell dies at 80

Actress Lois Maxwell, who starred as Miss Moneypenny in a string of James Bond movies, has died aged 80.

Maxwell starred alongside Sir Sean Connery in Bond's first movie outing, Dr No, in 1962.

She played the role until 1985, when she appeared with Roger Moore in A View To A Kill. Her last film role was in the 2001 thriller The Fourth Angel.

A spokesperson for Fremantle Hospital, Western Australia, said she died there on Saturday evening.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on September 30, 2007, 05:31:06 PM
When celebs die, they don't meet death, they meet mogwai.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ElPandaRoyal on September 30, 2007, 06:40:34 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on September 30, 2007, 05:31:06 PM
When celebs die, they don't meet death, they meet mogwai.

:lol:

Mogwai informs them of their death.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 30, 2007, 06:52:10 PM
Quote from: ElPandaRoyal on September 30, 2007, 06:40:34 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on September 30, 2007, 05:31:06 PM
When celebs die, they don't meet death, they meet mogwai.

:lol:

Mogwai informs them of their death.

after he kills them.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 30, 2007, 09:15:43 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on September 30, 2007, 05:31:06 PM
When celebs die, they don't meet death, they meet mogwai.

That kinda sounds like a tagline on a movie poster.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 01, 2007, 02:29:44 AM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on September 30, 2007, 05:31:06 PM
When celebs die, they don't meet death, they meet mogwai.

don't you mean nirvana?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 19, 2007, 12:10:40 AM
Comedian Joey Bishop dies at home in Los Angeles
 
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Joey Bishop, the stone-faced comedian who found success in nightclubs, television and movies but became most famous as a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack, has died at 89.

Joey Bishop was the last surviving member of the Rat Pack.

He was the group's last surviving member. Peter Lawford died in 1984, Sammy Davis Jr. in 1990, Dean Martin in 1995, and Sinatra in 1998.

Bishop died Wednesday night of multiple causes at his home in Newport Beach, publicist and longtime friend Warren Cowan said Thursday.

The Rat Pack -- originally a social group surrounding Humphrey Bogart -- became a show business sensation in the early 1960s, appearing at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in shows that combined music and comedy in a seemingly chaotic manner.

Reviewers often claimed that Bishop played a minor role, but Sinatra knew otherwise. He termed the comedian "the Hub of the Big Wheel," with Bishop coming up with some of the best one-liners and beginning many jokes with his favorite phrase, "Son of a gun!"

The quintet lived it up whenever members were free of their own commitments. They appeared together in such films as "Ocean's Eleven" and "Sergeants 3" and proudly gave honorary membership to a certain fun-loving politician from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, at whose inauguration gala Bishop served as master of ceremonies.

The Rat Pack faded after Kennedy's assassination, but the late 1990s brought a renaissance, with the group depicted in an HBO movie and portrayed by imitators in Las Vegas and elsewhere. The movie "Ocean's Eleven" was even remade in 2003 with George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the lead roles.

Bishop defended his fellow performers' rowdy reputations in a 1998 interview.

"Are we remembered as being drunk and chasing broads?" he asked. "I never saw Frank, Dean, Sammy or Peter drunk during performances. That was only a gag. And do you believe these guys had to chase broads? They had to chase 'em away."

Away from the Rat Pack, Bishop starred in two TV series, both called "The Joey Bishop Show."

The first, an NBC sitcom, got off to a rocky start in 1961. Critical and audience response was generally negative, and the second season brought a change in format. The third season brought a change in network, with the show moving to ABC, but nothing seemed to help and it was canceled in 1965.

In the first series, Bishop played a TV talk show host.

Then, he really became a TV talk show host. His program was started by ABC in 1967 as a challenge to Johnny Carson's immensely popular "The Tonight Show."

Like Carson, Bishop sat behind a desk and bantered with a sidekick, TV newcomer Regis Philbin. But despite an impressive guest list and outrageous stunts, Bishop couldn't dent Carson's ratings, and "The Joey Bishop Show" was canceled after two seasons.

Philbin remembered Bishop fondly.

"It was the thrill of my life to be chosen by Joey as the announcer for his talk show on ABC back in the '60s," he said in a statement. "I learned a lot about the business of making people laugh. He was a master comedian and a great teacher and I will never forget those days or him."

After the talk show's cancellation, Bishop became a familiar guest figure in TV variety shows and as sub for vacationing talk show hosts, filling in for Carson 205 times.

He also played character roles in such movies as "The Naked and the Dead" ("I played both roles"), "Onion-head," "Johnny Cool," "Texas Across the River," "Who's Minding the Mint?" "Valley of the Dolls" and "The Delta Force."

His comedic schooling came from vaudeville, burlesque and nightclubs.

Skipping his last high school semester in Philadelphia, he formed a music and comedy act with two other boys, and they played clubs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They called themselves the Bishop Brothers, borrowing the name from their driver, Glenn Bishop.

Joseph Abraham Gottlieb would eventually adopt Joey Bishop as his stage name.

When his partners got drafted, Bishop went to work as a single, playing his first solo date in Cleveland at the well-named El Dumpo.

During these early years he developed his style: laid-back drollery, with surprise throwaway lines.

After 3 1/2 years in the Army, Bishop resumed his career in 1945. Within five years he was earning $1,000 a week at New York's Latin Quarter. Sinatra saw him there one night and hired him as opening act.

While most members of the Sinatra entourage treated the great man gingerly, Bishop had no inhibitions. He would tell audiences that the group's leader hadn't ignored him: "He spoke to me backstage; he told me, 'Get out of the way.' "

When Sinatra almost drowned filming a movie scene in Hawaii, Bishop wired him: "I thought you could walk on water."

Born in New York's borough of the Bronx, Bishop was the youngest of five children of two immigrants from Eastern Europe.

When he was 3 months old the family moved to South Philadelphia, where he attended public schools. He recalled being an indifferent student, once remarking, "In kindergarten, I flunked sand pile."

In 1941 Bishop married Sylvia Ruzga and, despite the rigors of a show business career, the marriage survived until her death in 1999.

Bishop, who spent his retirement years on the upscale Lido Isle in Southern California's Newport Bay, is survived by son Larry Bishop; grandchildren Scott and Kirk Bishop; and longtime companion Nora Garabotti.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deborah Kerr dead at 86; actress had suffered from Parkinson's disease
     
LONDON, England (AP) -- Deborah Kerr, who shared one of Hollywood's most famous kisses and made her mark with such roles as the correct widow in "The King and I" and the unhappy officer's wife in "From Here to Eternity," has died. She was 86.

Deborah Kerr was nominated for six Oscars, including one for "From Here to Eternity."

Kerr, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, died Tuesday in Suffolk in eastern England, her agent, Anne Hutton, said Thursday.

For many she will be remembered best for her kiss with Burt Lancaster as waves crashed over them on a Hawaiian beach in the wartime drama "From Here to Eternity."

Kerr's roles as forceful, sometimes frustrated women pushed the limits of Hollywood's treatment of sex on the screen during the censor-bound 1950s.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated Kerr a six times for best actress, but never gave her an Academy Award until it presented an honorary Oscar in 1994 for her distinguished career as an "artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance."

She had the reputation of a "no problem" actress.

"I have never had a fight with any director, good or bad," she said toward the end of her career. "There is a way around everything if you are smart enough."

Kerr (pronounced CARR) was the only daughter of Arthur Kerr-Trimmer, a civil engineer and architect who died when she was 14.

Born in Helensburgh, Scotland, she moved with her parents to England when she was 5, and she started to study dance in the Bristol school of her aunt, Phyllis Smale.

Kerr won a scholarship to continue studying at the Sadler's Wells Ballet School in London. A 17 she made her stage debut as a member of the corps de ballet in "Prometheus."

She soon switched to drama, however, and began playing small parts in repertory theater in London until it was shut down by the 1939 outbreak of World War II.

After reading children's stories on British Broadcasting Corp. radio, she was given the part of a hatcheck girl with two lines in the film "Contraband," but her speaking role ended on the cutting-room floor.

After more repertory acting she had another crack at films, reprising her stage role of Jenny, a Salvation Army worker, in a 1940 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara," and receiving favorable reviews both in Britain and the United States.

She continued making films in Britain during the war, including one -- "Colonel Blimp" -- in which she played three different women over a span of decades.

"It is astonishing how she manages to make the three parts distinctly separate as characterizations," said New Movies magazine at the time.

Kerr was well-reviewed as an Irish spy in "The Adventuress" and as the tragic girlfriend of a Welsh miner in "Love on the Dole."

She was invited to Hollywood in 1946 to play in "The Hucksters" opposite Clark Gable. She went on to work with virtually all the other top American actors and with many top directors, including John Huston, Otto Preminger and Elia Kazan.

Tired of being typecast in serene, ladylike roles, she rebelled to win a release from her MGM contract and get the role of Karen Holmes in "From Here to Eternity."

Playing the Army officer's alcoholic, sex-starved wife in a fling with Lancaster as a sergeant opened up new possibilities for Kerr.

She played virtually every part imaginable from murderer to princess to a Roman Christian slave to a nun.

In "The King and I," with her singing voice dubbed by Marni Nixon, she was Anna Leonowens, who takes her son to Siam so that she can teach the children of the king, played by Yul Brynner.

Her best-actress nominations were for "Edward, My Son" (1949), "From Here to Eternity" (1953), "The King and I" (1956), "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" (1957), "Separate Tables" (1958), and "The Sundowners" (1960).

Among her other movies is "An Affair to Remember" with Cary Grant.

Other notable roles were in "Beloved Infidel," "The Innocents" (an adaptation of the Henry James novella "Turn of the Screw"), "The Night of the Iguana" with Richard Burton and "The Arrangement" with Kirk Douglas.

After "The Arrangement" in 1968, she took what she called a "leave of absence" from acting, saying she felt she was "either too young or too old" for any role she was offered.

Kerr told The Associated Press that she turned down a number of scripts, either for being too explicit or because of excessive violence.

She refused to play a nude scene in "The Gypsy Moths," released in 1968. "It was when they started that 'Now everybody has got to take their clothes off,' " she said. "My argument was that it was completely gratuitous. Had it been necessary for the dramatic content, I would have done it."

In fact she undressed for "The Arrangement," even though the scene was later cut. "There the nude scene was necessary, husband and wife in bed together," Kerr said. "That was real."

She returned to the stage, acting in Edward Albee's "Seascape" on Broadway and "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in Los Angeles.

Her Broadway debut was in 1953, when she was acclaimed as Laura Reynolds, a teacher's wife who treats a sensitive student compassionately in "Tea and Sympathy."

After a full season in New York, she took it on a national tour and recreated the role in a movie in 1956.

Kerr was active until the mid-1980s, with "The Assam Garden," "Hold the Dream" and "Reunion at Fairborough" all in 1985.

She told the AP that TV reruns of her old movies have "kept me alive" for a new generation of film fans.

In 1945 Kerr married Anthony Charles Bartley, whom she had met as a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force. They had two daughters and were divorced in 1959. A year later she married Peter Viertel, a novelist-screenwriter, with whom she lived on a large estate with two trout ponds in the Swiss Alpine resort of Klosters and in a villa in Marbella, Spain.

Kerr is survived by Viertel, two daughters and three grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on October 23, 2007, 06:07:26 AM
ok i'm calling it... robert goulet is next.  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 30, 2007, 07:03:04 PM
Quote from: Cinephile on October 23, 2007, 06:07:26 AM
ok i'm calling it... robert goulet is next.  :yabbse-sad:


WINNER!!!


Singer Robert Goulet dies at 73

Robert Goulet, the handsome, big-voiced baritone whose Broadway debut in "Camelot" launched an award-winning stage and recording career, has died. He was 73.

The singer died Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles hospital while awaiting a lung transplant, said Goulet spokesman Norm Johnson.

He had been awaiting a lung transplant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after being found last month to have a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis.

Goulet had remained in good spirits even as he waited for the transplant, said Vera Goulet, his wife of 25 years.

"Just watch my vocal cords," she said he told doctors before they inserted a breathing tube.

The Massachusetts-born Goulet, who spent much of his youth in Canada, gained stardom in 1960 with "Camelot," the Lerner and Loewe musical that starred Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as his Queen Guenevere.

Goulet played Sir Lancelot, the arrogant French knight who falls in love with Guenevere.

He became a hit with American TV viewers with appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other programs. Sullivan labeled him the "American baritone from Canada," where he had already been a popular star in the 1950s, hosting his own show called "General Electric's Showtime."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on October 30, 2007, 10:09:16 PM
HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on October 30, 2007, 10:47:55 PM
that's nothing, you should see cine at the tracks.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.backgammon.org%2Fupload-images%2FMoneyAnim.gif&hash=761e2b50c18e608843004a9724d3991bd5c649cc)

also you should see the tracks on his arms. sad story, really.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on October 31, 2007, 07:25:48 AM
I would be saddened by this if not for my being in awe (and fear) of Cinephile.

Who's next, Cine?  Jerry Lewis?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on October 31, 2007, 11:07:52 AM
Goulet just did this for Halloween.  he'll be back. 

Robert Ghoulet!

Crooner Kills Rare Disease
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on October 31, 2007, 06:48:02 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on October 30, 2007, 07:03:04 PM
Goulet had remained in good spirits even as he waited for the transplant, said Vera Goulet, his wife of 25 years.

Vera said that?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 10, 2007, 07:56:09 AM
Author Norman Mailer dies aged 84

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Norman Mailer, the pugnacious two-times Pulitzer Prize winner who was a dominating presence on the U.S. literary scene across seven decades, has died, his editorial assistant said on Saturday.

Mailer, 84, had undergone lung surgery in October.

In more than 40 books and a torrent of essays, Mailer provoked and enraged readers with his strident views on U.S. political life, and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on November 10, 2007, 12:03:34 PM
I'd just read this super long interview with him in paris review.  he seemed like an alright guy.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: grand theft sparrow on November 14, 2007, 07:34:46 AM
Alright, Cinephile, who's next?  Larry McMurtry, William Goldman, or Cormac McCarthy?

Novelist, playwright Ira Levin dead at 78

NEW YORK (AFP) — Ira Levin, the playwright and novelist who wrote "Rosemary's Baby," "The Stepford Wives" and "The Boys From Brazil," has died at the age of 78, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Levin died Monday at his home in Manhattan, apparently of natural causes, the newspaper quoted his son Nicholas as saying.

Able to write a variety of genres, from mystery and horror to Broadway comedy, Levin sold tens of millions of books despite producing only seven novels in four decades, the Times quoted his agent Phyllis Westberg as saying.

Several of his works were given the Hollywood treatment, including perhaps most famously his supernatural 1967 novel "Rosemary's Baby."

The film version, directed by Roman Polanski in 1968, tells the story of a young bride involved in a group of Satanists who mysteriously falls pregnant.

His 1972 novel "The Stepford Wives," made into a film in 1975, is a thriller about a group of housewives in a quaint Connecticut town being replaced by robots. It was remade in 2004 in a movie starring Nicole Kidman.

"The Boys From Brazil," written in 1976 and adapted for the screen in 1978 spins a tale of a bizarre Nazi plot to resurrect Hitler and the Third Reich in South America in the late 1970s.

Levin was born in New York in 1929 and served in the US Army briefly in the early 1950s after leaving university. He went on to write for television before publishing his first novel, "A Kiss Before Dying," in 1953.

The book won Levin the best first novel from the Mystery Writers of America and was twice adapted for screen.

He also wrote for theater, notably adapting a novel by Mac Hyman into the 1955 Broadway comedy hit "No Time for Sergeants," and penning comic thriller "Deathtrap," in 1979, which ran on Broadway before also being made into a film.

According to the New York Times, Levin was unhappy with the legacy of popular Satanism that followed the release of "Rosemary's Baby."

"I feel guilty that 'Rosemary's Baby' led to 'The Exorcist,' 'The Omen,'" it quoted him as telling the The Los Angeles Times in 2002. "A whole generation has been exposed, has more belief in Satan.

"I don't believe in Satan. And I feel that the strong fundamentalism we have would not be as strong if there hadn't been so many of these books."

"Of course," he reportedly added, "I didn't send back any of the royalty checks."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on November 30, 2007, 03:57:24 PM
RIP Evel Knievel.  Hep C finally got him from his blood transfusion 15 years ago, along with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on November 30, 2007, 04:16:18 PM
Quote from: pete on November 30, 2007, 03:57:24 PM
RIP Evel Knievel.  Hep C finally got him from his blood transfusion 15 years ago, along with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_en_ce/obit_knievel

Evel Knievel dies at 69
By MITCH STACY, Associated Press Writer

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Knievel's death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.

Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.

Immortalized in the Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.

Though Knievel dropped off the pop culture radar in the '80s, the image of the high-flying motorcyclist clad in patriotic, star-studded colors was never erased from public consciousness. He always had fans and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years.

His death came just two days after it was announced that he and rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of Knievel's trademarked image in a popular West music video.

Knievel made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. Thousands came to Butte, Mont., every year as his legend was celebrated during the "Evel Knievel Days" festival.

"They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives," Knievel said. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."

For the tall, thin daredevil, the limelight was always comfortable, the gab glib. To Knievel, there always were mountains to climb, feats to conquer.

"No king or prince has lived a better life," he said in a May 2006 interview with The Associated Press. "You're looking at a guy who's really done it all. And there are things I wish I had done better, not only for me but for the ones I loved."

He had a knack for outrageous yarns: "Made $60 million, spent 61. ...Lost $250,000 at blackjack once. ... Had $3 million in the bank, though."

He began his daredevil career in 1965 when he formed a troupe called Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Daredevils, a touring show in which he performed stunts such as riding through fire walls, jumping over live rattlesnakes and mountain lions and being towed at 200 mph behind dragster race cars.

In 1966 he began touring alone, barnstorming the West and doing everything from driving the trucks, erecting the ramps and promoting the shows. In the beginning he charged $500 for a jump over two cars parked between ramps.

He steadily increased the length of the jumps until, on New Year's Day 1968, he was nearly killed when he jumped 151 feet across the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace. He cleared the fountains but the crash landing put him in the hospital in a coma for a month.

His son, Robbie, successfully completed the same jump in April 1989.

In the years after the Caesar's crash, the fee for Evel's performances increased to $1 million for his jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London — the crash landing broke his pelvis — to more than $6 million for the Sept. 8, 1974, attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in a rocket-powered "Skycycle." The money came from ticket sales, paid sponsors and ABC's "Wide World of Sports."

The parachute malfunctioned and deployed after takeoff. Strong winds blew the cycle into the canyon, landing him close to the swirling river below.

On Oct. 25, 1975, he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at Kings Island in Ohio.

Knievel decided to retire after a jump in the winter of 1976 in which he was again seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and broke both arms in an attempt to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheater. He continued to do smaller exhibitions around the country with his son, Robbie.

Many of his records have been broken by daredevil motorcyclist Bubba Blackwell.

Knievel also dabbled in movies and TV, starring as himself in "Viva Knievel" and with Lindsay Wagner in an episode of the 1980s TV series "Bionic Woman." George Hamilton and Sam Elliott each played Knievel in movies about his life.

Evel Knievel toys accounted for more than $300 million in sales for Ideal and other companies in the 1970s and '80s.

Born Robert Craig Knievel in the copper mining town of Butte on Oct. 17, 1938, Knievel was raised by his grandparents. He traced his career choice back to the time he saw Joey Chitwood's Auto Daredevil Show at age 8.

Outstanding in track and field, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High School, he went on to win the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1957 and played with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959.

He also formed the Butte Bombers semiprofessional hockey team, acting as owner, manager, coach and player.

Knievel also worked in the Montana copper mines, served in the Army, ran his own hunting guide service, sold insurance and ran Honda motorcycle dealerships. As a motorcycle dealer, he drummed up business by offering $100 off the price of a motorcycle to customers who could beat him at arm wrestling.

At various times and in different interviews, Knievel claimed to have been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker, a holdup man.

Evel Knievel married hometown girlfriend, Linda Joan Bork, in 1959. They separated in the early 1990s. They had four children, Kelly, Robbie, Tracey and Alicia.

Robbie Knievel followed in his father's footsteps as a daredevil, jumping a moving locomotive in a 200-foot, ramp-to-ramp motorcycle stunt on live television in 2000. He also jumped a 200-foot-wide chasm of the Grand Canyon.

Knievel lived with his longtime partner, Krystal Kennedy-Knievel, splitting his time between their Clearwater condo and Butte. They married in 1999 and divorced a few years later but remained together. Knievel had 10 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 12, 2007, 05:44:10 PM
Ike Turner dies in San Diego at age 76

Ike Turner, whose role as one of rock's critical architects was overshadowed by his ogrelike image as the man who brutally abused former wife Tina Turner, died Wednesday at his home in suburban San Diego. He was 76.

Turner died at his San Marcos home, Scott M. Hanover of Thrill Entertainment Group, which managed Turner's career, told The Associated Press.

There was no immediate word on the cause of death, which was first reported by celebrity Web site TMZ.com.

Turner managed to rehabilitate his image somewhat in later years, touring around the globe with his band the Kings of Rhythm and drawing critical acclaim for his work. He won a Grammy in 2007 in the traditional blues album category for "Risin' With the Blues."

But his image is forever identified as the drug-addicted, wife-abusing husband of Tina Turner. He was hauntingly portrayed by Laurence Fishburne in the movie "What's Love Got To Do With It," based on Tina Turner's autobiography.

In a 2001 interview with The Associated Press, Turner denied his ex-wife's claims of abuse and expressed frustration that he had been demonized in the media while his historic role in rock's beginnings had been ignored.

"You can go ask Snoop Dogg or Eminem, you can ask the Rolling Stones or (Eric) Clapton, or you can ask anybody — anybody, they all know my contribution to music, but it hasn't been in print about what I've done or what I've contributed until now," he said.

Turner, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is credited by many rock historians with making the first rock 'n' roll record, "Rocket 88," in 1951. Produced by the legendary Sam Phillips, it was groundbreaking for its use of distorted electric guitar.

But as would be the case for most of his career, Turner, a prolific session guitarist and piano player, was not the star on the record — it was recorded with Turner's band but credited to singer Jackie Brenston.

And it would be another singer — a young woman named Anna Mae Bullock — who would bring Turner his greatest fame, and infamy.

Turner met the 18-year-old Bullock, whom he would later marry, in 1959 and quickly made the husky-voiced woman the lead singer of his group, refashioning her into the sexy Tina Turner. Her stage persona was highlighted by short skirts and stiletto heels that made her legs her most visible asset. But despite the glamorous image, she still sang with the grit and fervor of a rock singer with a twist of soul.

The pair would have two sons. They also produced a string of hits. The first, "A Fool In Love," was a top R&B song in 1959, and others followed, including "I Idolize You" and "It's Gonna Work Out Fine."

But over the years their genre-defying sound would make them favorites on the rock 'n' roll scene, as they opened for acts like the Rolling Stones.

Their densely layered hit "River Deep, Mountain High" was one of producer Phil Spector's proudest creations. A rousing version of "Proud Mary," a cover of the Creedence Clearwater Revival hit, became their signature song and won them a Grammy for best R&B vocal performance by a group.

Still, their hits were often sporadic, and while their public life depicted a powerful, dynamic duo, Tina Turner would later charge that her husband was an overbearing wife abuser and cocaine addict.

In her 1987 autobiography, "I, Tina," she narrated a harrowing tale of abuse, including suffering a broken nose. She said that cycle ended after a vicious fight between the pair in the back seat of a car in Las Vegas, where they were scheduled to perform.

It was the only time she ever fought back against her husband, Turner said.

After the two broke up, both fell into obscurity and endured money woes for years before Tina Turner made a dramatic comeback in 1982 with the release of the album "Private Dancer," a multiplatinum success with hits such as "Let's Stay Together" and "What's Love Got To Do With It."

The movie based on her life, "What's Love Got To Do With It," was also a hit, earning Angela Bassett an Oscar nomination.

But Fishburne's glowering depiction of Ike Turner also furthered Turner's reputation as a rock villain.

Meanwhile, Turner never again had the success he enjoyed with his former wife.

After years of drug abuse, he was jailed in 1989 and served 17 months.

Turner told the AP he originally began using drugs to stay awake and handle the rigors of nonstop touring during his glory years.

"My experience, man, with drugs — I can't say that I'm proud that I did drugs, but I'm glad I'm still alive to convey how I came through," he said. "I'm a good example that you can go to the bottom. ... I used to pray, `God, if you let me get three days clean, I will never look back.' But I never did get to three days. You know why? Because I would lie to myself. And then only when I went to jail, man, did I get those three days. And man, I haven't looked back since then."

But while he would readily admit to drug abuse, Turner always denied abusing his ex-wife.

After years out of the spotlight his career finally began to revive in 2001 when he released the album "Here and Now." The recording won rave reviews and a Grammy nomination and finally helped shift some of the public's attention away from his troubled past and onto his musical legacy.

"His last chapter in life shouldn't be drug abuse and the problems he had with Tina," said Rob Johnson, the producer of "Here and Now."

Turner spent his later years making more music and touring, even while he battled emphysema.

Robbie Montgomery — one of the "Ikettes," backup singers who worked with Ike and Tina Turner — said Turner's death was "devastating" to her.

"He gave me my start. He gave a million people their start," Montgomery said.

Accolades for Turner's early and later work continued to come in as he grew older, and the once-broke musician managed to garner a comfortable income as his songs were sampled by a variety of rap acts.

In interviews toward the end of his life, Turner would acknowledge having made many mistakes, but maintained he was still able to carry himself with pride.

"I know what I am in my heart. And I know regardless of what I've done, good and bad, it took it all to make me what I am today," he once told the AP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 20, 2007, 08:11:08 PM
Studio Head Frank Capra Jr. Dies

Frank Capra Jr., a producer who helped build a major television and movie studio and whose father directed the Christmas classic "It's A Wonderful Life," has died. He was 73.

Capra Jr. died Wednesday night at a hospital in Philadelphia, said Bill Vassar, the executive vice president of Wilmington-based EUE Screen Gems Studios, of which Capra was president. Capra died after a long fight with prostate cancer, Vassar said.

"With his Hollywood pedigree and extensive experience as a producer, Frank was the perfect ambassador to Hollywood," Chris Cooney, chief operating officer of EUE Screen Gems, said in a statement. "He will be missed as a friend and a colleague."

Under Capra's leadership, EUE Screen Gems' credits include several major motion pictures, including "28 Days," "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," "Domestic Disturbance," "Black Knight" and "A Walk to Remember."

He also was at the helm when "Dawson's Creek" starring a then-unknown Katie Holmes filmed at the studios, and he kept all nine of the studio's sound stages full in recent years between movies and the filming of another successful teenage soap, "One Tree Hill."

Capra was one of three children of Frank Capra and Lucille Rayburn Warner Capra, who tried to protect her children from the Hollywood life. Still, he could tell stories about dinners with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, and said he was best friends with Gary Cooper's daughter Maria.

Capra Jr. said his father had no idea he was making a classic when filming "It's a Wonderful Life," which starred Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore.

"I don't think any filmmaker knows that," he said. "He loved the idea of the story. He fell in love with that idea of the story about a man who could see the world the way it would have been had he never been born."

Capra said his father described the movie as "the picture I was born to make," and held no resentment that he didn't earn any money from the movie's repetitive showings on television during the Christmas season.

For the past several years, Capra screened his father's 1946 Christmas favorite at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, using his family's 35mm print until switching to a DVD last year. This year's screening is Friday night.

Capra worked alongside his father on the 1961 Bette Davis film "Pocketful of Miracles." He was a producer of three "Planet of the Apes" sequels and produced and directed several early television series, including "Gunsmoke" and "Dennis the Menace."

He discovered North Carolina in 1983 when searching for a home to burn down for the filming of "Firestarter," the Stephen King horror movie starring a young Drew Barrymore. The scene was shot at the Orton Plantation in Winnabow, and afterward Capra persuaded executive producer Dino De Laurentiis to build a studio facility in Wilmington.

De Laurentiis eventually sold the facility, which again changed hands in 1997, when the Cooney family bought the studios and installed Capra as president.

Along with his work at Screen Gems, Capra was a visiting professor at UNC Wilmington. He also served on the N.C. Film Council, and with Vassar helped bring the inaugural Scene First all-student film festival to Wilmington this year. Capra downplayed his involvement, saying he was scouting for talent.

Capra's survivors include his wife, Debra, and daughter, Christina, both of Santa Barbara, Calif.; two sons, Frank Capra III, of Los Angeles, and Jonathan Capra, of Wilmington; a sister, Lucille Capra, of Traverse City, Mich.; and brother Tom Capra, of Palm Desert, Calif.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on January 15, 2008, 06:17:45 PM
Actor Brad Renfro dead at 25
Cause of death has not be determined for 'The Client,' 'Ghost World' star

Actor Brad Renfro is dead, the Los Angeles County Coroner confirmed to "Access Hollywood."

According to the coroner's office, a Brad Barron Renfro, with the same date of birth as the actor, died today. They have no cause of death yet; the investigation is pending.

Renfro was 25 years old.

Renfro got his first big break when he was discovered by director Joel Schumacher, who cast the then 10-year-old in "The Client." The breakout 1994 role pitted the young actor on screen with Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones.

He quickly graduated to teen movies like 1995's "Tom and Huck," opposite Jonathan Taylor Thomas before moving on to indie dramas including 2001's "Ghost World" opposite Scarlett Johansson, Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi.

Renfro had been in frequent trouble with the law in recent years, including a December 2005 arrest in a heroin sting roundup on L.A.'s skid row. Renfro was charged with a felony count of attempting to possess heroin.

From MSNBC. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22671919/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on January 15, 2008, 06:19:33 PM
What the fuck? I just watched Bully last night on IFC.

The dude had mad problems. That's CRAZY. I guarantee it was drug related.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on January 16, 2008, 01:42:48 AM
i guarantee it was cause stefen watched Bully last night on IFC.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on January 16, 2008, 09:12:49 AM
Pshhh. If I had those types of powers my shitty movie watching would have disastrous results.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on January 16, 2008, 09:27:05 AM
Quote from: Stefen on January 16, 2008, 09:12:49 AM
Pshhh. If I had those types of powers my shitty movie watching would have disastrous results.

i take it you haven't seen CMMB yet?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on January 16, 2008, 10:12:17 AM
Quote from: mogwai on January 16, 2008, 09:27:05 AM
Quote from: Stefen on January 16, 2008, 09:12:49 AM
Pshhh. If I had those types of powers my shitty movie watching would have disastrous results.

i take it you haven't seen CMMB yet?

Oh, I think we'll all know when I see CMBB.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on January 16, 2008, 10:21:30 AM
yeah, paul dano will be dead.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on January 16, 2008, 10:44:05 AM
I've watched bits and parts of it though. I'd say around 10 minutes. What are the consequences of that? PTA will probably get a bum knee, or Dano will get wounded in a knife fight, but live.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on January 16, 2008, 11:20:10 AM
Quote from: Stefen on January 16, 2008, 10:44:05 AM
I've watched bits and parts of it though. I'd say around 10 minutes. What are the consequences of that?
vince froio, prepare to meet your maker.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on January 20, 2008, 01:19:08 PM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/01/19/entertainment/e211350S41.DTL

'Newhart' Actress Suzanne Pleshette Dies
By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, January 20, 2008
(01-20) 04:53 PST Los Angeles (AP)

Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced star best known for her role as Bob Newhart's sardonic wife on television's long-running "The Bob Newhart Show," has died at age 70.

Pleshette, whose career included roles in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and in Broadway plays including "The Miracle Worker," died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home, said her attorney Robert Finkelstein, also a family friend.

Pleshette underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006.

"The Bob Newhart Show, a hit throughout its six-year run, starred comedian Newhart as a Chicago psychiatrist surrounded by eccentric patients. Pleshette provided the voice of reason.

Four years after the show ended in 1978, Newhart went on to the equally successful "Newhart" series in which he was the proprietor of a New England inn populated by more eccentrics. When that show ended in 1990, Pleshette reprised her role — from the first show — in one of the most clever final episodes in TV history.

It had Newhart waking up in the bedroom of his "The Bob Newhart Show" home with Pleshette at his side. He went on to tell her of the crazy dream he'd just had of running an inn filled with eccentrics.

"If I'm in Timbuktu, I'll fly home to do that," Pleshette said of her reaction when Newhart told her how he was thinking of ending the show.

Born Jan. 31, 1937, in New York City, Pleshette began her career as a stage actress after attending the city's High School of the Performing Arts and studying at its Neighborhood Playhouse. She was often picked for roles because of her beauty and her throaty voice.

"When I was 4," she told an interviewer in 1994, "I was answering the phone, and (the callers) thought I was my father. So I often got quirky roles because I was never the conventional ingenue."

She met her future husband, Tom Poston, when they appeared together in the 1959 Broadway comedy "The Golden Fleecing," but didn't marry him until more than 40 years later.

Although the two had a brief fling, they went on to marry others. By 2000 both were widowed and they got back together, marrying the following year.

"He was such a wonderful man. He had fun every day of his life," Pleshette said after Poston died in April 2007.

Among her other Broadway roles was replacing Anne Bancroft in "The Miracle Worker," the 1959 drama about Helen Keller, in New York and on the road.

Meanwhile, she had launched her film career with Jerry Lewis in 1958 in "The Geisha Boy." She went on to appear in numerous television shows, including "Have Gun, Will Travel,""Alfred Hitchcock Presents,""Playhouse 90" and "Naked City."

By the early 1960s, Pleshette attracted a teenage following with her youthful roles in such films as "Rome Adventure,""Fate Is the Hunter,""Youngblood Hawke" and "A Distant Trumpet."

She married fellow teen favorite Troy Donahue, her co-star in "Rome Adventure," in 1964 but the union lasted less than a year. She was married to Texas oilman Tim Gallagher from 1968 until his death in 2000.

Pleshette matured in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and the Disney comedies "The Ugly Dachshund,""Blackbeard's Ghost" and "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin." Over the years, she also had a busy career in TV movies, including playing the title role in 1990's "Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean."

More recently, she appeared in several episodes of the TV sitcoms "Will & Grace" and "8 Simple Rules ... For Dating My Teenage Daughter."

In a 1999 interview, Pleshette observed that being an actress was more important than being a star.

"I'm an actress, and that's why I'm still here," she said. "Anybody who has the illusion that you can have a career as long as I have and be a star is kidding themselves."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on January 22, 2008, 09:39:39 PM
It's really crazy how deaths come in threes. Brad Renfro, and Heath Ledger. I wonder who is next.  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on January 22, 2008, 09:41:20 PM
i thought Suzanne Pleshette was the first?  :yabbse-undecided:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 27, 2008, 12:44:48 PM
Marlon Brando's son dies at 49 in Los Angeles

Christian Brando, the eldest son of Hollywood icon Marlon Brando who made worldwide news in 1990 by shooting dead his sister's boyfriend, died on Saturday at the age of 49, his lawyer said.

Brando, son of the Oscar-winning screen star and Welsh actress Anna Kashfi, died early on Saturday of complications from pneumonia, attorney Bruce Margolin said.

He had been hospitalized at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center since January 11 with pneumonia and his ex-wife, Deborah, told People magazine in a story for their Web site that he had been comatose and on a respirator.

"His body was totally compromised," she said. "He'd lived so hard ... this is just so sad."

Representatives for Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center declined to comment.

Brando fatally shot Dag Drollet on May 16, 1990, after his sister Cheyenne told him that her 26-year-old boyfriend had been beating her.

His arrest and subsequent legal proceedings made international headlines, fueled by Marlon Brando's tearful plea for leniency on his eldest son's behalf in a Southern California courtroom.

Christian Brando pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, serving almost five years behind bars before he was released.

He told the Los Angeles Times in a 1991 interview that he never intended to kill Drollet, but that the gun went off accidentally while the two struggled.

"I just sat there and watched the life go out of this guy," Brando told the newspaper.

Cheyenne Brando committed suicide in 1995, at the age of 25, by hanging herself at her mother's home in Tahiti.

Brando also figured in the murder trial of actor Robert Blake, who was acquitted in the May 4, 2001 shooting death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.

Christian Brando had briefly dated Bakley, and defense lawyers suggested that he could have been the killer, but he was never arrested or charged in her death and police cleared him of any involvement.

Brando was called as a witness during Blake's subsequent civil trial but refused to testify and was fined for contempt of court.

In 2005, he pleaded guilty to spousal abuse charges involving his then-wife, Deborah, and was placed on probation.

Marlon Brando, considered one of the greatest actors of his generation, won Academy Awards for his acclaimed roles in "On the Waterfront" and "The Godfather."

He died in 2004 at the age of 80.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Chest Rockwell on January 27, 2008, 02:18:17 PM
Quote from: Stefen on January 22, 2008, 09:39:39 PM
It's really crazy how deaths come in threes. Brad Renfro, and Heath Ledger. I wonder who is next.  :(
There you go. A once-thought-to-be-the-next-Brando, a current-thought-to-be-the-next-Brando, and the real current Brando.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on January 27, 2008, 02:45:31 PM
too easy, I don't buy it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on February 10, 2008, 09:08:11 PM
Roy Scheider, a stage actor with a background in the classics who became one of the leading figures in the American film renaissance of the 1970s, died on Sunday afternoon in Little Rock, Ark. He was 75 and lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

Mr. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years, and died of complications from a staph infection, his wife, Brenda Seimer, said.

Mr. Scheider's rangy figure, gaunt face and emotional openness made him particularly appealing in everyman roles, most famously as the agonized police chief of "Jaws," Steven Spielberg's 1975 breakthrough hit, about a New England resort town haunted by the knowledge that a killer shark is preying on the local beaches.

Mr. Scheider conveyed an accelerated metabolism in movies like "Klute" (1971), his first major film role, in which he played a threatening pimp to Jane Fonda's New York call girl; and in William Friedkin's "French Connection" (also 1971), as Buddy Russo, the slightly more restrained partner to Gene Hackman's marauding police detective, Popeye Doyle. That role earned Mr. Scheider the first of two Oscar nominations.

Born in 1932 in Orange, N.J., Mr. Scheider earned his distinctive broken nose in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition. He studied at Rutgers and at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., where he graduated as a history major with the intention of going to law school. He served three years in the United States Air Force, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was discharged, he returned to Franklin and Marshall to star in a production of "Richard III."

His professional debut was as Mercutio in a 1961 New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Romeo and Juliet." While continuing to work onstage, he made his movie debut in "The Curse of the Living Corpse" (1964), a low-budget horror film by the prolific schlockmeister Del Tenney. "He had to bend his knees to die into a moat full of quicksand up in Connecticut," recalled Ms. Seimer, a documentary filmmaker. "He loved to demonstrate that."

In 1977 Mr. Scheider worked with Mr. Friedkin again in "Sorcerer," a big-budget remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 French thriller, "The Wages of Fear," about transporting a dangerous load of nitroglycerine in South America.

Offered a leading role in "The Deer Hunter" (1979), Mr. Scheider had to turn it down in order to fulfill his contract with Universal for a sequel to "Jaws." (The part went to Robert De Niro.)

"Jaws 2" failed to recapture the appeal of the first film, but Mr. Scheider bounced back, accepting the principal role in Bob Fosse's autobiographical phantasmagoria of 1979, "All That Jazz." Equipped with Mr. Fosse's Mephistophelean beard and manic drive, Mr. Scheider's character, Joe Gideon, gobbled amphetamines in an attempt to stage a new Broadway show while completing the editing of a film (and pursuing a parade of alluring young women) — a monumental act of self-abuse that leads to open-heart surgery. This won Mr. Scheider an Academy Award nomination in the best actor category. (Dustin Hoffman won that year, for "Kramer vs. Kramer.")

In 1980, Mr. Scheider returned to his first love, the stage, where his performance in a production of Harold Pinter's "Betrayal" opposite Blythe Danner and Raul Julia earned him the Drama League of New York award for distinguished performance. Although he continued to be active in films, notably in Robert Benton's "Still of the Night" (1982) and John Badham's action spectacular "Blue Thunder" (1983), he moved from leading men to character roles, including an American spy in Fred Schepisi's "Russia House" (1990) and a calculating Mafia don in "Romeo Is Bleeding" (1993).

One of the most memorable performances of his late career was as the sinister, wisecracking Dr. Benway in David Cronenberg's adaptation of William S. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch" (1991).

Living in Sag Harbor, Mr. Scheider continued to appear in films and lend his voice to documentaries, becoming, Ms. Seimer said, increasingly politically active. With the poet Kathy Engle, he helped to found the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, dedicated to creating an innovative, culturally diverse learning environment for local children. At the time of his death, Mr. Scheider was involved in a project to build a film studio in Florence, Italy, for a series about the history of the Renaissance.

Besides his wife, his survivors include three children, Christian Verrier Scheider and Molly Mae Scheider, with Ms. Seimer, and Maximillia Connelly Lord, from an earlier marriage, to Cynthia Bebout; a brother, Glenn Scheider of Summit, N.J.; and two grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on February 12, 2008, 01:13:34 PM
Not that it's a competition, but given the career, Roy outweighs the loss of Ledger.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on February 12, 2008, 01:37:57 PM
Quote from: Walrus on February 12, 2008, 01:13:34 PM
Not that it's a competition, but given the career, Roy outweighs the loss of Ledger.

it's offensive to "weigh" out losses like this, but since it started anyway: Ledger's loss is WAY worse because Roy was done... sick for a really long time... his greatness was completed... Ledger was just getting started and had great things in his future.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on February 12, 2008, 07:20:20 PM
the recent death of my cat OUTWEIGHS all of this! He had such a promising career.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on February 21, 2008, 12:56:25 AM
Lionel Mark Smith died...
he played the pimp in "Edmond" and was in a bunch of Mamet films... and he was the black detective in "Magnolia"...

"Help us help your son, Marcie," I believe was his line....
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on February 21, 2008, 01:12:34 AM
He was no squints' cat.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 28, 2008, 04:50:51 PM
Warner Bros. gobbles up New Line
Company ends 40-year run as indie studio
Source" Variety

New Line's 40-year run as an independent studio ended Thursday when Time Warner said it would fold the company into Warner Bros.

Co-toppers Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are ankling but are in talks to continue some business relationship with Warners.

The move came a mere four years after New Line's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" won the Best Picture Oscar and grossed $1.1 billion worldwide. Since then, however, New Line's performance has been drab with only a single breakout in "Wedding Crashers."

The move to fold in New Line was not a surprise following a Feb. 6 announcement by Time Warner president and CEO Jeff Bewkes. Citng the trend toward fewer releases, Bewkes said New Line would be the focus of budget cuts and layoffs in order to save $50 million annually.

Bewkes said Thursday that Time Warner's moving quickly to improve business performance and financial returns.

"New Line has built a strong franchise of cutting-edge entertainment," he said. "We can enhance its value by combining it with Warner Bros. Given the trend toward fewer movie releases, New Line and Warner Bros. will now have more complementary release slates, with New Line focusing on genres that have been its strength."

Bewkes also said New Line would no longer sell off international rights to finance films. "With the growing importance of international revenues, it makes sense for New Line to retain its international film rights and to exploit them through Warner Bros.' global distribution infrastructure," he added.

The exec said the combo would be able to take better advantage of digital distribution platforms.

In a message to New Line staffers, Shaye and Lynne said New Line will maintain its own identity and will continue to produce, market, and distribute movies. They also warned that New Line will probably be a much smaller operation and said details would be spelled out at meetings in Los Angeles and New York on Friday.

"This was a painful decision, because we love New Line and the people who work here have been like our second families," Shaye and Lynne said. "But we will be leaving the company with enormous pride in what all of us at New Line have accomplished together. From its humble beginnings 40 years ago, our studio has created some of the most popular and successful movies of all time."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on February 28, 2008, 06:48:43 PM
william f buckley jr. died too.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on February 28, 2008, 10:08:20 PM
Quote from: pete on February 28, 2008, 06:48:43 PM
william f buckley jr. died too.

yeah im surprised JB hasn't gone on a posting frenzy about it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on February 29, 2008, 01:40:54 AM
I thought the sun was shining a little brighter today...  :yabbse-smiley:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 03, 2008, 11:24:08 AM
Blind rocker Healey dies aged 41

Blind Canadian rock musician Jeff Healey has died in a Toronto hospital aged 41 from a rare form of cancer, his publicist has said.

Healey, famed for playing his electric guitar flat on his lap, died of retinoblastoma which claimed his sight when he was a one-year-old-child.

His 1988 album See The Light was nominated for a Grammy award and sold one million copies in the US.

Healey's latest album was due to be released in Canada on Monday.

Blues rock release Mess of Blues is expected to become available in the US and around Europe later this month and in April.

'Remarkable'

He was also due to appear on Later With Jools Holland and tour the UK and Germany.

His publicist Richard Flohil told broadcaster CTV: "Jeff was an intriguing player to watch, because he played guitar - by any conventional standard - all wrong, with it flat across his lap."

"But he was a remarkable, a virtuoso player," he added.

Colin Bray, a member of Healey's band who was at his bedside when he died, said: "I don't think any of us thought this was going to happen.

"We just thought he was going to bounce back like he always does."

Healey played with blues legend BB King and recorded with Mark Knopfler and the late George Harrison.

He was also a lover of jazz, and hosted radio shows in Canada where he would play music from his record collection, which numbered more than 30,000.

Last year, he underwent cancer surgery on his lungs and legs and had chemotherapy.

The musician is survived by his wife Christie and two children.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on March 04, 2008, 04:09:42 AM
This is a huge loss. I heard about this early monday morning and I was devastated. I really love his music...a blow to me, because his music meant a lot.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 04, 2008, 01:19:55 PM
Quote from: SiliasRuby on March 04, 2008, 04:09:42 AM
This is a huge loss. I heard about this early monday morning and I was devastated. I really love his music...a blow to me, because his music meant a lot.

i agree.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on March 04, 2008, 02:08:07 PM
This may not be a big deal to anyone else, but if it wasn't for this guy, I can't imagine how I could've gotten through Junior High.

I probably would've been more productive.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080304/ap_en_ot/obit_gygax

Dungeons & Dragons co-creator dies at 69
By EMILY FREDRIX

MILWAUKEE - Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.

He had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm, said his wife, Gail Gygax.

Gygax and Dave Arneson developed Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys, and eventually was turned into video games, books and movies.

Gygax always enjoyed hearing from the game's legion of devoted fans, many of whom would stop by the family's home in Lake Geneva, about 55 miles southwest of Milwaukee, his wife said. Despite his declining health, he hosted weekly games of Dungeons & Dragons as recently as January, she said.

"It really meant a lot to him to hear from people from over the years about how he helped them become a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, what he gave them," Gygax said. "He really enjoyed that."

Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures with the help of complicated rules. The quintessential geek pastime, it spawned a wealth of copycat games and later inspired a whole genre of computer games that's still growing in popularity.

Funeral arrangements are pending. Besides his wife, Gygax is survived by six children.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on March 18, 2008, 10:16:00 AM
Oscar-winning director Minghella dies


Ben Child and agencies
Tuesday March 18, 2008
guardian.co.uk

Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning director of The English Patient, has died at the age of 54, his agent said today.
The cause of death has not yet been released.

Minghella won the best director Academy award in 1997, the year in which the film won nine Oscars. He was also nominated for the best adapted screenwriting award in 2000 for The Talented Mr Ripley.

The film-maker recently completed work on the Botswana-set comedy, The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which he directed after co-writing with Four Weddings and a Funeral scribe Richard Curtis. An adaptation of the Alexander McCall Smith novel, it had been due to premiere on BBC1 on Easter Monday.

Article continues

Fellow film director Lord Puttnam said the death was a "shattering blow" to the industry.
"I am shattered. He was a very important person in the film community because not only was he a fine, fine writer ... and made the transfer into becoming a really excellent director, he was also a really beautiful man.

"I just spoke to Alan Parker and it was the line Alan used: he was a beautiful man; he was a lot of fun to be with; he was thoughtful and intelligent.

"Most importantly of all for me, he was one of the few filmmakers who really stepped up to the responsibility - he worked his guts out at the BFI (British Film Institute) to be an effective chair and was an extremely effective chair with the result being that the BFI to an extent is rising from the ashes as never before.

"He's going to be hugely missed. This is a shattering blow from someone who was a major figure in an important industry and had a lot to go on and contribute."

Lord Puttnam said Minghella had been "a storyteller in the classic British tradition". He compared him with David Lean, saying he was particularly good at inspiring great performances from actresses.

Minghella had two projects in the pipeline: New York, I Love You, a celluloid ode to the Big Apple for which he had written and directed a segment, and the drama The Ninth Life of Louis Drax.

The director was born on the Isle of Wight, the son of Gloria and Edward Minghella, who owned an ice-cream factory.

His father was Italian-Scottish and his mother came from Leeds, although her ancestors were also Italian. Minghella attended Sandown grammar school and St John's college in Portsmouth. He is a graduate of the University of Hull, where he completed undergraduate and graduate courses, but eventually abandoned his doctoral thesis.

Minghella worked as a television script editor before making his directing debut in 1990 with Truly, Madly, Deeply, a comedy about love and grief starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. The made-for-TV production proved so popular that it received a cinematic release.

The director also received critical plaudits for his 2003 film Cold Mountain. While Minghella himself did not receive any nominations, it saw Renée Zellweger take the Oscar for best supporting actress, with Jude Law picking up a nomination for best actor.

Minghella began his career in theatre, working as a playwright as well as a director. The plays of Beckett were a lifelong fascination - Play and Happy Days provided his directorial debut - and Minghella presided over a starry gala tribute to celebrate the playwright's 100th birthday in 2006, as well as writing a radio play to commemorate the occasion.

Two volumes of Minghella's own plays were published by Methuen, and he won a number of awards for his theatre writing in the mid-80s.

He returned to the stage in 2005 with a cinematically lavish staging of Puccini's Madam Butterfly at the English National Opera, which disappointed critics but was enthusiastically received by audiences. Last year, it was announced he would direct and write the libretto for a new work at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the 2011-12 season

At the time of his death Minghella had recently relinquished his role as chairman of the British Film Institute. He was replaced by the former director-general of the BBC, Greg Dyke, on March 1. Minghella was made a CBE in the 2001 Queen's birthday honours list.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 18, 2008, 10:26:13 AM
Oh my god. That's terrible. Talented Mr. Ripley is one of the movies that I cite as getting me interested in filmmaking.

Rest in peace Mr. Minghella.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 18, 2008, 12:19:45 PM
Quote from: Stefen on March 18, 2008, 10:26:13 AM
Oh my god. That's terrible. Talented Mr. Ripley is one of the movies that I cite as getting me interested in filmmaking.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is one of my favorite films as well.  RIP Anthony Minghella.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on March 18, 2008, 04:27:58 PM
According to CNN, he "died of a hemorrhage after a routine operation on his neck."  Botched surgery, it sounds like. 

Anyway, he will be missed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on March 18, 2008, 05:21:18 PM
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- An aide says science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has died.

Science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke, best known for "2001: A Space Odyssey," was a prolific and best-selling author for four decades with an uncanny ability to predict the impact of technology.

Rohan De Silva says Clarke died early today after suffering from breathing problems. He was 90.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on March 18, 2008, 05:38:53 PM
 :yabbse-sad: :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 18, 2008, 05:44:32 PM
who will be the third!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on March 18, 2008, 05:46:40 PM
Quote from: edison on March 18, 2008, 05:21:18 PM
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- An aide says science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has died.

fuck... i don't know what to say, so i'll just quote something polkablues wrote after vonnegut died:

Quote from: polkablues on April 12, 2007, 01:15:27 AM
One of the rare, great minds of our lifetime has been extinguished.  I'm going to be depressed for a week now.  So it goes.

RIP.

:cry: :cry: :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on March 18, 2008, 08:50:35 PM
Quote from: cron on March 18, 2008, 05:38:53 PM
:yabbse-sad: :yabbse-sad:

:salute: :salute:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on March 18, 2008, 09:12:36 PM
Damn, I was very shocked at Minghella, he was so young. I too think the Talented Mr. Ripley is both one of my favorite films and the best performance by Matt Damon.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on March 19, 2008, 11:45:31 AM
Damn, I just found out by reading this thread, yesterday there were very strong winds where I live and so almost the whole city went dark for all day.

:yabbse-sad:


RIP Arthur C. and Anthony M.


Edit: Found this letter on another forum.

Arthur C. Clarke Offers His Vision of the Future
by  Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Ray Kurzweil

The science fiction visionary behind HAL offers his predictions of salient events to come in this century.

Originally published December 3, 2001 on KurzweilAI.net.

On Friday, November 30, 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and inventor of the geosynchronous communications satellite, joined myself and two other panelists by video and phone connection from Sri Lanka to offer his vision of the future. The event took place at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts in front of an audience of approximately 500 college and high school students and teachers. The other panelists included Alison Taunton-Rigby, president of Forester Biotech and David Cyganski, WPI professor of electrical and computer engineering and an expert in machine vision.


The legendary science fiction author offered the predictions below. My own view is that Clarke's near term predictions involving energy are at least a
decade premature. However, many of his predictions involving intelligent machines and nanotechnology are insightful and reflect a keen understanding
of the acceleration of technological progress.


Arthur C. Clarke's predictions for the next century:

2002 Clean low-power fuel involving a new energy source, possibly based on cold fusion.
2003 The automobile industry is given five years to replace fossil fuels.
2004 First publicly admitted human clone.
2006 Last coal mine closed.
2009 A city in a third world country is devastated by an atomic bomb explosion.
2009 All nuclear weapons are destroyed.
2010 A new form of space-based energy is adopted.
2010 Despite protests against "big brother," ubiquitous monitoring eliminates many forms of criminal activity.
2011 Space flights become available for the public.
2013 Prince Harry flies in space.
2015 Complete control of matter at the atomic level is achieved.
2016 All existing currencies are abolished. A universal currency is adopted based on the "megawatt hour."
2017 Arthur C. Clarke, on his one hundredth birthday, is a guest on the space orbiter.
2019 There is a meteorite impact on Earth.
2020 Artificial Intelligence reaches human levels. There are now two intelligent species on Earth, one biological, and one nonbiological.
2021 The first human landing on Mars is achieved. There is an unpleasant surprise.
2023 Dinosaurs are cloned from fragments of DNA. A dinosaur zoo opens in Florida.
2025 Brain research leads to an understanding of all human senses. Full immersion virtual reality becomes available. The user puts on a metal helmet
and is then able to enter "new universes."
2040 A universal replicator based on nanotechnology is now able to create any object from gourmet meals to diamonds. The only thing that has value is information.
2040 The concept of human "work" is phased out.
2061 Hunter gatherer societies are recreated.
2061 The return of Haley's comet is visited by humans.
2090 Large scale burning of fossil fuels is resumed to replace carbon dioxide.
2095 A true "space drive" is developed. The first humans are sent out to nearby star systems already visited by robots.
2100 History begins.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 21, 2008, 01:16:09 PM
http://www.guidelive.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/performingarts/stories/scofieldobit_0320gl.bedc782.html

'A Man for All Seasons' actor Paul Scofield dead at 86
12:18 PM CDT on Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Associated Press

LONDON — Paul Scofield, the towering British stage actor who won international fame and an Academy Award for the film A Man for All Seasons, has died. He was 86.

Mr. Scofield died Wednesday in a hospital near his home in southern England, agent Rosalind Chatto said. He had been suffering from leukemia.

He made few films even after the Oscar for his 1966 portrayal of Sir Thomas More, the Tudor statesman executed for treason in 1535 after clashing with King Henry VIII. He was a stage actor by inclination and by his gifts — a dramatic, craggy face and an unforgettable voice that was likened to a Rolls-Royce starting up or the rumbling sound of low organ pipes.

Even his greatest screen role was a follow-up to a play — the London stage production of A Man for All Seasons, in which he starred for nine months. Mr. Scofield also turned in a performance in the 1961 New York production that won him extraordinary reviews and a Tony Award.

"With a kind of weary magnificence, Scofield sinks himself into the part, studiously underplays it, and somehow displays the inner mind of a man destined for sainthood," Time magazine said.

Mr. Scofield's huge success with A Man for All Seasons was followed in 1979 by another great historical stage role, as composer Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. Actor Richard Burton, once regarded as the natural heir to Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud at the summit of British theater, said it was Mr. Scofield who deserved that place. "Of the 10 greatest moments in the theater, eight are Scofield's," he said.

Mr. Scofield's rare films included Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance in 1974; Kenneth Branagh's 1989 production of Henry V, in which he played the king of France; Quiz Show, Robert Redford's film about the 1950s TV scandal in which Mr. Scofield played poet Mark Van Doren; and the 1996 adaptation of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible .

He was an unusual star — a family man who lived almost his entire life within a few miles of his birthplace and hurried home after work to his wife and children. He didn't seek the spotlight, gave interviews sparingly, and at times seemed to need coaxing to venture out, even onto the stage he loved.

He is survived by his wife, actress Joy Parker, a son and a daughter.

Audrey Woods, the Associated Press
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 26, 2008, 01:22:48 PM
Actor Richard Widmark Dies at 93

Richard Widmark, who made a sensational film debut as the giggling killer in "Kiss of Death" and became a Hollywood leading man in "Broken Lance," "Two Rode Together" and 40 other films, has died after a long illness. He was 93.

Widmark's wife, Susan Blanchard, says the actor died at his home in Roxbury on Monday. She would not provide details of his illness and said funeral arrangements are private.

"It was a big shock, but he was 93," Blanchard said.

After a career in radio drama and theater, Widmark moved to films as Tommy Udo, who delighted in pushing an old lady in a wheelchair to her death down a flight of stairs in the 1947 thriller "Kiss of Death." The performance won him an Academy Award nomination as supporting actor; it was his only mention for an Oscar.

"That damned laugh of mine!" he told a reporter in 1961. "For two years after that picture, you couldn't get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh. The guy was such a ridiculous beast."

A quiet, inordinately shy man, Widmark often portrayed killers, cops and Western gunslingers. But he said he hated guns.

"I know I've made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence," he remarked in a 1976 Associated Press interview. "I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns."

Two years out of college, Widmark reached New York in 1938 during the heyday of radio. His mellow Midwest voice made him a favorite in soap operas, and he found himself racing from studio to studio.

Rejected by the Army because of a punctured eardrum, Widmark began appearing in theater productions in 1943. His first was a comedy hit on Broadway, "Kiss and Tell." He was appearing in the Chicago company of "Dream Girl" with June Havoc when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year contract. He almost missed out on the "Kiss of Death" role.

"The director, Henry Hathaway, didn't want me," the actor recalled. "I have a high forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual." The director was overruled by studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck, and Hathaway "gave me kind of a bad time."

An immediate star, Widmark appeared in 20 Fox films from 1957 to 1964. Among them: "The Street With No Name," "Road House," "Yellow Sky," "Down to the Sea in Ships," "Slattery's Hurricane," "Panic in the Streets," "No Way Out," "The Halls of Montezuma," "The Frogmen," "Red Skies of Montana," "My Pal Gus" and the Samuel Fuller film noir "Pickup on South Street."

In 1952, he starred in "Don't Bother to Knock" with Marilyn Monroe. He told an interviewer in later years:

"She wanted to be this great star but acting just scared the hell out of her. That's why she was always late couldn't get her on the set. She had trouble remembering lines. But none of it mattered. With a very few special people, something happens between the lens and the film that is pure magic. ... And she really had it."

After leaving Fox, Widmark's career continued to flourish. He starred (as Jim Bowie) with John Wayne in "The Alamo," with James Stewart in John Ford's "Two Rode Together," as the U.S. prosecutor in "Judgment at Nuremberg," and with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in "The Way West." He also played the Dauphin in "St. Joan," and had roles in "How the West Was Won," "Death of a Gunfighter," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Midas Run" and "Coma."

"Madigan," a 1968 film with Widmark as a loner detective, was converted to television and lasted one season in 1972-73. It was Widmark's only TV series.

He also was in some TV films, including "Cold Sassy Tree" and "Once Upon a Texas Train."

Richard Widmark was born Dec. 26, 1914, in Sunrise, Minn., where his father ran a general store, then became a traveling salesman. The family moved around before settling in Princeton, Ill.

"Like most small-town boys, I had the urge to get to the big city and make a name for myself," he recalled in a 1954 interview. "I was a movie nut from the age of 3, but I don't recall having any interest in acting," he said.

But at Lake Forest College, he became a protege of the drama teacher and met his future wife, drama student Ora Jean Hazlewood.

In later years, Widmark appeared sparingly in films and TV. He explained to Parade magazine in 1987: "I've discovered in my dotage that I now find the whole moviemaking process irritating. I don't have the patience anymore. I've got a few more years to live, and I don't want to spend them sitting around a movie set for 12 hours to do two minutes of film."

When he wasn't working, he and his wife lived on a horse ranch in Hidden Valley, Calif., or on a farm in Connecticut. Their daughter Ann became the wife of baseball immortal Sandy Koufax.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 31, 2008, 07:03:33 PM
Film director Dassin dies in Athens aged 96

Jules Dassin, the American who directed the film "Never on Sunday" and was married to the late Greek actress and culture minister Melina Mercouri, died in an Athens hospital after a short illness on Monday aged 96.

"Greece grieves the loss of a rare human being, an important creator and a true friend," Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a statement. "His passion, energy, fighting spirit and nobility will never be forgotten."

Blacklisted in the United States in the 1950s, he fled to Europe, where he met the young, larger-than-life Greek actress at the Cannes film festival and never looked back.

"I was Greek even before I knew it," Dassin was quoted as saying by Greek state TV.

Born in Connecticut on December 18 1911, Dassin began working as an actor and theatre producer before becoming assistant to film director Alfred Hitchcock in 1940.

He was hailed as a bright talent with his first films in the 1940s but his career froze in 1952, when he was named in testimony to the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as a member of Hollywood's "communist faction."

Blacklisted and unemployable in Hollywood, he moved to France where he supported himself by writing.

His biggest success was the 1960 film "Never on Sunday," starring Mercouri, which he wrote and directed. It won an Oscar in 1961 for best original song and Dassin received Oscar nominations for best director and best writing, story and screenplay.

After the 1967 military coup in Greece, the couple became vocal opponents of the junta and their home in Paris the centre of the Greek diaspora's resistance. They settled in Greece when democracy returned in 1974.

When the socialists won the 1981 elections, Mercouri was appointed culture minister and Dassin become a Greek citizen, occasionally directing for the theatre.

In his later years Dassin was active in the Greek drive to return the Elgin Marbles to Athens from the British Museum in London, a campaign led with passion by Mercouri.

"This British Museum does not understand what these marbles mean to Greece, how sacred they are," he told Greek TV in heavily accented Greek.

He was well loved by the public and respected across the political spectrum in Greece.

"His death fills us all with deep emotion," said socialist opposition leader George Papandreou. "He will be remembered for all his good work and struggles with Melina for his campaign for the return of the marbles, which will continue."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 06, 2008, 12:02:33 AM
Charlton Heston dead at 84

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing "Ben-Hur" and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84.

The actor died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia at his side, family spokesman Bill Powers said.

Powers declined to comment on the cause of death or provide further details.

Heston revealed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease, saying, "I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure."

With his large, muscular build, well-boned face and sonorous voice, Heston proved the ideal star during the period when Hollywood was filling movie screens with panoramas depicting the religious and historical past. "I have a face that belongs in another century," he often remarked.

The actor assumed the role of leader offscreen as well. He served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and chairman of the American Film Institute and marched in the civil rights movement of the 1950s. With age, he grew more conservative and campaigned for conservative candidates.

In June 1998, Heston was elected president of the National Rifle Association, for which he had posed for ads holding a rifle. He delivered a jab at then-President Clinton, saying, "America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns."

Heston stepped down as NRA president in April 2003, telling members his five years in office were "quite a ride. ... I loved every minute of it."

Later that year, Heston was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. "The largeness of character that comes across the screen has also been seen throughout his life," President Bush said at the time.

He engaged in a lengthy feud with liberal Ed Asner during the latter's tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild. His latter-day activism almost overshadowed his achievements as an actor, which were considerable.

Heston lent his strong presence to some of the most acclaimed and successful films of the midcentury. "Ben-Hur" won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent "Titanic" (1997) and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003). Heston's other hits include: "The Ten Commandments," "El Cid," "55 Days at Peking," "Planet of the Apes" and "Earthquake."

He liked the cite the number of historical figures he had portrayed:

Andrew Jackson ("The President's Lady," "The Buccaneer"), Moses ("The Ten Commandments"), title role of "El Cid," John the Baptist ("The Greatest Story Ever Told"), Michelangelo ("The Agony and the Ecstasy"), General Gordon ("Khartoum"), Marc Antony ("Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra"), Cardinal Richelieu ("The Three Musketeers"), Henry VIII ("The Prince and the Pauper").

Heston made his movie debut in the 1940s in two independent films by a college classmate, David Bradley, who later became a noted film archivist. He had the title role in "Peer Gynt" in 1942 and was Marc Antony in Bradley's 1949 version of "Julius Caesar," for which Heston was paid $50 a week.

Film producer Hal B. Wallis ("Casablanca") spotted Heston in a 1950 television production of "Wuthering Heights" and offered him a contract. When his wife reminded him that they had decided to pursue theater and television, he replied, "Well, maybe just for one film to see what it's like."

Heston earned star billing from his first Hollywood movie, "Dark City," a 1950 film noir. Cecil B. DeMille next cast him as the circus manager in the all-star "The Greatest Show On Earth," named by the Motion Picture Academy as the best picture of 1952.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Kal on April 06, 2008, 01:00:30 AM
RIP

He had an interesting life... and he was old... big deal in Hollywood to die peacefully these days and living a life of success without going psycho or being remembered like some punk. He did good!


Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on April 06, 2008, 09:58:09 AM
Quote from: kal on April 06, 2008, 01:00:30 AM
RIP

He had an interesting life... and he was old... big deal in Hollywood to die peacefully these days and living a life of success without going psycho or being remembered like some punk. He did good!




i think plenty of people will still remember him as the NRA punk... considering his involvement with them i guess it is surprising that he was able to die of old age.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on April 06, 2008, 02:16:58 PM
When I think of him, I think of Bowling For Columbine. That's my memory of him. It's unfortunate, but that's the way I'll remember him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on April 06, 2008, 03:04:18 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbp3.blogger.com%2F_c8LNGp0k9_c%2FR_hscOFZrSI%2FAAAAAAAACfo%2FWSXQ08cZxZE%2Fs400%2Fparade_1961_heston2.jpg&hash=13a0ee006bea23d7a6d09734799774cbf099a351)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Tictacbk on April 07, 2008, 01:53:31 PM
...I guess we can finally get that rifle out of his hands.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on April 07, 2008, 09:42:08 PM
They kept playing tat "from my cold dead hands" clip on the radio this morning. Over and over. I guess it's the iberals getting payback for all the nasty Heath Ledger stuff...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 15, 2008, 06:50:47 PM
Disney animator Ollie Johnston dies at 95

Walt Disney Studios says legendary animator Ollie Johnston has died at age 95.

Studio Vice President Howard Green says Johnston died of natural causes on Monday at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington.

Johnston was the last of Walt Disney's so-called Nine Old Men.

He contributed animation and direction to classics such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," "Song of the South," "Cinderella," and "Alice in Wonderland."

He also worked on "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "Sleeping Beauty," "Sword in the Stone," "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book," "Robin Hood," "The Rescuers," and "The Fox and the Hound."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on April 15, 2008, 07:07:05 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on April 15, 2008, 06:50:47 PM
Disney animator Ollie Johnston dies at 95

Walt Disney Studios says legendary animator Ollie Johnston has died at age 95.

Studio Vice President Howard Green says Johnston died of natural causes on Monday at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington.

Johnston was the last of Walt Disney's so-called Nine Old Men.

He contributed animation and direction to classics such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," "Song of the South," "Cinderella," and "Alice in Wonderland."

He also worked on "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "Sleeping Beauty," "Sword in the Stone," "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book," "Robin Hood," "The Rescuers," and "The Fox and the Hound."

sure this shouldn't go in my childhood just died?  that's an amazing body of work.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on April 19, 2008, 03:25:06 PM
an elegy by brad bird. (http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/brad-bird-on-ollie-johnston)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 26, 2008, 08:15:57 PM
Sydney Pollack, Film Director, Dies at 73

LOS ANGELES — Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like "The Way We Were," "Tootsie" and "Out of Africa" were among the most successful of the 1970s and '80s, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 73.

The cause was cancer, said a representative of the family.

Mr. Pollack's career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.

Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film "Out of Africa" as well as nominations for directing "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" (1969) and "Tootsie" (1982).

Last fall, Warner Brothers released "Michael Clayton," of which Mr. Pollack was a producer and a member of the cast. He delivered a trademark performance as an old-bull lawyer who demands dark deeds from a subordinate, played by George Clooney. ("This is news? This case has reeked from Day One," snaps Mr. Pollack's Marty Bach.) The picture received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and a Best Actor nomination for Mr. Clooney.

Mr. Pollack became a prolific producer of independent films in the latter part of his career. With a partner, the filmmaker Anthony Minghella, he ran Mirage Enterprises, a production company whose films included Mr. Minghella's "Cold Mountain" and the documentary "Sketches of Frank Gehry," released last year, the last film directed by Mr. Pollack.

Apart from that film, Mr. Pollack never directed a movie without stars. His first feature, "The Slender Thread," released by Paramount Pictures in 1965, starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. In his next 19 films — every one a romance or drama but for the single comedy, "Tootsie" — Mr. Pollack worked with Burt Lancaster, Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Ms. Streisand and others.

Sydney Irwin Pollack was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., and reared in South Bend. By Mr. Pollack's own account, in the biographical dictionary "World Film Directors," his father, David, a pharmacist, and his mother, the former Rebecca Miller, were first-generation Russian-Americans who had met at Purdue University.

Mr. Pollack developed a love of drama at South Bend High School and, instead of going to college, went to New York and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. He studied there for two years under Sanford Meisner, who was in charge of its acting department, and remained for five more as Mr. Meisner's assistant, teaching acting but also appearing onstage and in television.

Curly-haired and almost 6 feet 2 inches tall, Mr. Pollack had a notable role in a 1959 "Playhouse 90" telecast of "For Whom the Bell Tolls," an adaptation of the Hemingway novel directed by John Frankenheimer. Earlier, Mr. Pollack had appeared on Broadway with Zero Mostel in "A Stone for Danny Fisher" and with Katharine Cornell and Tyrone Power in "The Dark Is Light Enough." But he said later that he probably could not have built a career as a leading man.

Instead, Mr. Pollack took the advice of Burt Lancaster, whom he had met while working with Frankenheimer, and turned to directing. Lancaster steered him to the entertainment mogul Lew Wasserman, and through him Mr. Pollack landed a directing assignment on the television series "Shotgun Slade."

After a faltering start, he hit his stride on episodes of "Ben Casey, "Naked City," "The Fugitive" and other well-known shows. In 1966 he won an Emmy for directing an episode of "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater."

From the time he made his first full-length feature, "The Slender Thread," about a social work student coaxing a woman out of suicide on a telephone help line, Mr. Pollack had a hit-and-miss relationship with the critics. Writing in The New York Times, A. H. Weiler deplored that film's "sudsy waves of bathos." Mr. Pollack himself later pronounced it "dreadful."

But from the beginning of his movie career, he was also perceived as belonging to a generation whose work broke with the immediate past. In 1965, Charles Champlin, writing in The Los Angeles Times, compared Mr. Pollack to the director Elliot Silverstein, whose western spoof, "Cat Ballou," had been released earlier that year, and Stuart Rosenberg, soon to be famous for "Cool Hand Luke" (1967). Mr. Champlin cited all three as artists who had used television rather than B movies to learn their craft.

Self-critical and never quite at ease with Hollywood, Mr. Pollack voiced a constant yearning for creative prerogatives more common on the stage. Yet he dived into the fray. In 1970, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?," his bleak fable of love and death among marathon dancers in the Great Depression, based on a Horace McCoy novel, received nine Oscar nominations, including the one for directing. (Gig Young won the best supporting actor award for his performance.)

Two years later, Mr. Pollack made the mountain-man saga "Jeremiah Johnson," one of three closely spaced pictures in which he directed Mr. Redford.

The second of those films, "The Way We Were," about a pair of ill-fated lovers who meet up later in life, also starred Ms. Streisand and was an enormous hit despite critical hostility.

The next, "Three Days of the Condor," another hit, about a bookish C.I.A. worker thrust into a mystery, did somewhat better with the critics. "Tense and involving," said Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times.

With "Absence of Malice" in 1981, Mr. Pollack entered the realm of public debate. The film's story of a newspaper reporter (Sally Field) who is fed a false story by federal officials trying to squeeze information from a businessman (Paul Newman) was widely viewed as a corrective to the adulation of investigative reporters that followed Alan J. Pakula's hit movie "All the President's Men," with its portrayal of the Watergate scandal.

But only with "Tootsie," in 1982, did Mr. Pollack become a fully realized Hollywood player.

By then he was represented by Michael S. Ovitz and the rapidly expanding Creative Artists Agency. So was his leading man, Dustin Hoffman.

As the film — a comedy about a struggling actor who disguises himself as a woman to get a coveted television part — was being shot for Columbia Pictures, Mr. Pollack and Mr. Hoffman became embroiled in a semi-public feud, with Mr. Ovitz running shuttle diplomacy between them.

Mr. Hoffman, who had initiated the project, argued for a more broadly comic approach. But Mr. Pollack — who played Mr. Hoffman's agent in the film — was drawn to the seemingly doomed romance between the cross-dressing Hoffman character and the actress played by Jessica Lange.

If Mr. Pollack did not prevail on all points, he tipped the film in his own direction. Meanwhile, the movie came in behind schedule, over budget and surrounded by bad buzz.

Yet "Tootsie" was also a winner. It took in more than $177 million at the domestic box office and received 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture. (Ms. Lange took home the film's only Oscar, for best supporting actress.)

Backed by Mr. Ovitz, Mr. Pollack expanded his reach in the wake of success. Over the next several years, he worked closely with both Tri-Star Pictures, where he was creative consultant, and Universal, where Mirage, his production company, set up shop in 1986.

Mr. Pollack reached perhaps his career pinnacle with "Out of Africa." Released by Universal, the film, based on the memoirs of Isak Dinesen, paired Ms. Streep and Mr. Redford in a period drama that reworked one of the director's favorite themes, that of star-crossed lovers. It captured Oscars for best picture and best director.

Still, Mr. Pollack remained uneasy about his cinematic skills. "I was never what I would call a great shooter or visual stylist," he told an interviewer for American Cinematographer last year. And he developed a reputation for caution when it came to directing assignments. Time after time, he expressed interest in directing projects, only to back away. At one point he was to make "Rain Man," a Dustin Hoffman picture ultimately directed by Mr. Levinson; at another, an adaptation of "The Night Manager" by John le Carré.

That wariness was undoubtedly fed by his experience with "Havana," a 1990 film that was to be his last with Mr. Redford. It seemed to please no one, though Mr. Pollack defended it. "To tell you the truth, if I knew what was wrong, I'd have fixed it," Mr. Pollack told The Los Angeles Times in 1993.

"The Firm," with Tom Cruise, was a hit that year. But "Sabrina" (1995) and "Random Hearts" (1999), both with Harrison Ford, and "The Interpreter" (2005), with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, fell short, as Hollywood and its primary audience increasingly eschewed stars for fantasy and special effects.

Mr. Pollack never stopped acting; in a recent episode of "Entourage," the HBO series about Hollywood, he played himself.

Among Mr. Pollack's survivors are daughters, Rachel and Rebecca , and his wife, Claire Griswold, who was once among his acting students. The couple married in 1958, while Mr. Pollack was serving a two-year hitch in the Army. Their only son, Steven, died at age 34 in a 1993 plane crash in Santa Monica, Calif.

In his later years, Mr. Pollack appeared to relish his role as elder statesman. At various times he was executive director of the Actors Studio West, chairman of American Cinematheque and an advocate for artists' rights.

He increasingly sounded wistful notes about the disappearance of the Hollywood he knew in his prime. "The middle ground is now gone," Mr. Pollack said in a discussion with Shimon Peres in the fall 1998 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly. He added, with a nod to a fellow filmmaker: "It is not impossible to make mainstream films which are really good. Costa-Gavras once said that accidents can happen."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cinemanarchist on May 26, 2008, 09:17:49 PM
As a tribute to Sydney I will be wearing suspenders and no shirt for the rest of the evening. You will be missed good sir.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Kal on May 26, 2008, 09:33:01 PM
Shocked. I knew he was sick but no idea it was so bad. Very sad.

RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on May 26, 2008, 10:55:38 PM
wow. shocked.

definite  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on May 27, 2008, 01:51:39 AM
one of the most admirable and intelligent men in the business. he will be missed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on May 27, 2008, 04:17:09 AM
i love that there's no mention in the previously macguff posted article of pollack's role in the greatest director of all time's last film.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on May 27, 2008, 08:59:38 AM
^^ yeah

RIP Victor Ziegler  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on May 27, 2008, 10:56:32 AM
 :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on May 27, 2008, 04:31:26 PM
 :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 29, 2008, 07:13:21 PM
Harvey Korman dies 4 months after aneurysm

Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to "The Carol Burnett Show" and on the big screen in "Blazing Saddles," died Thursday. He was 81.

Korman died at UCLA Medical Center after suffering complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago, his family said in a statement released by the hospital.

His daughter, Kate Korman, said in the statement that it was a "miracle" that her father had survived the aneurysm at all, and that he had several major operations.

"Tragically, after such a hard fought battle he passed away," she said.

A natural second banana, Korman gained attention on "The Danny Kaye Show," appearing in skits with the star. He joined the show in its second season in 1964 and continued until it was canceled in 1967. That same year he became a cast member in the first season of "The Carol Burnett Show."

Burnett and Korman developed into the perfect pair with their burlesques of classic movies such as "Gone With the Wind" and soap operas like "As the World Turns" (their version was called "As the Stomach Turns").

Another recurring skit featured them as "Ed and Eunice," a staid married couple who were constantly at odds with the wife's mother (a young Vickie Lawrence in a gray wig). In "Old Folks at Home," they were a combative married couple bedeviled by Lawrence as Burnett's troublesome young sister.

Burnett was devastated by the news, said her assistant, Angie Horejsi.

"She loved Harvey very much," Horejsi said. She said Burnett had not yet made a statement.

Korman revealed the secret to the long-running show's success in a 2005 interview.

"We were an ensemble, and Carol had the most incredible attitude. I've never worked with a star of that magnitude who was willing to give so much away."

After 10 successful seasons, he left in 1977 for his own series. Dick Van Dyke took his place, but the chemistry was lacking and the Burnett show was canceled two years later. "The Harvey Korman Show" also failed, as did other series starring the actor.

"It takes a certain type of person to be a television star," he said in that 2005 interview. "I didn't have whatever that is. I come across as kind of snobbish and maybe a little too bright. ... Give me something bizarre to play or put me in a dress and I'm fine."

His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedley Lamarr (who was endlessly exasperated when people called him Hedy) in Mel Brooks' 1974 Western satire, "Blazing Saddles."

He also appeared in the Brooks comedies "High Anxiety," "The History of the World Part I" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It," as well as two "Pink Panther" moves, "Trail of the Pink Panther" in 1982 and "Curse of the Pink Panther" in 1983.

Korman's other films included "Gypsy," "Huckleberry Finn" (as the King), "Herbie Goes Bananas" and "Bud and Lou" (as legendary straightman Bud Abbott to Buddy Hackett's Lou Costello). He also provided the voice of Dictabird in the 1994 live-action feature "The Flintstones."

In television, Korman guest-starred in dozens of series including "The Donna Reed Show," "Dr. Kildare," "Perry Mason," "The Wild Wild West," "The Muppet Show," "The Love Boat," "The Roseanne Show" and "Burke's Law."

In their '70s, he and Tim Conway, one of his Burnett show co-stars, toured the country with their show "Tim Conway and Harvey Korman: Together Again." They did 120 shows a year, sometimes as many as six or eight in a weekend.

Harvey Herschel Korman was born Feb. 15, 1927, in Chicago. He left college for service in the U.S. Navy, resuming his studies afterward at the Goodman School of Drama at the Chicago Art Institute. After four years, he decided to try New York.

"For the next 13 years I tried to get on Broadway, on off-Broadway, under or beside Broadway," he told a reporter in 1971.

He had no luck and had to support himself as a restaurant cashier. Finally, in desperation, he and a friend formed a nightclub comedy act.

"We were fired our first night in a club, between the first and second shows," he recalled.

After returning to Chicago, Korman decided to try Hollywood, reasoning that "at least I'd feel warm and comfortable while I failed."

For three years he sold cars and worked as a doorman at a movie theater. Then he landed the job with Kaye.

In 1960 Korman married Donna Elhart and they had two children, Maria and Christopher. They divorced in 1977. Two more children, Katherine and Laura, were born of his 1982 marriage to Deborah Fritz.

In addition to his daughter Kate, he is survived by his wife and the three other children.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 02, 2008, 08:57:04 PM
Rock pioneer Bo Diddley dies at age 79

Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday after months of ill health. He was 79.

Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., spokeswoman Susan Clary said. He had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he had returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Diddley appreciated the honors he received, "but it didn't put no figures in my checkbook."

"If you ain't got no money, ain't nobody calls you honey," he quipped.

The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago, he said in a 1999 interview.

"I don't know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name," he said, adding that he liked it so it became his stage name. Other times, he gave somewhat differing stories on where he got the name. Some experts believe a possible source for the name is a one-string instrument used in traditional blues music called a diddley bow.

His first single, "Bo Diddley," introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as "shave and a haircut, two bits." The B side, "I'm a Man," with its slightly humorous take on macho pride, also became a rock standard.

The company that issued his early songs was Chess-Checkers records, the storied Chicago-based labels that also recorded Chuck Berry and other stars.

Howard Kramer, assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, said in 2006 that Diddley's Chess recordings "stand among the best singular recordings of the 20th century."

Diddley's other major songs included, "Say Man," "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover," "Shave and a Haircut," "Uncle John," "Who Do You Love?" and "The Mule."

Diddley's influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. Buddy Holly borrowed the bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp rhythm for his song "Not Fade Away."

The Rolling Stones' bluesy remake of that Holly song gave them their first chart single in the United States, in 1964. The following year, another British band, the Yardbirds, had a Top 20 hit in the U.S. with their version of "I'm a Man."

Diddley was also one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, adding reverb and tremelo effects. He even rigged some of his guitars himself.

"He treats it like it was a drum, very rhythmic," E. Michael Harrington, professor of music theory and composition at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., said in 2006.

Many other artists, including the Who, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello copied aspects of Diddley's style.

Growing up, Diddley said he had no musical idols, and he wasn't entirely pleased that others drew on his innovations.

"I don't like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it," he said. "I don't have any idols I copied after."

"They copied everything I did, upgraded it, messed it up. It seems to me that nobody can come up with their own thing, they have to put a little bit of Bo Diddley there," he said.

Despite his success, Diddley claimed he only received a small portion of the money he made during his career. Partly as a result, he continued to tour and record music until his stroke. Between tours, he made his home near Gainesville in north Florida.

"Seventy ain't nothing but a damn number," he told The Associated Press in 1999. "I'm writing and creating new stuff and putting together new different things. Trying to stay out there and roll with the punches. I ain't quit yet."

Diddley, like other artists of his generations, was paid a flat fee for his recordings and said he received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances.

"I am owed. I've never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."

In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music, "Jungle Music." It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll."

Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat."

Diddley won attention from a new generation in 1989 when he took part in the "Bo Knows" ad campaign for Nike, built around football and baseball star Bo Jackson. Commenting on Jackson's guitar skills, Diddley says to him, "Bo, you don't know diddly."

"I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked," Diddley said. "I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube."

Born as Ellas Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss., Diddley was later adopted by his mother's cousin and took on the name Ellis McDaniel, which his wife always called him.

When he was 5, his family moved to Chicago, where he learned the violin at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He learned guitar at 10 and entertained passers-by on street corners.

By his early teens, Diddley was playing Chicago's Maxwell Street.

"I came out of school and made something out of myself. I am known all over the globe, all over the world. There are guys who have done a lot of things that don't have the same impact that I had," he said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 03, 2008, 06:48:29 PM
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-sills3-2008jun03,0,7755190.story

Paul Sills, 80; co-founder of Second City, Compass Players
The stage director nurtured improvisation and helped launch the careers of major stars.
By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 3, 2008

Paul Sills, the legendary improvisational director and teacher who co-founded the Compass Players in Chicago and was the founding director of Chicago's Second City improvisational comedy cabaret, died Monday.

He was 80.

Sills died of complications of pneumonia at his home in Baileys Harbor, Wis., said documentary filmmaker Vince Waldron, a family friend.

"Paul was the founding father of American improvisational theater," said Waldron, who is in post-production on a feature-length documentary on Sills' life and work.

"The roots of Paul's theater came out of the same era that gave us bebop in jazz," Waldron said.

"Improvisation was in the air in the postwar era; I think Paul harnessed it for the stage."

A former University of Chicago student, Sills co-founded the Compass Players with playwright and producer David Shepherd in 1955.

The Compass became a launching pad for some of the top performers of their generation, including Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Shelley Berman and Barbara Harris, who was the second of Sills' three wives.

"It's hard to make a single comment about Paul Sills because he had so many areas of expertise, not the least of which he knew when the scene was over and he turned off the lights," Berman told The Times on Monday.

"If we wanted to run on and on, getting one meager laugh after another, POW! The lights were off and your scene was over.

"He wanted us to be only aware of each other on stage. If someone said something and it was ignored, you made a mistake. And Paul didn't run around crabbing and criticizing. He was just a guy who was never busy asserting his authority. He made a bunch of young people become important."

Citing one improvisation about a teenager that he did at the Compass that later became "an important piece of material" in his comedy act, Berman said Sills "helped create all kinds of material," including "marvelous things for Nichols and May."

"We all found treasures in working with him," he said.

After serving as one of the directors of the Compass through its early years, Sills co-founded Second City in 1959.

The legendary Chicago improv club provided a springboard for performers such as Alan Arkin, Avery Schreiber, Hamilton Camp, Paul Sand and Severn Darden.

Sills was the primary director through the mid-1960s.

He then launched the Story Theater, a groundbreaking technique for adapting folk tales and other literary material to the stage, in Chicago in 1968.

Sills adapted the classic folk tales of the Brothers Grimm and directed "Paul Sills' Story Theater," which was one of the earliest hits of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1970.

The show then went to Broadway, where the cast included Peter Bonerz, Melinda Dillon, Mary Frann, Valerie Harper, Paul Sand and others. Sills won a Drama Desk Award for outstanding director.

Sills was born in Chicago Nov. 18, 1927.

He was the son of Viola Spolin, who was known as the grand dame of improvisational theater, Waldron said.

"Everything you see from 'Saturday Night Live' to 'The Simpsons' owes a debt to the improvisational work of Paul and his players, who really started with nothing more than the theater games that his mother had developed teaching neighborhood kids in settlement houses in Chicago in the 1930s," Waldron said.

Spolin later codified her theater games into the classic book, "Improvisation for the Theater" (1963).

Sills served in the Army from 1946 to 1948 and went to the University of Chicago on the GI Bill.

Before co-founding the Compass, he and Shepherd co-founded the Playwrights Theatre Club, whose company included Nichols, Harris and Ed Asner.

In 1988, Sills co-founded the New Actors Workshop in Manhattan with Mike Nichols and director George Morrison. Sills taught his mother's theater games and directed an annual Story Theater production there until 2003.

For the last dozen years, he would mount productions with local community actors in the barn on his farm.

He also taught summer master classes at his farm for teachers, actors, directors and writers.

In Los Angeles in April, Sills and his wife and longtime collaborator, Carol, completed teaching an eight-week workshop for actors and teachers in Sills' Story Theater techniques.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children, David, Rachel, Polly, Aretha Amelia and Neva; his brother, William; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 13, 2008, 05:40:30 PM
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06132008/news/nationalnews/tim_russert_dies_from_apparent_heart_att_115384.htm

TIM RUSSERT DIES FROM APPARENT HEART ATTACK
By CHARLES HURT
June 13, 2008

Tim Russert, NBC journalist and political heavyweight host of "Meet the Press," has died after collapsing at NBC's Washington news bureau. He was 58 years old.

Television sources said Russert was recording a voice-over when he collapsed in the studio today.

An ambulance rushed to the studio and a source at the network said Russert was briefly revived. But, the broadcasting lion apparently passed away either on the way or at a local Washington D.C. hospital.

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw announced news of Russert's death at 3:39 p.m.

"The news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice," a solemn Brokaw said.

Sources said the network allowed itself to be scooped by other media outlets as it tried to contact Russert's wife Maureen and son Luke, who just graduated from Boston College.

Russert had just returned from a family vacation in Italy last night.

Russert, who rose from the inside world of politics where he was former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo's press secretary and one-time chief of staff to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was able to successfully cross over to political journalism and rise to become one of its leading lights.

In his role as host of the seminal Sunday morning political program "Meet the Press" - which he took over in 1991 - he became renowned for his hard-nosed interviews where he frequently cornered some of Washington's cagiest political figures with tough questions.

Russert joined NBC News in 1984. In April 1985, he supervised the live broadcasts of the Today program from Rome, negotiating and arranging an appearance by Pope John Paul II - a first for American television. In 1986 and 1987 Russert led NBC News weeklong broadcasts from South America, Australia and China.

In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 13, 2008, 05:46:42 PM
I'm drowned in the TV coverage about him. Sad day because he was young and invigorating to watch.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on June 16, 2008, 02:08:00 PM
Stan Winston died.  Goddamnit.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alexandro on June 17, 2008, 11:41:49 AM
we own stan winston a lot of fun and scary moments. his work in jurassic park and terminator are pretty much the citizen kane of modern special effects. i enjoyed inmensely those thousand of penguins in batman returns when i was a kid. and i will be forever grateful for his contribution to make A.I. easily the best looking sci fi film of the decade, regarding sfx.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on June 23, 2008, 12:21:45 AM
George Carlin Dead at 71

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, died at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine about seven dirty words you could not say on television. A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of his "Filthy Words" routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Kal on June 23, 2008, 12:45:37 AM
Fuck. I just saw that on TV while almost falling asleep and had to turn on the PC to double check. FUCK.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on June 23, 2008, 12:50:16 AM
Well jeez, I'm sorry you were woken up!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on June 23, 2008, 04:04:51 AM
fuck i'm crushed by this news.

he was the first comedian i ever loved. the first to ever make me cry tears of laughter.

really sad. RIP george.  :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 23, 2008, 09:17:59 AM
Very weird for me. Just two days ago I watched an old interview with him on youtube about his feelings on death. Was from over 10 years ago. Not only does this sting because this year he played my hometown and still seemed robust and active, but I was privvy to his feelings on the biggest subject in life. Dennis Miller was right though. If there is a Mount Rushmore for comedians, George Carlin is the first head on it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on June 23, 2008, 09:54:26 AM
Another thing I found out is that, just two weeks ago, he was announced as the recipient of this year's Mark Twain Award for Humor, which was to be given during a ceremony this September.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on June 23, 2008, 10:48:03 AM
George Carlin is one of my biggest heroes and he's also responsible for my filthy mouth as a kid. in my canon he's right up there with mr. rogers and the dalai lama, and i was exposed to him before either of the other two. my parents used to play tapes of his stand-up while i was a toddler (and later).  i'm glad to hear that he doesn't have to deal with this planet anymore but i'll miss his his presence very much.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on June 23, 2008, 12:25:19 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on June 23, 2008, 09:17:59 AM
Very weird for me. Just two days weeks ago I watched an old interview with him him live on stage.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on July 12, 2008, 10:15:05 AM
Former Bush press secretary Tony Snow dies  :waving:

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bush's press secretary, died Saturday of colon cancer. He was 53.

"America has lost a devoted public servant and a man of character," President Bush said in a statement from Camp David, where he was spending the weekend. "It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day. He brought wit, grace, and a great love of country to his work."

Snow died at 2 a.m. at Georgetown University Hospital, according to former employer Fox News.
Snow, who served as the first host of the television news program "Fox News Sunday" from 1996 to 2003, would later say that in the Bush administration he was enjoying "the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I'm ever going to have."

Snow was working for Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio when he replaced Scott McClellan as press secretary in May 2006 during a White House shake-up. Unlike McClellan, who came to define caution and bland delivery from the White House podium, Snow was never shy about playing to the cameras.

With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster's good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.

He served just 17 months as press secretary, a tenure interrupted by his second bout with cancer. In 2005 doctors had removed his colon and he began six months of chemotherapy. In March 2007 a cancerous growth was removed from his abdominal area and he spent five weeks recuperating before returning to the White House.

"All of us here at the White House will miss Tony, as will the millions of Americans he inspired with his brave struggle against cancer," Bush said.

Snow resigned as Bush's chief spokesman last September, citing not his health but a need to earn more than the $168,000 a year he was paid in the government post. In April, he joined CNN as a commentator.

As press secretary, Snow brought partisan zeal and the skills of a seasoned performer to the task of explaining and defending the president's policies. During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.

Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.

Although a star in conservative politics, as a commentator he had not always been on the president's side. He once called Bush "something of an embarrassment" in conservative circles and criticized what he called Bush's "lackluster" domestic policy.

Most of Snow's career in journalism involved expressing his conservative views. After earning a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1977 and studying economics and philosophy at the University of Chicago, he wrote editorials for The Greensboro (N.C.) Record, and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.

He was the editorial page editor of The Newport News (Va.) Daily Press and deputy editorial page editor of The Detroit News before moving to Washington in 1987 to become editorial page editor of The Washington Times.

Snow left journalism in 1991 to join the administration of the first President Bush as director of speechwriting and deputy assistant to the president for media affairs. He then rejoined the news media to write nationally syndicated columns for The Detroit News and USA Today during much of the Clinton administration.

Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, called Snow a "renaissance man."

Robert Anthony Snow was born June 1, 1955, in Berea, Ky., and spent his childhood in the Cincinnati area. Survivors include his wife, Jill Ellen Walker, whom he married in 1987, and three children.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on July 12, 2008, 03:32:41 PM
He wasn't Jessie Helms. He was only a conservative mouth piece who really did die too young. I'll feel bad for his situation.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on July 13, 2008, 03:43:16 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftbn0.google.com%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AVEISiDRxo6PQGM%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fbp0.blogger.com%2F_DnPwaEn8aGE%2FRi1NeStAAsI%2FAAAAAAAACwM%2FGq2Vi842y9Q%2Fs200%2Fvlcsnap-7376.png&hash=dfa832dbe89893e8126fd6dc5cc063b8ea3e095b)

Just found out that Don S. Davis died on June 29.

He played Major Briggs in Twin Peaks, and Scully's father on The X-Files.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on July 16, 2008, 07:10:12 PM
Charles Joffe dies aged 78

Film producer Charles Joffe, who had worked on Woody Allen films since 1969, has died at the age of 78.

Joffe and business partner Jack Rollins first co-produced Allen in Take the Money and Run. In 1978, Joffe collected the best picture Oscar for Annie Hall.

The pair, who are executive producers of new Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona, also managed comedians including Robin Williams in the 1960s.

Joffe died in a Los Angeles hospital after suffering from lung disease.

Allen said in a statement: "When he was at the top of his game, nobody was better."

Joffe picked up the best picture award at the 1978 Oscars ceremony after Allen decided to stay away.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929, Joffe studied journalism before going on to work for Rollins in the 1950s as a junior manager for comedians.

In the 1960s, the pair formed their own company, Rollins and Joffe Productions, and helped the careers of comedians including Williams and Billy Crystal.

Joffe's wife Carol said: "He was a fabulous deal-maker - that was his real strength."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on July 22, 2008, 01:49:37 PM
Estelle Getty Dies

The Golden Girls star Estelle Getty has died of dementia, just three days before her 85th birthday.

She passed away in the early hours of Tuesday morning at her Los Angeles, California home.

The actress had endured a long battle with Lewy Body Dementia, a disease exhibiting symptoms similar to Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's.

Born in New York in 1923, Getty began her acting career with a small part in 1978 comedy Team-Mates.

She went on to land roles in 1982 classic Tootsie and 1985's Mask, but it was her turn as wise-cracking Sicilian mother Sophia Petrillo on 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls that made her a household name.

She is also known for her stint on New York's Broadway in a 1982 production of Torch Song Trilogy.

Getty later starred in movies including Stuart Little, Throw Momma From The Train, and Mannequin.

Paying tribute to the star, her longtime care-giver Paul Chapdelaine says, "Sadly, today July 22, 2008 at 5:35 a.m. Pacific Time, we said our last good-byes to our little friend Estelle, who passed away and made her journey to the great beyond. Although it was a trip that she never wanted to take, she went gracefully, in the comfort of her own home, surrounded by her family and her very loving care-givers.

"Estelle's legacy will live on and on through the comedy and laughter she gave to us all, which will forever keep us laughing out loud...

"Estelle was a fighter. She always stood up for the underdogs, fought for equality for all, and always pictured a world filled with "Love and Laughter" - her most favourite catch phrase.

"Estelle, we love you and will miss you dearly. We pray that you are met at the Pearly Gate with open arms and a warm welcome by all who have passed before you.... You have touched my life, and the lives of so many others who will never forget you."

The Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning actress is survived by two adult sons from her marriage to Arthur Gettleman. He passed away in 2004.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on July 22, 2008, 02:06:12 PM
my mother loved her and refuses to believe this news.  so, stop!  or my mom will shoot.

nope, still am ghey.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cinemanarchist on July 22, 2008, 07:08:50 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi47.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Ff165%2FRentFreak610%2FGg_scene.jpg&hash=d98f4c9edcda5f1ef962bf7d34b1a03cd2324eb6)

We lost an angel today. Golden Girls marathon at my crib this weekend. Let's laugh through the tears.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on July 27, 2008, 11:22:17 PM
Egyptian film legend Chahine dies

Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine has died in Cairo aged 82, four weeks after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

One of Arab cinema's most admired figures, he made his first film in 1950 and tackled authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism in his work.

Chahine also had a loyal following in France, and was given the lifetime achievement award at Cannes in 1997.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Chahine "a fervent defender of freedom of expression".

Chahine was flown to Paris for treatment following his haemorrhage, but returned to Cairo 10 days ago.

His last film, This Is Chaos, was released earlier this year. Colleague Khaled Youssef had to finish it off because of the director's ill health.

"He was one of the most important film-makers in the world, not just in the Arab world," Egyptian actor Nur al-Sherif told Agence France Presse.

Chahine's early films like Cairo: Central Station dealt with sexual morality, a daring theme for its time, and during his career he attracted the anger of both religious and political forces in Egypt.

But his career survived the nationalisation of the country's film industry under President Nasser, and his film The Sparrow was critical of Egypt's leadership at the time of the Six Day War in 1967.

Chahine carried on producing work critical of Egypt's leaders, and made a series of films centred on his home city of Alexandria, recounting his childhood, his love of early Hollywood and his ambiguous feelings towards the United States. He had studied in California in the 1940s.

In his later career, censorship was a theme close to his heart, and he also became a prominent opponent of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

In 1994, his film The Emigrant was banned by a court because its plot was based on the story of Joseph, found in the Bible and Koran. The depiction of prophets is banned in most interpretations of Islam.

"Every day human beings suffer a lot from people telling you to shut up, you have no right to talk, you have no right to discuss," Chahine said.

"I think this is extreme violence, and it happened to me."

Chahine is survived by his French wife Colette. A funeral ceremony will be held in Cairo on Monday, ahead of his burial in Alexandria.


Story from BBC NEWS
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on August 03, 2008, 05:46:19 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080803/ap_en_ot/obit_solzhenistyn

Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at 89

MOSCOW - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author whose books chronicled the horrors of the Soviet gulag system, has died of heart failure, his son said Monday. He was 89.

Stepan Solzhenitsyn told The Associated Press his father died late Sunday, but he declined further comment.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on August 09, 2008, 08:42:05 AM
Comic actor Bernie Mac dies

(CNN) -- Comic actor Bernie Mac died early Saturday of complications from pneumonia, according to a family member and his publicist. He was 50.

He had been hospitalized in Chicago, Illinois, for more than a week with the lung infection.

Danica Smith, the comedian's publicist, had said Thursday that Mac's condition was "stable," The Associated Press reported.

"When I got the call this morning, it was just devastating news," said Chicago Sun-Times columnist Stella Foster. "Let's face it: Bernie Mac was one of a kind. He was the best of the best in terms of giving you a good laugh."

Smith previously said the pneumonia wasn't related to sarcoidosis, a lung disease Mac had, which had been in remission since 2005, according to AP.

Mac caused a stir in July with some jokes he made during a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, AP reported.

Mac -- born Bernard Jeffrey McCollough -- starred in the Fox television series "The Bernie Mac Show." His film roles included the "Ocean's Eleven" series, "Friday," "Get on the Bus," "Transformers" and "Bad Santa."


:cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on August 09, 2008, 12:23:23 PM
This is very sad news.  His show and his comedy was so good, and there were moments in interviews where you could tell he was still very humble after all his success.  He was one of my favorites.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 09, 2008, 01:03:31 PM
ah man my friends and I were all just quoting him at a party:
"you don't understand, I ain't scared of you motherfuckers."
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RviYo3WsqjU
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on August 09, 2008, 01:10:15 PM
http://www.variety.com/VR1117990257.html

Industry icon Bernie Brillstein dies
Pioneering manager had an eye for talent
By CYNTHIA LITTLETON

Bernie Brillstein, pioneering manager and producer whose keen eye for talent led him to steer the careers of such stars and creatives as John Belushi and Jim Henson, died Thursday night of chronic pulmonary disease. He was 77.

Brillstein had been suffering from complications stemming from double-bypass heart surgery in February.

A one-time WMA agent, Brillstein headed Hollywood's most successful management company in the 1980s and also into the '90s, in partnership with Brad Grey, now chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures.

Brillstein was an influential force in the 1975 launch of NBC mainstay ``Saturday Night Live'' as the manager of creator-exec producer Lorne Michaels as well as stars Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner.

Michaels and Grey are in the midst of organizing a memorial event to be held Monday at UCLA's Royce Hall.

"He was talented and brilliant, and hilarious," Grey said of his longtime friend. "I have a debt to Bernie for so many reasons that I can never possibly repay. He was my mentor, my partner and my friend. He was like a father to me and he treated me like a son."

Said Michaels: "He loved talent and he loved the action. He never wavered in that. He was always a wise and honest voice in my life. He was clear on the hard realities of show business, but he never lost his love of the game."

Other clients whose careers were nurtured at Brillstein-headed shingles included such biz heavyweights as Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Geena Davis, Martin Short, Jim Belushi, Dabney Coleman, John Larroquette, Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller, Nicolas Cage, Rob Lowe and Jay Tarses.

In the 1980s, the Brillstein Co. was among the first contempo talent rep shingles to branch out into TV production in a significant way with shows packaged around clients, a list that included ``ALF,'' ``It's Garry Shandling's Show,'' ``The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd'' and ``The Slap Maxwell Story.''

In late 1991, when Brillstein partnered with Grey, who had joined the Brillstein Co. in the mid-1980s as a manager, the company further expanded the scope of its film and TV operations.

Brillstein-Grey Television fielded such noteworthy skeins as ``The Sopranos,'' (Brillstein even made a cameo appearance in 2004, playing in a poker game with Tony Soprano), ``Just Shoot Me,'' ``NewsRadio,'' ``Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher'' and ``The Larry Sanders Show.''

Brillstein-Grey Entertainment's features included Adam Sandler's ``Happy Gilmore,'' Jim Carrey's ``The Cable Guy'' and ``The Replacement Killers.''An avuncular presence who sported shoulder-length white hair and a linebacker's build, Brillstein was well-known and well-liked in showbiz for his easygoing manner and candor. Even when Grey bought out Brillstein's share in the Brillstein-Grey banner in 1996, but as a lover of the game, Brillstein continued to serve as founding partner, repping a select group of clients. He maintained a regular presence in the offices of what is now Brillstein Entertainment Partners up until his recent surgery.

``With his boundless passion, energy and wisdom, Bernie inspired the culture and success that we're blessed with today,'' said Jon Liebman, who took the reins as CEO of what was renamed Brillstein Entertainment Partners after Grey moved on to Paramount.

In addition to working as a manager and producer, Brillstein also wore a third hat in the late 1980s as an executive, serving as the head of film at the prosperous indie Lorimar. Lorimar bought his Brillstein Co. shingle when he joined the company in 1986, and it continued to operate as an autonomous management-production entity.

Brillstein stepped down as chairman and CEO of Lorimar Film Entertainment in late 1988 after the parent company was acquired by Warner Bros., and he returned to managing and producing full -time.

He Brillstein credited much of his success to betting on the potential of clients who impressed him with their innate talents: ``Good things begin with talent,'' Brillstein told Daily Variety in 1987. In a column he penned for Daily Variety in 2002, Brillstein lamented how the networks and studios no longer put much emphasis on scouting for and developing talent.``Where has all the talent gone? Or, more to the point, where have all the people who love and respect talent gone?,'' Brillstein wrote. ``There's nothing like the thrill you get in discovering a real talent; it's a great feeling to share that discovery with the world. And to know you were there for the beginning.''

Early in his career, Brillstein was mightily impressed by the talent and vision of a young puppeteer he'd met in New York. He repped Muppets creator Henson until the latter's death in 1990.

Brillstein's savvy business guidance played a major role in building Henson's Muppets empire, including the decision to cut a deal with the U.K.'s ITC to finance for "The Muppet Show,'' which aired in the U.S. in firstrun syndication from 1976-1981. Brillstein also helped Henson move into features, and to strike innovative deals with HBO and plus a slew of international outlets for the critically praised 1980s kidvid skein ``Fraggle Rock.''

(A more adult breed of Muppets also had a semi-regular presence on the early years of ``SNL,'' thanks to the Brillstein connection.)

By the mid-'70s, Brillstein's clout in the biz increased considerably, as his clients were suddenly in demand for movie roles. Brillstein began serving as an exec producer on many of his clients' features after John Belushi expressly asked him to take on that role for 1980's ``The Blues Brothers.''

Belushi's later descent into the drug and alcohol abuse that killed him at age 33 in 1982 was devastating to Brillstein, who had tried to convince the comic to seek treatment and temper his hard living.

Born in New York, Brillstein got his first exposure to showbiz through his uncle, Ziegfeld Follies comic Jack Pearl. After graduating from New York U., Brillstein got his start in the WMA mailroom in New York. He didn't stay in the mailroom long, though, quickly moving up to become an agent. After nine years with WMA, Brillstein moved on in 1964 to join talent rep firm Management III.

Three years later, Brillstein relocated to Los Angeles to open up a West Coast office for Management III. As leader of a fledgling operation on the West Coast, he knew he had no shot at signing big-name movie stars, so he made the fortuitous decision to focus on signing writers, producers and directors.

As those clients became successful in TV, Brillstein's fortunes rose. By 1969, he went out on his own with the Brillstein Co. Among the first big successes he packaged was the long-running syndie hit ``Hee Haw.''

Brillstein wittily recounted his showbiz experiences in two popular books that were part memoir and part Hollywood how-to tomes: 1999's "Where Did I Go Right?" and 2004's "The Little Stuff Matters Most."

Survivors include his wife of 10 years, Carrie Brillstein, and five children, daughters Leigh Brillstein and Kate Brillstein; sons Michael Brillstein, David Koskoff, Nick Koskoff; and grandson Alden.

Funeral services will be private.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Kal on August 09, 2008, 02:24:50 PM
wow. i just read on cnn. sad and totally unexpected. didnt even know he was sick at all.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on August 09, 2008, 04:08:56 PM
Quote from: kal on August 09, 2008, 02:24:50 PM
wow. i just read on cnn. sad and totally unexpected. didnt even know he was sick at all.



Which Bernie are you talkin about?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on August 09, 2008, 04:48:23 PM
I'm sure he's talking about Bernie Mac.

This is the worst weekend for Bernies since Weekend At Bernie's.

Sorry
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 10, 2008, 04:11:46 PM
issac hayes is gone too, age 65.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on August 10, 2008, 09:24:29 PM
Quote from: pete on August 10, 2008, 04:11:46 PM
issac hayes is gone too, age 65.

now that the duke is gone i guess i should finally get around to upping the escape from new york caps i did forever ago.

Soul icon Isaac Hayes dies at 65

A look back at the life of Isaac Hayes

US singer-songwriter Isaac Hayes has died at his home in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 65, police said.

Police were called to Mr Hayes' home after his wife found him unconscious. He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead at 1408 (1908 GMT).

Mr Hayes, a flamboyant, deep-voiced performer, won an Oscar for the 1971 hit Theme From Shaft.

He was perhaps better known to a younger audience as the voice of Chef from the hit cartoon show, South Park.

The cause of death was not immediately known.

"Family members believe at this point it is a medical condition that might have led to his death," a police spokesman said, adding Mr Hayes was being treated for "a number of medical issues".

Mr Hayes suffered a stroke in 2006.

Hayes the showman

Isaac Hayes - along with Al Green, James Brown and Stevie Wonder - was one of the dominant black artists of the early 1970s.

Hayes, a self-taught musician, was hired in 1964 by Stax Records as a back-up pianist and saxophone, working as a session musician for big names such as Otis Redding.

He established a songwriting partnership with David Porter, and in the 1960s, writing hits for Sam and Dave such as Hold On, I'm Coming and Soul Man. This success led on to a recording contract, and in 1969 he shot to fame with the release the groundbreaking album Hot Buttered Soul.

The theme from the film Shaft was a number one hit in 1971. He won an Academy Award for the song and was nominated for another one for the score. The song and score also won him two Grammys.

Isaac Hayes was also in several movies, including It Could Happen to You with Nicolas Cage, and Ninth Street with Martin Sheen.

He had success later in life as the voice of the South Park character, Chef. But he angrily quit the show in 2006 after an episode mocked Scientology, a religious movement to which he belonged.

He was married four times and has 12 children.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on August 20, 2008, 12:22:10 PM
i'm not a fan of the band anymore, but this guy was a seriously great musician. though he's got a low profile on stage, his sax/flute/clarinet performances really contribute to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. as a lead on most of my favorite songs by the band, this man is responsible for 90% of the times i made out in high school.

Dave Matthews Band founder dies

LeRoi Moore, a founding member of the Dave Matthews Band, has died aged 46, his publicist has said.

The versatile saxophonist died after suffering complications from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident in June on his Virginia farm.

Publicist Ambrosia Healy said he died on Tuesday at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, in Los Angeles.

A statement announcing the star's unexpected death on the band's website said: "We are deeply saddened".

Moore initially went to hospital in June after crashing an all-terrain vehicle on his farm outside Charlottesville, Virginia.

He was later discharged and had returned to his Los Angeles home to begin a physical rehabilitation program when complications forced him back to the hospital in July.

The musician was best known for donning dark sunglasses at live concerts.
He was classically trained but said jazz was his main musical influence, according to a biography on the band's web site.

The group formed in 1991 in Charlottesville, Virginia, when lead singer Dave Matthews was working as a bartender.

He handed a demo tape of his songs to Moore, who liked what he heard and recruited his friend and fellow jazzman Carter Beauford to play drums.

The group broke out of the local music scene with the album Under the Table and Dreaming.

They went on to win a Grammy award in 1997 for the hit song So Much to Say, from their second album Crash.

Other hits include What Would You Say, Crash Into Me and Satellite.

The band went on with its show Tuesday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where lead singer Dave Matthews dedicated the entire show to Moore.

"It's always easier to leave than be left," Matthews told the crowd, according to Ambrosia Healy, the band's publicist.

"We appreciate you all being here."

Saxophonist Jeff Coffin had been sitting in for Moore during the band's summer tour.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 21, 2008, 10:06:02 PM
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117990885.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F100grana.files.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F05%2Fshonuff.jpg&hash=81423f478d406991b1d43ccd01984d9e59cc707b)
Character actor Julius Carry dies at 56
Veteran thesp played Sho'nuff in 'Last Dragon'
By VARIETY STAFF

Character actor Julius Carry died Aug. 19 in Los Angeles of pancreatic cancer. He was 56.

He had recurring roles on TV shows including "Two Guys And Girl," "Boy Meets World," "Grown Ups," "The District," "Cosby," "Murphy Brown," "It's A Living" and "Duet."

Carry appeared in more than 100 guest roles including "Hill Street Blues," "Jag," "Spin City" and "Moesha."

He also appeared as the villain Sho'nuff in the cult pic "The Last Dragon." Other feature credits included "The New Guy," "Moving," "World Gone Wild," "The Man With The Red Shoe" and "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh."

Born in Chicago, his first screen credit was in "Disco Godfather."

Carry is survived by his wife Naomi.

Donations may be made to The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 02, 2008, 09:43:49 AM
Don LaFontaine Dies at 68

Voiceover Master Don LaFontaine has died. He was 68.

LaFontaine, known as the "King of Voiceovers," died Monday afternoon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. LaFontaine's agent, Vanessa Gilbert, tells ET that he passed away following complications from Pneumothorax, the presence of air or gas in the pleural cavity, the result of a collapsed lung. The official cause of death has not yet been released.

Over the past 25 years, LaFontaine cemented his position as the "King of Voiceovers." Aside from being the preeminent voice in the movie trailer industry, Don also worked as the voice of Entertainment Tonight and The Insider, as well as for CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and UPN, in addition to TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network. By conservative estimates, he voiced hundreds of thousands of television and radio spots, including commercials for Chevrolet, Pontiac, Ford, Budweiser, McDonalds, Coke, and many other corporate sponsors.

He recently parodied himself on a series of national television commercials for Geico. At last count, he has worked on nearly 5000 films, including appearances as the in-show announcer for the Screen Actors Guild and Academy Awards. Based on contracts signed, he has the distinction of being perhaps the single busiest actor in the history of SAG. Don is survived by his wife -- singer/actress Nita Whitaker, and three children: Christine, Skye and Elyse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJMGS7l0wT8
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on September 02, 2008, 02:17:55 PM
NOOOOOOOOOO
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 02, 2008, 06:26:30 PM
In a world where there's no Don LaFontaine...

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fswindlemagazine.com%2Fimages%2Fdon-lafontaine.jpg&hash=ece255adad12be084cb558485eb54eaa949f7ec8)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on September 02, 2008, 07:23:46 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QPMvj_xejg&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QPMvj_xejg&feature=related)

This is pretty touching.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 04, 2008, 10:54:51 AM
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3i666fc0408ab465aaaa3c27625a84282e

'Peanuts' animator Bill Melendez dies
Responsible for 'Charlie Brown Christmas,' 'Great Pumpkin'
By Mike Barnes
Sept 3, 2008, 02:26 PM ET

Bill Melendez, best known for bringing the Peanuts characters to life with such classics as "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," died Tuesday at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. He was 91.

Melendez, the only animator permitted by Charles M. Schulz to work with the Peanuts characters, earned eight Emmy Awards, 17 Emmy nominations, one Oscar nomination and two Peabody Awards. He began his career at Disney and Warner Bros., working on classic characters at those studios, and spent more than 70 years in the entertainment industry.

In 1948, the Mexican native left Warner Bros. and for more than a decade served as a director and producer on more than 1,000 commercials and films for United Productions of America, Playhouse Pictures and John Sutherland Prods.

It was at UPA that Melendez started doing work for the New York-based J. Walter Thompson ad agency, whose client included Ford. The carmaker expressed interest in using the Peanuts characters to sell its cars on TV, and in 1959 Melendez prepared his animation work and showed it to Peanuts creator Schulz.

Melendez went on to bring Charlie Brown and his pals to the screen in more than 63 half-hour specials, five one-hour specials, four feature films and more than 372 commercials. In addition to perennial favorites "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965) and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (1966), Melendez produced the Oscar-nominated "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" (1971), "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" (1973), "She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown" (1980) and "You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown" (1975). He also provided the voices for Snoopy and Woodstock through the years.

Melendez also animated TV specials "Garfield on the Town," "Cathy," "Babar Comes to America" and "The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe," among others. He shared an Emmy in 1987 for outstanding animated program with three others for "Cathy."

His last credit was as a producer for 2006 TV special "He's A Bully, Charlie Brown."

Melendez, who sported a handle bar mustache for decades, began his career at Walt Disney Studios and worked on Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, Dumbo and classic Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons. He then moved to Warners to animate Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and others. He worked under the monikers C. Melendez or J.C. Melendez.

Bill Melendez Prods., its sister studio Melendez Films in London and Sopwith Prods. (Melendez's art distribution unit) will continue to animate, direct and produce features and commercials.

Melendez is survived by his wife of 68 years, Helen; two sons, Steven Melendez and (Ret.) Navy Rear Admiral Rodrigo Melendez; six grandchildren; and 11 great grandchildren. A memorial service will take place for family only.

Donations can be made in Melendez's name to Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cinemanarchist on September 14, 2008, 07:51:12 PM
Source: Salon.com
:yabbse-cry:In memory of David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

A tribute to the great American novelist who left us all a little less alone.
By Laura Miller

Sep. 14, 2008 | He talked about how difficult it was to be a novelist in a world seething with advertisements and entertainment and knee-jerk knowingness and facile irony. He wrote about the maddening impossibility of scrutinizing yourself without also scrutinizing yourself scrutinizing yourself and so on, ad infinitum, a vertiginous spiral of narcissism -- because not even the most merciless self- examination can ignore the probability that you are simultaneously congratulating yourself for your soul-searching, that you are posing. He tried so hard to be sincere and to attend to the world around him because he was excruciatingly aware of how often we are merely "sincere" and "attentive" and all too willing to leave it at that. He spoke of the discipline and of the abrading, daily labor such efforts require because the one imperative that runs throughout all of his work is the intimate connection between humility and wisdom.

Perhaps someday we'll be offered an explanation for why David Foster Wallace took his life on Sept. 12, but any reader can see how his fiction had, in recent years, moved into greater darkness. "Infinite Jest," though "sad" in accordance with its author's stated intentions, bubbled with humor and the sort of creative energy that is a kind of hope, the belief that, in the telling, the tale might redeem what is told. The story collection "Oblivion," the last book of fiction Wallace published before his death, shows character after character flailing away at the impossible task of making life endurable. While Don Gately and Hal Incandenza, the heroes (more or less) of the novel "Infinite Jest," fight to stay on the road through the desert, the men and women of "Oblivion" mostly can't manage to convince themselves that such a road exists.

None of them more so than Neal, the suicidal narrator of "Good ol' Neon," a man who, we learn at the end, is based on a former classmate of Wallace's. The story's final paragraph sums up the preceding 40 pages as the thoughts flickering through Wallace's mind as he glimpses the dead man's photo while flipping through his high school yearbook. It's impossible to resist the idea that the fictional Neal's motivations in ending his life -- he regards himself as utterly "calculating" and "fraudulent" -- were Wallace's own, but such conclusions would only have multiplied the author's despair.

Wallace believed, I think, that one way out of Neal's labyrinthine artificiality, out of his preoccupation with selling "a certain image" of himself to every person he met, was to practice a rigorous, imaginative compassion. If Wallace could persuade himself that he was able to conjure even an inkling of Neal's inner life, then he, at least, might feel a little less alone. By getting it down on paper, he could further subdue that loneliness in other people, as other writers had subdued it in him. This was, in part, literature's purpose, a task to which it was uniquely suited. Perhaps, at times, it also became Wallace's purpose, and kept him alive a little longer as a result. So if we decide that "Good ol' Neon" is primarily about Wallace's own suffering, we betray him. That would amount to insisting that no matter how hard he tried to escape, he remained trapped in himself, concerned only with himself.

Perhaps in the end, that's what he thought, but he was wrong. He was my favorite living writer, and I know I have plenty of company in that. His detractors accused him of being show-offy, of calling attention to his own cleverness, but they, too, were wrong. He meant, with his footnotes and his digressions, to acknowledge the agonies of self-consciousness and the "difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know." Point taken. Still, I read about his characters, each tennis prodigy and recovering addict and transvestite hooker and yuppie and ad exec and game show contestant and closeted political aide, and thought: Hey, I know you. Maybe it was an illusion -- Wallace would have been the first to admit as much -- but it made me feel less alone, too.

I interviewed Wallace once, in 1996, and communicated with him occasionally over the intervening years. A reader once asked me to ask him to write a letter to a gravely ill friend, and he did. I don't doubt that those who knew him better, including his many students, can further testify to his kindness and generosity. Really, though, I knew him as a reader knows a writer. I thought I could see him, even if he couldn't see me, even if he couldn't (clearly) see himself. Again, less alone.

Every author wants to sell books, to please his or her publisher, to reap critical accolades and to bask in the admiration of colleagues, and Wallace did want those things, at the same time that he was more than a little embarrassed by such desires and acutely aware of the fact that none of it could make him happy. However, all great writers -- and I have no doubt that he was one -- have a preeminent purpose: to tell the truth. David Foster Wallace's particular vocation was to allow us to see just how fraught and complicated, how difficult yet how necessary, that telling had become -- not just for him, but for all of us. What will we do without him?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: New Feeling on September 14, 2008, 07:59:52 PM
what the fuck?   :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cinemanarchist on September 14, 2008, 08:37:10 PM
D.F.W. commencement speech from '05
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html (http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 15, 2008, 12:21:26 PM
FUCK  :(

Pink Floyd's keyboardist and occasional singer and songwriter Rick Wright has died aged 65.

The musician, who formed the influential band with Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Syd Barrett in 1965, passed away today (September 15) after battling with cancer.

A spokesman said: "The family of Richard Wright, founder member of Pink Floyd, announce with great sadness that Richard died today after a short struggle with cancer.

"The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this difficult time."

As well as playing keyboards, Wright contributed a number of songs to the band in their early years, including 'Paintbox', 'Remember A Day' and 'Summer '68', and also contributed prominent vocals to the band's 1971 23-minute classic 'Echoes'.

He will most likely be remembered primarily for 'The Great Gig In The Sky', his stately song on 1973's million-selling 'Dark Side Of The Moon'.

Although his influence in the band declined, and he was eventually forced to leave as a full-time member during sessions for 1979's 'The Wall', Wright returned as a session musician and rejoined the band when Roger Waters left, performing on hit albums including 1994's 'The Division Bell'.

After the '70s line-up reunited for a one-off gig at 2005's Live 8, Wright has recently been seen regularly performing with Pink Floyd singer and guitarist David Gilmour.

The keyboardist also released a handful of solo albums and worked on albums by founding member Syd Barrett, who died in 2006.

Stay tuned to NME.COM for a full obituary, plus see our sister site Uncut.co.uk for more.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on September 15, 2008, 12:24:25 PM
fuck indeed  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: New Feeling on September 15, 2008, 03:14:08 PM
I just want to take another moment to acknowledge the passing of David Foster Wallace, a true genius of our time.  Losing him seems equivalent to losing PTA or something to me.  It was actually through a PTA friend on a community much like this that I was first turned on to this man back in 2000, and I have forever been grateful.  I would really like to take this opportunity to strongly recommend everyone hunt down a copy of INFINITE JEST and commit to making your way through it.  It's the Magnolia of novels, in my opinion, only twice a dense.  You will not regret it.  Unless you suck.  It's a book that the film obsessed need to read.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on September 15, 2008, 03:42:14 PM
Quote from: mogwai on September 15, 2008, 12:21:26 PM
FUCK  :(

see, Coen bros. use of the word isn't always funny.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cron on September 18, 2008, 09:53:17 PM
i'm not very acquainted  with the work of david foster wallace, but this is fucking funny,

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nascar_cancels_remainder_of_season

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on September 21, 2008, 07:42:26 AM
I am so surprised by the general lack of grieving over the death of DFW here ! Go read Infinite Jest by all means.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 27, 2008, 09:16:32 AM
Movie legend Paul Newman dies, 83 

Hollywood legend Paul Newman has died at the age of 83, his spokeswoman has confirmed.

Marni Tomljanovic said the star of films like The Sting and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid died on Friday of cancer. She gave no further details.

Newman was nominated for an Oscar 10 times, winning a best actor trophy in 1987 for The Color Of Money.

In May 2007, he said he was giving up acting because he could no longer perform to the best of his ability.

"I'm not able to work anymore... at the level that I would want to," he told US broadcaster ABC.

Earlier this year, he pulled out of directing a stage production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in Connecticut because of unspecified health problems.

However, he denied reports that he was ill with cancer.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 27, 2008, 10:34:27 AM
 :yabbse-sad: R.I.P. There had been rumors that he was calling everyone close to him and saying goodbye.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on September 27, 2008, 10:54:46 AM
Weird, just last night i had a dream i took a nude portrait of him and his family and he thought it was rude that i wasn't naked as well.

Quit passing through my dream Newman Ghost!!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on October 18, 2008, 04:32:10 PM
a part of Shynola died :yabbse-sad:

www.shynola.com

adam buxton wrote a great thing.. (this is the video he refers to http://www.lumeneclipse.com/gallery/03/lambchop_shynola/)

"I find that a really great music video for a fantastic song is one of the most inspiring things I can see. It brings a bit of warmth and even meaning to a world that is all too often cold, meaningless and random and it doesn't get much more random and meaningless than the accidental death of Gideon Baws, one of the founder members of Shynola, whose work so often communicates that warmth and meaning. He was only 33.

The Shynola video for Is A Woman by Lambchop, which follows the journey of a single leaf downstream until it finds some friends and starts grooving, is one of those bits of art that makes you feel like crying, (in fact to be honest, the first time I saw it I did) not just because it's so poignant but because it's so beautifully done and infused with so much love: for the music, for the animation, for leaves, for grooving and for pretty much everything that's worth anything. If Gideon had never been involved with anything else in his life, his work on that video alone would have made his time on the planet more than worthwhile in my book. I would bump into him at gigs from time to time and it was always good to see him. Witheringly critical opinions would be underpinned with so much real sweetness and enthusiasm one couldn't fail to be charmed.

Hmmm. It's always the people you want to hang out with most that leave the party earliest isn't it? It's very selfish and it ruins it for everyone left behind. I hope Gideon's buddies at Shynola, his girlfriend, friends and family can find some comfort in seeing how well he was loved."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 21, 2008, 10:39:27 AM
'Dolemite' Star Rudy Ray Moore Dead At 81
Blaxploitation pioneer's influential comedy has been sampled by Dr. Dre, Busta Rhymes, 2 Live Crew and more.
   
Rudy Ray Moore, the comedian whose style, swagger and downright salacious subject matter made him a cult figure in the world of hip-hop, died on Sunday of complications from diabetes at the age of 81.

Moore starred in dozens of films but is best known for 1975's "Dolemite," a low-budget mix of kung fu and bawdy humor that he wrote, produced and starred in as the titular wisecracking pimp. The film was a huge hit, spawned many knockoffs (not to mention a few sequels of its own) and was declared — many years later, of course — to be "the 'Citizen Kane' of blaxploitation films" by The New York Times.

Through late-night screenings, the film would eventually become a cult favorite and influenced an entire generation of hip-hop artists, including Snoop Dogg, the Beastie Boys, 2 Live Crew, Busta Rhymes and Big Daddy Kane, all of whom would feature Moore on their albums. Clips from the film are also used in Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Got Your Money" video. A sample from one of Moore's records is used to famous effect on the song "Deeez Nuuuts" from Dr. Dre's The Chronic.

Moore's unique brand of "toasts" — rhyming jokes that usually disguised fabulously dirty material about sex — are often cited as early examples of rapping and were on display not just in "Dolemite," but in the close to 30 comedy albums he released in his career. Two of those early albums, Below the Belt and The Beatnik Scene, were branded "Adults Only" and were therefore not allowed to be sold in stores. But thanks to under-the-counter deals and Moore's own marketing ploys (he'd drive through city neighborhoods with the records stuffed in his trunk), they became hits, opening doors for the likes of Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx and Eddie Murphy.

Moore was born March 17, 1927, in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The oldest of seven children, he had to develop his extroverted personality just to be noticed. When he was 15, his family moved to Cleveland, where he began singing in church, eventually graduating to the city's rhythm and blues clubs. He later took his act to Los Angeles, where he worked as a DJ and began touring on the famed "Chitlin' Scene" as a stand-up comedian.

Moore is survived by four of his siblings, his daughter Yvette "Rusty" Wesson and his 98-year-old mother, Lucille.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 21, 2008, 11:12:23 AM
r.i.p. dolemite! :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on October 31, 2008, 08:02:19 PM
Pulitzer winner Terkel dies at 96
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel has died at his home in Chicago, aged 96, his son has announced.

He was renowned for relating US history through personal stories from a cross-section of society in books such as Working and Division Street:America.

Born Louis Terkel, he won a Pulitzer in 1985 for his chronicling of World War II in his oral history, The Good War.

"My dad led a long, full, eventful, sometimes tempestuous, but very satisfying life," his son said.

For four decades, Studs Terkel entertained listeners on his Chicago-based radio show.

Born in 1912 in New York to Russian Jewish parents, Studs Terkel moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois, eight years later where he spent most of his life.

His prodigious career spanned acting, writing and broadcasting, but it was for his oral histories that he became best-known.

In his 1970 book Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, the writer assembled recollections from across the socio-economic spectrum, from prison inmates to the wealthy.

Terkel's working methods were perhaps best illustrated by the subtitle of Working, published in 1974: "People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/7703428.stm

Published: 2008/10/31 22:38:20 GMT

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on October 31, 2008, 11:08:21 PM
wow, I would've had no idea who he was if it weren't for a guy at my work mistaking my harpo costume for studs terkel today.  so weird.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on November 01, 2008, 12:07:45 AM
^lulz.

But, yeah, R.I.P.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: edison on November 05, 2008, 12:17:36 PM
Best-Selling Author Michael Crichton Dies

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 5, 2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS) Best-selling author and filmaker Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, after a courageous and private battle against cancer, according to a statement released by his family. He was 66.

Crichton is best known as the author of "Jurassic Park" and the creator of "ER." His most recent novel, "Next," about genetics and law, was published in December 2006.

"While the world knew him as a great story teller that challenged our preconceived notions about the world around us -- and entertained us all while doing so -- his wife Sherri, daughter Taylor, family and friends knew Michael Crichton as a devoted husband, loving father and generous friend who inspired each of us to strive to see the wonders of our world through new eyes," the statement said. "He did this with a wry sense of humor that those who were privileged to know him personally will never forget."

Through his books, Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way all could understand.

"He will be profoundly missed by those whose lives he touched, but he leaves behind the greatest gifts of a thirst for knowledge, the desire to understand, and the wisdom to use our minds to better our world," the statement added.

Born in Chicago Oct. 23, 1942, Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He has taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. Crichton's 2004 bestseller, "State of Fear," acknowledged the world was growing warmer, but challenged extreme anthropogenic warming scenarios.

Crichton's first bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, was published while he was still a medical student. He later worked full time on film and writing. One of the most popular writers in the world, his books have been translated into thirty-six languages, and thirteen have been made into films.

Crichton won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writer's Guild of America Award for "ER." In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini.

A private funeral service is expected, but no further details will be released to the public.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on November 05, 2008, 12:32:31 PM
Oh my God. I grew up reading his books. I still re-read Jurassic park every couple of years. This is a shock.

RIP Mr. Crichton.

"All major changes are like death... You can't see to the other side until you are there."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on November 06, 2008, 02:47:49 AM
darn.. now i adore jurassic park the movie like few other things, but the book as i recall it is even more exciting. i've always wished they could've included the t-rex swim chase. or one of the final deaths.. he was really good. i think i have to read it again now.. sphere and timeline were also great. he had an amazing way of taking some incredible scientific concept you couldn't fully understand, explaining it so you felt like you did, then making it do something that seemed just barely possible in a really thrilling way..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on December 10, 2008, 09:22:30 PM
Actor Prosky Dies

Actor Robert Prosky has died at a hospital near his home in Washington DC. He was 77.

Prosky enjoyed a long stage career, and starred in more than 200 Broadway productions and over 100 plays at the Arena Theatre in Washington, a venue close to his heart.

But he will be best remembered by most for his film and TV roles, with appearances in movies Dead Man Walking, Mrs Doubtfire, Hoffa and Far and Away and shows Cheers and Hill Street Blues.

Prosky's eldest son Stefan reveals the star died on Monday night (8Dec08) after undergoing a heart procedure.

He says, "He went gracefully last night, not in pain. Everybody knows him as a fairly famous actor. My brothers and I know him as a marvellous father."

Prosky is survived by his wife, Ida, and three sons, Stefan, John and Andrew.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on December 10, 2008, 11:24:41 PM
[size=9]([/size] (https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimgsrv.kyw1060.com%2Fimage%2FDbLiteGraphic%2F200802%2F2090369.jpg&hash=8f32e8652afae5a7d00bdab1c6f3458774824acc) [size=9])[/size]

he was good in all the little things i saw him in..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 11, 2008, 11:51:25 PM
1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85

LOS ANGELES – Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.

Page was placed on life support last week after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. He said he and Page's family agreed to remove life support. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.

"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."

Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.

Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.

"I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She was a very dear person."

Page mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades, during which time she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.

After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.

"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."

The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.

Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen."

Hefner said he last saw Page when he held a screening of "The Notorious Bettie Page" at the Playboy Mansion. He said she objected to the fact that the film referred to her as "notorious," but "we explained to her that it referred to the troubled times she had and was a good way to sell a movie."

Page's career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.

Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998: "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."

Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."

In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.

"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.

Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.

Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.

She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce.

Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.

In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.

After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.

A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.

She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.

A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.

"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."

Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.

He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.

"Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.

Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."

The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.

After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.

In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on December 18, 2008, 03:45:30 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fentimg.msn.com%2Fi%2F150%2FNews%2FDec08%2Fsambottoms_150.jpg&hash=152e7ff295b8b64b25be485ba949337b047a0b62)

'Apocalypse Now' actor Sam Bottoms dies
Dec. 18, 2008, 3:05 PM EST

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Sam Bottoms, who had small but memorable roles in the 1970s classics "Apocalypse Now" and "The Last Picture Show," has died. He was 53.

Bottoms, one of four actor-brothers, died Tuesday of brain cancer at his home in Los Angeles, wife Laura Bickford said.

In "Apocalypse Now," Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War epic, Bottoms played pro surfer-turned-soldie r Lance B. Johnson, who takes to the waves amid bombs and bullets under the orders of the maniacal, surfing-mad Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore played by Robert Duvall.

"He was a handsome, tall young man and very sweet-natured and seemed to be right for that part," Coppola said Wednesday. "Sam was a good actor. Of course, he comes from a family that had a lot of theatrical activity."

In his 1971 film debut, a 15-year-old Bottoms starred alongside his best-known brother, Timothy, in "The Last Picture Show," playing a mute and mentally handicapped boy forced by friends to lose his virginity to a prostitute.

Sam Bottoms said he was in Texas to visit his brother, who was the film's lead, when director Peter Bogdanovich saw him and cast him in the part.

Brothers Joseph and Ben are also actors.

Sam Bottoms was born in Santa Barbara in 1955, the third of four sons of sculptor James "Bud" Bottoms. He began acting in local theater at age 10.

After his 1970s films, Sam Bottoms went on to appear in the Clint Eastwood westerns "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Bronco Billy," and Coppola's 1987 Vietnam film "Gardens of Stone."

He more recently appeared in the films "Seabiscuit" and "Shopgirl."

He is survived by his three brothers, his parents and his wife.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 19, 2008, 12:33:15 AM
Mark Felt, Watergate `Deep Throat,' dies at 95

SANTA ROSA, Calif. – W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who revealed himself as "Deep Throat" 30 years after he tipped off reporters to the Watergate scandal that toppled a president, has died. He was 95.

Felt died Thursday of congestive heart failure, said John D. O'Connor, a family friend who wrote the 2005 Vanity Fair article uncovering Felt's secret.

The shadowy central figure in the one of the most gripping political dramas of the 20th century, Felt insisted his alter ego be kept secret when he leaked damaging information about President Richard Nixon and his aides to The Washington Post.

While some — including Nixon and his aides — speculated that Felt was the source who connected the White House to the June 1972 break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, he steadfastly denied the accusations until finally coming forward in May 2005.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Felt told O'Connor, a San Francisco attorney whose story created a whirlwind of media attention.

The man who had kept his secret for decades, now weakened by a stroke, wasn't doing much talking — he merely waved the media from the front door of his daughter's Santa Rosa home.

Critics, including those who went to prison for the Watergate scandal, called him a traitor for betraying the commander in chief. Supporters hailed him as a hero for blowing the whistle on a corrupt administration trying to cover up attempts to sabotage opponents.

Felt grappled with his place in history, arguing with his children over whether to reveal his identity or to take his secret to the grave, O'Connor said. He agonized about what revealing his identity would do to his reputation. Would he be seen as a turncoat or a man of honor?

Ultimately, his daughter Joan persuaded him to go public; after all, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was sure to profit by revealing the secret after Felt died. "We could make at least enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I've run up for the kids' education," she told her father, according to the Vanity Fair article. "Let's do it for the family."

The revelation capped a Washington whodunnit that spanned more than three decades and seven presidents. It was the final mystery of Watergate, the subject of the best-selling book and hit movie "All the President's Men," which inspired a generation of college students to pursue journalism.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cinemanarchist on December 25, 2008, 12:58:39 PM
Harold Pinter, Nobel-Winning Playwright, Is Dead at 78

By MEL GUSSOW and BEN BRANTLEY
Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Wednesday. He was 78 and lived in London.

The cause was cancer, his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said Thursday.

Mr. Pinter learned he had cancer of the esophagus in 2002. In 2005, when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was unable to attend the awards ceremony at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm but delivered an acceptance speech from a wheelchair in a recorded video.

In more than 30 plays — written between 1957 and 2000 and including masterworks like "The Birthday Party," "The Caretaker," "The Homecoming" and "Betrayal" — Mr. Pinter captured the anxiety and ambiguity of life in the second half of the 20th century with terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence.

Along with another Nobel winner, Samuel Beckett, his friend and mentor, Mr. Pinter became one of the few modern playwrights whose names instantly evoke a sensibility. The adjective Pinteresque has become part of the cultural vocabulary as a byword for strong and unspecified menace.

An actor, essayist, screenwriter, poet and director as well as a dramatist, Mr. Pinter was also publicly outspoken in his views on repression and censorship, at home and abroad. He used his Nobel acceptance speech to denounce American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq, but that it had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years.

His political views were implicit in much of his work. Though his plays deal with the slipperiness of memory and human character, they are also almost always about the struggle for power.

The dynamic in his work is rooted in battles for control, turf wars waged in locations that range from working-class boarding houses (in his first produced play, "The Room," from 1957) to upscale restaurants (the setting for "Celebration," staged in 2000). His plays often take place in a single, increasingly claustrophobic room, where conversation is a minefield and even innocuous-seeming words can wound.

In Mr. Pinter's work "words are weapons that the characters use to discomfort or destroy each other," said Peter Hall, who has staged more of Mr. Pinter's plays than any other director.

But while Mr. Pinter's linguistic agility turned simple, sometimes obscene, words into dark, glittering and often mordantly funny poetry, it is what comes between the words that he is most famous for. And the stage direction "pause" would haunt him throughout his career.

Intended as an instructive note to actors, the Pinter pause was a space for emphasis and breathing room. But it could also be as threatening as a raised fist. Mr. Pinter said that writing the word "pause" into his first play was "a fatal error." It is certainly the aspect of his writing that has been most parodied. But no other playwright has consistently used pauses with such rhythmic assurance and to such fine-tuned manipulative effect.

Early in his career Mr. Pinter said his work was about "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet." Though he later regretted the image, it holds up as a metaphor for the undertow of danger that pervades his work. As Martin Esslin wrote in his book "Pinter: The Playwright," "Man's existential fear, not as an abstraction, but as something real, ordinary and acceptable as an everyday occurrence — here we have the core of Pinter's work as a dramatist."

Though often grouped with Beckett and others as a practitioner of Theater of the Absurd, Mr. Pinter considered himself a realist. In 1962 he said the context of his plays was always "concrete and particular." He never found a need to alter that assessment.

Beginning in the late 1950s, John Osborne and Mr. Pinter helped to turn British theater away from the gentility of the drawing room. With "Look Back in Anger," Osborne opened the door for several succeeding generations of angry young men, who railed against the class system and an ineffectual government. Mr. Pinter was to have the more lasting effect as an innovator and a stylist. And his influence on other playwrights, including David Mamet in the United States and Patrick Marber and Jez Butterworth in England, is undeniable.

The playwright Tom Stoppard said that before Mr. Pinter: "One thing plays had in common: you were supposed to believe what people said up there. If somebody comes in and says, 'Tea or coffee?' and the answer is 'Tea,' you are entitled to assume that somebody is offered a choice of two drinks, and the second person has stated a preference." With Mr. Pinter there are alternatives, "such as the man preferred coffee but the other person wished him to have tea," Mr. Stoppard said, "or that he preferred the stuff you make from coffee beans under the impression that it was called tea."

As another British playwright, David Hare, said of Mr. Pinter, "The essence of his singular appeal is that you sit down to every play or film he writes in certain expectation of the unexpected."

Though initially regarded as an intuitive rather than an intellectual playwright, Mr. Pinter was in fact both. His plays are dense with references to writers like James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. The annual Pinter Review, in which scholars probe and parse his works for meaning and metaphor, is one of many indications of his secure berth in academia.

While it was not immediately apparent, Mr. Pinter was always a writer with a political sensibility, which became overt in later plays like "One for the Road" (1984) and "Mountain Language" (1988). These works, having to do "not with ambiguities of power, but actual power," he said, were written out of "very cold anger."

He and his wife hosted gatherings in their Holland Park town house for liberal political seminars. Known as the June 20th Society, the participants included Mr. Hare, Ian McEwan, Michael Holroyd, John Mortimer, Salman Rushdie and Germaine Greer. In their discussions Mr. Pinter expressed the great struggle of the mid-20th century as one between "primitive rage" and "liberal generosity," Mr. Hare said.

Through the years Mr. Pinter became known, especially to the British news media, for having a prickly personality. "There is a violence in me," Mr. Pinter once said, "but I don't walk around looking for trouble." The director Richard Eyre said in a testimonial book published for Mr. Pinter's 70th birthday that he was "sometimes pugnacious and occasionally splenetic" but "just as often droll and generous — particularly to actors, directors and (a rare quality this) other writers."

Harold Pinter was born in Hackney in the East End of London on Oct. 10, 1930. His father, Jack, was a tailor; his mother, Frances, a homemaker. Mr. Pinter's grandparents had emigrated to England from Eastern Europe. His parents, he said, were "very solid, very respectable, Jewish, lower-middle-class people."

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Harold, an only child, was evacuated from London to a provincial town in Cornwall. His feelings of loneliness and isolation from that time were to surface later in his plays. When he was 13, he returned to London and was there during the Blitz when his house was struck by a bomb. He rushed inside to rescue a few valuable possessions: his cricket bat and a poem — "a paean of love" — he was writing to a girlfriend.

Sports, poetry and his relationships with women were to remain important to him. Vigorously athletic, he was a fierce competitor in cricket and tennis. Ian Smith, an Oxford don and cricket teammate, equated Mr. Pinter's art with his bold style of playing cricket. "Everything is focused," he said. "It's about performance and economy of gesture."

Mr. Pinter grew up on a diet of American gangster movies and British war films. From the first he was a great reader and a hopeful poet, with strong political judgments. When he was called up for military service at 18, as a pacifist he refused to serve.

In diverse ways he remained a conscientious objector in the years to come, echoing a line in "The Birthday Party," in which Stanley, a lodger in a seaside boarding house, is suddenly taken away by two strangers to some ominous future as a friend cries out, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!" Years later, Mr. Pinter said he had lived that line all his life.

Mr. Pinter's first poem was published in a magazine called Poetry London when he was 20. Soon afterward he completed a novel, "The Dwarfs." After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, he signed on with a repertory company and, performing under the name David Baron, toured Ireland in plays by Shakespeare and others, often in villainous roles like Iago.

In 1955, at a party in London, Mr. Pinter was struck by what he referred to as "an odd image." A little man, who later turned out to be the writer and professional eccentric Quentin Crisp, was making bacon and eggs for a large man who was sitting at a table reading the comics. Mr. Pinter told his friend Henry Woolf about the incident and said he thought he might write a play about it. The next year Mr. Woolf, then a graduate student at the University of Bristol, asked him if he could write that play for a group of drama students.

The resulting work, "The Room," was Mr. Pinter's first play. And with its story of mysterious intruders and its elliptical speech, it showed that Mr. Pinter had already found his voice as a dramatist. It opened in Bristol on May 15, 1957, and was restaged three years later at the Hampstead Theater Club in London.

In 1956 Mr. Pinter married Vivien Merchant, an actress in the company. After their son, Daniel, was born in 1958, they moved to the Chiswick section of London. He wrote "The Birthday Party," his first full-length play, drawing on his memories of touring as an actor in Eastbourne, on Britain's south coast.

The Pinters, who were temporarily unemployed and desperately poor had an offer to act in Birmingham, and Ms. Merchant wanted to accept it. But Mr. Pinter said: "I have this play opening in London. I think I must stay. Something's going to happen." She replied, "What makes you think so?"

They turned down the acting offer. "The Birthday Party" opened in the West End in 1958 and received disastrous reviews. Then, prodded by the theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay, Harold Hobson, the eminent critic of The Sunday Times of London, came to see it at a matinee. What he wrote turned out to be a life-changing review.

"It breathes in the air," Hobson wrote. "It cannot be seen but it enters the room every time the door is opened." He continued: "Though you go to the uttermost parts of the earth, and hide yourself in the most obscure lodgings in the least popular of towns, one day there is a possibility that two men will appear. They will be looking for you and you cannot get away. And someone will be looking for them too. There is terror everywhere." He concluded, "Mr. Pinter, on the evidence of this work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London."

Despite that review the play closed that weekend. By contrast Mr. Pinter's next full-length play to be produced, "The Caretaker," which opened in London in 1960, was a dazzling critical success. "Suddenly everything went topsy-turvy," Mr. Pinter said.

In that play two brothers live in a seedy house in London and, for inexplicable reasons, invite a homeless man named Davies to share their quarters and to act as a kind of custodian. Michael Billington, a critic for The Guardian and Mr. Pinter's biographer, has called the play "an austere masterpiece: a universally recognizable play about political maneuvering, fraternal love, spiritual isolation, language as a negotiating weapon or a form of cover-up."

Mr. Pinter's next play, "The Homecoming," opened in London in June 1965, in a Royal Shakespeare Company production directed by Mr. Hall. The story of an all-male family headed by a Lear-like father and the woman (Ms. Merchant, who starred in many of his plays) who enters and disrupts their domain scored a major success in London. Though it received a mixed reception in New York, "The Homecoming" won a Tony Award as best play and had a long run on Broadway.

After these first three full-length plays — all stories of raffish characters in shabby environments — Mr. Pinter shifted his focus. His next three dramas were set in the worlds of art and publishing: "Old Times" (1971), "No Man's Land" (1975) and "Betrayal" (1978), all studies of the unreliability of memory and the uncertainty of love. In "Old Times" a husband and wife encounter a woman they may or may not have known in the past.

In "No Man's Land" a faded poet visits a wealthy patron for an evening of recollection and gamesmanship, roles played in the original production by John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, who repeated their performances in New York the next year. The elegant "Betrayal" is a play about marriage and duplicity and, despite its use of reverse chronology, is among Mr. Pinter's most accessible works. It was made into a 1982 film starring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Hodge.

During the run of "No Man's Land" Mr. Pinter began an affair with Lady Antonia Fraser, the biographer and historian, who was then married to Hugh Fraser, a conservative politician. In 1980 Mr. Pinter and Lady Antonia were married, with Mr. Pinter becoming the substitute paterfamilias of an extended family.

In addition to his wife, his survivors include his son, Daniel, and his stepchildren, Benjamin, Damian, Orlando, Rebecca, Flora and Natasha. Years ago his son changed his last name to Brand, his maternal grandmother's maiden name. He had been estranged from his father, living as a recluse in Cambridgeshire.

After "Betrayal" Mr. Pinter's plays became shorter (like "A Kind of Alaska") and then, for about three years, they stopped. "Something gnaws away," he explained, "the desire to write something and the inability to do so." He added, "I think I was getting more and more imbedded in international issues."

At the same time he continued his involvement in films, highlighted by his close collaboration as screenwriter with the director Joseph Losey, which began in 1963 with "The Servant," a depiction of class relations in Britain. That was followed in 1967 by "Accident," about a professor infatuated with a student (Mr. Pinter and Ms. Merchant each had minor parts), and "The Go-Between" (1971), about a boy's complicity in an adult affair in turn of the century Britain, with Julie Christie and Alan Bates.

His many screenplays for other directors include "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964), about a woman (Anne Bancroft) drifting through multiple marriages, directed by Jack Clayton; "The Last Tycoon," Elia Kazan's 1976 adaptation of the Fitzgerald novel; and "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981), a Karel Reisz film with Meryl Streep and Mr. Irons.

With his plays "Moonlight" (a portrait of family relationships undermined by years of divisiveness) and "Ashes to Ashes" (a story of "torturers and victims" reflected in a typically uncommunicative marriage), Mr. Pinter returned to the longer, somberly meditative form.

His final work, "Celebration" (2000), is a wry look at power-conscious couples dining in a chic restaurant that bears a striking resemblance to the Ivy, a famous theater gathering place in London. "Celebration" was inspired by the playwright's early days as an unemployed actor, when he took a job as a busboy at the National Liberal Club. Because he dared to intrude on a conversation among several diners, he was fired.

He often directed plays by others, especially those by Simon Gray ("Butley," "Otherwise Engaged"), and occasionally his own work. Increasingly and with greater zeal he appeared as an actor — onstage with Paul Eddington in "No Man's Land" and in films like "Mojo," "Mansfield Park" and "The Tailor of Panama." Throughout his life he specialized in playing menacing characters, including several in his own plays ("The Hothouse," "One for the Road").

In July 2001 the highlight of the Lincoln Center Festival in New York was the presentation of nine Pinter plays, including a revival of "The Homecoming," and a pairing of his first and last plays, "The Room" and "Celebration." Mr. Pinter participated as a director and also acted in "One for the Road" in the role of a dapper and sadistic government interrogator.

The Pinter festival was the capstone of a season that, in London, featured the premiere at the National Theater of a stage version of his film script for "Remembrance of Things Past." Late in 2001 he directed an acclaimed revival of "No Man's Land," starring John Wood and Corin Redgrave at the National Theater.

In December 2001, during a routine medical examination, he was found to have cancer of the esophagus. In January 2002, while undergoing treatment, he acted in his brief comic sketch "Press Conference" at the National Theater in a malicious role as a minister of culture who was formerly the head of the secret police. In 2006 he appeared in a weeklong, sold-out production of Beckett's one-man play, "Krapp's Last Tape," at the Royal Court Theater.

"Pinter looks anxiously over his left shoulder into the darkness as if he felt death's presence in the room," Mr. Billington of The Guardian wrote, "It is impossible to dissociate Pinter's own recent encounters with mortality from that of the character."

Revivals of Mr. Pinter's work have become increasingly frequent in recent years. Last December an acclaimed production of his "Homecoming" opened on Broadway.

Mr. Pinter said he thought of theater as essentially exploratory. "Even old Sophocles didn't know what was going to happen next," he said. "He had to find his way through unknown territory. At the same time, theater has always been a critical act, looking in a broad sense at the society in which we live and attempting to reflect and dramatize these findings. We're not talking about the moon."

Speaking about his intuitive sense of writing, he said, "I find at the end of the journey, which of course is never ending, that I have found things out."

"I don't go away and say: 'I have illuminated myself. You see before you a changed person,' " he added. "It's a more surreptitious sense of discovery that happens to the writer himself."

Few writers have been so consistent over so many years in the tone and execution of their work. Just before rehearsals began for the West End production of "The Birthday Party" half a century ago, Mr. Pinter sent a letter to his director, Peter Wood. In it he said, "The play dictated itself, but I confess that I wrote it — with intent, maliciously, purposefully, in command of its growth."

He added: "The play is a comedy because the whole state of affairs is absurd and inglorious. It is, however, as you know, a very serious piece of work."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on December 25, 2008, 01:05:27 PM
i've only read Betrayal. i read it in the bookstore while waiting for my ride to arrive and it really shook me up. it's painful and brilliant and it stayed in my thoughts for a long, long time.

RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cinemanarchist on December 26, 2008, 12:38:14 AM
http://www.theparisreview.org/media/4351_PINTER.pdf (http://www.theparisreview.org/media/4351_PINTER.pdf)

Paris Review Interview with Pinter. Highly recommended.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 04, 2009, 12:08:58 AM
Bahamas autopsy planned for John Travolta's son

(Reuters) – An autopsy is planned in the Bahamas for actor John Travolta's 16-year-old son, who died suddenly during a vacation at his family's resort home, authorities said.

Police Superintendent Basil Rahming said on Saturday the autopsy, which could determine the cause of death of Jett Travolta, was likely to be performed on Monday.

Rahming did not elaborate on the time or place of the procedure. He said Travolta's eldest child, who had a history of seizures, had been found unconscious in a bathroom at his family's home at the Old Bahama Bay resort on Grand Bahama Island on Friday morning.

The body was discovered by a caretaker, Rahming said. Jett Travolta had last been seen alive on Thursday and was pronounced dead after being taken by ambulance to Rand Memorial Hospital in Freeport.

The Travoltas arrived in Grand Bahama on December 30 for a New Year family get-together at their vacation unit at the Old Bahama Bay hotel resort. They had planned to stay until January 9.

Family lawyer Michael Ossi said Travolta and his wife, actress Kelly Preston, were "distraught" over the loss of their son. Both have said previously that he became very sick when he was a toddler and was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, which leads to inflammation of the blood vessels in young children.

"This is the worst day in Mr. and Mrs. Travolta's life -- nobody wants to bury their child," Ossi said.

Travolta's publicists declined to comment on autopsy or funeral plans.

But Tampa-based attorney Michael McDermott, a family friend, told the Star-Banner newspaper in Ocala, a city in north-central Florida, that the funeral was being arranged in Ocala.

The couple have maintained a home for more than five years near Ocala in the exclusive Jumbolair community that aviation enthusiasts like Travolta can fly into at the wheel of their own private jets.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 05, 2009, 11:15:05 AM
Actor Pat Hingle dies at 84
Played Commissioner Gordon in '90s 'Batman'

Pat Hingle, a veteran actor whose career spanned stage, film and TV, including a recurring role as Commissioner Gordon in several Batman movies in the 1990s, died Saturday of cancer. He was 84.

Born Martin Patterson Hingle in 1924, he went to U. of Texas on a tuba scholarship. After a stint in the Navy during World War II, he earned a degree in radio broadcasting.

He later became a member of the Actors Studio, which led to a role in Broadway's "End as a Man."

He earned an acting Tony nom for 1958's "Dark at the Top of the Stairs."

Film roles included "On the Waterfront," "Hang 'Em High" and "Norma Rae."

Hingle was a guest star in many TV series, including roles on dramas "Touched by an Angel," "Homicide: Life on the Street," "Murder She Wrote," "War and Remembrance" and "In the Heat of the Night," as well as comedies "Wings," "Cheers" and "Mash" to name just a few.

Family friend Michele Seidman said Hingle died at his home in Carolina Beach shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday.

Seidman said he decided to settle in the coastal town after shooting the movie "Maximum Overdrive" in the area in 1986. He lived there for more than 15 years.

She said Hingle had battled multiple health problems over the past several years.

Hingle's career in movies and television spanned six decades, and he was also nominated for a Tony Award in 1958. Hingle's last movie was "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," which was released in 2006.

He set up the Pat Hingle Guest Artist Endowment at the U. of North Carolina, Wilmington.

Survivors include his wife, Julia; five children; two sisters; and 11 grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on January 05, 2009, 03:53:47 PM
sonuvobituaries.. personalwise too. i think the death around me stuff is why i took to CCBB.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 14, 2009, 05:40:09 PM
'Fantasy Island' star Ricardo Montalban dies at 88

LOS ANGELES – Ricardo Montalban, the Mexican-born actor who became a star in splashy MGM musicals and later as the wish-fulfilling Mr. Roarke in TV's "Fantasy Island," died Wednesday morning at his home, a city councilman said. He was 88. Montalban's death was announced at a city council meeting by president Eric Garcetti, who represents the district where the actor lived. Garcetti did not give a cause of death.

"What you saw on the screen and on television and on talk shows, this very courtly, modest, dignified individual, that's exactly who he was," said Montalban's longtime friend and publicist David Brokaw.

Montalban had been a star in Mexican movies when MGM brought him to Hollywood in 1946. He was cast in the leading role opposite Esther Williams in "Fiesta," and starred again with the swimming beauty in "On an Island with You" and "Neptune's Daughter."

But Montalban was best known as the faintly mysterious, white-suited Mr. Roarke, who presided over a tropical island resort where visitors were able to fulfill their lifelong dreams — usually at the unexpected expense of a difficult life lesson. Following a floatplane landing and lei ceremony, he greeted each guest with the line: "I am Mr. Roarke, your host. Welcome to Fantasy Island."

The show ran from 1978 to 1984.

More recently, he appeared as villains in two hits of the 1980s: "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" and the farcical "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad."

Between movie and TV roles, Montalban was active in the theater. He starred on Broadway in the 1957 musical "Jamaica" opposite Lena Horne, picking up a Tony nomination for best actor in a musical.

He toured in Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell," playing Don Juan, a performance critic John Simon later recalled as "irresistible." In 1965 he appeared on tour in the Yul Brynner role in "The King and I."

"The Ricardo Montalban Theatre in my Council District — where the next generations of performers participate in plays, musicals, and concerts — stands as a fitting tribute to this consummate performer," Garcetti said later in a written statement.

"Fantasy Island" received high ratings for most of its run on ABC, and still appears in reruns. Mr. Roarke and his sidekick, Tattoo, played by the 3-foot, 11-inch Herve Villechaize, reached the state of TV icons. Villechaize died in 1993.

In a 1978 interview, Montalban analyzed the series's success:

"What is appealing is the idea of attaining the unattainable and learning from it. Once you obtain a fantasy, it becomes a reality, and that reality is not as exciting as your fantasy. Through the fantasies you learn to appreciate your own realities."

As for Mr. Roarke: "Was he a magician? A hypnotist? Did he use hallucinogenic drugs? I finally came across a character that works for me. He has the essence of mystery, but I need a point of view so that my performance is consistent. I now play him 95 percent believable and 5 percent mystery. He doesn't have to behave mysteriously; only what he does is mysterious."

In 1970, Montalban organized fellow Latino actors into an organization called Nosotros ("We"), and he became the first president. Their aim: to improve the image of Spanish-speaking Americans on the screen; to assure that Latin-American actors were not discriminated against; to stimulate Latino actors to study their profession.

Montalban commented in a 1970 interview:

"The Spanish-speaking American boy sees Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid wipe out a regiment of Bolivian soldiers. He sees `The Wild Bunch' annihilate the Mexican army. It's only natural for him to say, `Gee, I wish I were an Anglo.'"

Montalban was no stranger to prejudice. He was born Nov. 25, 1920, in Mexico City, the son of parents who had emigrated from Spain. The boy was brought up to speak the Castilian Spanish of his forebears. To Mexican ears that sounded strange and effeminate, and young Ricardo was jeered by his schoolmates.

His mother also dressed him with old-country formality, and he wore lace collars and short pants "long after my legs had grown long and hairy," he wrote in his 1980 autobiography, "Reflections: A Life in Two Worlds."

"It is not easy to grow up in a country that has different customs from your own family's."

While driving through Texas with his brother, Montalban recalled seeing a sign on a diner: "No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed." In Los Angeles, where he attended Fairfax High School, he and a friend were refused entrance to a dance hall because they were Mexicans.

Rather than seek a career in Hollywood, Montalban played summer stock in New York. He returned to Mexico City and played leading roles in movies from 1941 to 1945. That led to an MGM contract.

Besides the Williams spectacles, the handsome actor appeared in "Sombrero" (opposite Pier Angeli), "Two Weeks With Love" (Jane Powell) and "Latin Lovers" (Lana Turner).

He also appeared in dramatic roles in such films as "Border Incident," "Battleground," "Mystery Street" and "Right Cross."

"Movies were never kind to me; I had to fight for every inch of film," he reflected in 1970. "Usually my best scenes would end up on the cutting-room floor."

Montalban had better luck after leaving MGM in 1953, though he was usually cast in ethnic roles. He appeared as a Japanese kabuki actor in "Sayonara" and an Indian in "Cheyenne Autumn." His other films included: "Madame X," "The Singing Nun," "Sweet Charity," "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" and "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes."

Montalban was sometimes said to be the source of Billy Crystal's "you look MAHvelous" character on "Saturday Night Live," though the inspiration was really Argentinian-born actor Fernando Lamas.

In 1944, Montalban married Georgiana Young, actress and model and younger sister of actress Loretta Young. Both Roman Catholics, they remained one of Hollywood's most devoted couples. She died in 2007. They had four children: Laura, Mark, Anita and Victor.

Montalban suffered a spinal injury in a horse fall while making a 1951 Clark Gable Western, "Across the Wide Missouri," and thereafter walked with a limp he managed to mask during his performances.

In 1993, Montalban lost the feeling in his leg, and exhaustive tests showed that he had suffered a small hemorrhage in his neck, similar to the injury decades earlier. He underwent 9 1/2 hours of spinal surgery at UCLA Medical Center.

Despite the constant pain, the actor was able to take a role in an Aaron Spelling TV series, "Heaven Help Us." Twice a month in 1994, he flew to San Antonio for two or three days of filming as an angel who watched over a young couple.

In an interview at the time, Montalban remarked: "I've never given up hope. But I have to be realistic. I gave my tennis rackets to my son, figuring I'll never play again. But my doctor said, `Don't say that. Strange things happen. You never know.'"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 28, 2009, 04:40:35 PM
X-Files, Supernatural Director Kim Manners Dies
Source: E! Online

Kim Manners, the veteran TV producer-director who helmed dozens of episodes of The X-Files and Supermatural, died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from lung cancer. He was 59.

Hailing from a showbiz family, Manners first broke into the TV business in the 1970s as a production manager and director on Charlie's Angels. He went on to work on such series as Star Trek: The Next Generation, 21 Jump Street and Baywatch until he got the call for The X-Files.

It was on Chris Carter's hit sci-fi mystery series where Manners made his mark, scoring four Emmy nominations for his work. All told he directed 52 episodes of The X-Files.

"Kim had a blazing intensity that inspired everyone—writers, producers, actors and crew...as long as he'd been a director, he never lost his passion for his work. Every time he got a script, he gave it his all," X-Files writer-producer Frank Spotnitz writes on his blog.

"Kim was an incredible force of life. It is hard for me to believe or accept that he is gone."

After The X-Files ended, Manners helped launch Supernatural in 2005, directing many of its most memorable episodes, including the season finales.

"Everyone at Supernatural is walking around in a daze, shocked and absolutely devastated," Supernatural mastermind Eric Kripke said in a statement. "Kim was a brilliant director; more than that, he was a mentor and friend."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on January 28, 2009, 07:13:56 PM
damn.. RIP..  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 08, 2009, 10:56:09 PM
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/entertainment/Actor-James-Whitmore-Dead-at-87.html

Actor James Whitmore Dead at 87
Updated 4:54 PM PST, Fri, Feb 6, 2009

MALIBU, Calif. -- Veteran character actor James Whitmore, who appeared in films ranging from "The Asphalt Jungle" to "Planet of the Apes" to "The Shawshank Redemption," died Friday at his Malibu home at age 87.

Whitmore died of lung cancer, which he was diagnosed with a week before Thanksgiving, his son, Steve, said.

"My father was a great man and it gives me great joy to speak about a father that always had my back," Steve Whitmore said. "He always said the most important thing in life was family. He loved his work, but he always saw it as a way to provide for the most important thing, and that's family."

A New York native, James Whitmore earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University, then served with the Marines in World War II. After his military service, Whitmore began appearing in stage productions in New Hampshire in the late 1940s.

He made his Broadway debut in "Command Decision" in 1947, winning a Tony Award.

Two years later, Whitmore was appearing on the big screen opposite Glenn Ford in "The Undercover Man." He earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations with his follow-up performance in "Battleground."

He made a string of film appearances through the 1950s, then began appearing in television shows such as "The Twilight Zone," "Rawhide," "Dr. Kildare," "The Law and Mr. Jones" and "The Detectives."

He portrayed veteran Chief Inspector Charles Kane in "Madigan" and played the president of the simian assembly in the original "Planet of the Apes."

He returned to the stage in the 1970s, appearing in one-man shows portraying Will Rogers, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt. He moved his Harry Truman role to the silver screen in "Give 'em Hell, Harry!," a role that earned him a second Oscar nomination.

Whitmore tugged on movie-goers' heart-strings when he played inmate Brooks Hatlen in "The Shawshank Redemption."

He won an Emmy Award in 2000 for his recurring role on the drama "The Practice."

"I know my father leaves a large footprint. So many in the motion picture business and the acting business loved and admired him, and we, the family, share in that admiration and love," Steve Whitmore said.

"He was nominated for the Academy Award twice. He's an Emmy Award winner, but that was all a means to an end to him -- to provide for those he loved and cared for," he said. "He was glad to be able to do what he loved and provide.

"We appreciate everybody and thank you all for your thoughts and prayers."

In addition to his son, Whitmore is survived by his wife Noreen, sons James Jr. and Dan, eight grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on February 23, 2009, 10:48:12 PM
Christopher Nolan, Irish Poet, Dead at Age 43
         

Associated Press
Writer Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Writer
– Sat Feb 21, 5:04 pm ET



LONDON – Christopher Nolan, an Irish poet and novelist who refused to let cerebral palsy get in the way of his writing, has died. He was 43.

Nolan choked on a piece of food Friday at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, according to a statement from his family carried in the Irish media. The hospital confirmed his death Saturday.

"Christopher Nolan was a gifted writer who attained deserved success and acclaim throughout the world for his work," Irish President Mary McAleese said in a statement, adding that his achievements were "all the more remarkable given his daily battle with cerebral palsy."

Nolan's brain was starved of oxygen during birth, leaving him unable to speak or control his arms or legs. He might have remained isolated from the outside world were it not for a drug, Lioresal, which restored some of his muscle function. His parents nurtured their partially paralyzed son's literary talent.

Using a "unicorn stick" strapped to his forehead to tap the keys of a typewriter, Nolan laboriously wrote out messages and, eventually, poems and books as well.

Bernadette Nolan, Christopher's mother, said her son was 11 when his writing first turned lyrical.

"He wrote of a family visit to a cave that was illuminated by electric lights: He said it was 'a lovely, fairy-like effect to the work of nature,'" she told The Associated Press in a 1987 interview. "It was just that turn of phrase," she said. "I thought, that's unusual for a kid of 11."

The next day Nolan wrote a poem packed with metaphors and peppered with alliteration, which his mother said showed a mind "just like a spin dryer at full speed."

His father Joe read his son poetry and passages from James Joyce's "Ulysses." Christopher took to writing early: He published "Dam-Burst of Dreams," a collection of poetry, at the age of 15. Even then critics compared it to Joyce.

His autobiography, "Under the Eye of the Clock: The Life Story of Christopher Nolan," won the prestigious Whitbread Award in 1988. The third-person account describes Nolan's longing for an education and the liberation of finally being able to type out his feelings. The book was a frank but sometimes hilarious account of his disability: he described his arm flying out to grab a woman's skirt and how his mouth sometimes remained stubbornly shut when he wanted to take communion.

As novelist Margaret Drabble noted, the book was "not merely another tale of brave strife against odds," adding that Nolan was "a writer, a real writer who uses words with an idiosyncratic new-minded freshness."

Nolan disliked sentimental stories about his disability. Although the "Under the Eye of the Clock" drew offers to have his book made into a movie, Nolan refused on the grounds that the production would be a sympathy piece, according to the Irish Independent.

"I want to highlight the creativity within the brain of a cripple and, while not attempting to hide his crippledom, I want instead to filter all sob-storied sentiment from his portrait and dwell upon his life, his laughter, his vision, and his nervous normality," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090221/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_obit_nolan_3
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on February 23, 2009, 10:50:42 PM
And a million Batman fans simultaneously scream, "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! ... wait, never mind."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on February 23, 2009, 10:58:00 PM
Not cool. But R.I.P.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 15, 2009, 11:11:32 PM
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."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on March 17, 2009, 12:07:56 PM
Natasha Richardson.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on March 17, 2009, 12:32:28 PM
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.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on March 17, 2009, 02:18:55 PM
TMZ is reporting that she has brain swelling but is not brain dead.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 17, 2009, 03:46:09 PM
The Xixax Awards.  :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on March 18, 2009, 07:24:03 PM
 :(.... apparently, Richardson died this morning.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 18, 2009, 07:26:06 PM
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."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 29, 2009, 09:27:52 PM
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."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 13, 2009, 06:04:24 PM
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."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on April 13, 2009, 11:48:02 PM
This is a real shame. Fuck. Man, I didn't mean to make a pun.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 19, 2009, 08:49:54 PM
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.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on April 20, 2009, 11:51:07 AM
God damn it, that fucking sucks.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on April 20, 2009, 05:59:30 PM
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 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090420/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_hawking)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on April 26, 2009, 09:27:32 PM
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-bea-arthur26-2009apr26,0,176068.story


Bea Arthur, star of 'Golden Girls' and 'Maude,' dies at 86
The Broadway actress and TV star, known for her sharp-tongued characters, died of cancer at her home in Los Angeles.
By Claudia Luther
April 26, 2009

Beatrice Arthur, best known as the acerbic Maude Findlay on Norman Lear's sitcom "Maude" and as the strong-willed Dorothy Zbornak on the long-running "The Golden Girls," died Saturday. She was 86.

Arthur, a stage-trained actress who was a success on Broadway long before television audiences got to know her, died of cancer at her Los Angeles home.

In 1966, the tall and husky-voiced Arthur won a Tony for her performance as Vera Charles, the sharp-tongued sidekick to Angela Lansbury's Mame Dennis in the original production of "Mame" on Broadway, which was named best musical that year.

But Arthur had little experience in either film or TV when Lear spotted her singing a song called "Garbage" in an off-Broadway show, "The Shoestring Revue." In 1971, Lear brought her to Hollywood for a guest role on CBS' "All in the Family." She played Edith Bunker's loud-mouthed cousin, Maude, who tangled with Edith's equally loud-mouthed husband, Archie Bunker, from opposite sides of the political fence.

Within a year, Arthur had her own show, "Maude," which ran for six years on CBS.

In the series, Maude is living in Tuckahoe, N.Y., with her fourth husband, Walter Findlay (Bill Macy), daughter Carol (Adrienne Barbeau), a grandson and a black maid named Florida (Esther Rolle), whose sassy repartee with her boss was one of the best parts of "Maude." (Rolle's character spun off into another series, "Good Times.")

"Maude" came at the onset of the feminist movement and addressed serious issues, including infidelity, death, depression and abortion, but there were always laughs. Maude's most famous line, delivered often and with withering drollery, was: "God will get you for that, Walter."

Playing Maude earned Arthur five Emmy nominations and a statuette in 1977. Despite the show's enormous success, Arthur did not enjoy being the public face of feminism, a role she said was thrust upon her.

"It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me," she told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2001.

After Arthur left "Maude," she returned to TV briefly in 1983 for ABC's failed takeoff of the British series "Fawlty Towers," titled "Amanda's." She returned to television in triumph in 1985 as Dorothy on "The Golden Girls," the NBC hit that ran from 1985 to 1992, twice won Emmys for best comedy and enjoyed a long afterlife in syndication.

"The Golden Girls" followed the lives of three older women sharing a household in Miami with Dorothy's widowed mother, Sophia (Estelle Getty), who had suffered a small stroke that freed her from the constraints of tact.

Much of what made the show work was the snappy mother-daughter dialogue, with Arthur as the "isle of sanity who could look at the other three characters from the audience's perspective," as producer Paul Witt once said.

The series also starred Betty White as the naive Rose and Rue McClanahan as the saucy Blanche. All four won Emmys for their portrayals; Arthur's came in 1988.

Much quieter by nature than her famous characters, Arthur often said that what she and they had in common was: "All three of us are 5-foot-9 1/2 in our stocking feet and we all have deep voices." And all, she said, tended to be "bubble prickers."

Arthur was born Bernice Frankel on May 13, 1922, in New York City, the daughter of department store owners, and was raised in Cambridge, Md. She often described herself as a shy child, but her classmates remembered her as vivacious, self-assured and funny.

Though she pined to be a June Allyson type -- small and blond and cute -- she made the most of her stature and a voice so deep that on the telephone she was often mistaken for a man. She went to New York City, where she studied at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School with the influential German director Erwin Piscator.

She also joined the famed Actors Studio, where she met her future husband, Gene Saks, who later directed Broadway shows and movies, including several film versions of Neil Simon plays.

In 1954, she got the role of Lucy Brown in the U.S. premiere of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's "Threepenny Opera," which opened off-Broadway starring Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya.

Arthur adored Lenya and often referred to the experience as the highlight of her life, the time that she realized "I was good, damn good."

Around that time, working in television on "Caesar's Hour" with Sid Caesar on NBC, she said she learned to be "outrageous" by doing "under fives" -- under five lines -- in sketches. During the 1950s, she appeared many times in various roles on Kraft Television Theatre.

Several years later, she created the role of Yente, the matchmaker in the original 1964 Broadway production of "Fiddler on the Roof," directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins.

Next she was part of the original 1966 production of "Mame" and became a lifelong friend of Lansbury.

"The two of us together were dynamite, you know?" Lansbury said on CBS' "Sunday Morning" in 2002. "I mean, we really managed to just take off like birds."

Although she had wanted the part of Mame, Arthur was talked into taking the gal-pal role by husband Saks, who was directing the musical. But she didn't accept being second banana quietly, using humor to make her point.

According to "Balancing Act," Martin Gottfried's 1999 biography of Lansbury, Arthur told people that the original name of the show was "Vera" and that it was changed only because composer Jerry Herman couldn't find rhymes for that name. Then she would dramatically pause, Gottfried wrote, and say, "Steve Sondheim could have."

"She was perfect for Vera," Gottfried concluded.

Indeed, when "Mame" opened on May 24, 1966, the New York Post's Richard Watts wrote that Arthur's Vera was "a portrait in acid of a savagely witty, cynical and serpent-tongued woman who is at once a terror, a scourge, the relentless voice of truth and a pleasure to have around."

And Time magazine said Arthur "delivers a line as if someone had put lye in her martinis."

When "Mame" came to the screen, Lucille Ball, who replaced Lansbury as the lead character, insisted on having Arthur as Vera, even though Arthur was upset that Lansbury had not gotten the title role.

"She was the greatest Vera Charles in the world," Ball told the Hollywood Reporter. "We wrapped the whole production around [her]."

The film, also directed by Saks and riddled with production problems, was a critical flop.

Arthur did few movies, among them "That Kind of Woman" (1959) and "Lovers and Other Strangers" (1970).

In 2002, "Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends," a one-woman show she developed with composer Billy Goldenberg, appeared on Broadway for two months. The show also toured the U.S., Canada, Australia and elsewhere.

"I simply wanted to see if I had the guts to just come out and be myself, which is something I never felt very comfortable doing," Arthur told her audiences in the show.

In addition to performing, Arthur supported animal rights and AIDS research. She had lived in Los Angeles for many years.

Before marrying Saks, Arthur was married briefly to playwright Robert Alan Aurthur, from whom she acquired part of her stage name. "Bernice" became "Beatrice" because she always hated her given name, and she simplified the spelling of his last name.

Arthur and Saks, who married in 1950 and divorced in the late 1970s, had two sons, Matthew and Daniel, who survive her, as do two grandchildren.

Luther is a former Times staff writer.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on April 26, 2009, 09:37:17 PM
I was so angry when I read this....so sad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cinemanarchist on April 26, 2009, 10:51:22 PM
I've always had this idea in waiting to get a full back tattoo of The Last Supper but with the Golden Girls (and Empty Nest neighbors) instead. There would be cheesecake and Bea/Dorothy would of course be Jesus. I also always wanted to be responsible for an IMAX Golden Girls movie...that's just not going to happen. Bea Arthur was truly one of a kind and she will be missed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on April 30, 2009, 04:54:49 PM
April 22

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/8012994.stm

Film-maker Cardiff dies aged 94

Cinematographer and director Jack Cardiff, who actress Marilyn Monroe once described as "the best in the world", has died aged 94.

He was best known for his work on movies such as The African Queen and Sons and Lovers, and was awarded an Oscar for Black Narcissus in 1948.

The filmmaker was also presented with an Honorary Oscar in 2001.

Born to two music hall artists, he grew up in the theatre, resulting in a showbusiness career spanning 90 years.

He moved into film as a runner on the 1928 drama The Informer, then progressed to work as a camera operator and, eventually, cinematographer.

In an article for The National Gallery in 2007, Cardiff described his early film set experiences.
FILMS OF JACK CARDIFF
# 1918 Performed as an actor in the silent film My Son, My Son
# 1937 Cinematographer on Wings of The Morning, the first Technicolor movie shot in the British Isles
# 1946 Shot the post-war masterpiece A Matter of Life and Death, starring David Niven
# 1947 Won an Oscar for Black Narcissus
# 1950 Worked on The African Queen, directed by John Huston
# 1957 Worked with Marilyn Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl
# 1960 Directed Scent of Mystery, the first film in Smell-O-Vision
# 1960 Adapted DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, starring Trevor Howard

"I suppose I was much less than an apprentice when I first went behind the camera," he wrote.

"I was a runner, whose main job was to supply the German director with Vichy water because he had a problem with flatulence.".

He also described how, as a child, he used to watch art directors work in theatres, painting the backdrops and setting up the lights.

"I was fascinated by two men up in the wings, one on each side of the stage, following the actors with a spotlight," he wrote.

"I spent a lot of time with them and a stirring was born in me which I later recognised as an urge to create. Light and colour became my world."

In 1937 he shot Wings of the Morning, the first film in Britain to be shot in Technicolor.

He also worked with cinema greats Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe in the 1957 movie The Prince and the Showgirl.

He was made an OBE in 2000.

Inspiration

In 2001, he took part in an interview with readers of the BBC news website, in which he revealed he would have been a painter if he had not worked in film.

In fact much of his work was inspired by impressionist painters - he said the lighting and colour palette of Black Narcissus "was inspired by Vermeer".

Cardiff was admired by many in the film industry, including Martin Scorsese.

The director once described the 18-minute dance sequence in 1948's The Red Shoes as "a moving painting".

Scorsese added the cinematographer could "paint with the camera".

When asked which films he was most proud of, Cardiff said the "successful" ones had really made their mark.

"Naturally, I am proud of successful films that I have enjoyed working on like The Red Shoes and the Black Narcissus and I have had a certain satisfaction from that.

"But the films that I am most proud of - the film for instance that I made under great difficulty, Sons and Lovers, I wanted to make it into a good film because the book is marvellous and I didn't want to let the author down."

Published: 2009/04/22 16:00:44 GMT

© BBC MMIX
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on May 05, 2009, 12:48:32 PM
Comedian Dom DeLuise Dies  :yabbse-sad:

Dom DeLuise, the comedian who became a household name in the '70s and '80s for his small but memorable roles in Blazing Saddles, Cannonball Run and Spaceballs, died late Monday night in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 75.

DeLuise got his big break in 1964 as a as a regular performer on TV's The Entertainers. He soon became a regular guest star on The Dean Martin Summer Show. The exposure led to Deluise's landing his own eponymous comedy program on CBS that lasted for a season.

In the '70s, DeLuise moved to the big screen, becoming a regular fixture in various Mel Brooks films. After meeting Burt Reynolds on the set of Brooks's Silent Movie, the two actors became friends and worked together in several films, including two Cannonball Run movies, Smokey and the Bandit II and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

DeLuise, who often made jokes about his rotund figure, was an avid chef who wrote four cookbooks. He also wrote seven children's books. He married actress Carol Arthur in 1965. His three sons - Peter, Michael and David - are all actors. DeLuise's death was first reported by TMZ.com.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on May 07, 2009, 08:26:46 PM
Quote from: mogwai on May 05, 2009, 12:48:32 PM
DeLuise's death was first reported by TMZ.com.

Almost more tragic than the death itself.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on May 11, 2009, 01:25:09 AM
I'm calling Farrah Fawcett.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on May 11, 2009, 01:31:47 AM
i got Ed McMahon.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on May 11, 2009, 12:32:54 PM
Quote from: Bethie on May 11, 2009, 01:25:09 AM
I'm calling Farrah Fawcett.

i bet dom deluise is longing for some company since they both starred in "cannonball run".
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on May 11, 2009, 01:25:12 PM
Quote from: mogwai on May 11, 2009, 12:32:54 PM
Quote from: Bethie on May 11, 2009, 01:25:09 AM
I'm calling Farrah Fawcett.

i bet dom deluise is longing for some company since they both starred in "cannonball run".
'cannonball run', such a beauty of a movie.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on May 24, 2009, 09:55:34 PM
Jay Bennett, dead at age 45

Jay Bennett, a rock musician with deep ties to Chicago best known as a former member of Wilco, died early Sunday morning in downstate Urbana, where he had been running a recording studio, according to a spokesman for his family.

The singer and multi-instrumentalist was 45 years old.

"Early this morning, Jay died in his sleep and an autopsy is being performed," said Edward Burch, a friend and musician who collaborated with Bennett on the 2005 album "The Palace at 4 a.m." "The family is in mourning and is unavailable for comment at this time."

Born in the Chicago suburb of Rolling Meadows, Bennett began playing in bands as a teenager. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earned multiple degrees in secondary education, math and political science. In between, he co-founded the Replacements-like power-pop band Titanic Love Affair, which released three albums during the alternative-rock heyday between 1991 and 1996, when it was dropped from its label.

Bennett was working at a VCR repair shop in Champaign when he was tapped to join Wilco as it toured in support of its first album, "A.M." A talented arranger and versatile musician who could play virtually any instrument he picked up, from mandolin to Mellotron, Bennett formed a fruitful partnership with Wilco bandleader Jeff Tweedy. His contributions over a seven-year period were key to the albums that resulted in the band's national breakthrough, including "Being There" (1996), "Summerteeth" (1999) and "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" (2002).

Relations between Bennett and Tweedy, both painstaking perfectionists, soured during the latter recording, as documented in the film "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," and Bennett left the band. Earlier this month, Bennett filed a lawsuit against Tweedy for breach of contract and unpaid artist's royalties, stemming in part from his role in the film.

In late April, Bennett wrote on his MySpace blog about dealing with intense pain from a hip injury suffered during a dive from the stage while playing with Titanic Love Affair. He was preparing to have surgery, but was concerned about his lack of health insurance. However, he also was looking forward to finishing his fifth solo album, "Kicking at the Perfumed Air," at his studio, Pieholden Suites, named after the song on "Summerteeth" that best encapsulates his talents as an arranger.

"This whole experience [with the hip pain] has really taught me to look both inward and outward for support, and I've learned things about myself that I thought I had completely figured out years ago," Bennett wrote. "Family and friends have helped me to keep faith in a future that will actually be much more carefree than my constricted present state. I encourage you all to tell me stories of recovery, as they really do help... All in all, I'm 'in a really good place' right now; I'm just waiting until I can make it all happen."

Bennett's former bandmates in Wilco are touring in Spain and could not be reached for comment. But Burch said he had spoken to bassist John Stirratt, and the band was "broken up" about the news.

"He was an extremely talented musician and a great person, and I'll miss him terribly," Burch added.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on June 04, 2009, 09:28:29 AM
Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique? (a coworker said this immediately and I couldn't stop laughing, even though it's pretty awful)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/04/obit.david.carradine/index.html

Actor David Carradine found dead

(CNN) -- American actor David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok, Thailand, hotel, according to his personal manager, Chuck Binder.

David Carradine became famous in the 1970s after starring in the television series "Kung Fu."

Binder said Thursday that the death is being investigated but could provide no other details.

Carradine, who became famous in the 1970s when he starred in the television series "Kung Fu," was 72.

Modern audiences may best know him as "Bill" in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 04, 2009, 09:30:09 AM
Quote from: Gamblour. on June 04, 2009, 09:28:29 AM
Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique? (a coworker said this immediately and I couldn't stop laughing, even though it's pretty awful)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/04/obit.david.carradine/index.html

Actor David Carradine found dead

(CNN) -- American actor David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok, Thailand, hotel, according to his personal manager, Chuck Binder.

David Carradine became famous in the 1970s after starring in the television series "Kung Fu."

Binder said Thursday that the death is being investigated but could provide no other details.

Carradine, who became famous in the 1970s when he starred in the television series "Kung Fu," was 72.

Modern audiences may best know him as "Bill" in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films.


RIP  :yabbse-sad:


edit: because gamblour beat me to it, im quoting his post.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on June 04, 2009, 10:39:07 AM
Looks like it was suicide by hanging.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on June 04, 2009, 12:02:11 PM
David Carradine Found Hanged In a Bangkok Hotel Room Say Reports (http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Kung-Fu-And-Kill-Bill-Acting-Star-David-Carradine-Found-Hanged-In-A-Bangkok-Hotel-Room-Say-Reports/Article/200906115296063?lpos=Home_First_World_News_Article_Teaser_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15296063_Kung_Fu_And_Kill_Bill_Acting_Star_David_Carradine_Found_Hanged_In_A_Bangkok_Hotel_Room%2C_Say_Reports)

admin-edit: page width fucked up by shitty, lengthy link
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on June 04, 2009, 12:08:11 PM
Arrrrrrghhhhh this is terrible. Why ? Does anybody have any clue yet ??? I loved Kung fu and I think he looked like a pretty wise man. I am shocked
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on June 04, 2009, 12:14:17 PM
two epic kungfu icons/ villains in one day:

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=14890&icid=3&d_str=20090604

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fthestandard.com.hk%2Fimages%2Finstant_news%2F20090604%2FAIG%286%29.jpg&hash=88cfef624eeb014fb5ea783e1a57713e1997b6b8)

Veteran actor Shek Kin dies
(06-04 19:15)
Seasoned actor Shek Kin has died of kidney failure. He was 96.

Shek, who joined showbiz in 1940 as an actor in bit parts, became famous for his roles as the main villain who pits his wits in the Wong Fei Hung movies against the legendary folk hero.

Shek, pictured pitted against Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon, joined TVB in 1975 and retired in 1993.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on June 04, 2009, 01:08:40 PM
Crazy, I just watched "My Suicide" this year at SXSW and he plays a guy who talks the main character out of suicide.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: New Feeling on June 04, 2009, 01:16:36 PM
link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFrjfd1a0hA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efacebook%2Ecom%2Fprofile%2Ephp%3Fid%3D521571717%26ref%3Dprofile&feature=player_embedded)

this is extremely sad for me as I met Mr. Carradine about 4 weeks ago and he was awesome to my 3 year old son.  Please check the video.


admin-edit: link messed up page width. shortened.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 04, 2009, 01:41:05 PM
^^ great vid. he was awesome indeed, and he looked like a truly nice person.
great, now im really sad.


oh...and i have to ask, you showed kill bill to your son? you were kidding right? not that im against it  :yabbse-smiley:

:(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 04, 2009, 07:41:50 PM
It seems he and Michael Hutchence might have had shared interests:

Quote from: BBCThai police told the BBC a hotel maid found the 72-year-old naked in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and other parts of his body.

Until a couple hours ago, that "other parts of his body" line read "genitals".
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on June 04, 2009, 08:12:00 PM
yeah it appears this is not a suicide but a strange sex accident/murder???
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on June 04, 2009, 11:41:48 PM
everyone on larry king was unanimous in the thinking that there was no effing way this was a suicide. rip.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on June 05, 2009, 02:46:23 AM
Quote from: Gamblour. on June 04, 2009, 09:28:29 AM
Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique? (a coworker said this immediately and I couldn't stop laughing, even though it's pretty awful)

haha. a friend of mine text me and said "i guess they really did kill bill"

too soon jokes are the best.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jefferson on June 05, 2009, 06:23:33 AM
Quote from: Bethie on June 05, 2009, 02:46:23 AM
[a friend of mine text me and said "i guess they really did kill bill"

those exact words were spoken at my house when the news broke. eerie.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on June 05, 2009, 09:51:49 AM
I just had a cord wrapped around my genitals.  Eerie.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on June 05, 2009, 09:53:48 AM
I'm going to go do a test run with a friend of mine. I'll report back with results.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 23, 2009, 11:14:39 AM
Quote from: jtm on May 11, 2009, 01:31:47 AM
i got Ed McMahon.

Winner!!!

`Tonight' sidekick Ed McMahon dies in LA at 86
By LYNN ELBER, AP Television Writer

Ed McMahon, the loyal "Tonight Show" sidekick who bolstered boss Johnny Carson with guffaws and a resounding "H-e-e-e-e-e-ere's Johnny!" for 30 years, died early Tuesday. He was 86.

McMahon died shortly after midnight at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center surrounded by his wife, Pam, and other family members, said his publicist, Howard Bragman.

Bragman didn't give a cause of death, saying only that McMahon had a "multitude of health problems the last few months."

McMahon had bone cancer, among other illnesses, according to a person close to the entertainer, and had been hospitalized for several weeks. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

McMahon broke his neck in a fall in March 2007, and battled a series of financial problems as his injuries preventing him from working.

McMahon and Carson had worked together for nearly five years on the game show "Who Do You Trust?" when Carson took over NBC's late-night show from Jack Paar in October 1962. McMahon played second banana on "Tonight" until Carson retired in 1992.

"You can't imagine hooking up with a guy like Carson," McMahon said an interview with The Associated Press in 1993. "There's the old phrase, hook your wagon to a star. I hitched my wagon to a great star."

McMahon, who never failed to laugh at his Carson's quips, kept his supporting role in perspective.

"It's like a pitcher who has a favorite catcher," he said. "The pitcher gets a little help from the catcher, but the pitcher's got to throw the ball. Well, Johnny Carson had to throw the ball, but I could give him a little help."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: OrHowILearnedTo on June 23, 2009, 12:28:05 PM
i wouldn't exactly call that a win.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on June 24, 2009, 12:50:06 AM
Quote from: OrHowILearnedTo on June 23, 2009, 12:28:05 PM
i wouldn't exactly call that a win.

he died, fair and square.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on June 25, 2009, 01:00:32 PM
Quote from: Bethie on May 11, 2009, 01:25:09 AM
I'm calling Farrah Fawcett.

close 2nd..

'Charlie's Angel' Farrah Fawcett dies at 62
June 25, 2009, 11:53 AM EST
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Farrah Fawcett, whose luxurious tresses and blinding smile helped redefine sex appeal in the 1970s as one of TV's "Charlie's Angels," died Thursday after battling cancer. She was 62.

The pop icon, who in the 1980s set aside the fantasy girl image to tackle serious roles, died Thursday shortly before 9:30 a.m. PDT in a Santa Monica hospital, spokesman Paul Bloch said.

She burst on the scene in 1976 as one-third of the crime-fighting trio in TV's "Charlie's Angels." A poster of her in a clingy swimsuit sold in the millions.

She left the show after one season but had a flop on the big screen with "Somebody Killed Her Husband." She turned to more serious roles in the 1980s and 1990s, winning praise playing an abused wife in "The Burning Bed."

She had been diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006. As she underwent treatment, she enlisted the help of actor Ryan O'Neal, who had been her longtime companion and was the father of her son, Redmond, born in 1985.

This month, O'Neal said he asked Fawcett to marry him and she agreed. They would wed "as soon as she can say yes," he said.

Her struggle with painful treatments and dispiriting setbacks was recorded in the television documentary "Farrah's Story." Fawcett sought cures in Germany as well as the United States, battling the disease with iron determination even as her body weakened.

"Her big message to people is don't give up, no matter what they say to you, keep fighting," her friend Alana Stewart said. NBC estimated the May 15, 2009, broadcast drew nearly 9 million viewers.

In the documentary, Fawcett was seen shaving off most of her trademark locks before chemotherapy could claim them. Toward the end, she's seen huddled in bed, barely responding to a visit from her son.

Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith comprised the original "Angels," the sexy, police-trained trio of martial arts experts who took their assignments from a rich, mysterious boss named Charlie (John Forsythe, who was never seen on camera but whose distinctive voice was heard on speaker phone.)

The program debuted in September 1976, the height of what some critics derisively referred to as television's "jiggle show" era, and it gave each of the actresses ample opportunity to show off their figures as they disguised themselves in bathing suits and as hookers and strippers to solve crimes.

Backed by a clever publicity campaign, Fawcett — then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors because of her marriage to "Six Million Dollar Man" star Lee Majors — quickly became the most popular Angel of all.

Her face helped sell T-shirts, lunch boxes, shampoo, wigs and even a novelty plumbing device called Farrah's faucet. Her flowing blond hair, pearly white smile and trim, shapely body made her a favorite with male viewers in particular.

A poster of her in a dampened red swimsuit sold millions of copies and became a ubiquitous wall decoration in teenagers' rooms.

Thus the public and the show's producer, Spelling-Goldberg, were shocked when she announced after the series' first season that she was leaving television's No. 5-rated series to star in feature films. (Cheryl Ladd became the new "Angel" on the series.)

But the movies turned out to be a platform where Fawcett was never able to duplicate her TV success. Her first star vehicle, the comedy-mystery "Somebody Killed Her Husband," flopped and Hollywood cynics cracked that it should have been titled "Somebody Killed Her Career."

The actress had also been in line to star in "Foul Play" for Columbia Pictures. But the studio opted for Goldie Hawn instead. "Spelling-Goldberg warned all the studios that that they would be sued for damages if they employed me," Fawcett told The Associated Press in 1979. "The studios wouldn't touch me."

She finally reached an agreement to appear in three episodes of "Charlie's Angels" a season, an experience she called "painful."

She returned to making movies, including the futuristic thriller "Logan's Run," the comedy-thriller "Sunburn" and the strange sci-fi tale "Saturn 3," but none clicked with the public.

Fawcett fared better with television movies such as "Murder in Texas," "Poor Little Rich Girl" and especially as an abused wife in 1984's "The Burning Bed." The last earned her an Emmy nomination and the long-denied admission from critics that she really could act.

As further proof of her acting credentials, Fawcett appeared off-Broadway in "Extremities" as a woman who is raped in her own home. She repeated the role in the 1986 film version.

Not content to continue playing victims, she switched type. She played a murderous mother in the 1989 true-crime story "Small Sacrifices" and a tough lawyer on the trail of a thief in 1992's "Criminal Behavior."

She also starred in biographies of Nazi-hunter Beate Klarsfeld and photographer Margaret Bourke-White.

"I felt that I was doing a disservice to ourselves by portraying only women as victims," she commented in a 1992 interview.

In 1995, at age 50, Fawcett posed partly nude for Playboy magazine. The following year, she starred in a Playboy video, "All of Me," in which she was equally unclothed while she sculpted and painted.

She told an interviewer she considered the experience "a renaissance," adding, "I no longer feel ... restrictions emotionally, artistically, creatively or in my everyday life. I don't feel those borders anymore."

Fawcett's most unfortunate career moment may have been a 1997 appearance on David Letterman's show, when her disjointed, rambling answers led many to speculate that she was on drugs. She denied that, blaming her strange behavior on questionable advice from her mother to be playful and have a good time.

In September 2006, Fawcett, who at 59 still maintained a strict regimen of tennis and paddleball, began to feel strangely exhausted. She underwent two weeks of tests and was told the devastating news: She had anal cancer.

O'Neal, with whom she had a 17-year relationship, again became her constant companion, escorting her to the hospital for chemotherapy.

"She's so strong," the actor told a reporter. "I love her. I love her all over again."

She struggled to maintain her privacy, but a UCLA Medical Center employee pleaded guilty in late 2008 to violating federal medical privacy law for commercial purposes for selling records of Fawcett and other celebrities to the National Enquirer.

"It's much easier to go through something and deal with it without being under a microscope," she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview in which she also revealed that she helped set up a sting that led to the hospital worker's arrest.

Her decision to tell her own story through the NBC documentary was meant as an inspiration to others, friends said. The segments showing her cancer treatment, including a trip to Germany for procedures there, were originally shot for a personal, family record, they said. And although weak, she continued to show flashes of grit and good humor in the documentary.

"I do not want to die of this disease. So I say to God, `It is seriously time for a miracle,'" she said at one point.

Born Feb. 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas, she was named Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett by her mother, who said she added the Farrah because it sounded good with Fawcett. She was less than a month old when she underwent surgery to remove a digestive tract tumor with which she was born.

After attending Roman Catholic grade school and W.B. Ray High School, Fawcett enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. Fellow students voted her one of the 10 most beautiful people on the campus and her photos were eventually spotted by movie publicist David Mirisch, who suggested she pursue a film career. After overcoming her parents' objections, she agreed.

Soon she was appearing in such TV shows as "That Girl," "The Flying Nun," "I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Partridge Family."

Majors became both her boyfriend and her adviser on career matters, and they married in 1973. She dropped his last name from hers after they divorced in 1982.

By then she had already begun her long relationship with O'Neal. The couple never married. Both Redmond and Ryan O'Neal have grappled with drug and legal problems in recent years.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on June 25, 2009, 04:42:31 PM
guess i'll play. Michael Jackson :/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on June 25, 2009, 05:00:36 PM
Yeah, if he croaks, this will be a weird triumvirate.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on June 25, 2009, 05:13:27 PM
i feel weird doing these today..

Michael Jackson Dies
Posted Jun 25th 2009 5:20PM by TMZ Staff

We've just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived.

Once at the hospital, the staff tried to resuscitate him but he was completely unresponsive.

We're told one of the staff members at Jackson's home called 911.

La Toya ran in the hospital sobbing after Jackson was pronounced dead.

Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince "Blanket" Michael Jackson II.

http://www.tmz.com/ (http://www.tmz.com/)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 25, 2009, 05:18:18 PM
cnn still has:

Pop singer Michael Jackson is taken to hospital suffering a cardiac arrest, sources briefed on the situation told CNN.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on June 25, 2009, 05:27:30 PM
weird.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 25, 2009, 05:28:28 PM
Not to seem flippant, but Michael Jackson is doing Mark Sanford a huge favor right now.


EDIT: CNN is now confirming that he has died.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on June 25, 2009, 11:13:08 PM
Quote from: polkablues on June 25, 2009, 05:28:28 PM
Not to seem flippant, but Michael Jackson is doing Mark Sanford a huge favor right now.

i know what you mean, but most South Carolina voters want him to resign. so the damage is done nonetheless.

i have a hunch more stuff will come up on Sanford and the media will go back to him anyhow..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on June 25, 2009, 11:15:56 PM
That's so sad. I always felt Mike got a bad rap. He was just too famous. The type of fame he had would make anyone eccentric.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 26, 2009, 12:20:24 AM
I'm a little distant to most celeb deaths but it is sad. He made good music in my youth and I guess I'll always be grateful. A friend of mine works a few blocks from where Michael died. She had an interesting ancedote for the day:

" thought it was a joke when someone said something at work. really sad. a fed-ex guy who delivered something at work today said that he delivers for a gift basket company and every year michael jackson would send farrah fawcett a gift basket with turtle doves"

Wow.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on June 26, 2009, 02:20:54 AM
I'm devastated by this, an obit coming.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on June 26, 2009, 04:28:29 AM
i've never been a huge fan of his, i don't think i've ever even met a huge fan of his, yet this is one of the most shocking celeb deaths i've ever heard, if not thee most.

MJ in his prime was the shit.

no one could dance better.

no one.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on June 26, 2009, 06:58:09 AM
Quote from: jtm on June 26, 2009, 04:28:29 AM
i've never been a huge fan of his, i don't think i've ever even met a huge fan of his

yeah me neither. I also don't even know anyone with a cd of his. strange.

also sad by this. especially since I don't believe that he was a pedo or whatever
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on June 26, 2009, 07:50:40 AM
i actually just bought the SE of Bad a couple weeks ago.

Off the Wall is his masterpiece though - I think I wrote about that on the Now Playing some time ago.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 26, 2009, 09:07:55 AM
It took the death of MJ to get MTV to start playing music videos again.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on June 26, 2009, 09:49:38 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on June 26, 2009, 09:07:55 AM
It took the death of MJ to get MTV to start playing music videos again.

ain't that the truth (ruth)?

i was off recently and i thought MTV still played some videos during the work day, but not a single one. i guess when they stopped TRL they stopped all video play other than bits of videos during the credits of shows.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 26, 2009, 11:59:05 AM
I was a huge MJ fan when I was a kid and his older stuff is still amazing.  I was a kid when Dangerous came out, and that's when I went back and got his other albums, as well as the Moonwalker and Dangerous videotapes.  He was an incredible dancer, and his music was always impeccably produced.  He defined the music video era.  They don't make entertainers like him anymore.  I was obsessed with him when I was a kid, so this is especially sad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 26, 2009, 12:39:39 PM
Quote from: jtm on June 26, 2009, 04:28:29 AM
i've never been a huge fan of his, i don't think i've ever even met a huge fan of his, yet this is one of the most shocking celeb deaths i've ever heard, if not thee most.

Bernie Mac was shocking. This has zero effect on me.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on June 26, 2009, 12:47:22 PM
ghost of Carlin tribute..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uC8LSV-j2g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uC8LSV-j2g)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 26, 2009, 02:26:33 PM
I'll share an anecdote that was told in a radio show here:

Back in 1993 right before all the sexual abuse accusations he was doing 5 or 6 show in Mexico city and was gonna perform one in Monterrey where I live, I think he only played three shows and when the accusations went public he canceled the rest of the shows. Anyway, he was staying at a luxury hotel in m.city and had rented two whole floors, there where odd things since the beginning of his stay because the cleaning service was not allowed to enter his suite, they were given the dirty sheets and what not at the door and left all clean stuff that was needed, food was order always as room service and again they took the meals and nobody ever entered the suite. Upon leaving when his staff payed everything they left an additional $10thou for 'damages that may had be done'.

When they finally left the admins of the hotel went to check the rooms and to their surprised the whole room was wrecked, bathrooms destroyed even toilets teared out of the floor, floor and bathroom tiles also teared down, furniture cut with knives, jars broken, every goddamn thing was totaled, the hotel had to contact his ppl because the damage done surpassed the ten thousend they left and asked for 36thou more.

The only explanation the admins found was that the guy not only had an eccentric life style but one of excess in every way.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 26, 2009, 08:52:13 PM
Quote from: polkablues on June 26, 2009, 12:39:39 PM
Quote from: jtm on June 26, 2009, 04:28:29 AM
i've never been a huge fan of his, i don't think i've ever even met a huge fan of his, yet this is one of the most shocking celeb deaths i've ever heard, if not thee most.

Bernie Mac was shocking. This has zero effect on me.

I see your Bernie Mac, and raise you a Heath Ledger.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on June 26, 2009, 10:11:53 PM
semi-meaningless fact: twice in my life have i gone to a particular movie theatre to see a horror movie because no one else was interested. first time i saw cloverfield, then drag me to hell. both times someone very famous has unexpectedly died. first heath, then jackson.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on June 26, 2009, 10:14:42 PM
Quote from: Ravi on June 26, 2009, 11:59:05 AM
I was a huge MJ fan when I was a kid and his older stuff is still amazing.  I was a kid when Dangerous came out, and that's when I went back and got his other albums, as well as the Moonwalker and Dangerous videotapes.  He was an incredible dancer, and his music was always impeccably produced.  He defined the music video era.  They don't make entertainers like him anymore.  I was obsessed with him when I was a kid, so this is especially sad.

Took the words out of my mouth. This was my childhood. My dad played Michael Jackson nonstop. I rented the Thriller video from Blockbuster dozens of times, watching the behind the scenes with John Landis tickling Michael's feet. That video got me into film, basically. I was about 8 at the time and rented dozens and dozens of horror movies, bought books on horror makeup. I loved it.

Dangerous was the first cassette I ever owned. I was glued to the TV when "Jam" debuted on MTV. I saw the Moonwalker movie everytime it came on VH1. And the "Scream" solidified one of my first director obsessions, Mark Romanek.

I listened to Dangerous today and I really do marvel at what a genius he was. Watch that clip of the Jackson 5 on Ed Sullivan and it'll make you miss him. I don't understand all this apathy towards his death.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on June 26, 2009, 10:44:24 PM
i watched his simpsons ep last night. it made me smile. you can't not love him in that. along with being so obviously incredibly talented he was so.. soft. ebert did an amazing analysis/write-up which i agree with:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090625/PEOPLE/906259982

i think the apathy has everything to do with who he was/had been when he died. that british doc where they follow him around vegas and he just walks into stores and buys everything he sees, unsure of what he owns and doesn't own is so effing sad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on June 26, 2009, 10:48:20 PM
Nobody would be able to keep any sense of normalcy when you're dealing with that kind of fame. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on June 26, 2009, 10:56:10 PM
i know. you said that. i don't think fame was THE thing that made him sad and strange though. it just exaggerated the sadness he was already carrying around from no childhood/a horrible father and allowed him to manifest it in ways we'd never think of because we don't have $1 billion + legions of screaming fans around the world.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on June 26, 2009, 11:23:23 PM
Quote from: picolas on June 26, 2009, 10:56:10 PM
i don't think fame was THE thing that made him sad and strange though.

:saywhat:

There's tons of kids in this fucked up world dealing with shitty fathers. None of them are like Michael Jackson. The fame and the money definitely IS the reason he was the way he was.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on June 26, 2009, 11:35:36 PM
i don't think its possible for us to nail down precisely why he was how he was.

but if i had to speculate.. i'd say it was the body dysmorphic disorder...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: picolas on June 26, 2009, 11:38:28 PM
Quote from: Stefen on June 26, 2009, 11:23:23 PMThe fame and the money definitely IS the reason he was the way he was.
it didn't help. but it wasn't the only ingredient. the seed of insanity was his childhood. i'm saying fame/money gave him license to exaggerate it to levels no normal person can know. i don't think we're saying very different things.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on June 27, 2009, 02:09:31 AM
Quote from: polkablues on June 26, 2009, 12:39:39 PM
Quote from: jtm on June 26, 2009, 04:28:29 AM
i've never been a huge fan of his, i don't think i've ever even met a huge fan of his, yet this is one of the most shocking celeb deaths i've ever heard, if not thee most.

Bernie Mac was shocking. This has zero effect on me.

no disrespect to Bernie, but his death comes nowhere near the vicinity of this.

Micheal was arguably the most famous celebrity on the planet. his death is up there with Elvis and Lennon. the difference here is we weren't around when those guys had their rise and fall. well, Lennon didn't really fall but you know what i mean.

like i said, i was never a big fan, but i was always mesmerized when i saw video of him performing onstage... looking back, i should have been a bigger fan.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgPKc9FUC6Y

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 27, 2009, 02:23:34 AM
I just don't see how this death caught so many people so by surprise... the man was a 50-year-old anorexic with long-standing prescription drug addictions.  I don't care how talented an entertainer the man was, he's been living on borrowed time for years now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 27, 2009, 02:55:34 AM
Quote from: polkablues on June 27, 2009, 02:23:34 AM
I just don't see how this death caught so many people so by surprise... the man was a 50-year-old anorexic with long-standing prescription drug addictions.  I don't care how talented an entertainer the man was, he's been living on borrowed time for years now.

Yea, his situation reminds me of Elvis in his final years. A shell of his former great self and embracing every bad lifestyle choice to just fight the demons he created over the years. Jackson isn't entirely to blame, but his adulthood should have given him enough consciousness to fight his problems instead of just admit to them in interviews.

I think the shock of his death is that an icon is dead. Sinatra led a long life and was able to wind down his career before he passed on, but Jackson's greatest heights are barely 20 years old and there's a feeling he still had time to turn it all around. Nobody expected he would do it career wise, but I think there was hope that he could find a better note to end his life on. Going into this year, Jackson was still in the headlines and a figment of public fascination. The idea is that the book hadn't completely been written on him yet. No one had forgotten about him so I think a lot of people were still rooting for him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Neil on June 27, 2009, 12:21:39 PM
Yeah, ya know this is scarily like elvis.  They cliamed elvis suffered cardiac arrest at 42 i think(?) well, i'm not really sure how characteristic it is for people to go into cardiac arrest at 50 or below...I think that the meds thing was probably a serious issue.  battling the media for 20+ years probably has an effect on a person.  Not to mention the other shit in his past...As soon as i hear the news GT i said "oh man, and he didn't even get to make his memoir yet."  800 million records is something else.  What a world.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on June 27, 2009, 01:28:04 PM
Quote from: Fernando on June 26, 2009, 02:26:33 PM
I'll share an anecdote that was told in a radio show here:

Back in 1993 right before all the sexual abuse accusations he was doing 5 or 6 show in Mexico city and was gonna perform one in Monterrey where I live, I think he only played three shows and when the accusations went public he canceled the rest of the shows. Anyway, he was staying at a luxury hotel in m.city and had rented two whole floors, there where odd things since the beginning of his stay because the cleaning service was not allowed to enter his suite, they were given the dirty sheets and what not at the door and left all clean stuff that was needed, food was order always as room service and again they took the meals and nobody ever entered the suite. Upon leaving when his staff payed everything they left an additional $10thou for 'damages that may had be done'.

When they finally left the admins of the hotel went to check the rooms and to their surprised the whole room was wrecked, bathrooms destroyed even toilets teared out of the floor, floor and bathroom tiles also teared down, furniture cut with knives, jars broken, every goddamn thing was totaled, the hotel had to contact his ppl because the damage done surpassed the ten thousend they left and asked for 36thou more.

The only explanation the admins found was that the guy not only had an eccentric life style but one of excess in every way.


what a story !!! is this somekind of Monterey urban legend or is that an actual fact ??????
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on June 28, 2009, 11:48:05 AM
This guy was just on Conan.

Billy Mays Found Dead

TAMPA, Fla. – Tampa police say Billy Mays, the television pitchman known for his boisterous hawking of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean, has died. He was 50.

Authorities say Mays was pronounced dead Sunday morning after being found by his wife at home. There were no signs of a break-in, and investigators do not suspect foul play. The coroner's office expects to have an autopsy done by Monday afternoon.

Mays' wife, Deborah Mays, says the family doesn't expect to make any public statements and asked for privacy.

Mays was also featured on the reality TV show "Pitchmen" on the Discovery Channel, which followed Mays and Anthony Sullivan in their marketing jobs.

Discovery Channel spokeswoman Elizabeth Hillman released a statement Sunday extending sympathy to the Mays family.

"Everyone that knows him was aware of his larger-than-life personality, generosity and warmth," Hillman's statement said. "Billy was a pioneer in his field and helped many people fulfill their dreams. He will be greatly missed as a loyal and compassionate friend."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 28, 2009, 12:08:22 PM
That right there is way more shocking than Michael Jackson. I'm not the biggest fan, but he was fun to watch on Pitchmen. This one's really out of the blue.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Neil on June 28, 2009, 12:43:56 PM
Just goes to show where a life of shouting will get ya.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on June 28, 2009, 04:46:35 PM
Quote from: Neil on June 28, 2009, 12:43:56 PM
Just goes to show where a life of shouting will get ya.

shouting and spending hours with cheap cleaning products and glues under hot lights
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on June 28, 2009, 10:45:28 PM
Quote from: matt35mm on June 28, 2009, 11:48:05 AM
Billy Mays Found Dead

that'll sell
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on June 28, 2009, 11:19:48 PM
haha too soon.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on June 29, 2009, 01:23:12 AM
this is horrible.

note the first thing he says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCc3NHRrTOc
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on June 29, 2009, 09:21:37 AM
Jesus, what an awful fucker. Ebert's article makes even more sense.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 29, 2009, 10:29:19 AM
Quote from: picolas on June 26, 2009, 11:38:28 PM
Quote from: Stefen on June 26, 2009, 11:23:23 PMThe fame and the money definitely IS the reason he was the way he was.
it didn't help. but it wasn't the only ingredient. the seed of insanity was his childhood. i'm saying fame/money gave him license to exaggerate it to levels no normal person can know. i don't think we're saying very different things.

although like cine i don't think we can pin point exactly the why of his behavior, I wholeheartedly agree with pic and to add something, his father was a key ingredient of his many phobias.


Quote from: Pas Rap on June 27, 2009, 01:28:04 PM
what a story !!! is this somekind of Monterrey urban legend or is that an actual fact ??????

well, it isn't urban legend, it was told in a news radio show that is pretty serious. I did a quick search on-line but couldn't find anything, but you know, i choose to believe it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on June 29, 2009, 11:17:57 AM
Quote from: jtm on June 29, 2009, 01:23:12 AM
this is horrible.

note the first thing he says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCc3NHRrTOc


talking about his next step already?

i watched Living w/MJ last night and saw where he talked about his dad making fun of his nose and having to act like he was asleep while his brothers did groupies. i felt really bad for him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Neil on June 29, 2009, 11:42:23 AM
Yeah, i mean if we had any doubt about the whole father thing, that video was pretty god damn sad...At least he had his stunna shades on though.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on July 01, 2009, 06:31:14 PM
Karl Malden is dead at 97.  Clearly the most shocking death of them all.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on July 01, 2009, 09:36:10 PM
No love for Karl.   :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 02, 2009, 12:11:45 AM
To be honest, I thought he was already dead.  :oops:


In other news:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.tvguide.com%2FMediaBin%2FGalleries%2FImported%2FBioPix%2FMi%2Fbio03%2Fharve-presnell1.jpg&hash=306a7c4a7d1242dab7988687d5fbafe4853a1d1b)


Actor Harve Presnell dies
'Fargo,' 'Paint Your Wagon' among credits
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Harve Presnell, whose booming baritone graced such Broadway musicals as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "Annie," has died. He was 75.

Presnell's agent Gregg Klein said the actor died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica.

Presnell also appeared in the film versions of "Molly Brown" and "Paint Your Wagon" as well as "Fargo."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: New Feeling on July 02, 2009, 12:21:38 AM
Saw Baby Doll recently and Malden rocked it.  Harve was legendary in Fargo.  They will both be missed. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on July 02, 2009, 12:26:42 AM
the best picture category won't drag on the 2010 oscars, it'll be that fuckin' death list. good lord.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on July 02, 2009, 01:04:24 AM
Quote from: polkablues on July 01, 2009, 06:31:14 PM
Karl Malden is dead at 97.  Clearly the most shocking death of them all.

yeah, he was just too young to die. dead at 97. i can not believe it... i was sure he had another 30 years in him.
:(


Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on July 02, 2009, 02:54:48 AM
Apologies to Karl Malden for no love, but after this week, I think we're all dead tired.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on July 02, 2009, 03:27:36 AM
Quote from: Gold Trumpet on July 02, 2009, 02:54:48 AM
Apologies to Karl Malden for no love, but after this week, I think we're all dead tired.
Hey oh!!!!!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on July 02, 2009, 07:54:01 AM
i guess the death lists are going to get bigger and bigger as the baby boom starts dying.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on July 02, 2009, 11:54:45 AM
Quote from: jtm on July 02, 2009, 01:04:24 AM
Quote from: polkablues on July 01, 2009, 06:31:14 PM
Karl Malden is dead at 97.  Clearly the most shocking death of them all.

yeah, he was just too young to die. dead at 97. i can not believe it... i was sure he had another 30 years in him.
:(

are you explaining polka's joke?

peace to both. i'll double feature Waterfront & Fargo this wknd.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on July 03, 2009, 02:31:57 AM
yeah yeah, i got polkas funny joke.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on July 05, 2009, 12:31:53 AM
This one is very sad and very shocking to me. The details will come out, but McNair was considered one of the genuinely decent guys in the NFL. Like I said, details will come out, but very sad to me.

Former NFL quarterback McNair killed in Tennessee
By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press Writer
29 minutes ago


NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)—Former NFL quarterback Steve McNair(notes), who led the famous Tennessee Titans' drive that came a yard short of forcing overtime in the 2000 Super Bowl, was found dead Saturday with multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the head. Police said a pistol was discovered near the body of a woman also shot dead in a downtown condominium.

Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron identified the woman as 20-year-old Sahel Kazemi, whom he called a "friend" of McNair's. She had a single gunshot wound to the head.

Police said the 36-year-old McNair was found on the sofa in the living room, and Kazemi was very close to him on the floor. Aaron said the gun was not "readily apparent" when police first arrived.

Autopsies were planned for Sunday.

Aaron said McNair's wife, Mechelle, is "very distraught."

"At this juncture, we do not believe she is involved," he said. "Nothing has been ruled out, but as far as actively looking for a suspect tonight, the answer would be no."


Fred McNair, Steve McNair's oldest brother, said some family members likely will travel to Nashville on Monday to consult with Steve McNair's wife.

"It's still kind of hard to believe," Fred McNair said. "He was the greatest person in the world. He gave back to the community. He loved kids and he wanted to be a role model to kids."

He said he did not know who Kazemi was.

The bodies were discovered Saturday afternoon by McNair's longtime friend, Wayne Neeley, who said he rents the condo with McNair.

Aaron said Neeley told authorities he went into the condo, saw McNair on the sofa and Kazemi on the floor but walked first into the kitchen before going back into the living room, where he saw the blood.

Neeley then called a friend, who alerted authorities.

Police said a witness saw McNair arrive at the condo in the upscale Rutledge Hill neighborhood between 1:30 and 2 a.m. Saturday and that Kazemi's vehicle was already there. The condominium is located within walking distance of an area filled with restaurants and nightspots, a few blocks from the Cumberland River and within view of the Titans' stadium.

Two days ago, Nashville police arrested Kazemi on a DUI charge while driving a 2007 Escalade registered to her and McNair. McNair was in the front seat, but didn't break the law and was allowed to leave by taxi.

The arrest affidavit said Kazemi had bloodshot eyes and the smell of alcohol on her breath, but refused a breathalyzer test, saying "she was not drunk, she was high."

In June, McNair opened a restaurant near the Tennessee State University campus. It was closed Saturday evening, but had become a small memorial, where flowers, candles and notes had been placed outside the door.

On the restaurant's windows were messages: "We will miss you Steve" and "We love you Steve."

A note attached to a small blue teddy bear read, "We will never forget you, Steve. Once a Titan, always a Titan."

"We don't know the details, but it is a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the families involved," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.


Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on July 06, 2009, 12:35:16 PM
mcnamara is dead.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on July 08, 2009, 09:30:37 PM
Oscar Mayer. Dead. 95.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31806348/ns/business-consumer_news?GT1=43001
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on July 09, 2009, 04:37:05 AM
Quote from: Pozer on June 25, 2009, 05:13:27 PM

Michael Jackson Dies \

http://www.tmz.com/ (http://www.tmz.com/)


my dad was a firefighter at neverland for fivre years, nevewr saw anything wrong... i miss him. i never saw hiim as a human, always just MJ. black nor white, man nor woman, just michael jackson. god blesss him, i cried... long live th last greatest!!!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 09, 2009, 10:40:10 AM
The MJ service was beautiful; so touching and emotional. Many a tear were brought to my eyes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on July 17, 2009, 07:43:26 PM
Walter Cronkite died after a long illness.  He was 92.  That's all the info available now, as it's breaking news.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on July 17, 2009, 11:55:41 PM
he was still alive??
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on July 18, 2009, 02:44:18 AM
Yeah, he had a pretty damned good run.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on August 06, 2009, 03:59:10 PM
JOHN HUGHES!!

59 isn't even that old!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 06, 2009, 04:12:08 PM
 :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry: :yabbse-cry:


Director John Hughes dies at 59
Helmer died of a heart attack

John Hughes, director of culturally significant films such as "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," died suddenly today of a heart attack while taking a morning walk during a trip to Manhattan. He was 59.
John Wilden Hughes, Jr., born on Feb. 18, 1950 in Michigan, began as an advertising copywriter in Chicago.

In the last decade, he stepped back from the legacy he created to enjoy time with his family, maintain a functioning farm in northern Illinois and support independent arts. He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Nancy, two sons, John and James, and four grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on August 06, 2009, 04:19:56 PM
big time :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on August 06, 2009, 07:13:45 PM
God DAMN it.
Jeez, sooo many amazing movies
This really makes me sad. I'm might put in 'Planes, Trains, and Automobiles' now. Did you know they are re-releasing it on DVD, a new remastered special edition? 'Dutch' is amazing, though I haven't seen it in years. I need to pick it up. I WAS Ducky from 'pretty in pink'. 'The breakfast club' perfectly captured high school as I knew it. I'm sorry I'm at a loss for words now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on August 06, 2009, 07:41:37 PM
I always just assumed he would eventually come back and show the Diablo Cody's of the world how it's done but now he isn't.

Very very sad. I don't think there is anyone form the age of 20-40 that he didn't leave a giant impression on.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on August 06, 2009, 10:22:55 PM
Hi.

Much, much love to Mr. Hughes. A great deal of my childhood movie memories are full of his films. Planes Trains and Automobiles was a family favorite around Christmas oddly enough. My father took me to Ferris Bueler's Day off when I was just 9 years old. If you're 30-something, how many of you watched Weird Science and wished you could create your own Kelly LeBrock?

The truely great writer/directors out there have lost a wonderful part of that family.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on August 06, 2009, 10:25:54 PM
A Myxo sighting.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 07, 2009, 12:13:15 AM
Written by Hughes, Some Kind of Wonderful is an underrated gem. And for all the well deserved praise that Planes, Traines gets, lets not forget the man wrote also another comedy classic in National Lampoon's Vacation.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on August 07, 2009, 01:21:20 AM
i just made a reference to the breakfast club today. crazy how much his films are a part of our lives.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on August 07, 2009, 01:28:47 AM
a huge piece of my childhood just died.

:yabbse-sad:


Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on August 07, 2009, 08:20:34 AM
we have the people who die young - cobain, elliot smith - and then people who are great artists and just choose to leave - hughes, salinger, etc. very frustrating.

interesting you say Plains was getting a new DVD, but i'm guessing it would just be like his other films being re-released - now involvement from Hughes or deleted scenes.

the only positive is that maybe his family will release some of the stuff out of the archives.

i have wanted to buy that older DVD of Ferris just to hear his one commentary, but have never done it.
anyone heard that commentary?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on August 07, 2009, 02:12:51 PM
Anyone that hasn't read Sincerely, John Hughes (http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html) yet should definitely take the time out.

Between this and the new WtWTA trailer, I have done a lot of crying at work today.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on August 07, 2009, 03:25:18 PM
Quote from: RegularKarate on August 07, 2009, 02:12:51 PM
Anyone that hasn't read Sincerely, John Hughes (http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html) yet should definitely take the time out.

thanks for the link.

if he was so afraid of the Hollywood system, why not produce movies on a smaller scale outside of the system?

i doubt he would have trouble getting A-listers signing on to any of his projects.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 07, 2009, 05:58:05 PM
That link was a tear-jerker, RK.

Momentarily sidetracking from John Hughes, apparently the autopsy report in Billy Mays' death revealed that cocaine use was a contributing cause of the heart disease from which he died.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090807/ap_on_en_tv/us_billy_mays (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090807/ap_on_en_tv/us_billy_mays)

EDIT: And TMZ is saying that he also had Vicodin, Xanax, Valium, Oxycodone, Temazepam, and alcohol in his system.  This death is getting less and less shocking with each passing moment.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on August 08, 2009, 01:29:36 AM
Quote from: RegularKarate on August 07, 2009, 02:12:51 PM
Anyone that hasn't read Sincerely, John Hughes (http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html) yet should definitely take the time out.

that was awesome. thanks for sharing.

although, after reading that, i'm even sadder about his death.



Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 08, 2009, 02:00:28 AM
Quote from: bigideas on August 07, 2009, 03:25:18 PM
Quote from: RegularKarate on August 07, 2009, 02:12:51 PM
Anyone that hasn't read Sincerely, John Hughes (http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html) yet should definitely take the time out.

thanks for the link.

if he was so afraid of the Hollywood system, why not produce movies on a smaller scale outside of the system?

i doubt he would have trouble getting A-listers signing on to any of his projects.

he wasn't afraid of it.  also it was the early 90s; "indie" was just a new thing that the kids were trying out.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on August 10, 2009, 11:27:13 AM
Quote from: pete on August 08, 2009, 02:00:28 AM
Quote from: bigideas on August 07, 2009, 03:25:18 PM
Quote from: RegularKarate on August 07, 2009, 02:12:51 PM
Anyone that hasn't read Sincerely, John Hughes (http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html) yet should definitely take the time out.

thanks for the link.

if he was so afraid of the Hollywood system, why not produce movies on a smaller scale outside of the system?

i doubt he would have trouble getting A-listers signing on to any of his projects.

he wasn't afraid of it.  also it was the early 90s; "indie" was just a new thing that the kids were trying out.

think someone has already pitched a screenplay idea for a parallel lives story called Penpals?
-one is a teenage girl
-one is a successful movie director in touch with the teen mindset
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: OrHowILearnedTo on August 10, 2009, 03:00:34 PM
Rob Schneider is a succesful hollywood director, but he's about to find out that being in touch with teenage angst isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Penpals, rated PG-13
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on August 10, 2009, 03:12:39 PM
Quote from: OrHowILearnedTo on August 10, 2009, 03:00:34 PM
Rob Schneider is a succesful hollywood director, but he's about to find out that being in touch with teenage angst isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Penpals, rated PG-13

the not very good joke one in my mind was directed by Michael Bay and showed "action" scenes like

finger gets paper cut
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 10, 2009, 03:20:27 PM
too soon too soon
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jefferson on August 10, 2009, 08:56:03 PM
Quote from: RegularKarate on August 07, 2009, 02:12:51 PM
Anyone that hasn't read Sincerely, John Hughes (http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html) yet should definitely take the time out.

Between this and the new WtWTA trailer, I have done a lot of crying at work today.


wow. i was never a huge fan of his but that was pretty intense. i think a hughes marathon is in order.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on August 11, 2009, 11:18:35 AM
Quote from: pete on August 10, 2009, 03:20:27 PM
too soon too soon

ah.

i think Hughes found humor in death - you have seen the granny scene in Vacation, right?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 11, 2009, 09:05:48 PM
no I haven't, but lazy michael bay jokes of that caliber shouldn't be considered "humorous" anymore. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 11, 2009, 09:10:31 PM
Quote from: pete on August 11, 2009, 09:05:48 PM
no I haven't, but lazy michael bay jokes of that caliber shouldn't be considered "humorous" anymore. 

He's right. Michael Bay jokes require a much larger caliber.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on August 12, 2009, 09:57:42 AM
we missed this dude:

http://www.legacy.com/NYTimes/DeathNotices.asp?page=lifestory&personid=131008795

thanks to TCM for showing A Face in the Crowd a few times - if you haven't seen it, i think you'd be quite surprised with Andy Griffith's performance.

p.s. regarding the Hughes commentary availability - i forgot about seeing these "I Love the 80's" editions at Wal-Mart. i think it is just the older commentary version with a new slip and it think it comes with a CD of 80's songs. these came out after the Bueller...Bueller edition. very weird.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 13, 2009, 02:17:02 PM
Guitar legend-inventor Les Paul dies at age 94

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – Les Paul, who invented the solid-body electric guitar later wielded by a legion of rock 'n' roll greats, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 94.

According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side.

As an inventor, Paul also helped bring about the rise of rock 'n' roll with multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the tracks in the finished recording.

The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the mid-'50s.

"Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music," Paul once said. "To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn't think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system."

"Without Les Paul, we would not have rock and roll as we know it," said Terry Stewart, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. "His inventions created the infrastructure for the music and his playing style will ripple through generations. He was truly an architect of rock and roll."

A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called "The Log," a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.

"I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut." He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.

In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.

Pete Townshend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string.

Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie's auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.

Guitarist Joe Satriani called Paul "the original guitar hero," saying: "Les Paul set a standard for musicianship and innovation that remains unsurpassed."

In the late 1960s, Paul retired from music to concentrate on his inventions. His interest in country music was rekindled in the mid-'70s and he teamed up with Chet Atkins for two albums. The duo were awarded a Grammy for best country instrumental performance of 1976 for their "Chester and Lester" album.

With Mary Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records for hits including "Vaya Con Dios" and "How High the Moon," which both hit No. 1. Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul had helped develop.

"I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished," he recalled. "This is quite an asset." The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters.

Released in 2005, "Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played" was his first album of new material since those 1970s recordings. Among those playing with him: Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Richie Sambora.

"They're not only my friends, but they're great players," Paul told The Associated Press. "I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message."

Two cuts from the album won Grammys, "Caravan" for best pop instrumental performance and "69 Freedom Special" for best rock instrumental performance. (He had also been awarded a technical Grammy in 2001.)

Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.

Paul was born Lester William Polfuss, in Waukseha, Wis., on June 9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. He toured with the popular Chicago band Rube Tronson and His Texas Cowboys and led the house band on WJJD radio in Chicago.

In the mid-1930s he joined Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians and soon moved to New York to form the Les Paul Trio, with Jim Atkins and bassist Ernie Newton.

Meanwhile, he had made his first attempt at audio amplification at age 13. Unhappy with the amount of volume produced by his acoustic guitar, Paul tried placing a telephone receiver under the strings. Although this worked to some extent, only two strings were amplified and the volume level was still too low.

By placing a phonograph needle in the guitar, all six strings were amplified, which proved to be much louder. Paul was playing a working prototype of the electric guitar in 1929.

His work on taping techniques began in the years after World War II, when Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. Drawing on his earlier experimentation with his homemade record-cutting machines, Paul added an additional playback head to the recorder. The result was a delayed effect that became known as tape echo.

Tape echo gave the recording a more "live" feel and enabled the user to simulate different playing environments.

Paul's next "crazy idea" was to stack together eight mono tape machines and send their outputs to one piece of tape, stacking the recording heads on top of each other. The resulting machine served as the forerunner to today's multitrack recorders.

In 1954, Paul commissioned Ampex to build the first eight-track tape recorder, later known as "Sel-Sync," in which a recording head could simultaneously record a new track and play back previous ones.

He had met Ford, then known as Colleen Summers, in the 1940s while working as a studio musician in Los Angeles. For seven years in the 1950s, Paul and Ford broadcast a TV show from their home in Mahwah, N.J. Ford died in 1977, 15 years after they divorced.

In recent years, even after his illness in early 2006, Paul played Monday nights at New York night spots. Such stars as Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Van Halen came to pay tribute and sit in with him.

"It's where we were the happiest, in a `joint,'" he said in a 2000 interview with the AP. "It was not being on top. The fun was getting there, not staying there — that's hard work."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on August 13, 2009, 02:38:14 PM
He was old as shit.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 26, 2009, 02:17:22 AM
U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy dies

BOSTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, a towering figure in the Democratic Party who took the helm of one of America's most fabled political families after two older brothers were assassinated, has died, his family said. He was 77.

"Edward M. Kennedy, the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply, died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port (Massachusetts)," the Kennedy family said in a statement.

One of the most influential and longest-serving senators in U.S. history -- a liberal standard-bearer who was also known as a consummate congressional dealmaker -- Kennedy had been battling brain cancer, which was diagnosed in May 2008.

"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," the family statement said.

"He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it. He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it's hard to imagine any of them without him," the family added.

His death marked the twilight of a political dynasty and dealt a blow to Democrats as they seek to answer President Barack Obama's call for an overhaul of the healthcare system. Kennedy had made healthcare reform his signature cause.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said in a statement the Kennedy family and Senate "have together lost our patriarch."

"As we mourn his loss, we rededicate ourselves to the causes for which he so dutifully dedicated his life."

Known as "Teddy," he was the brother of President John Kennedy, assassinated in 1963, Senator Robert Kennedy, fatally shot while campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, and Joe Kennedy, a pilot killed in World War Two.

When he first took the Senate seat previously held by John Kennedy in 1962, he was seen as something of a political lightweight who owed his ascent to his famous name.

Yet during his nearly half century in the chamber, Kennedy became known as one of Washington's most effective senators, crafting legislation by working with lawmakers and presidents of both parties, and finding unlikely allies.

At the same time, he held fast to liberal causes deemed anachronistic by the centrist "New Democrats," and was a lightning rod for conservative ire.

He helped enact measures to protect civil and labor rights, expand healthcare, upgrade schools, increase student aid and contain the spread of nuclear weapons.

"There's a lot to do," Kennedy told Reuters in 2006. "I think most of all it's the injustice that I continue to see and the opportunity to have some impact on it."

After Robert Kennedy's death, Edward was expected to waste little time in vying for the presidency. But in 1969, a young woman drowned after a car Kennedy was driving plunged off a bridge on the Massachusetts resort island of Chappaquiddick after a night of partying.

Kennedy's image took a major hit after it emerged he had failed to report the accident to authorities. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene and received a suspended sentence.

Kennedy eventually ran for his party's presidential nomination in 1980 but lost to then-President Jimmy Carter.

His presidential ambitions thwarted, Kennedy devoted himself to his Senate career.

A 2009 survey by The Hill, a Capitol Hill publication, found that Senate Republicans believed Kennedy was the chamber's easiest Democrat to work with and most bipartisan.

Republican Senator John McCain called Kennedy "the single most effective member of the Senate if you want to get results."

In January 2008, Kennedy endorsed Obama, who was serving his first term as a senator, for the Democratic presidential nomination. Many saw the endorsement -- Obama went on to win the nomination and the White House -- as the passing of the political torch to a new generation.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 13, 2009, 10:22:19 PM
'Basketball Diaries' author dies
Jim Carroll was a poet and a musician

Punk-rock poet and musician Jim Carroll, who chronicled his wild teen years in "The Basketball Diaries," has died of a heart attack, his ex-wife told The New York Times.

Rosemary Klemfuss, who was married to Carroll in 1978 before they divorced in the mid-1980s, said he died on Friday at his Manhattan home. He was 60, the newspaper said on Sunday, although other biographical profiles listed his age as 59.

Carroll's most famous work, "The Basketball Diaries," was published in 1978. In it, he wrote of his wild youth as both a basketball star and a drug abuser during his teen years at Manhattan's private Trinity school, was made into a 1995 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Pioneering punk-rock singer Patti Smith told the newspaper "I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation."

"The work was sophisticated and elegant," said Smith, who helped usher Carroll into a music career that included songs such as "People Who Died" and "Catholic Boy."

Carroll also worked with rockers from Lou Reed and The Doors to Pearl Jam and Rancid.

Carroll, a fixture on Manhattan's downtown punk-rock scene, saw his poetry lauded by Beat Generation icons including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. His work was published in The Paris Review, and he worked at Andy Warhol's Factory and on the pop artist's films.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on September 14, 2009, 05:13:01 PM
Man that kinda sucks.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 14, 2009, 07:10:48 PM
Publicist: Patrick Swayze dies at 57

LOS ANGELES – Patrick Swayze has died after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

Swayze's publicist Annett Wolf says the 57-year-old "Dirty Dancing" actor died Monday with family at his side. He came forward about his illness last spring, but continued working as he underwent treatments.

It was 1987 when Swayze became a star with his performance in "Dirty Dancing," a coming-of-age story set in a Catskills resort. The 1990 film "Ghost" cemented his status as a screen favorite.

Swayze played a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee through a spirit played by Whoopi Goldberg.

He kept on working even after it was disclosed in March 2008 that he had a particularly deadly form of cancer. He starred in "The Beast," an A&E drama series, and said he and his wife were working on a memoir.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on September 14, 2009, 07:12:41 PM
I'll watch Road House this week . An action favorite of mine.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on September 14, 2009, 07:36:27 PM
Jim Carroll and Patrick Swayze... who will be number 3?  Here are my nominees:

Kanye
Glenn Beck
The guy who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard
Glenn Beck again
Kim Jong Il
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on September 14, 2009, 07:53:49 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Forangejuiceblog.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2009%2F08%2Fcrying-beck.jpg&hash=7c59a766aa97ed8dfb66e5fad0d2fb76423f9118)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on September 14, 2009, 07:55:52 PM
Son of a bitch!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on September 14, 2009, 09:39:38 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi35.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fd179%2Fpolkablues%2Fglenn-beck-goes-crazy-in-radio-show.jpg&hash=ad587987448618653c08c231dadf00b477fc8523)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on September 15, 2009, 08:34:51 AM
Quote from: Gold Trumpet on September 14, 2009, 07:12:41 PM
I'll watch Road House this week . An action favorite of mine.

It comes on all the time.

Weird - Dirty Dancing just happens to be airing a couple times this week on cable.  :ponder:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on September 15, 2009, 01:42:27 PM
 :yabbse-sad:

Point Break is awesome, in fact I saw it not so long ago and wondered if there was dvd* with a decent transfer, haven't seen road house, will do some day.

He also was probably in the most hilarious snl skit ever with chris farley.

* there's one pure adrenaline edition, is it good mac/sillias?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 15, 2009, 02:32:52 PM
Quote from: Fernando on September 15, 2009, 01:42:27 PM* there's one pure adrenaline edition, is it good mac/sillias?

Nothing wrong with it to me. Wish there was commentary, but the featurettes are okay.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on September 15, 2009, 04:46:17 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on September 15, 2009, 02:32:52 PM
Quote from: Fernando on September 15, 2009, 01:42:27 PM* there's one pure adrenaline edition, is it good mac/sillias?

Nothing wrong with it to me. Wish there was commentary, but the featurettes are okay.
Get the Blu-ray version if you can...It's really worth it. Long Live 'Dirty Dancing' and 'Point Break'.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on September 15, 2009, 05:44:08 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi35.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fd179%2Fpolkablues%2Ftoosoonjpg.jpg&hash=b8c5d261acf026544212edb81d3fdd2f338c5fc8)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on September 15, 2009, 05:55:32 PM
Love seeing the progression of a twitter-joke turning into one of those picture things (do they have a name?).

The internet is too available now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 16, 2009, 05:49:20 PM
Quote from: polkablues on September 14, 2009, 07:36:27 PM
Jim Carroll and Patrick Swayze... who will be number 3?  Here are my nominees:

Kanye
Glenn Beck
The guy who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard
Glenn Beck again
Kim Jong Il

Nope. It was Thurston Howell:

'Laugh-In' original Henry Gibson dies
Also appeared in 'Boston Legal,' four Robert Altman films
Spource: Hollywood Reporter

Henry Gibson, a wry comic character actor whose career included "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," "Nashville" and "Boston Legal," died Monday at his home in Malibu after a brief battle with cancer. He was 73.

Gibson's breakthrough came in 1968 when he was cast as a member of the original ensemble of NBC's top-rated "Laugh-In," on which he performed for three seasons. Each week, a giant flower in his hand, he recited a signature poem, introducing them with the catch phrase that became his signature: "A Poem, by Henry Gibson."

The poems proved so popular that they led to the release of two comedy albums, "The Alligator" and "The Grass Menagerie," as well as a book, "A Flower Child's Garden of Verses."

After "Laugh-In," he played the evil Dr. Verringer in "The Long Goodbye" (1973), the first of four films in which he appeared for director Robert Altman. Their second collaboration came in "Nashville" (1975), in which Gibson earned a Golden Globe nomination and a National Society of Film Critics supporting-actor award for his performance as unctuous country singer Haven Hamilton. He also wrote his character's songs.

In television, Gibson's recent work included a five-season stint as cantankerous Judge Clarence Brown on ABC's "Boston Legal" and providing the voice for sardonic, eye-patched newspaperman Bob Jenkins on Fox's animated series "King of the Hill."

Born James Bateman in Germantown, Pa., on Sept. 21, 1935, Gibson began acting professionally at age 8. After graduating from Catholic University, he served in France from 1957-60 as an intelligence officer with the Air Force, then studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

Back in New York, the actor developed the comic persona of "Henry Gibson" (a pun on the name of playwright Henrik Ibsen), a humble, wide-eyed poet laureate from Fairhope, Ala. Appearances on "The Tonight Show" and "The Joey Bishop Show" led to him being flown out to Hollywood by Jerry Lewis to be cast in "The Nutty Professor" (1963).

Also that year, Gibson appeared in his Broadway debut opposite Walter Matthau and Ruth Gordon in Lillian Hellman's "My Mother, My Father and Me."

Other memorable film roles for Gibson included a turn as the voice of Wilbur the Pig in the animated "Charlotte's Web" (1973); as an Illinois Nazi pursuing John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in "The Blues Brothers" (1980); as a menacing neighbor opposite Tom Hanks in "The 'Burbs" (1989); as flamboyant barfly Thurston Howell in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia" (1999); and as a befuddled priest in "Wedding Crashers" (2005).

In 2001, he returned to Broadway in the Encores! New York City Center production of Rogers & Hart's "A Connecticut Yankee."

Offscreen, Gibson was active as an environmentalist; he contributed opinion pieces and poetry to publications such as the Washington Post and donated proceeds from the sale of posters featuring his poetry to the then-fledgling Environmental Defense Fund.

Gibson is survived by three sons -- Jon, a business affairs executive at Universal Pictures; Charles, a director and two-time Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor; and James, a screenwriter -- and grandchildren Matthew and Miranda.

Memorial services are pending. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Screen Actors Guild Foundation and Friends of the Malibu Public Library.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on September 16, 2009, 06:56:37 PM
That's much sadder than any of my choices.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on September 16, 2009, 09:51:16 PM
damn. i loved that guy. well i'm making my first trip to LA in 20 years to see nashville on the big screen.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on September 17, 2009, 04:30:35 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on September 16, 2009, 05:49:20 PM

Offscreen, Gibson was active as an environmentalist; he contributed opinion pieces and poetry to publications such as the Washington Post and donated proceeds from the sale of posters featuring his poetry to the then-fledgling Environmental Defense Fund.
...

Memorial services are pending. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Screen Actors Guild Foundation and Friends of the Malibu Public Library.

Ok, so what I don't get is, why didn't he leave any money for the Environmental Defense Fund?  I mean, the Malibu Public Library makes sense, but why would it suggest donations to the Screen Actors Guild Foundation?  I would hope it was his request to have that done, but then I'm left to guess why.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 14, 2009, 09:03:58 PM
Pro wrestler, music video icon Albano dies at 76

NEW YORK - Captain Lou Albano, who became one of the most recognized professional wrestlers of the 1980s after appearing in Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" music video, died Wednesday. He was 76.

Albano, whose real name was Louis Vincent Albano, died in Westchester County in suburban New York, said Dawn Marie, founder of Wrestlers Rescue, an organization that helps raise money for the health care of retired wrestlers. He died of natural causes, Marie said.

World Wrestling Entertainment called him one of the company's "most popular and charismatic legends."

With his trademark Hawaiian shirts, wily goatee and rubber bands hung like piercings from his cheek, Albano was an outsize personality who, in a career spanning nearly five decades, was known as much for his showmanship as for his talent in the ring.

His fame skyrocketed when he appeared in Lauper's 1983 music video, playing a scruffy, overbearing father in a white tank top who gets shoved against a wall by the singer.

Partly because of the success of Albano's partnership with Lauper, the entity then known as the World Wrestling Federation forged ties with the music industry. That helped bring it to a wider national audience in the mid-1980s, known as the "Rock n' Wrestling" era.

It was a time when wrestlers such as Albano, Hulk Hogan, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Andre the Giant were so popular that they could headline a television cartoon series and appear in movies.

Albano later had a role in the music video for Lauper's 1984 song "Time After Time," and he appeared in episodes of the TV series "Miami Vice" and in the 1986 movie "Body Slam." He played Mario in "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show," a live-action animated show, from 1989 to 1991.

His career in the ring began in 1953 in Canada, and he went on to form the "The Sicilians" tag team with Tony Altimore. They were known for wearing fedoras and talking about the Mafia in interviews, according to the book "WWE Legends" by Brian Solomon.

Albano also coached popular tag teams such as The Wild Samoans, The Executioners and The Moondogs. He retired from the WWE in 1996.

Albano was born on July 29, 1933, in Rome. After moving to the U.S., the family settled in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Survivors include his wife, Geri, four children and 14 grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 18, 2009, 03:46:45 PM
'Alien' writer Dan O'Bannon dies
'Star Wars,' 'Dark Star' also among his credits

Dan O'Bannon, the unassuming sci-fi screenwriter and quirky horror specialist behind the "Alien" film franchise, died Thursday in Los Angeles after a short illness. He was 63.

O'Bannon adapted the Philip K. Dick tales "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" and "Second Variety" into "Total Recall" (1990) and "Screamers" (1995), respectively. He wrote 1985 space vampire tale "Lifeforce," wrote and directed the zombie parody "The Return of the Living Dead" (1985) and helmed "The Resurrected" (1992), an HP Lovecraft adaptation.

The St. Louis-born O'Bannon met John Carpenter at USC, where the two wrote a short film that turned into the low-budget cosmic comedy "Dark Star" (1974). O'Bannon co-wrote the pic with Carpenter, who also directed, and served as effects supervisor, production designer, editor and actor (playing Sgt. Pinback).

O'Bannon was hired by George Lucas to do some effects work on "Star Wars" in 1977, then set "Alien" on its course into space with his and Ronald Shusett's bug-filled action spec script "The Star Beast."

O'Bannon also worked on the sequels "Aliens" (1986), "Alien3" (1992), "Alien: Resurrection" (1997) and the two "Alien vs. Predator" films from 2004 and 2007. He was working on the untitled "Alien" prequel that is set for 2011.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on December 20, 2009, 01:30:22 PM
Reported: Brittany Murphy Dead of Cardiac Arrest

Source: The Wrap

Actress Brittany Murphy has died, according to TMZ.

The 32-year-old actress, who starred in "Clueless" and with Eminem in "8 Mile," went into full cardiac arrest and could not be revived on Sunday morning, multiple sources told the site.

TheWrap has not yet been able to confirm the report.

The Los Angeles City Fire Department said a 911 call was made at 8 a.m. from the Los Angeles home of Murphy's husband, Simon Monjack. She was pronounced dead on arrival at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on December 20, 2009, 02:48:11 PM
It's always especially sad when a person dies so young.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on December 20, 2009, 04:06:22 PM
Unexpected! SNL made fun of her couple weeks ago too.

Must be drug related, she looked like a crazy/weird person.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on December 20, 2009, 06:58:13 PM
Besides being anorexic, she's been rumored to be a heroin addict for years, so this is sad, but unfortunately not too surprising.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 29, 2009, 06:01:25 PM
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/29/avenged-sevenfold-drummer-james-sullivan-dies-28/

December 29, 2009
Avenged Sevenfold drummer James Sullivan dies 28

James Sullivan, the drummer for the Huntington Beach rock band Avenged Sevenfold, died on Monday, according to Orange County authorities.

The cause of death is still under investigation. Sullivan, 28, was found unresponsive inside his home.

"It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we tell you of the passing today of Jimmy 'The Rev' Sullivan," band members posted in a statement on the group's official Web site. "Jimmy was not only one of the world's best drummers, but more importantly he was our best friend and brother. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jimmy's family and we hope that you will respect their privacy during this difficult time."

News of Sullivan's death prompted an outpouring of grief on social media sites as well as on the band's official Web site.

"I cant believe it..The Rev is gone..R.I.P. Jimmy Sullivan..im crying so hard right now. I think Im in complete shock," a fan with the handle Star888Star posted on Twitter this morning.

The group, which blended hard rock with hard-core punk, was named Best New Artist at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2006.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: OrHowILearnedTo on December 29, 2009, 08:19:49 PM
Don't worry, Johnny Christ should be able to bring him back
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on January 11, 2010, 03:52:57 PM
French film-maker Eric Rohmer dies aged 89


The French arthouse film-maker Eric Rohmer has died aged 89, according to his production house.

Les Films du Losange said Rohmer, who was a key figure in the postwar French New Wave cinema movement, died in Paris earlier today. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Rohmer's best-known films included Tales of Four Seasons, My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee. After the release of his last film, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, at the Venice film festival in 2007, he said he was considering retirement.

Rohmer debuted in cinema in the early 1950s. In 2001, he was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice film festival for his body of work.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jan/11/eric-rohmer-death
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: children with angels on January 11, 2010, 03:58:56 PM
Good NYT obit on Rohmer:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/movies/12rohmer.html
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on January 13, 2010, 03:37:50 PM
Jay Reatard. (http://pitchfork.com/news/37575-rip-jay-reatard/)   :yabbse-sad:

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on January 14, 2010, 01:05:48 PM
Teddy Pendergrass. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/6990098/Teddy-Pendergrass.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on January 14, 2010, 01:56:39 PM
Yabby You (http://www.avclub.com/articles/and-another-rip-yabby-you,37068/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 14, 2010, 02:04:40 PM
Hannah Montana (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i0bdeb9f8495547e16244dc3855fe4487)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on January 27, 2010, 05:55:32 PM
howard zinn (http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: hedwig on January 27, 2010, 06:04:11 PM
ouch. that hurts. rest in peace, howard.  :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on January 27, 2010, 06:09:04 PM
Certainly of age, but it's always a little surprising when someone that active suddenly passes. He's an influence and since I subscribe to the Nation magazine, I'm thinking an honorary issue devoted to him is coming my way. He recently contributed a small piece (more like a lengthy blurb) to the rag about Obama's first year in office. I'm not his biggest fan but he's definitely a voice I paid attention to when going around looking for voices to see the full range of thought on something.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Tictacbk on January 28, 2010, 12:33:45 PM
 JD Salinger (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/jd-salinger-91-is-dead/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: children with angels on January 28, 2010, 01:26:03 PM
Fuck.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on January 28, 2010, 01:45:29 PM
I actually see it as kind of being good news. For one, the dude was 91; he lived a full life. Two, he was a grumpy ass old man who, even though he was writing (I'm sure), he refused to publish anything. Now maybe his stuff can get published and on the even brighter side, if any posthumous work sucks, who cares? It was released after he was dead and if he was alive, he'd only release stellar work.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: New Feeling on January 28, 2010, 02:01:39 PM
If JD has really been writing all these years and the stuff gets published his death will probably go down as one of the greatest things ever.  Dude's whole body of work so far is 10/10.  I am excited beyond belief to see how this plays out!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: children with angels on January 28, 2010, 02:09:58 PM
Oh, absolutely on the above points. I was just marking the objectively sad news of the death of a fine writer, whose work at one time meant the world to me, and still does to a great extent. However, I too am very curious, excited, and nervous to see what work he may have cooked up and whether it will now see the light of day. In the meantime, I'll bet we can expect some snooty obituries damning him with faint praise: "A writer whose work struck a nerve especially with adolescent males", etc.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on January 28, 2010, 04:09:54 PM
As far as a public identity goes, he's been dead for years. If I knew him intimately, I'd be sad over his death, but Salinger doesn't even give me a public memory to find sadness for. I once read a lengthy piece on how his pieces were going to be printed posthumously so there should be a mild excitement now.

Also, the New Yorker has all of his short stories online and free. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2010/01/postscript-j-d-salinger.html
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on January 28, 2010, 04:13:58 PM
It's an odd position to be in where fans of an artist's work are actively anticipating his death, but here we are. For his friends and family, this is a sad day; for readers of his writing, it's a day of celebration.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on January 29, 2010, 12:37:04 AM
R.I.P. Miramax Films: 1979 - 2010
Source: The Wrap

The writing was on the wall when Disney made this announcement, but The Wrap is reporting that today the studio will be closing the New York and Los Angeles offices of Miramax Films and 80 people will lose their jobs.

The site says that six movies awaiting distribution, including Last Night, The Debt and The Tempest, will be shelved or get a tepid release.

Founded in 1979 by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Miramax was a leading independent movie distribution and production company before it was acquired by Disney in 1993. In 2005, the Weinsteins decided to leave the company and founded The Weinstein Company.

"I'm feeling very nostalgic right now," Harvey Weinstein told the site yesterday. "I know the movies made on my and my brother Bob's watch will live on as well as the fantastic films made under the direction of Daniel Battsek. Miramax has some brilliant people working within the organization and I know they will go on to do great things in the industry."

The Weinsteins have tried to buy the name of their former company back. Disney has not responded. But Bob Iger has made it known that he would be willing to sell Miramax outright – for about $1.5 billion.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on January 29, 2010, 01:12:45 AM
stop croaking shows and businesses dude.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on January 29, 2010, 01:15:04 AM
Bob Iger is like, "Oh, yeah, Harvey -- I'll sell the Miramax name back to you. Price? A BAJILLION KAJILLION DOLLARS!!!"

haha.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on January 29, 2010, 09:58:45 AM
Goodbye Miramax, hello, Maxamir!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on January 30, 2010, 09:19:46 PM
Famed film editor struck, killed by car in NYC

By Cristian Salazar, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK – An award-winning film editor who worked on many of Errol Morris' documentaries, including "The Fog of War," was struck and killed by a getaway car speeding from a Manhattan drugstore robbery, police and her mother said on Saturday.

Karen Schmeer was crossing Broadway at West 90th Street on the Upper West Side on Friday when she was struck by a car driven by two suspects in the theft of over-the-counter medication from a CVS drugstore a few blocks away, police said.

Her mother, Eleanor DuBois Schmeer, confirmed the film editor's death. Schmeer was an editor for Morris' documentaries as well as other works, including "Sergio," which won a best-editing award last year at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie is about Sergio de Mello, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights killed in a 2003 explosion at U.N. headquarters in Iraq.

"She was just extremely loved by many, many friends," said Schmeer's mother, from her home in Portland, Ore., where her daughter was born.

Morris wrote on his Twitter feed that Schmeer's death was a "senseless tragedy."

Lt. John Grimpel said the driver of the car has been arrested on a murder charge shortly after Friday's crash. Schmeer was pronounced dead at St. Luke's Hospital.

On Saturday, police were still looking for a passenger who fled from the car as well as a third suspect.

Although Schmeer's last listed address was in Boston, her mother said she was living in an apartment on the Upper West Side when she was killed.

In addition to editing Morris' Academy Award-winning documentary film, "The Fog of War," which profiled former Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara, Schmeer worked as editor on many of his other films. She also was an editor for "Sketches of Frank Gehry," directed by Sydney Pollack.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on February 04, 2010, 12:09:57 PM
Developing: Coroner rules actress Brittany Murphy's death an accident; cites pneumonia, anemia and multiple drug intoxication.

Off of CNN.com.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 15, 2010, 12:56:33 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8515729.stm

The Knack lead singer Doug Fieger dies aged 57

Fieger said he had been clean and sober for 25 years

The lead singer of The Knack, Doug Fieger, who co-wrote the hit My Sharona, has died at the age of 57.

Fieger, who died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles, had been battling cancer, and had undergone surgery to remove brain tumours in 2006.

"Our hearts are broken, we will miss you Doug," his band members posted on The Knack's official website.

My Sharona topped the US singles chart in 1979, and led to the group being hailed as the "next Beatles".

The song, co-written with Berton Averre, was inspired by an ex-girlfriend of the same name.

It was re-released in 1994 after featuring in the Ben Stiller film Reality Bites, and was later revealed to be on former US president George W Bush's iPod.

It reached number six in the UK and enjoyed a revival after appearing in a cereal advert last year.

Fieger had spoken frankly about his drug and alcohol abuse during the band's heyday, but recently revealed he had been living a healthy lifestyle for more than 25 years.

Former member Bruce Gary died of cancer in 2006, while Berton Averre and Prescott Niles still perform as The Knack.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on February 26, 2010, 11:41:28 AM
Andrew Koenig, Walter Koenig's son/ Jimmy Pardo's brother-in-law / Actor, camera-man, and all-around swell guy was found dead in Vancouver.  He took his own life.

Very sad.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: children with angels on March 07, 2010, 09:41:33 AM
This is really sad - his music has been very important for me. Any other fans out there?


R.I.P. Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous

Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse has committed suicide, according to a report from Rolling Stone. His family has released a statement reading, "It is with great sadness that we share the news that our dear friend and family member, Mark Linkous, took his own life today. We are thankful for his time with us and will hold him forever in our hearts. May his journey be peaceful, happy and free. There's a heaven and there's a star for you."

Linkous made his debut under the Sparklehorse name with the 1995 album vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, which yielded the minor hit "Someday I Will Treat You Good". He went on to release three more acclaimed records of fractured, experimental alt-blues: 1999's Good Morning Spider, 2001's It's a Wonderful Life, and 2006's Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, as well as the Danger Mouse/David Lynch all-star project Dark Night of the Soul and the Fennesz collaboration In the Fishtank. A voracious collaborator, Linkous also worked with PJ Harvey, Daniel Johnston, Tom Waits, and many others.

Last year, Dark Night of the Soul was released as a book and a blank CD and leaked to the internet due to a legal battle between Danger Mouse and EMI. Earlier this week, it was announced that Dark Night of the Soul would finally receive physical release this summer.

http://pitchfork.com/news/38114-rip-sparklehorses-mark-linkous/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_S1dZCA058
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on March 07, 2010, 10:12:56 AM
I listen to his music nearly every day... this is so sad.  He was such a beautiful songwriter.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on March 08, 2010, 02:19:57 AM
Dark Night of the Soul was one of the really good albums from last year.


Sparklehorse + Flaming Lips - Daniel Johnston's "Go"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rx2iYH3mK8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rx2iYH3mK8)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on March 08, 2010, 02:39:10 PM
I have his second and third albums. I definitely like him on a song basis and not an album basis.

Saint Mary blows me away though. So weird to go through that near death (or technically dead 2 mins) event only to take your life down the road. Although, maybe the first was a suicide attempt as well (I have no idea)?

Apparently shooting his heart in the alley behind a friend's house - and right after Soul gets legal clearance? Something doesn't add up.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 10, 2010, 08:12:24 AM
Corey Haim, 38, Found Dead

By Stephen M. Silverman
• Additional reporting by BLANE BACHELOR

Originally posted Wednesday March 10, 2010 08:30 AM EST

Corey Haim is dead, Los Angeles Police confirmed to TV station KTLA. He was 38.

Police say it is believed the actor, who had a long history of substance-abuse problems, perished from an accidental overdose at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Haim reportedly was found unresponsive at his apartment. His mother was said to be with him at the time.

He was pronounced dead Providence St. Joseph's Medical Center in Burbank.

Haim shot to fame in the '80s after starring in several teen films, including The Lost Boys, Lucas and License to Drive. Most notably, he collaborated numerous times with Corey Feldman, and the pair were dubbed "The Two Coreys." They starred in an A&E reality show with that name from 2007 to 2008.

But Haim struggled with drug addiction for several years. At one point, Feldman told his friend he would no longer speak to himuntil he got sober.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: children with angels on March 10, 2010, 08:18:40 AM
Quote from: ρ on March 10, 2010, 08:12:24 AM
Corey Haim, 38, Found Dead

By Stephen M. Silverman
• Additional reporting by BLANE BACHELOR[
Originally posted Wednesday March 10, 2010 08:30 AM EST

Corey Haim is dead, Los Angeles Police confirmed to TV station KTLA. He was 38.

Police say it is believed the actor, who had a long history of substance-abuse problems, perished from an accidental overdose at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Haim reportedly was found unresponsive at his apartment. His mother was said to be with him at the time.

He was pronounced dead Providence St. Joseph's Medical Center in Burbank.

Haim shot to fame in the '80s after starring in several teen films, including The Lost Boys, Lucas and License to Drive. Most notably, he collaborated numerous times with Corey Feldman, and the pair were dubbed "The Two Coreys." They starred in an A&E reality show with that name from 2007 to 2008.

But Haim struggled with drug addiction for several years. At one point, Feldman told his friend he would no longer speak to himuntil he got sober.


Gah, that's sad. I just watched him in Murphy's Romance two days ago.




admin edit: added quote for new page
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 10, 2010, 11:02:03 AM
Sad news, big fan of "Lucas" which I think was one of his more serious roles.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Find Your Magali on March 10, 2010, 04:06:53 PM
I knew a girl who had auditioned for a movie that starred Corey Haim and Alan Thicke.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 14, 2010, 09:44:28 PM
'Mission: Impossible' star Peter Graves dies in LA

LOS ANGELES - Peter Graves, the tall, stalwart actor likely best known for his portrayal of Jim Phelps, leader of a gang of special agents who battled evil conspirators in the long-running television series "Mission: Impossible," died Sunday.

Graves died of an apparent heart attack outside his Los Angeles home, publicist Sandy Brokaw said. He would have been 84 this week.

Graves had just returned from brunch with his wife and kids and collapsed before he made it into the house, Brokaw said. One of his daughters administered CPR but was unable to revive him. Graves' family doctor visited the house and believed he had a heart attack, Brokaw said.

Although Graves never achieved the stardom his older brother, James Arness, enjoyed as Marshall Matt Dillon on TV's "Gunsmoke," he had a number of memorable roles in both films and television.

Normally cast as a hero, he turned in an unforgettable performance early in his career as the treacherous Nazi spy in Billy Wilder's 1953 prisoner-of-war drama "Stalag 17."

He also masterfully lampooned his straight-arrow image when he portrayed bumbling airline pilot Clarence Oveur in the 1980 disaster movie spoof "Airplane!"

Graves appeared in dozens of films and a handful of television shows in a career of nearly 60 years.

The authority and trust he projected made him a favorite for commercials late in his life, and he was often encouraged to go into politics.

"He had this statesmanlike quality," Brokaw said. "People were always encouraging him to run for office. But he said, 'I like acting. I like being around actors.'"

Graves' career began with cheaply made exploitation films like "It Conquered the World," in which he battled a carrot-shaped monster from Venus, and "Beginning of the World," in which he fought a giant grasshopper.

He later took on equally formidable human villains each week on "Mission: Impossible."

Every show began with Graves, as agent Phelps, listening to a tape of instructions outlining his team's latest mission and explaining that if he or any of his agents were killed or captured "the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions."

The tape always self-destructed within seconds of being played.

The show ran on CBS from 1967 to 1973 and was revived on ABC from 1988 to 1990 with Graves back as the only original cast member.

The actor credited clever writing for the show's success.

"It made you think a little bit and kept you on the edge of your seat because you never knew what was going to happen next," he once said.

He also played roles in such films as John Ford's "The Long Gray Line" and Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter," as well as "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell," "Texas Across the River" and "The Ballad of Josie."

Graves' first television series was a children's Saturday morning show, "Fury," about an orphan and his untamed black stallion. Filmed in Australia, it lasted six years on NBC. A western, "Whiplash," also shot in Australia, played for a year in syndication, and the British-made "Court-Martial" appeared on ABC for one season. In his later years, Graves brought his white-haired eminence to PBS as host of "Discover: The World of Science" and A&E's "Biography" series.

He noted during an interview in 2000 that he made his foray into comedy somewhat reluctantly.

Filmmakers Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker had written a satire on the airplane-in-trouble movies, and they wanted Graves and fellow handsome actors Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen and Robert Stack to spoof their serious images.

All agreed, but Graves admitted to nervousness. On the one hand, he said, he considered the role a challenge, "but it also scared me."

"I thought I could lose a whole long acting career," he recalled.

"Airplane!" became a box-office smash, and Graves returned for "Airplane II, The Sequel."

Born Peter Aurness in Minneapolis, Graves adopted his grandfather's last name to avoid confusion with his older brother, James, who had dropped the "U" from the family name.

He was a champion hurdler in high school, as well as a clarinet player in dance bands and a radio announcer.

After two years in the Air Force, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota as a drama major and worked in summer stock before following his brother west to Hollywood.

He found enough success there to send for his college sweetheart, Joan Endress. They were married in 1950 and had three daughters — Kelly Jean, Claudia King and Amanda Lee — and six grandchildren.

Graves credited the couple's Midwest upbringing for a marriage that lasted more than 50 years in a town not known for long unions.

"Hollywood or New York ... can be very flighty and dangerous places to live, but the good grounding we had in the Midwest ethic I think helped us all our lives," he said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 15, 2010, 02:46:24 PM
he was the first famous American I'd met; on the airplane about 14 years ago.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on March 16, 2010, 10:38:17 AM
Quote from: pete on March 15, 2010, 02:46:24 PM
he was the first famous American I'd met; on the airplane about 14 years ago.

At that point, had you or had you not ever seen a grown man naked?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 16, 2010, 11:59:11 AM
oh holy shit that's the same guy?!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on March 16, 2010, 01:00:38 PM
Quote from: pete on March 16, 2010, 11:59:11 AM
oh holy shit that's the same guy?!

I feel like I'm walking into some kind of sarcastic trap, but yes, that's the same guy.

It's funny, whether you're kidding or not.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 16, 2010, 01:30:03 PM
nah man I didn't know.  I mean, now it's painfully obvious, but I didn't know.
he was in the remake of the mission impossible series in the early 90s.  it was on in Taiwan on Saturday nights after MacGuyver, one of the only things I was allowed to watch. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on March 24, 2010, 08:24:01 PM
So Robert Culp died.  He had a long and varied career in both film and television, but if I'm being honest, he'll always be Dr. Breen to me.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi35.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fd179%2Fpolkablues%2F1810800922_df13ae7170.jpg&hash=a41baa4d38d5211d59b41a764b07d28cda09f5b9)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 24, 2010, 08:36:50 PM
Greatest FPS if all time. Of all fucking time.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 25, 2010, 03:08:03 AM
from here (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/24/MNV91CKPA9.DTL)

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lostartandantiques.com%2Fimages%2FFine%2520Art%2FMarshall%2C%2520Jim%3B%2520Jim%2520Morrison.jpg&hash=3fa78e80b55f690e0152db32788a13b6c93de216)

Legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall, who captured some of the most memorable moments in music - Johnny Cash flipping the bird at San Quentin and Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar at Monterey Pop - died in his sleep Tuesday in a New York hotel. He was 74. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Mr. Marshall's unparalleled access, technical talent and musical passion merged to create hundreds of album and magazine covers, turning him into a household name among the biggest names in rock 'n' roll.

As the chief photographer at Woodstock, he captured The Who greeting the sunrise. When the Beatles played their final concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park in 1966, Mr. Marshall was the only shooter invited backstage. He photographed the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles and Thelonious Monk.

"He started very early, before most of us knew what contemporary music was about, and he spanned into the great cultural upheaval of the '60s," said Ken Light, director of the Center for Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

Short and barrel-chested, with a love of whiskey, women and at one time cocaine, Mr. Marshall lived in a Castro flat packed with books, photos, LPs and magazines.

He was known to occasionally brandish guns and yell obscenities, and twice police arrested him for firing a pistol at his enemies - once at the neighbors and another time at a male friend of his then-wife.

But he had an oversize sweet side, taking in stray animals, helping young photographers get their start, and giving away valuable prints to friends and associates.
'God of rock photography'

San Francisco photographer Pat Johnson remembers meeting "the God of rock photography" as a young kid in the mid-1970s.

"Everyone looked up to Jim, and he was just so generous of spirit to me and other photographers," Johnson said. "There will never be another Jim Marshall, but his images will live on."

Mr. Marshall always insisted he didn't have talent; he said he simply could "see the music."

Born in Chicago in 1936, Mr. Marshall was raised in San Francisco, where he began documenting the Beat scene while still in high school.

His big break came in the 1950s after he returned home from the Air Force and bumped into John Coltrane, who needed a ride. The jazz legend later showed his gratitude by allowing Mr. Marshall to photograph him.

Those photos helped land him work shooting musicians such as Bob Dylan and Ray Charles for the Atlantic and Columbia labels in New York.

Mr. Marshall returned to San Francisco in the late 1960s and developed his iconic style by taking hundreds of quiet photographs of the Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Santana.

Many photographers tried unsuccessfully to emulate Mr. Marshall, said Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco photographer Kim Komenich, who now teaches new media at San Jose State University.

"Marshall would insist on being where he needed to be to make a Jim Marshall photo," Komenich said. "His insistence on doing things his way, standing on stage as the artists were performing, gave him notoriety but also allowed him to get the pictures he had set the precedent for. These days, most rock photographers get three songs before the publicists throw them out of the auditorium."
Recent photos

Mr. Marshall continued to take pictures until his final days. Most recently, he photographed John Mayer, Ben Harper, Lenny Kravitz and Limp Bizkit.

His work is published in five books, including the 2009 collection "Trust."

Mr. Marshall considered his work his family. "I have no kids," he once said. "My photographs are my children."

Mr. Marshall was in New York this week for a party marking the release of his new book, "Match Prints," produced jointly with celebrity photographer Timothy White, said San Francisco photographer Michael Zagaris, who was with Mr. Marshall last week.

"In a day of political correctness, Jim was never that," Zagaris said. "But he was real. You knew he loved you, and you knew when he was calling you a mother- that he didn't mean anything bad. Deep down he was one of the most caring people I've ever met."

An exhibition of photos from "Match Prints" is set to go on display Friday at New York's Staley-Wise Gallery.

The party will be much more subdued than originally planned.

"If you listen, it's quieter, and I don't like quiet," said San Francisco '60s culture photographer Robert Altman. "Jim's gone."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on March 25, 2010, 12:03:20 PM
I'd like to see a collection of all of his work. This guy seems pretty amazing.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on March 31, 2010, 02:36:53 PM
David Mills Dead: 'The Wire' Writer Dies Days Before Premiere Of New Show 'Treme'
Mary Foster - AP

NEW ORLEANS - David Mills, a veteran television writer who worked on the award-winning series "ER" and "The Wire," has died. He was 48.

Mills died Tuesday night in New Orleans, said HBO spokesman Diego Aldana, declining to provide any other information.

Mills had been living in New Orleans while co-writing and acting as co-executive producer of the new HBO series "Treme," (truh-MAY'). He wrote two of the upcoming episodes. The drama is set to premiere April 11.

"HBO is deeply saddened by the sudden loss of our dear friend and colleague David Mills," said a network statement. "He was a gracious and humble man, and will be sorely missed by those who knew and loved him, as well as those who were aware of his immense talent. David has left us too soon but his brilliant work will live on."

Treme cast and crew members held a memorial for Mills on the set Wednesday morning, said New Orleans-born actor Wendell Pierce, who played Detective William "Bunk" Moreland on "The Wire," and plays a musician in "Treme."

"He was very quiet and introverted, but spoke volumes when he wrote," Pierce said of Mills. "He challenged us as actors and he challenged Americans when it came to matters of race. He was one of the more talented people working in TV. He made it much more than just empty entertainment."

Mills collapsed on the set Tuesday night, Pierce said. An autopsy was pending.

"He was carrying on a conversation and just fell over," Pierce said. "They called the medics, but there was nothing to be done."

Mills began his career as a reporter for the Washington Post, before turning to screenwriting. In addition to "ER" and "The Wire," he worked on the HBO drama, "The Corner," and "Homicide: Life on the Street," among other shows.

According to Internet Movie Database, Mills started his television writing career with longtime friend and "Wire" creator David Simon in 1994. The pair wrote an episode of "Homicide" that year, for which they won a Writers Guild of America award.

Mills won Emmys for co-writing and executive producing the miniseries "The Corner" and an Edgar in 2007 for "The Wire."

Treme is set in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and is being filmed in the city. The series is named after the Creole neighborhood known for its rich musical history.

"I'm so sorry he won't be able to see the launch of the show he cared so much about," Pierce said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on March 31, 2010, 02:44:29 PM
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/jaime-escalante-teacher-who-inspired-stand-and-deliver-dies/19421103?icid=main|aim|dl1|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fnation%2Farticle%2Fjaime-escalante-teacher-who-inspired-stand-and-deliver-dies%2F19421103

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fo.aolcdn.com%2Fphoto-hub%2Fnews_gallery%2F6%2F5%2F655865%2F1270030847445.JPEG&hash=9d6e2c342af1d2c09bfad043de542bf620438126)

LOS ANGELES (March 31) -- Jaime Escalante transformed a tough East Los Angeles high school by motivating struggling inner-city students to master advanced math, became one of America's most famous teachers and inspired the movie "Stand and Deliver."

He died Tuesday at age 79 after battling cancer for several years, family friend Keith Miller said.

Escalante used his outsized personality to goad his working-class Mexican-American students to succeed, said Elsa Bolado, 45, one of his former pupils.

Bolado, now an elementary school teacher and trainer, remembers Escalante's charisma, the way he built her confidence with long hours of solving problems and how he inspired her career choice with his unorthodox approach to learning.

"Teaching is an art form. There's a lot of practicioners and very few artists. He was a master artist," she said.

An immigrant from Bolivia, he overhauled Garfield High School's math curriculum and pushed his students to do their best until the school had more advanced placement calculus students than all but four other public high schools in the country.

Edward James Olmos played Escalante in the 1988 film based on his story.

"Jaime exposed one of the most dangerous myths of our time -- that inner-city students can't be expected to perform at the highest levels," Olmos said. "Because of him, that destructive idea has been shattered forever."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Escalante "shared in my belief that anything is possible in California."

"He put everything he had into becoming an inspirational teacher whose passion, commitment and belief that all students can achieve excellence set an example for us all," Schwarzenegger said. "His talent, hard work and dedication in the classroom changed the lives of countless students."

Escalante was a teacher in La Paz before he emigrated to the U.S. He had to study English at night for years to get his California teaching credentials and return to the classroom.

At first he was discouraged by Garfield's "culture of low expectations, gang activity and administrative apathy," Miller said. Gradually his long hours in the classroom paid off and dozens of his students passed the test year after year.

Bolado took the AP calculus test in 1982, the year that testing officials made some Garfield students retake it because they were suspicious that so many of Escalante's students had passed. She said 14 students were asked to take the test again months later and all 12 who did passed.

"To this day, I still think of the example he set -- the study skills, how not to give up," said Bolado, 45. "I revert back to that every time things get rough."

Escalante left Garfield in 1991, taught at schools in Sacramento and retired to Bolivia in 2001.

The cast of "Stand and Deliver" recently appealed for donations to help Escalante pay for his alternative cancer treatments.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and six grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cine on March 31, 2010, 11:18:38 PM
Quote from: Find Your Magali on March 10, 2010, 04:06:53 PM
I knew a girl who had auditioned for a movie that starred Corey Haim and Alan Thicke.

just coming around to the board again. a good friend of mine was the funeral director for Haim's funeral, since it was in Ontario and all. as you can imagine it was pretty surreal to her. when she had to close the casket, the mother was sobbing and asked for it to be opened again, and this went on a couple times. standard funeral stuff, i'm sure, but i wouldn't know.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on April 01, 2010, 02:21:39 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on March 31, 2010, 02:36:53 PM
David Mills Dead: 'The Wire' Writer Dies Days Before Premiere Of New Show 'Treme'

Mills collapsed on the set Tuesday night, Pierce said. An autopsy was pending.

"He was carrying on a conversation and just fell over,"

Yikes.  That's some shit straight out of his own shows.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek on April 02, 2010, 02:59:10 PM
John Forsythe passed away at 92 yesterday.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on April 08, 2010, 01:55:11 PM
Former Sex Pistols manager Malcom McLaren dies at 64

Malcolm McLaren, the former manager of punk group the Sex Pistols, has died in New York, aged 64, his agent has said.

McLaren, the ex-partner of designer Vivienne Westwood, was believed to have been diagnosed with cancer a while ago.

He set up a clothes shop and label with Westwood on London's King's Road in the 1970s and was later a businessman and performer in his own right.

The couple had a son, Joseph Corre, the co-founder of lingerie shop Agent Provocateur.

His agent told the BBC McLaren passed away on Thursday morning.

Spokesman Les Malloy said he expected McLaren's body to be returned to the UK.

McLaren also managed a number of other bands, including the New York Dolls and Bow Wow Wow before producing his own records including the much-sampled track Double Dutch from the 1983 album Duck Rock.

He continued to be involved in the culture and arts scene up until his death.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 18, 2010, 02:17:47 PM
Pioneering film editor Dede Allen dies at 86

LOS ANGELES - Dede Allen, the film editor whose pioneering work on movies like "The Hustler" and "Bonnie and Clyde" brought a new approach to shaping the look and sound of American movies, has died. She was 86.

Her son Tom Fleischman tells the Los Angeles Times Allen died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles days after suffering a stroke.

With "Bonnie and Clyde" in 1967, Allen became the first film editor to receive sole credit on a movie. She was nominated for Oscars for that movie, as well as "Dog Day Afternoon," "Reds" and "Wonder Boys."

Allen was the first to embrace European methods of editing by beginning sequences with close-ups or jump cuts and using the sound from the next shot while the previous scene was still playing.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on April 20, 2010, 09:13:35 AM
Guru from Gang Starr died yesterday of complications of cancer. R.I.P.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on April 20, 2010, 11:44:09 AM
No.  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 03, 2010, 10:51:29 AM
Actress Lynn Redgrave has died at age 67

NEW YORK - Lynn Redgrave, an introspective and independent player in her family's acting dynasty who became a 1960s sensation as the freethinking title character of "Georgy Girl" and later dramatized her troubled past in such one-woman stage performances "Shakespeare for My Father" and "Nightingale," has died. She was 67.

Her publicist Rick Miramontez, speaking on behalf of her children, said Redgrave died Sunday night at her Manhattan apartment. In 2003, Redgrave had been treated for breast cancer.

Her death comes a year after her niece Natasha Richardson died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident and just a month after the death of her older brother, Corin Redgrave.

The youngest child of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lynn Redgrave never quite managed the acclaim — or notoriety — of elder sibling Vanessa Redgrave, but received Oscar nominations for "Georgy Girl" and "Gods and Monsters," and Tony nominations for "Mrs. Warren's Profession," "Shakespeare for My Father" and "The Constant Wife."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on May 10, 2010, 02:21:28 PM
This is a complete tragedy (not to take away tragedy from any other post in this thread) but this guy along with Julie Bell, Joe Jusko and Boris Vallejo were all incredibly important artists to me growing up.  

http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-frank-frazetta,41001/

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.avclub.com%2Fimages%2Farticles%2Farticle%2F41001%2Ffraz_jpg_595x325_crop_upscale_q85.jpg&hash=86ede83f18b252303099615ba9f3a2e22da4e4ae)

RIP Frank Frazetta

By Jason Heller May 10, 2010

A giant of fantasy art as towering as the heroes, heroines, and monsters he famously painted, Frank Frazetta has died at the age of 82. As reported by The Beat, the artist—best known for his rich, vivid portrayals of mythic beasts and warriors like Conan and Tarzan—succumbed to a stroke today. Frazetta had recently suffered from a thyroid condition, dementia, and a series of strokes, plus a public struggle within his family for the rights to his work.

In addition to the iconic imagery he produced for book covers, magazines, posters, calendars, comics like Harvey Kurtzman's Little Annie Fanny, and animated films like Ralph Bakshi's Fire And Ice, Frazetta was also known for his rock album cover art, most notably those he did for Dust, Nazareth, Wolfmother, and Molly Hatchet. Rest in peace, Mr. Frazetta. Actually, scratch that: May you gallop into glorious battle with an army of epic-chested Valkyries at your back for all eternity.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: New Feeling on May 10, 2010, 04:05:26 PM
Not to take away from the loss of Frank Frazetta but the death of any 82 year-old by stoke doesn't really qualify as "tragedy"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on May 10, 2010, 04:36:52 PM
Quote from: New Feeling on May 10, 2010, 04:05:26 PM
Not to take away from the loss of Frank Frazetta but the death of any 82 year-old by stoke some dude no one's ever heard of save for über nerds doesn't really qualify
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on May 10, 2010, 10:23:25 PM
Patton Oswalt's twitter:
 
"RIP Frank Frazetta. '70s-era make-out vans should dim their headlights in tribute."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on May 10, 2010, 11:50:28 PM
Quote from: Pozer on May 10, 2010, 04:36:52 PM
Quote from: New Feeling on May 10, 2010, 04:05:26 PM
Not to take away from the loss of Frank Frazetta but the death of any 82 year-old by stoke some dude no one's ever heard of save for über nerds doesn't really qualify

Shouldn't you be somewhere contributing nothing to another thread?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on May 11, 2010, 03:57:23 AM
seriously guys, how dare you mention the name of someone pas has never heard of?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on May 11, 2010, 06:20:34 AM
Quote from: pete on May 11, 2010, 03:57:23 AM
seriously guys, how dare you mention the name of someone pas has never heard of?

You see me in your dreams or what?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on May 11, 2010, 06:54:25 AM
Quote from: Pas on May 11, 2010, 06:20:34 AM
Quote from: pete on May 11, 2010, 03:57:23 AM
seriously guys, how dare you mention the name of someone pas has never heard of?

You see me in your dreams or what?

hahaha. pete must've forgotten his glasses (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=11116.msg291712#msg291712) yesterday.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on May 11, 2010, 04:35:14 PM
fined, fuck you them.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on May 16, 2010, 09:52:16 PM
Black Sabbath and Dio singer Ronnie James Dio dies aged 67

Singer passes away after losing his battle with stomach cancer

Black Sabbath and Dio singer Ronnie James Dio has died after losing his battle with stomach cancer.

The 67-year-old singer, who passed early this morning (May 16), was diagnosed last November and seemed to be making good progress earlier this year.

His wife and manager posted a statement on his official site ronniejamesdio.com which read: "Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45am 16th May.

"Many, many friends and family were able to say their private good-byes before he peacefully passed away. Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us.

"Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss. Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever."

The singer, who replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath in 1979, fronted Heaven & Hell and Dio before his death.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek on May 24, 2010, 11:32:18 AM
Brittany Murphy's Husband Found Dead
Today 7:52 AM PDT by Marcus Errico


AP PHoto/Dan Steinberg
Nearly five months to the day after the shocking death of Brittany Murphy, the actress' screenwriter husband has been found dead in the master bedroom of the couple's Hollywood Hills home. Simon Monjack was 39.

Paramedics were called to the scene just before 9:30 p.m. Sunday. The person sounding the 911 alert was Brittany's mother, Sharon—who shared the home with her son-in-law and who made the heart-wrenching emergency call on the day her daughter died.

LAPD detectives and coroner officials were on the scene investigating, but police said there were no signs of foul play and Monjack appeared to have died of a heart attack. The medical examiner confirmed drugs were recovered.


"This evening Mr. Monjack was found unresponsive. Paramedics responded to the house, he was pronounced at [9:45 p.m.]," said coroner's lead examiner Ed Winter. "It appears to be natural.

"There were some prescription drugs found that belonged to Mr. Monjack and will have an ongoing investigation. The cause of death is pending. We will have an autopsy in the next day or so. And pending toxicology, we will be releasing results once we get all those tests back."

Winter added that "there were no illicit drugs located, just prescription meds."

The British-born Monjack's IMDb résumé included two films: a story credit on Factory Girl, the 2006 biopic of Andy Warhol sidekick Edie Sedgwick starring Sienna Miller; and as writer-director-producer of the U.K. indie drama Two Days, Nine Lives. He also dabbled in photography.

Murphy died of cardiac arrest in the same house on Dec. 20. The coroner ruled her death accidental, the fatal combination of pneumonia, anemia and prescription drugs, many of which were prescribed in Monjack's name. The Clueless star was just 32.

The last time Winter met Monjack was during the Murphy probe. "He was a despondent husband. The family is devastated over his passing and, like I said, it is under investigation. I ask that you give the family some privacy from this point on."

In February, Monjack came under scrutiny after it was learned he was trying to raise funds for the Brittany Murphy Foundation without applying for nonprofit status with the IRS. He wound up scuttling the foundation and returned all donations.

A month later, Monjack told E! News he was planning on selling the couple's home and moving to New York, along with Sharon.

—Additional reporting by Chris Hall

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on May 28, 2010, 03:18:27 PM
Gary Coleman.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on May 28, 2010, 04:50:40 PM
I was just thinking... I could have contributed to this thread when I heard this afternoon. But all I would have contributed would be his name. And then I opened the thread.

Nice one, polk
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on May 28, 2010, 05:00:33 PM
If I were to add anything to it, it would only be to include the best comment I read about it on the internet already:
QuoteIsn't a brain hemorrhage just a diff'rent kind of stroke?
But I figured it was too soon.  

Now that like two hours have passed, it's okay.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on May 29, 2010, 01:08:57 AM
haha. there's a reservation at work on the books for tomorrow that says "3 for Coleman" and one of my servers came up and pointed to it and goes "Coleman just turned to a 2."  :yabbse-thumbup:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on May 29, 2010, 04:00:32 AM
judging from their posts, i'm sure the previous two posters don't agree, but i think it's sad... he had a tragic life and i feel bad for him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on May 29, 2010, 05:14:16 AM
I feel bad for him too. I hate seeing walking punchlines go out like this. Call me a sucker, but I like seeing the underdog get the W. When Bonnaduce knocked the fuck out of Greg Brady on Fox's Celebrity Boxing back in 2002, I about lost my shit. So uplifting.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on May 29, 2010, 08:40:07 AM
Who is this Gary Coleman anyway? Some kind of midget?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on May 29, 2010, 09:21:26 AM
Quote from: jtm on May 29, 2010, 04:00:32 AM
judging from their posts, i'm sure the previous two posters don't agree, but i think it's sad... he had a tragic life and i feel bad for him.

I totally agree.  His parents dicked him out of his own money and its not like there was a lot of demand for him after Diff'rent Strokes.

BTW, I saw Coleman's last film Midgets vs. Mascots (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4guUdHl2tU).  Its a totally silly but funny film, and Coleman is particularly funny.  And I'm not just saying that because he's dead.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on May 29, 2010, 12:25:40 PM
Quote from: KarlJan on May 29, 2010, 08:40:07 AM
Who is this Gary Coleman anyway? Some kind of midget?

he's an actor who was famous in america and most of the english-speaking world after starring in a sitcom in the 70s and 80s called Diff'rent Strokes, you may be familiar with his catch phrase from the show "whatchoo talkin' bout willis?" his growth was stunted at an early age due to a congenital kidney disease.

maybe u'll have heard of the next one..

DENNIS HOPPER (http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Hollywood+hellraiser+Dennis+Hopper+dead/3087858/story.html).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on May 29, 2010, 02:05:01 PM
Now who will take over as lead actor on "Crash: the Starz! Original Series"???
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on May 29, 2010, 02:14:40 PM
Quote from: P on May 29, 2010, 12:25:40 PM
Quote from: KarlJan on May 29, 2010, 08:40:07 AM
Who is this Gary Coleman anyway? Some kind of midget?

he's an actor who was famous in america and most of the english-speaking world after starring in a sitcom in the 70s and 80s called Diff'rent Strokes, you may be familiar with his catch phrase from the show "whatchoo talkin' bout willis?" his growth was stunted at an early age due to a congenital kidney disease.

maybe u'll have heard of the next one..

DENNIS HOPPER (http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Hollywood+hellraiser+Dennis+Hopper+dead/3087858/story.html).

Never in my life seen or heard about Diff'rent Strokes.

Dennis hopper! That's sad. :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on May 29, 2010, 02:35:40 PM
Who's going to be the third? I'm predicting Brendan Fraser.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on May 29, 2010, 06:47:03 PM
Even though I'd been anticipating the news of Dennis Hopper's death for weeks now, it was still a shock when I heard he was actually gone. The guy was a living legend right up until the end. He was a player and an artist. And always the coolest guy in the room. A legend.

:bravo:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on May 29, 2010, 11:32:01 PM
Quote from: Stefen on May 29, 2010, 02:35:40 PM
Who's going to be the third? I'm predicting Brendan Fraser.

for me, the good money's still on godard.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on May 30, 2010, 03:38:37 PM
Rest in peace Mr. Hopper. You were one of my favorite villains.

I'll never forget watching Super Mario Bros. on VHS at some random high school party when I was 17 years old. It took a lot of drugs but everyone loved it!

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.themis-media.com%2Fmedia%2Fglobal%2Fimages%2Fgalleries%2Fdisplay%2F53%2F53507.jpg&hash=90c95f346c52a3e951d29ad2d6713b946d82c5a8)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: New Feeling on June 01, 2010, 03:09:51 AM
I just watched The Last Movie as the conclusion to my own private directed by Dennis Hopper tribute and it was fuckin' awesome, especially if you love non-linear mildly experimental cinematic ramblings on life and death and cinema.  Out of the Blue was also stellar, with a particularly great supporting performance from Hopper.  Colors turned out really good too, can't believe I've been passing up Sean Penn/Robert Duvall cops in tha hood film all these years.  The Hot Spot was pretty good neo-noir as well, particularly notable for lots of good sex stuff especially young Jennifer Connelly in all her glory....  Never really heard anyone talk about any of these movies. 

RIP Dennis Hopper: underrated filmmaker. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cinemanarchist on June 02, 2010, 11:25:37 AM
Dennis Hopper & The Russian Suicide Chair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfe3_FIuEOM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfe3_FIuEOM)

Maybe everyone else has heard of this, but I hadn't, and it feels like a very fitting tribute.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 02, 2010, 11:37:33 PM
My baseball self esteem just croaked. If you're on my facebook or twitter, you have seen me overplay this to an annoying level, but man, this is the hardest sports thing I have ever had to swallow. The thing that makes grown men cry, haha.

http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/article/2010-06-02/tigers-armando-galarraga-loses-perfect-game-2-outs-9th

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcmsimg.freep.com%2Fapps%2Fpbcsi.dll%2Fbilde%3FSite%3DC4%26amp%3BDate%3D20100602%26amp%3BCategory%3DSPORTS02%26amp%3BArtNo%3D100602063%26amp%3BRef%3DAR%26amp%3BMaxW%3D320%26amp%3BMaxH%3D300%26amp%3BQ%3D100%26amp%3Bmime%3Djpeg&hash=2e75ebd787d4c342bb2da2f7239aa3975d8ae7fe)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on June 03, 2010, 02:15:34 AM
couldn't care less.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on June 03, 2010, 03:02:42 AM
Yea, I post about my emotions for your fucking approval.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on June 03, 2010, 03:13:21 AM
Quote from: P on June 03, 2010, 02:15:34 AM
couldn't care less.

what? That shit is insane. Will probably be talked about forever. Wong thread but what a fucking sad thing.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on June 03, 2010, 03:35:46 AM
Garbage.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on June 03, 2010, 09:08:49 PM
Quote from: Gold Trumpet on June 03, 2010, 03:02:42 AM
Yea, I post about my emotions for your fucking approval.

He posts so you'll make this post. I figured that out years ago. Come on GT. I'm disappointed man! :yabbse-smiley:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on June 03, 2010, 09:55:53 PM
i don't, actually.

anyway, i guess this is the third:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.huffpost.com%2Fgen%2F171495%2Fthumbs%2Fs-RUE-MCCLANAHAN-DEAD-DIES-STROKE-large.jpg&hash=6f9f6eb04b2b6e6c3187f3cdce9ce281feb4b504)
      
Rue McClanahan Dead: 'Golden Girl' Dies Of Stroke At 76

DAVID BAUDER | 06/ 3/10 08:29 PM | AP


NEW YORK — Rue McClanahan, the Emmy-winning actress who brought the sexually liberated Southern belle Blanche Devereaux to life on the hit TV series "The Golden Girls," has died. She was 76.

Her manager, Barbara Lawrence, said McClanahan died Thursday morning at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital of a brain hemorrhage.

She had undergone treatment for breast cancer in 1997 and later lectured to cancer support groups on "aging gracefully." In 2009, she had heart bypass surgery.

McClanahan had an active career in off-Broadway and regional stages in the 1960s before she was tapped for TV in the 1970s for the key best-friend character on the hit series "Maude," starring Beatrice Arthur. After that series ended in 1978, McClanahan landed the role as Aunt Fran on "Mama's Family" in 1983.

But her most loved role came in 1985 when she co-starred with Arthur, Betty White and Estelle Getty in "The Golden Girls," a runaway hit that broke the sitcom mold by focusing on the foibles of four aging – and frequently eccentric – women living together in Miami.

"Golden Girls" aimed to show "that when people mature, they add layers," she told The New York Times in 1985. "They don't turn into other creatures. The truth is we all still have our child, our adolescent, and your young woman living in us."

Blanche, who called her father "Big Daddy," was a frequent target of roommates Dorothy, Rose and the outspoken Sophia (Getty), who would fire off zingers at Blanche such as, "Your life's an open blouse."

Fellow "Golden Girl" Betty White called McClanahan a close and dear friend.

"I treasured our relationship," said White, who was working in Los Angeles on the set of her TV Land comedy "Hot in Cleveland" on Thursday. "It hurts more than I even thought it would, if that's even possible."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on June 03, 2010, 11:03:19 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FN2nBj.jpg&hash=b231ceb3486f4cc1d4727b4cd19923b0ee9b2583)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jtm on June 04, 2010, 01:03:16 AM
i thought ronnie james dio was the 1st. and hopper was the 3rd.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on June 04, 2010, 09:48:36 AM
Quote from: pete on June 03, 2010, 11:03:19 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FN2nBj.jpg&hash=b231ceb3486f4cc1d4727b4cd19923b0ee9b2583)

:yabbse-grin:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on June 09, 2010, 04:21:08 PM
Dennis Hopper's 7-Year-Old Daughter Not at His Funeral (http://blogs.babble.com/famecrawler/2010/06/08/dennis-hoppers-7-year-old-daughter-not-at-his-funeral/)

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv239%2FDreydin%2FHoppersDaughter.jpg&hash=649e5c2497e0c576467fb59ce7f8e82c71e445be)

Dennis Hopper was laid to rest over the weekend after losing his battle with prostate cancer. Unfortunately, his seven-year-old daughter, Galen Grier Hopper, wasn't there to see him off to his final resting place. That's because Hopper and his wife, Victoria Duffy are in the midst of a nasty divorce battle over his estate, and neither Duffy nor Hopper's representatives seemed able to broker a deal that would allow Galen to attend her dad's funeral.

(How sad is that?)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on June 09, 2010, 10:18:50 PM
so what you're saying is, her childhood just croaked.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on June 10, 2010, 01:26:31 AM
http://www.thisisbrandx.com/2010/06/peppep-passes-tim-and-erics-richard-dunn-19352010.html

Last week, actor Richard Dunn, the perpetually befuddled senior citizen --and unintentional comic genius-- who was a cast member of Adult Swim's "Tim and Eric Awesome Show--great job!" for the entire run of the series, passed away. Now the surrealist comedic duo have set up a Richard Dunn memorial website where fans can leave tributes and donate money for a funeral service.

From the Tim and Eric website:

"We are deeply saddened to announce that our friend Richard Dunn has passed away. Richard was an irreplaceable member of our family and he will be greatly missed as a brilliant comic actor and a great friend."

-Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on July 12, 2010, 11:31:13 AM
Harvey Pekar

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2010/07/harvey-pekar-graphic-artist-di.html (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2010/07/harvey-pekar-graphic-artist-di.html)

died grumpy
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on August 03, 2010, 11:01:54 AM
Bond screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz dies aged 68

American screenwriter and director Tom Mankiewicz, whose credits included several James Bond films, has died from cancer at the age of 68.

Mankiewicz wrote the scripts for Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun.

He also worked on the first two Superman films, and the TV series Hart to Hart.

Mankiewicz, who died at his home on Saturday, underwent surgery to treat pancreatic cancer three months ago.

He was a member of a famous Hollywood family - his father Joseph directed All About Eve and his uncle Herman co-wrote Citizen Kane.

Mankiewicz began his film career in the early 1960s when he was hired as an assistant director on John Wayne film The Comancheros.

His work on the screenplay of Diamonds Are Forever was the beginning of a long association with the Bond franchise. He made uncredited contributions to The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

'Gift of the gab'

At the request of director Richard Donner, Mankiewicz fine-tuned the scripts for 1978's Superman and 1980's Superman II sequel - for which he was credited as creative consultant.

"Making Superman was only possible because when Tom came in, he brought his sense of humour and brought those characters to life," Donner said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press.

"A lot of people in this town have 'the gift of gab'. Tom's was unique; there was always a true emotional centre," he said.

During the 1970s, Mankiewicz wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for thrillers The Eagle Has Landed and The Cassandra Crossing.

He also wrote and directed on the TV series Hart to Hart, and directed the 1987 movie Dragnet - starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 14, 2010, 05:06:14 AM
Bruno S. (http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/2010/08/12/rip-bruno-s/#ixzz0wPdgWRRq)!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on August 14, 2010, 12:03:22 PM
Awww bummer
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on August 25, 2010, 12:20:35 PM
Anime director Satoshi Kon dies at age 47
Source: The Inquisitr

Twitter has been buzzing with news that Satoshi Kon, director of Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress and Paprika, has died of cancer at the age of 47.

Madhouse studio founder Masao Maruyama confirmed that a major filmmaker had passed away, but did not provide a name. News of Satoshi Kon's death spread rapidly via the microblogging service, with the top retweeted comment:

    "It's not that anime will never be the same with Satoshi Kon gone. It's now much more likely that anime will always be the same."

Owing to time differences between the US and Japan, official confirmation is still pending, but Cinematical says the acclaimed director has passed, adding:

    "Kon was a brilliant filmmaker. His works are vital and revolutionary for their visions of lucid dreaming and the way psychosis bleeds over into the waking world. If he has indeed died, the world has lost a bright artist in the prime of his career."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on August 25, 2010, 06:10:08 PM
This is fucking tragic.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 04, 2010, 10:55:05 AM
 :yabbse-sad:

http://www.tmz.com/2010/09/04/robert-schimmel-dead-dies-car-accident-howard-stern-show/

Robert Schimmel Dies
9/4/2010 6:43 AM PDT by TMZ Staff  

Comedian Robert Schimmel died last night in a Phoenix hospital from injuries he sustained in a car accident last week. He was 60 years old.

As TMZ first reported, Schimmel was the passenger in a serious car accident after his daughter, who was driving at the time, swerved to avoid an accident. She's still in the hospital, but we're told she'll be ok.

Schimmel is perhaps best known for his work on "The Howard Stern Show."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 05, 2010, 10:49:21 PM
ELO star killed by bale of hay

Updated 5 hours 42 minutes ago


(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.net.au%2Freslib%2F201009%2Fr633142_4328722.jpg&hash=73017889e8eda04a9007b0912501c3771366ebeb)

RIP: Former ELO cellist Mike Edwards (centre). (www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCcAn-_KKtU)

A founding member of rock group Electric Light Orchestra has been killed after a giant bale of hay tumbled down a hill and crashed onto his van.

Cellist Mike Edwards died after the 600-kilogram bale careered down a steep field, smashed through a hedge and onto the road in Devon, south-west England.

The 62-year-old died instantly.

"This was a tragic accident and we have now identified the victim as Michael Edwards, a founder member of ELO," said Sergeant Steve Walker of the Devon and Cornwall police traffic unit.

"We have used photographs and YouTube footage to identify him but we now need help contacting his family for formal identification."

ELO have sold more than 50 million records worldwide.

- AFP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 05, 2010, 10:50:58 PM
wut?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on September 06, 2010, 08:57:37 PM
As someone who lives by the country and his family has a farm where we have dozens of bails of hay at a time, those fuckers are dangerous if they ever land on you. Professional farmers are no jokers about the size they will make individual ones to save for land space.

The news on Robert Schimmel sucks. The guy got over a lot of shit in the last 5 years and to die after that...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek on September 07, 2010, 08:24:05 PM
http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/glenn-shadix-dies-otho-beetlejuice-falls-wheelchair-2661243.html
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on September 07, 2010, 08:50:56 PM
Quote from: Derek on September 07, 2010, 08:24:05 PM
http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/glenn-shadix-dies-otho-beetlejuice-falls-wheelchair-2661243.html

^ too skerd to find out who or wut is on the other side of that link. not doing it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 07, 2010, 11:31:40 PM
Was that a reference to me?

How clear do I have to be, it has nothing to do with being SCARED by a link it's just simply about wishing people were more INFORMATIVE.

I don't even mind what Derek did here cos at least the URL itself contains some kind of headline  (which makes little sense). If ppl think this was ever about being scared like a fucking loser then they haven't understood a single thing I've said. Frankly I'm giving up on the whole cause, as children with angels said, giving credit to ppl's intelligence is proving to be just a huge waste of time.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 08, 2010, 01:20:58 AM
Whoa, dude. Pozer wasn't talking about you. He loves you! The wut was in reference to my comment on the previous page which was a worthy response to someone getting killed by a bale of hay (wait wut?) and the description within the link address definitely warrants a wut.

Beetlejuice? Wheelchair? Dead?  WAIT WUT?

Get ahold of yourself, P. This whole link description thing has made you a mess. You're turning on your friends! When was the last time you saw the sun? Get it together, man.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 08, 2010, 03:52:28 AM
Are you crazy?

I obviously wasn't saying that pozer's usage of the word "wut" was the reference, that is obviously a small reference to your comment on the previous page which i have no problem with.

The aspect of pozer's comment to which I was relying was the idea that he was jokingly not clicking the link because he was SCARED of what might be on the other side. As I've been making waves about unlabeled links I assumed this reference was to me. And i am not turning on my pals nor do I didn't think pozer was attacking me, just that it seemed he misunderstood my point. I was only clearing up that if that was what people have been taking away from my complaints (that i am scared to click links that are unlabeled) then I haven't been understood at all. It's about common courtesy, when a little bit of extra effort by one person saves some time and effort for a lot of people.

I also explained that I am giving up on my useless plight and I would like to reiterate that, as it becomes clear that not only my basic point but even my statements of concession are falling on deaf ears. So I hope you've now read this and understood it, though if this whole debacle has taught me anything it's that I've been talking to myself this whole time.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek on September 08, 2010, 12:32:37 PM
Glenn Shadix, Best Known As Otho From Beetlejuice, Dies After Falling From His Wheelchair

Shadix sadly passed away on Tuesday morning after falling from his wheelchair and hitting his head in the kitchen.


Aside from his role as the interior decorator in Beetlejuice, Shadix appeared in over 70 projects, including ER and Planet of the Apes.


"He was having mobility problems, and he was in a wheelchair," Susan Gagne, Shadix's sister, said. "It looks like he fell and hit his head in the kitchen, and that's the cause of death."
Source: blog.al.com


He had retired from Hollywood and was living in Birmingham to be closer to his family.


No funeral arrangements have been announced reports al.com.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on September 08, 2010, 04:26:04 PM
my lil joke was intended to be pro-labeling links and the skerrd thing was in ref to your lesson taught with river puppies. i understand & respect a lil info blurb pre-link. 

i had no clue what Glenn Shadix meant. for all i knew that name belonged to this dude:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.beetlejuiceonline.com%2Fpics%2Fbeetlejuice-howard-stern-04.jpg&hash=f95b6fd3ea3e4346abe60884d9a63e8bce932499)

and the link led to a clip of him falling from his wheelchair to his demise. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on September 08, 2010, 06:25:12 PM
^^  :laughing:

Quote from: P on September 08, 2010, 03:52:28 AM
So I hope you've now read this and understood it, though if this whole debacle has taught me anything it's that I've been talking to myself this whole time.

I can assure you you're not talking to yourself, I took pozer's comment as a lil joke like he just said.

so you're not alone buddy, you'll never walk* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=Y7xvegPH_Lw) post alone.

* Liverpool FC's anthem on youtube.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: children with angels on September 12, 2010, 02:53:25 PM
French film-maker Claude Chabrol dies

Source: Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/12/claude-chabrol-dies)

The world of French cinema is in mourning for one of its greatest and most prolific directors, Claude Chabrol, who died today aged 80.

One of the founding fathers of the New Wave of French film, Chabrol was best known for his masterful suspense thrillers, subversive female roles and stinging critiques of the bourgeoisie. His first work, Le Beau Serge, was released in 1958 and he made more than 80 films, his last – a murder mystery starring Gérard Depardieu – released last year.

In the wake of his death, announced with no further details by a cultural official at Paris city hall, tributes poured in, both professional and personal. Speaking on French radio, Depardieu said: "Claude was joie de vivre itself. I cannot bring myself to believe he has gone. At no moment did he speak of death."

Chabrol, whose career began amid the creative boom that was French cinema in the late 50s and 60s, continued to make films long after the initial excitement of the Nouvelle Vague, adapting his style and themes according to the changing times. He remained fascinated with psychological tensions and inspired by class restlessness, often making unsettlingly dark films that contrasted with his real-life public image as a genial bon vivant.

"He was an absolutely delicious man: mischievous, with an incredible intelligence of which he only let certain sides come through," said Serge Toubiana, director of the French Cinémathèque in Paris, who drew particular attention to the years in which Chabrol released The Butcher, a thriller that Alfred Hitchcock said he wished he had made, and 1969's The Unfaithful Wife.

"I would dare say that there was a period in French cinema, I'm thinking about the late 60s ... when he was, in my opinion, the best French film-maker," said Toubiana.

Some of Chabrol's most respected later films - including Story of Women, his haunting 1988 tale of a Vichy-era abortionist, and La Cérémonie, released in 1995 – featured Isabelle Huppert, the award-winning actor whose disturbing portrayals of women on the brink of madness often have fitted well with Chabrol's vision.

It was for her role as a young murderess in Violette Nozière that she won the best actress award at Cannes in 1978, and as a bitter postal office worker in La Cérémonie that she garnered her only Cesar.

Thierry Frémaux, chairman of the Cannes film festival, said Chabrol would above all be remembered for his love of those he cast in his films. "He was someone who tapped into many generations of actors," Fremaux said on French radio, describing the director's death as "a thunderbolt". "[He] was 80 years old but he was still working, and his energy, joie de vivre ... gave the feeling that he was here for good."

It was not only Chabrol's fellow artists who paid him tribute but also France's political leaders. The former culture minister Jack Lang saluted his "vital energy"; the Socialist leader, Martine Aubry, hailed his "great finesse".

In a statement, Nicolas Sarkozy said: "He took after Balzac in the skill of his social depiction. He took after Rabelais in his humour and certainly also in his truculence, but he was above all himself in his films as in life."

Chabrol is survived by a rapidly diminishing cohort of Nouvelle Vague greats, foremost among them Jean-Luc Godard, the 79-year-old Breathless director currently keeping Hollywood on tenterhooks as to whether or not he will show up to collect an honorary Oscar this year. Most of the other major names of the period, including Francois Truffaut, have long gone; Eric Rohmer died in January.

"Every time a film-maker dies, a singular view of the world and a particular expression of our humanity is irreparably lost to us," said the French film directors' association.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Tryskadekafobia on September 12, 2010, 11:22:21 PM
Kevin McCarthy, Star of `Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' Is Dead at 96

Source: Bloomberg http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-13/kevin-mccarthy-star-of-invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-is-dead-at-96.html (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-13/kevin-mccarthy-star-of-invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-is-dead-at-96.html)

Kevin McCarthy, the actor best known as the star of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," the classic 1956 science-fiction film about humans taken over by giant seed pods from outer space, has died. He was 96.

He died Sept. 11 at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts, the Los Angeles Times reported.

A versatile character actor with the chiseled jaw and blue eyes of a leading man, McCarthy was adept on stage, in movies or on television shows. He acted in almost 100 films over seven decades and was a familiar presence on prime-time TV from the 1950s through the 1990s.

He was trained as a stage actor and made his Broadway debut in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" in 1938. He later appeared in "Two for the Seesaw" (1959) and "Advise and Consent" (1960). He also toured the country for more than two decades in the one- man show about President Harry S. Truman, "Give 'Em Hell Harry."

"Kevin McCarthy is superb as my father," Margaret Truman once said.

McCarthy was nominated for an Oscar in his first film role, as Willy Loman's son Biff in "Death of a Salesman" (1951). He also played Marilyn Monroe's husband in "The Misfits" (1961) and appeared in "Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983).

He was the brother of the acclaimed writer and critic Mary McCarthy, author of the best-selling 1963 novel "The Group." She died in 1989 at age 77.

Cult Status

McCarthy was known mainly for his role as Miles Bennell, the family doctor in Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Thanks in part to repeated showings on television in the 1960s, the film achieved cult status.

McCarthy took it all in stride. He was always gracious when answering questions about the movie from fans and journalists. He even spoofed himself in a cameo appearance at the beginning of the 1978 remake, banging on the windows of a car driven by Donald Sutherland's character in an homage to the original.

Fans have argued for decades about the meaning of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Some saw it as an allegory about the perils of McCarthyism. Others viewed it as an attack on the conformity of Communism.

"There was no assignment of political points of view when we were making the film," McCarthy told the Bangor (Maine) Daily News in 1997. "People began to think of McCarthyism later. I thought it was really about the onset of a kind of life where the corporate people are trying to tell you how to live, what to do, how to behave."

'You're Next!'

Based on a magazine serial by Jack Finney, the movie takes place in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California, where Miles has just returned from a medical convention. He begins to learn from his patients that some of their relatives have changed. They act strange and show no emotion.

At first Miles attributes the changes to mass hysteria but soon discovers to his horror that their bodies have been duplicated by giant seed pods while they were sleeping. As Miles and his love interest, Becky, played by Dana Wynter, try to flee and stay awake, they are pursued by the alien impostors.

The original ending of the film had McCarthy on a highway banging on car windows and yelling: "Look, you fools. You're in danger. Can't you see? They're after you. They're after all of us. Our wives, our children, everyone."

Then, looking into the camera in an extreme close-up, he shouts: "They're already here. You're next!"

The studio deemed that conclusion too grim and forced Siegel to "frame" the film as a flashback with a prologue and a happy epilogue that has the police finally believing Miles's story and mobilizing the FBI.

Flu Epidemic

Kevin McCarthy was born on Feb. 15, 1914, in Seattle to Martha Therese Preston and Roy Winfield McCarthy.

When he was 4, his family moved to Minneapolis. Shortly after, both parents died in the worldwide flu epidemic. His grandparents told him they had gone away, without further explanation.

In an interview with the Irish Echo newspaper 87 years later, McCarthy said he remembered himself as "this little kid, who was standing in a pile of snow at 11 o'clock in the morning and wondering what happened to his parents, who had disappeared suddenly.'

McCarthy's grandmother turned him and his three siblings over to her sister, whose husband physically abused them. Mary eventually moved back with relatives in Seattle while Kevin spent his youth shifting between homes of various relatives.

He graduated from Campion High School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, in 1932 and briefly attended Georgetown University before dropping out.

Shakespeare Role

McCarthy later attended the University of Minnesota after persuading a guardian to give him the $26 admission to the state school. He joined the student theater group, which was casting for Shakespeare's "Henry IV Part I." He told a friend that he had trouble with Shakespeare's English.

"You don't have to make sense of it; just talk loud," his friend told him. "So I talked loud," McCarthy said. He got the part.

McCarthy frequently appeared on television. He co-starred with Lana Turner in the short-lived ABC series "The Survivors' (1969-1970). He played a wealthy patriarch on the prime-time NBC soap opera "Flamingo Road" (1980-1982) and the romantic interest for Beatrice Arthur in ABC's "Amanda's" (1983).

He also was in the NBC miniseries "Poor Little Rich Girl" (1987) with Farrah Fawcett and the 1997 HBO film "The Second Civil War."

McCarthy had two children with his second wife, Kate Crane McCarthy, and three children from his first marriage.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 12, 2010, 11:42:49 PM
How did that guy get a bigger write up than Claude Chabrol..  :yabbse-undecided:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on September 13, 2010, 02:04:20 AM
Different papers, different writers and Kevin McCarhy was in a bigger movie that more people have heard of than what Claude did. Sad but true. Also, the guardian isn't a french paper. I'm sure in the french paper there was a huge article.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 13, 2010, 02:12:46 AM
He was old as shit. Who cares? I hope I can live to 80, much less 96.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on September 13, 2010, 08:52:08 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.i-mockery.com%2Fminimocks%2Fmovie-assholes%2Frj-fletcher.jpg&hash=569eeaa3f8d37f1971ba465906dc5e19604e23b7)

RJ Fletcher has the last laugh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9FCYy7kZkw).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 13, 2010, 11:09:21 AM
^

He was the bomb in UHF.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on September 28, 2010, 09:11:06 AM
Sally Menke, longtime film editor for Quentin Tarantino, found dead near Griffith Park
September 28, 2010 |  6:27 am

Menke Director Quentin Tarantino's longtime film editor, who went hiking with her dog amid the extreme heat Monday, was discovered dead early Tuesday morning by searchers in Beachwood Canyon, according to law-enforcement sources.

Award-winning film editor Sally Menke, 53, worked on such movies as "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill" and "Jackie Brown."

Menke had gone hiking in the morning, and her friends alerted police after she failed to come home.

Search dogs, an LAPD helicopter and officers from patrol units spent hours in Griffith Park searching for her.

Her locked car was found in a Griffith Park parking lot. Menke's dog was found alive, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The sources, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because the investigation was ongoing, said Menke's body was found at the bottom of a ravine near 5600 block of Green Oak Drive.

No cause of death was immediately reported, and it's unclear whether the heat was a factor.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 28, 2010, 09:46:49 AM
Quote from: modage on September 28, 2010, 09:11:06 AM
Sally Menke, longtime film editor for Quentin Tarantino, found dead near Griffith Park
September 28, 2010 |  6:27 am

Menke Director Quentin Tarantino's longtime film editor, who went hiking with her dog amid the extreme heat Monday, was discovered dead early Tuesday morning by searchers in Beachwood Canyon, according to law-enforcement sources.

Award-winning film editor Sally Menke, 53, worked on such movies as "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill" and "Jackie Brown."

Menke had gone hiking in the morning, and her friends alerted police after she failed to come home.

Search dogs, an LAPD helicopter and officers from patrol units spent hours in Griffith Park searching for her.

Her locked car was found in a Griffith Park parking lot. Menke's dog was found alive, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The sources, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because the investigation was ongoing, said Menke's body was found at the bottom of a ravine near 5600 block of Green Oak Drive.

No cause of death was immediately reported, and it's unclear whether the heat was a factor.

and gloria stuart, aged 100.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on September 28, 2010, 10:36:59 AM
Quote from: modage on September 28, 2010, 09:11:06 AM
Sally Menke, longtime film editor for Quentin Tarantino, found dead near Griffith Park
September 28, 2010 |  6:27 am

Menke Director Quentin Tarantino's longtime film editor, who went hiking with her dog amid the extreme heat Monday, was discovered dead early Tuesday morning by searchers in Beachwood Canyon, according to law-enforcement sources.

Award-winning film editor Sally Menke, 53, worked on such movies as "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill" and "Jackie Brown."

Menke had gone hiking in the morning, and her friends alerted police after she failed to come home.

Search dogs, an LAPD helicopter and officers from patrol units spent hours in Griffith Park searching for her.

Her locked car was found in a Griffith Park parking lot. Menke's dog was found alive, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The sources, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because the investigation was ongoing, said Menke's body was found at the bottom of a ravine near 5600 block of Green Oak Drive.

No cause of death was immediately reported, and it's unclear whether the heat was a factor.

That's terrible!  She was great.  It sucks when people die at the height of their skills/career like this, and so young.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on September 28, 2010, 02:21:01 PM
i wonder if it was a heat thing or a murder thing... either way, a sad loss for film, Goodbye Sally :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on September 28, 2010, 08:50:19 PM
:yabbse-huh:

now who's gonna cut this (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=212.msg286662#msg286662) this (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=212.msg287719#msg287719) this (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=212.msg290109#msg290109) and this? (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=212.msg294909#msg294909)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on September 28, 2010, 09:02:08 PM
Tarantino will probably just use whatever shitty editor Eli Roth uses. Robert Rodriguez?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on September 29, 2010, 12:05:27 PM
Arthur Penn, director of 'Bonnie and Clyde' dies

NEW YORK – Director Arthur Penn, a myth-maker and myth-breaker who in such classics as "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Little Big Man" refashioned movie and American history and sealed a generation's affinity for outsiders, died Tuesday night, a day after his 88th birthday.

Daughter Molly Penn said her father died at his home, in Manhattan, of congestive heart failure. Longtime friend and business manager Evan Bell said Wednesday that Penn had been ill for about a year and that a memorial service will be held before the end of the year. Penn's older brother was photographer Irving Penn, who died in October 2009.

After first making his name on Broadway as director of the Tony Award-winning plays "The Miracle Worker" and "All the Way Home," Penn rose as a film director in the 1960s, his work inspired by the decade's political and social upheaval, and Americans' interest in their past and present.

"Bonnie and Clyde," with its mix of humor and mayhem, encouraged moviegoers to sympathize with the lawbreaking couple from the 1930s, while "Little Big Man" told the tale of the conquest of the West with the Indians as the good guys.

"A society would be wise to pay attention to the people who do not belong if it wants to find out ... where it's failing," Penn once said.

Penn's other films included his adaptation of "The Miracle Worker," featuring an Oscar-winning performance by Anne Bancroft; "The Missouri Breaks," an outlaw tale starring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson; "Night Moves," a Los Angeles thriller featuring Gene Hackman; and "Alice's Restaurant," based on the wry Arlo Guthrie song about being turned down for the draft because he had once been fined for littering.

Penn was most identified with "Bonnie and Clyde," although it wasn't a project he initiated or, at first, wanted. Beatty, who earlier starred in Penn's "Mickey One" and produced "Bonnie and Clyde," had to persuade him to take on the film, written by Robert Benton and David Newman and inspired by the movies of the French New Wave. (Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc-Godard each turned down offers to direct the film).

Penn was in his 40s when he made "Bonnie and Clyde," but his heart was very much with the gorgeous stars, played by Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and with the story, as liberal in its politics as it was with the facts — a celebration of individual freedom and an expose of the banks that had ruined farmers' lives.

Released in 1967, when opposition to the Vietnam War was ballooning and movie censorship crumbling, "Bonnie and Clyde" was shaped by the frenzy of silent comedy, the jarring rhythms of the French New Wave and the surge of youth and rebellion. The robbers' horrifying death, a shooting gallery that took four days to film and ran for less than a minute, only intensified their appeal.

"I thought that if were going to show this (violence), we should SHOW it," Penn said in the documentary "A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies."

"We should show what it looks like when somebody gets shot." TV coverage of Vietnam, he added, "was every bit, perhaps even more, bloody than what we were showing on film."

With the glibbest of promotional tag lines, "They're young ... they're in love ... and they kill people," it was a film that challenged and changed minds. Beatty worked for a reduced fee because the studio, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, was convinced that "Bonnie and Clyde" would flop. Released in August 1967, then rereleased early in 1968 in response to undying attention, "Bonnie and Clyde" appalled the old and fascinated the young, widening a generational divide not only between audiences, but critics.

The New York Times' Bosley Crowther, then at the end of his career — an end hastened by "Bonnie and Clyde" — snorted that the film was "a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in `Thoroughly Modern Millie.'"

But Pauline Kael, just starting her long reign at The New Yorker, welcomed "Bonnie and Clyde" as a new and vital kind of movie — an opinion now widely shared — and asked, "How do you make a good movie in this country without being jumped on?"

"The accusation that the beauty of movie stars makes the anti-social acts of their characters dangerously attractive is the kind of contrived argument we get from people who are bothered by something and clutching at straws," Kael wrote. "`Bonnie and Clyde' brings into the almost frighteningly public world of movies things people have been feeling and saying and writing about."

The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, with Estelle Parsons winning for best supporting actress, and is regarded by many as the dawn of a golden age in Hollywood, when the old studio system crumbled and performers and directors such as Penn, Beatty, Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese enjoyed creative control.

Penn, who had fought — and lost to — the studios over the editing of such early films as "The Left Handed Gun" and "The Chase," now was able to realize a long-desired project — an adaptation of "Little Big Man," based on the Thomas Berger novel.

"Originality is filtered out like tar is filtered out of cigarettes," Penn once complained. "I have not had a lot of success with the suits — or the dresses. Executives are executives. They're going to interfere as much as they can.

"('Little Big Man') didn't happen until I had so much clout I sort of made it happen."

None of Penn's other films would have the impact of "Bonnie and Clyde," but the director regarded "Little Big Man," released in 1970, as his greatest success, with Dustin Hoffman playing the 121-year-old lone survivor of Custer's last stand. It was, again, a violent and romantic overturning of the past and an angry finger pointed at the war and racism of the present.

Penn earned Academy Award nominations for both films and for his first movie, "The Miracle Worker," based on the Broadway show about Helen Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, played by Bancroft. Among Penn's other stage credits: "All the Way Home," which won both the Tony and Pulitzer Prize in 1961 as best play; "Two for the Seesaw"; the musical version of "Golden Boy"; and "Wait Until Dark."

Penn traced his affinity for alienated heroes and heroines to the trauma of his childhood. Truffaut's film "The 400 Blows," he once said, "was so much like my own childhood it really stunned me."

When he was 3, Penn moved from Philadelphia to New York with his mother after his parents divorced. He and his mother, a nurse who had run a health food store, lived in a succession of apartments in New Jersey and New York City, and the boy attended at least a dozen elementary schools.

At age 14, Penn returned to Philadelphia to live with his ailing father and help him run his watch repairman's shop.

"He was an excellent mechanic. ... His hands were magical," Penn said. "But he was an evasive man for someone to try to make contact with. I think I'm like him in some ways. I'm not the most available of men, emotionally or personally."

He was no filmgoer as a child; books and baseball mattered more. Penn was frightened by a horror picture when he was 5 and said he did not see another movie until his teens, when Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" "staggered" him.

Along with Welles and Charlie Chaplin, Penn greatly admired Akira Kurosawa and the French New Wave directors, especially Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

He was known for allowing actors to improvise — and getting a wide range of expression from them in return. He believed words are to the theater as action is to film: "A look, a simple look, will do it."

Penn's 1960s success was bracketed by frustration. Early in his career, he was so angered by how Warner Bros. changed "The Left Handed Gun," a Western released in 1958, that he stopped making movies for years and turned to Broadway. He was fired from "The Train," a 1964 film, over disagreements with the lead actor, Burt Lancaster. And none of his later works found favor at the box office, though several — "Night Moves" (1975), "The Missouri Breaks" (1976) and "Four Friends" (1981) — won critical acclaim.

He decided to live in New York, rather than Los Angeles, as Hollywood soured on his social vision. Broadway, too, seemed increasingly drawn to blockbuster musicals rather than serious drama, further marginalizing Penn.

"It was frustrating and more than a little humiliating," Penn told The New York Times.

"It's not that I've drifted away from film," he said in another interview. "I'm very drawn to film, but I'm not sure that film is drawn to me."

Arthur Hiller Penn was born in Philadelphia Sept. 27, 1922, the son of Harry and Sonia Penn and brother of Irving Penn. Although both sons were involved in the visual arts, Arthur Penn later said that he saw little in common in their work and rarely discussed it. (Beatty would claim the director was influenced profoundly by his brother, known for a spare, but dramatic style.)

He joined the Army during World War II, formed a dramatic troupe at Fort Jackson, S.C., was often in trouble for behaving disrespectfully to his superiors and was in an infantry unit that fought in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he studied literature in Italy for two years, then returned to New York, where he found work as a floor manager on NBC-TV's "Colgate Comedy Hour."

By the early 1950s, Penn was writing and directing TV dramas. In 1956, he debuted as a Broadway director, but "The Lovers" closed after just four days.

As a boy, Penn had little success learning the watchmaker's trade from his father, who died without having seen any of his son's films.

"He went to his grave despairing I would never find my way in the world," the director said, "and the movies rescued me."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Tictacbk on September 29, 2010, 05:36:28 PM
 Comedian Greg Giraldo died.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on September 29, 2010, 06:11:11 PM
The best people are dying!!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on September 29, 2010, 06:36:25 PM
Holy shit!  I heard about his overdose, but the report that I read didn't give any indication that it might be life-threatening.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on September 29, 2010, 10:07:17 PM
Shit.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 30, 2010, 05:40:20 AM
Coroner: Actor Tony Curtis dies at Las Vegas home AP

LAS VEGAS -Clark County coroner says actor Tony Curtis has died.

Coroner Mike Murphy says Curtis died at 9:25 p.m. MDT Wednesday at his Las Vegas area home of a cardiac arrest. Curtis, who had heart bypass surgery in 1994, began his acting career as a 1950s heartthrob but became a respected actor with such films as "The Defiant Ones" and "Sweet Smell of Success. "The Defiant Ones" brought him an Oscar nomination in 1958 for his portrayal of a racist escaped convict handcuffed to a black escapee, Sidney Poitier. The following year, he co-starred in one of the most acclaimed film comedies ever, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on September 30, 2010, 05:45:18 AM
The rule of threes is out the window!  They're dropping like flies out there.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 30, 2010, 07:15:14 AM
the rule i'm seeing is an alternating pattern of octogenarian (or older), followed by a young unexpected death.

it's like the life expectancy average is trying to keep constant by taking out a young'n for every old fogie that sneaks in a decade or two over.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 30, 2010, 11:47:07 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on September 30, 2010, 05:40:20 AM
Coroner: Actor Tony Curtis dies at Las Vegas home AP

LAS VEGAS -Clark County coroner says actor Tony Curtis has died.

Coroner Mike Murphy says Curtis died at 9:25 p.m. MDT Wednesday at his Las Vegas area home of a cardiac arrest. Curtis, who had heart bypass surgery in 1994, began his acting career as a 1950s heartthrob but became a respected actor with such films as "The Defiant Ones" and "Sweet Smell of Success. "The Defiant Ones" brought him an Oscar nomination in 1958 for his portrayal of a racist escaped convict handcuffed to a black escapee, Sidney Poitier. The following year, he co-starred in one of the most acclaimed film comedies ever, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot."

He was the bomb in Jackie Brown.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on September 30, 2010, 02:52:48 PM
Has Tarantino made a public statement about Menke yet?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on October 01, 2010, 05:17:45 PM
Max Von Sydow and Nick Nolte are still alive even though they've been 80 for like 50 years. Those are men.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on October 04, 2010, 09:46:17 PM
I still want to know what Giraldo OD'd off of. Is that morbid?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on October 04, 2010, 11:24:08 PM
Quote from: bigideas on September 30, 2010, 02:52:48 PM
Has Tarantino made a public statement about Menke yet?

Quote from: Reelist on October 04, 2010, 09:46:17 PM
I still want to know what Giraldo O'd off of.

you guys should totally make a pact to seek out the answers to each others' queries and then start a new thread called CROAKespondence.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on October 11, 2010, 01:24:44 PM
great loss today... solomon burke died at the age of 70. he had just arrived in amsterdam to play and died of natural causes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on October 19, 2010, 02:29:16 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com%2F2009%2F08%2F05%2Fhowardcunningham8.jpg&hash=a7c3358e3dbc016d70e46707bb69f297fa7494a4)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on October 19, 2010, 02:32:35 PM
David the Gnome :yabbse-cry: Who's going to take care of Swift?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek on October 30, 2010, 07:08:46 PM
Director George Hickenlooper Has Died at Age 47
Posted on Saturday, October 30th, 2010 by Russ Fischer



Director George Hickenlooper, whose film Casino Jack has been playing festivals and is on the verge of release, has died in Denver, Colorado at the age of 47. His cousin, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, confirmed the director's passing to the Denver Post.

George Hickenlooper may still be best known for co-directing the wonderful 1991 Apocalypse Now documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. He also directed the short film Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade as well as Mayor of the Sunset Strip, Factory Girl and a short documentary about director Monte Hellman, among other films.

Cousins George and John actually didn't meet until the director was promoting Hearts of Darkness in 1991; their familial relationship eventually led to the 2008 documentary 'Hick' Town, in which George chronicled John's attempt to govern the town of Denver during the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The cause of death is being investigated, but foul play is not suspected; the Denver Post reports that early supposition is that the director succumbed due to natural causes.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 06, 2010, 12:08:15 AM
Oscar-nominated Actress Jill Clayburgh Dies
Source: THR

Jill Clayburgh, whose performance in An Unmarried Woman as a woman who suddenly finds herself single after a divorce reflected the growing women's liberation movement, died Friday at her home in Lakeville, Conn. She was 66.

The actress, who recently conclued two seasons as the rich matriach of ABC's Dirty Sexy Money, had been battling chronic lymphocytic leukemia for 21 years, her husband, playwright David Rabe, told the Associated Press.

She dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, Rabe said, and conducted herself with enormous grace "and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human."

Clayburgh won an Oscar nomination for 1978's Woman, directed by Paul Mazursky. And she shared best actress honors at Cannes with Isabelle Huppert for her portrayal of a young, comfortable woman who finds her world is shattered when her husband of surprises her by asking for a divorce.

With willowy good-looks, an edgy verve, as well as singing ability, Clayburgh was a versatile talent with a distinctive style: In 1978, Cue magazine described her "winsome naturalness," characterized by "...quick movements, glances, shrugs, half-smiles and pensive, revealing expressions."

Having attracted attention in the 1975 TV movie Hustling, in which she played a prostitute and earned an Emmy nomination, Clayburgh portrayed Carole Lombard opposite James Brolin in 1976's Gable and Lombard. She teamed with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in the screwball mystery Silver Streak and with Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson in the football comedy Semi-Tough, based on Dan Jenkins' best-seller. She and Reynolds had a good rapport, and Clayburgh co-starred with him again in 1979's Starting Over, where she was nominated for a second Oscar for best actress.

She also gravitated toward edgier films, including Bernardo Bertolucci's Luna and Costa-Gavra's Hanna K. Bertolucci complimented her ability "to move from one extreme to the other in the same shot, be funny and dramatic within the same scene."

Clayburgh also turned in multiple guest-starring performances on such TV series as Ally McBeal, Leap of Faith, The Practice and Nip/Tuck, for which she earned a second Emmy nomination in 2005.

Clayburgh was born April 30, 1944 in New York City. Her father was a vice president of the Bancroft Bookcloth Company and an opera lover, while her mother was a production secretary to Broadway producer David Merrick.

She attended the exclusive Brearley School and enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College, where she became involved in acting after serving as a summer-stock apprentice at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. While in college, Clayburgh starred with friends Robert De Niro and Jennifer Salt in The Wedding Party, an indie film that another friend, Brian De Palma, helped direct.

After graduating from Sarah Lawrence, she worked for a year as a member of the Charles Street Playhouse repertory company in Boston. While there, Clayburgh formed a romantic attachment with one of the other performers, Al Pacino and they moved in together in New York, where she studied acting with Uta Hagen.

She appeared in several off-Broadway productions, including a couplet of plays with Pacino at the off-Broadway Astor Place Theater: She played in It's Called the Sugarplum, while he performed in The Indian Wants the Bronx.

Clayburgh made her Broadway debut in 1970 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in The Rothschilds, a musical about a Jewish family that moved from the Frankfurt ghetto to become the richest bankers in Europe. She displayed her vocal talents again in the musical Pippin, directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse.

However, she lost a role she coveted -- the go-go dancer in Rabe's In the Boom Boom Room-- to Madeline Kahn. That experience convinced her that she needed a bigger "Hollywood name," and so she sought out mainstream roles in film and TV, breaking into film with 1972's Portnoy's Complaint.

And though she wasn't cast in his play, at her try-out she met Rabe, whom she married in 1979.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by three children, actress Lily Rabe, Michael Rabe and stepson Jason Rabe.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: SiliasRuby on November 08, 2010, 04:40:47 AM
awwww.... thats sad
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on November 11, 2010, 07:50:02 AM
de laurentiis!

he was 91 and lived an amazing life, so no sad smiley for him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pedro on November 28, 2010, 08:43:21 PM
Leslie Nielsen has died at age 84
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gamblour. on November 28, 2010, 09:32:39 PM
Surely you can't be serious.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on November 28, 2010, 10:14:29 PM
FINALLY.
I've been saying surely you can't be serious to at least 12 people now.
and no one has given me the proper response.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on November 29, 2010, 12:03:20 AM
Quote from: pete on November 28, 2010, 10:14:29 PM
FINALLY.
I've been saying surely you can't be serious to at least 12 people now.
and no one has given me the proper response.

I said that to a friend, who replied, "How long you been saving that up?"

RIP Leslie Nielsen.  Airplane! and the Naked Gun films were/are some of my favorite comedies.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on November 29, 2010, 12:28:57 AM
so, peter graves, the lady who speaks jive, and leslie nielsen...three airplane passengers have died this year.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on November 29, 2010, 12:50:21 AM
EDIT: Fudge. Don't want to be a jerk on a new page.

Everyone who dies is a good person. Death sucks, man. I wish everyone could live forever. I love all people. Living, dead. It don't matter to me. It's all good here.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on November 29, 2010, 08:57:51 AM
I loved Leslie Nielsen.  Watched the shit out of the Naked Gun movies when I was younger. 

Also: Irvin Kershner is dead.   :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on December 17, 2010, 06:30:34 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsingaporedreams.files.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F11%2Fcaptain_beefheart.jpg&hash=b3a4ed83c3888614d2e3f6d47937b7eda3447834)
Captain Beefheart 1941-2010
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 19, 2010, 07:46:47 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obit_blake_edwards

Master of farce and slapstick, Blake Edwards, dies
AP
By JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle, Ap Entertainment Writer – Fri Dec 17, 6:32 am ET

When Julie Andrews began writing her 2008 autobiography, "Home," her husband Blake Edwards had just one piece of advice: "Characters make your story."

In an up-and-down career that spanned writing, directing and producing nearly 50 films, Edwards, who died late Wednesday, cultivated more than his share of indelible characters: Peter Sellers' bumbling Inspector Clouseau of the "Pink Panther" movies, Dudley Moore's equally clueless George Webber from "10," Audrey Hepburn's high fashion wild child Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

He knew laughter and sadness, making alcoholism seem hilarious in "10" and desperate in "Days of Wine and Roses." But his strength was comedy, farce and slapstick that he captured in a visual style trained on silent comedies. It was, after all, in his blood.

Edwards' stepfather, Jack McEdwards (the family name), was an assistant director, and his stepfather's father, J. Gordon Edwards, was a pioneering director of silent films. Though born in Tulsa, Okla., Edwards was raised on movie sets. He was an extra and supporting actor before he was a filmmaker.

A child of Hollywood who made his home there, he would forever have a conflicted relationship with the industry he assailed, but to which he kept returning. He dropped in and out of favor, feuded with producers and famously satirized Hollywood in 1981's scathing "S.O.B."

"I was certainly getting back at some of the producers of my life," Edwards once remarked, "although I was a good deal less scathing than I could have been. The only way I got to make it was because of the huge success of `10,' and even then they tried to sabotage it."

But he also made movies that added to Hollywood's bottom line, particularly in the "Pink Panther" films.

In one of his last public appearances at a tribute from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in October, Edwards opened his remarks with fitting sarcasm: "Can I go now?"

When the academy gave him an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2004, he accepted the award with a slapstick gag right out of his own movies: He careened across the stage in a wheelchair, snagging the statue from Jim Carrey and crashing into the set.

"That felt good," he said, dusting himself off.

Edwards, 88, died from complications of pneumonia at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., after being hospitalized for about two weeks. He had knee problems, had undergone unsuccessful procedures and was "pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two," said publicist Gene Schwam, who knew him for 40 years.

At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals, one based on the "Pink Panther" movies. The other, "Big Rosemary," was to be an original comedy set during Prohibition, Schwam said.

"He was the most unique man I have ever known-and he was my mate," Andrews said in a statement Thursday. "He will be missed beyond words, and will forever be in my heart."

A third-generation filmmaker, Edwards was praised for evoking classic performances from Sellers, Moore, Hepburn, Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick and Andrews, his wife of nearly half a century.

Steve Martin, who played Clouseau in the 2006 and 2009 "Pink Panther" productions, said Thursday that Edwards "was one of the people who made me love comedy."

Edwards directed and often wrote a wide variety of movies including "Days of Wine and Roses," a harrowing story of alcoholism; "The Great Race," a comedy-adventure that starred Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood; and "Victor/Victoria," his gender-bender musical comedy with Andrews.

Although many of Edwards' films were solid hits, he was nominated for Academy Awards only twice, in 1982 for writing the adapted screenplay of "Victor/Victoria" and in 1983 for co-writing "The Man Who Loved Women." Lemmon and Remick won Oscar nominations in 1962 for "Days of Wine and Roses," and Hepburn was nominated for "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961.

Edwards had entered television in 1958, creating "Peter Gunn," which established a new style of hard-edged detective series. The tone was set by Henry Mancini's pulsating theme music. Starring Craig Stevens, the series ran until 1961 and resulted in a 1967 feature movie "Gunn."

"Peter Gunn" marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between Edwards and Mancini, who composed melodic scores and songs for most of Edwards' films. Mancini won Oscars for the "Breakfast at Tiffany's" score and the song "Moon River," the title song of "Days of Wine and Roses" and the score of "Victor/Victoria."

William Blake McEdwards was born July 26, 1922, in Tulsa, Okla. The family moved to Hollywood three years later.

Edwards began in films as an actor, playing small roles in such movies as "A Guy Named Joe" and "Ten Gentlemen From West Point." After 18 months in the Coast Guard in World War II, he returned to acting but soon realized he lacked the talent. With John Champion, he wrote a Western, "Panhandle," which he produced and in which he acted for the quickie studio, Monogram. He followed with "Stampede."

In 1947, Edwards turned to radio and created the hard-boiled "Richard Diamond, Private Detective," which was converted to television in 1957.

Tiring of the TV grind, Edwards returned to films and directed his first feature, "Bring Your Smile Along." After a few more B movies which he usually co-wrote, he made the big time in 1958 with "The Perfect Furlough," starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and "Operation Petticoat" with Cary Grant and Curtis.

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961 established Edwards as a stylish director who could combine comedy with bittersweet romance. His next two films proved his versatility: the suspenseful "Experiment in Terror" (1962) and "Days of Wine and Roses" (1963), the story of a couple's alcoholism, with Lemmon in his first dramatic role.

"The Great Race," about an auto race in the early 1900s, marked Edwards' first attempt at a big-budget spectacle. He spent Warner Bros.' money lavishly, raising the ire of studio boss Jack Warner. The 1965 release proved a modest success.

Edwards' disdain for the studios reached a peak in the 1970 "Darling Lili," a World War I romance starring his new wife, Andrews, and Rock Hudson. The long, expensive Paris location infuriated the Paramount bosses. The movie flopped, continuing Andrews' decline from her position as Hollywood's No. 1 star.

For a decade, Edwards' only hits were "Pink Panther" sequels. Then came "10," which he also produced and wrote. The sex comedy became a box-office winner, creating a new star in Bo Derek and restoring the director's reputation.

"It was my greatest fortune, my life-changing fortune, that he believed in me," Derek said in a statement. "He selected me for the role which shaped everything that ever happened to me. He was a loyal friend and I will miss him and that mischievous expression that would come over his face when he was about to come up with something hilarious."

Edwards scored again in 1982 with "Victor/Victoria," with Andrews playing a woman who poses as a (male) female impersonator. His later films became more personal, particularly the 1986 "That's Life," which he wrote with his psychiatrist.

After Sellers' death in 1980, Edwards attempted to keep the "Pink Panther" franchise alive. He wrote and directed "Curse of the Pink Panther" in 1983, starring David Niven, and "Son of the Pink Panther" in 1993, starring Roberto Benigni. Both were failed efforts.

A 2006 remake of the original with Steve Martin as Clouseau was modestly successful; its 2009 follow up was less so. Both had new directors, with Edwards credited as a writer.

He continued to supervise Andrews' career, which included a short-lived television series and her 1996 return to Broadway in a $8.5 million version of "Victor/Victoria." Edwards directed the show, which drew mixed reviews. When Andrews was the only one connected with the musical to be nominated for a Tony, she announced to a matinee audience that she was declining the nomination because her co-workers had been snubbed.

Andrews and Edwards married in 1968. She had a daughter, Emma, from her marriage to Broadway designer Tony Walton. Edwards had a daughter, Jennifer, and a son, Geoffrey, from his marriage to Patricia Edwards. He and Andrews adopted two Vietnamese children, Amy and Jo.

A longtime painter, Edwards began sculpting in mid-life, and his bronze works in the style of Henry Moore drew critical praise in shows in Los Angeles and Bucks County, Pa.

Edwards is survived by his wife, five children, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. His family says a private memorial is planned and a public memorial will be scheduled in the new year.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on January 03, 2011, 05:54:04 AM
Pete Postlethwaite  :yabbse-sad:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/03/actor-pete-postlethwaite-dies?CMP=twt_fd (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/03/actor-pete-postlethwaite-dies?CMP=twt_fd)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on January 03, 2011, 01:10:15 PM
Aw, that's too bad. He was still young.  :shock: and he was in two of the biggest movies last year (Inception, The Town).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on January 03, 2011, 01:53:30 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi35.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fd179%2Fpolkablues%2Ftumblr_leg7yy2zw91qzaw5fo1_500-1.jpg&hash=524cfea66c053931a160d3ac3775fd2b6d418750)

"I thought it mattered. I thought that music mattered. But does it? Bollocks. Not compared to how people matter."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on January 03, 2011, 01:55:32 PM
I just rewatched The Town and Inception and was thinking that he looked very thin in those.  Terribly sad news.  He was great.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on January 10, 2011, 01:20:41 PM
Peter Yates (http://www.screendaily.com/news/uk-ireland/bullitt-director-peter-yates-dies-aged-82/5022105.article), director of Bullitt and Breaking Away.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on January 10, 2011, 02:22:46 PM
no!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on January 26, 2011, 01:27:03 AM
German movie producer Bernd Eichinger dead

BERLIN - German movie producer, director and screenplay writer Bernd Eichinger, who produced well-known films "The Neverending Story" and "Downfall," has died. He was 61.

Eichinger suffered a deadly heart attack Monday night during a dinner with family and friends in Los Angeles, German production firm Constantin Film AG said in a statement Tuesday.

"We are all shocked by this unbelievable news and we feel with his family and relatives," the firm said in a statement. Eichinger, a former Constantin top executive and major shareholder, served as the deputy chairman of the firm's supervisory board.

Over his 40-years in the industry, Eichinger was widely credited for his ability to turn novels and stories into movies that not only pleased critics, but also proved popular at the box office.

One of his most successful productions was the 2004 film "Downfall," for which he also wrote the screenplay. The movie depicts the last days of Nazi Germany in Adolf Hitler's bunker in Berlin and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005.

His 2008 movie "The Baader Meinhof Complex," devoted to the history of Germany's left-wing terrorist group Red Army Faction, was also nominated for a foreign-language Oscar.

In 2005, German newspaper Tagesspiegel referred to him as a "genius" poised to succeed with whatever movie he touches. "May the critics be upset, people love his stuff," it said.

Eichinger also produced "The Name of the Rose," based on an Umberto Eco's novel and "The House of the Spirits," which was based on Isabel Allende's book. He alsoco-authored the screenplay of the successful 2006 movie "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer," after pressing author Patrick Suesskind, a friend of his, for years to sell him the movie rights.

"Bernd Eichinger's death means the loss of a great German filmmaker and producer who marked international cinematography as few others have done," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement late Tuesday. Culture Minister Bernd Neumann added: "He was the German movie scene's motor — his reliable sense for topics and issues impressed millions of spectators."

Eichinger, born 1949 in southern Germany, started his career at Munich film school in 1970, and founded his first production company four years later.

In 1979, he bought a 25 percent stake in then-struggling movie production and distribution company Constantin, which he later increased to a 50 percent stake, successfully turning the firm around while laying the foundations for his extensive film business.

Eichinger, who lived in both Germany and Los Angeles, is survived by his wife Katja and a 29-year-old daughter from an earlier relationship.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on January 26, 2011, 10:03:54 AM
I was/am really sad that the lead singer of Broadcast, Trish Keenan, died.
This may be for film related people only though.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on January 26, 2011, 10:48:27 AM
That's right bigideas.  Someone that passes on that's not in the film industry... I mean, c'mon.  Who really gives a shit? 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on February 03, 2011, 01:52:08 PM
Maria Schneider, star of such films as LAST TANGO IN PARIS and THE PASSENGER, has died after an illustrious career. She was 58.

Truly breaking out at the age of 19 in the Bernardo Bertolucci masterpiece LAST TANGO IN PARIS, the actress found not only a heap of controversy to be waded through in the film's wake, but also a troublesome production, later leading her to say that she "felt a little raped," with regards to the film's infamous "butter scene." She spoke out against the way she was treated on the film, and while that didn't directly effect her following career, it was something she found hard to overcome.
She would then be seen on the Michelangelo Antonioni masterpiece, THE PASSENGER, starring alongside another huge name (Marlon Brando was her co-star in TANGO), Jack Nicholson. Always one to pick the perfect director, se went on to work with the likes of Franco Zeffirelli (JANE EYRE) and even Marco Bellocchio, on his film, THE CONVICTION.

Her filmography may not be big, but it is powerful. Please, go hunt out this wonderful actress' canon, it's one that can't be missed.

She will be missed.

from Gordon & the Whale (http://gordonandthewhale.com/maria-schneider-star-of-last-tango-in-paris-dead-at-58/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on February 03, 2011, 01:54:24 PM
Too young.  :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on February 05, 2011, 02:09:07 AM
Lena Nyman (I Am Curious Yellow) has passed away. She was 66.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Nyman
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 05, 2011, 06:11:52 PM
http://blogs.indiewire.com/kohn/archives/tura_santana_rip._1935_-_2011/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d4dcfa2f6b726dd%2C0#

Tura Satana, RIP. 1935 - 2011.

Just a day after my interview with "Dark Stars Rising" author Shade Rupe comes news that "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" star Tura Satana passed away last night in Reno. Since Rupe listed Satana as one of his favorite interviews form the book, I asked him to share some thoughts, which he graciously supplied. You can find his reminiscence below.

Tura Satana, born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi, July 10, 1935, in Hokkaido, Japan, grew up in an Italian, Jewish, Polish neighborhood on the west side of Chicago, IL after her family were released from the Manzanar relocation camp for Japanese-Americans after the war. Asians didn't mix well in the neighborhood and Tura found herself constantly fighting with the African-American girls on her way to and from school, skills that would serve her throughout her life. At age nine an a half Tura was brutalized and raped by five boys from the neighborhood. She then formed a girl gang with her Italian, Jewish, and Polish girlfriends called the Angels. After her parents placed her with an abusive uncle, Tura walked away to start her own life, becoming a cigarette girl at the Moulin Rouge on Hollywood Boulevard.

By age 15 she was a burlesque dancer with a fake ID. She was discovered by Turk Prujan who hired Tura for his Trocadero nightclub, also on Sunset. She also earned money modeling, becoming a favorite of famed actor Harold Lloyd, with results printed in Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3-D. During her tour in New Orleans, Tura performed down the street from Lili St. Cyr before working for Harold Minsky, who was married to Lily's sister. While performing in Chicago at the Follies Theater, Elvis Presley became infatuated and the two started an affair resulting in a marriage proposal. She declined, but kept the ring.

While working the Follies Theater in Los Angeles, a Warner Brothers scout approached Tura and she earned her Guild card on Hawaiian Eye. Subsequent television roles including The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., and Burke's Law. While working at the Pink Pussycat in West Hollywood, Billy Wilder and his wife came in one night and enraptured with Tura's performance realized they had finally found the girl to play Suzette Wong in the Shirley Maclaine-starring Irma La Douce. Tura's performance earned her additional roles as the nightclub dancer in Dean Martin's Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? and the job of Carol Burnett's choreographer for the film.

Tura earned her most visible role while performing in Irma La Douce. She got a call from her agent to come read for Russ Meyeer. She didn't have time to change so she showed up in the wedding dress she was wearing for Irma La Douce. Russ handed her the script for "Leather Girls," the original title of Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill! and asked how she would play her. Tura replied, "I'd make her kind of feminine, but also a bitch on wheels." After her cold reading Russ told her, "You are definitely Varla."

Ted V. Mikels gave Tura two more classic roles in Astro-Zombies, and Charlie's Angels precursor The Doll Squad, where she starred alongside Francine York and Michael Ansara.

Deciding to spend her time raising her two daughters, Tura left show biz and returned to her nursing career which she first studied while in high school, and continued to go to nursing school while dancing. One nigh, a druggie who had been turned in to the police by one of the doctors came looking for him and shot Tura twice but only hit her once, in the stomach. In 1981 she was hit by a driver without a license, heading at her at 60 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone. She spent two years in the hospital. They told her she would never walk again but she told the doctor, "Not only will I walk again, doc, but I'm going to do everything else I used to do." She made that promise shy of her martial arts moves.

When I interviewed her, I asked her if she had any words to live by. "One of the things that I always said, and it was one of my father's favorite sayings, 'Always be good to the people on the way up, because you're going to meet them on the way down.' I have always lived by that philosophy.
   
"The one thing you've got to remember is that you just never accept defeat. Remember to never let life get you down, because there is always something new to learn tomorrow. Life is to be lived, and lived well."

Tura Satana passed away February 4, 2011, in Reno, NV.

A press release from her manager will be released in a few days.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on February 06, 2011, 12:34:51 PM
Gary Moore, dead at 58.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Moore
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: quigliest on February 15, 2011, 09:47:25 AM
RIP Inspector Kemp

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wearysloth.com%2FGallery%2FActorsM%2F11140-21781.jpg&hash=cbadb1e9f992d1fd06e35b1ead15f25393102735)

http://news-briefs.ew.com/2011/02/15/kenneth-mars-dies/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on February 17, 2011, 01:20:18 AM
uncle leo..

'Seinfeld' actor Len Lesser dies at 88

(AP) – 5 hours ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Len Lesser, the veteran character actor best known for his scene-stealing role as Uncle Leo on "Seinfeld," has died. He was 88.

Lesser's family said in a statement that he died Wednesday in Burbank, Calif., from cancer-related pneumonia.

Lesser's lengthy list of television credits included parts on "Get Smart," "That Girl," "The Munsters," "The Monkees," "The Rockford Files," "thirtysomething," "ER," and "Everybody Loves Raymond," which featured Lesser in a recurring role as the arm-shaking Garvin. His film credits included "Outlaw Josey Wales," "Kelly's Heroes," "Birdman of Alcatraz" and "Death Hunt." He most recently appeared on the TV drama "Castle."

He is survived by his daughter, Michele; son, David; daughter-in-law, Julie; and grandchildren, Jonathan, Kayla, and Mayah.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on February 28, 2011, 01:18:48 PM
Director Gary Winick passed away this weekend because of a brain tumor. He was one of the nicest guys I've ever met in the office. It's a safe bet that many xixaxers aren't fans of the work that he's most known (read "paid") for, but he was really passionate about independent cinema and highly encouraging to young filmmakers. he was also really relaxed and just all around nice.

From an AP article:
Gary Winick, who rose to fame directing mainstream films like Letters to Juliet and 13 Going on 30, but is more well-known for his independent films, has died. He was 49."He was suffering from brain cancer for quite some time, and it ultimately metastasized throughout his body," his manager at Anonymous Content, Rosalie Swedlin, tells The Hollywood Reporter.

"What's remarkable is that after his first surgery, he was able to direct Letters to Juliet. It was a battle that we thought he had won, and ultimately they just didn't get it all," Swedlin added.

In 1999, Winick founded InDigEnt, which went on to produce nineteen indepedent films over the next 10 years, including Winick's Tadpole, which he sold to Miramax for $6 million at the 2002 Sundance film Festival.

Filmmaker Matt Dentler first announced the news on Twitter Sunday: Gary Winick died today. Too late to make the Oscars tribute, but way too early. He leaves behind a legacy of supporting indie film and NYC." Swedlin says a memorial service is still being planned, and people will be asked to donate to charity. The funeral will be private.

"He was very special to me," she adds. "He was a dear friend as well as a longtime client. Gary was an incredibly important figure in the indie movement. He will be missed."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on February 28, 2011, 09:29:01 PM
Sad news indeed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 28, 2011, 10:44:23 PM
Quote from: matt35mm on February 28, 2011, 09:29:01 PM
Sad news indeed.

Agreed.  He was 49, way too young to go.

Matt35mm and I saw the trailer for Letters to Juliet this weekend before watching The Ghost Writer  :shock:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 01, 2011, 05:51:38 AM
jane russell too..

she was someone.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 01, 2011, 10:45:05 AM
Who's next? M Night Shyamalan?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 01, 2011, 11:08:11 AM
Quote from: Christian on March 01, 2011, 10:45:05 AM
Who's next? M Night Shyamalan?

He's been dead the whole time.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 01, 2011, 11:27:08 AM
 :yabbse-thumbup:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on March 01, 2011, 12:40:08 PM
lol.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 08, 2011, 11:31:50 AM
So sad.  I was going to see him this weekend in Dallas too.

http://punchlinemagazine.com/blog/2011/03/comedian-mike-destefano-dies

Comedian Mike DeStefano dies
7 Mar, 2011  | by Dylan P. Gadino breaking news, stand-up

Mike DeStefano, well respected for his brutally honest approach to stand-up comedy, passed away last night after suffering a heart attack.

DeStefano, who gained some mainstream success last year due to his final five stature in the most recent season of Last Comic Standing, was set to perform his one-man show A Cherry Tree in The Bronx on Wednesday at the Barrow Street Theater in New York City. He had just finished a run of sold-out shows, as he performed a similar show under the title Drugs, Disease and Death: A Comedy at the Producer's Club Theater in New York.

The news of his death was confirmed to us by a friend of DeStefano's famiy. DeStefano's one-man show producer and longtime supporter Cringe Humor also Tweeted what seemed like a confirmation when their feed simply went live with the word "devastated."

DeStefano, who was HIV positive, had overcome severe drug addiction and the death of his wife; a lot of his material, especially his new show, centered around these things.

We interviewed Mike a few months ago in Los Angeles during his run on Last Comic Standing. You get a great sense of who Mike was. Check it out. Our thoughts are with Mike's family.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Champion Souza on March 08, 2011, 11:33:20 PM
Too bad.  His life is a pretty crazy story.  Which he told Marc Maron on his WTF podcast. (http://wtfpod.libsyn.com/webpage/episode-130-mike-de-stefano)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on March 09, 2011, 08:34:55 AM
awww man, he was hilarious!!! There must be a Last Comic Standing curse.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 09, 2011, 10:42:04 AM
Former Alice In Chains bassist Mike Starr dies aged 44

Starr was found dead in a house in Salt Lake City, Utah yesterday afternoon March 8. He was found by police after someone had telephoned the force to notify them of the death.

The official cause of his death is unconfirmed so far.

According to TMZ.com, Starr's father has spoken of his son's death, calling it "a terrible shock and tragedy".

Starr had struggled with drug addiction throughout his life, even appearing on US reality show Celebrity Rehab last year to help combat his heroin addiction.

He left Alice In Chains in 1993 after contributing to their 1992 album 'Dirt', and took no part in their subsequent reunion. He was believed to be putting together a new band in Utah just before he died.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on March 09, 2011, 10:57:03 AM
that's another awwww man. Awwww, maaannn!!!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 16, 2011, 05:44:32 AM
Rapper Nate Dogg dies aged 41

His death was confirmed late last night (March 15) in his home town of Long Beach, California by the Press-Telegram. The cause of death is not yet confirmed.

Dogg, real name Nathaniel D Hale, had suffered two strokes previously – one in 2007 and another in 2008.

The rapper made his debut on Dr. Dre's 1992 debut solo album 'The Chronic' and went on to sign with Death Row Records. He also collaborated with Eminem, Ludacris, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Warren G.

He released three studio albums of his own, most recently his 2004 self-titled effort.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on March 16, 2011, 06:04:25 AM
He looked like a criminal. More than they usually do.

Not black people I mean gangster rap people.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 16, 2011, 06:45:54 AM
Quote from: Pas on March 16, 2011, 06:04:25 AM
He looked like a criminal. More than they usually do.

Not black people I mean gangster rap people.

Gangster people like this?

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.westseattlefunblog.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F11%2Fvanilla-ice.jpeg&hash=3bc0e8cd4b8f633c013301d1aa65f4fdd0018414)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on March 16, 2011, 10:09:26 AM
OH NO! is all I can say to this, it was a pretty good song he did the chorus on with Mos Def and Pharoah Monche, I don't mean to spoil his legacy or anything but the dude always featured on songs, it seemed like he never did anything of his own, got a good hook voice.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on March 16, 2011, 10:19:12 AM
not spoiling anything because he was quite renown for being the go-to guy for hooks.

i think he carved out a good niche for himself, way better than warren G or some of the other ppl whose songs he appeared on.. i mean you could always count on nate dogg doing his thing and getting the hell out unscathed and with smooooooth vocals intact.

pretty young tho.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on March 16, 2011, 10:20:45 AM
When celebs/musicians start talking about Nate it is going to piss me off. Did they support 213 (the group/album that was made up of Snoop/Warren G/Nate)? Did they use their $/influence to visit Nate in the hospital or to help him in any way? Warren G is the only person I have heard talk about Nate being sick and ask for prayers. I hope others have and it just hasn't been publicized.

This also kills hope of not hearing Auto-Tune on every hook. Detox is looking potentially worse and worse...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Tryskadekafobia on March 17, 2011, 03:12:52 PM
Michael Gough, Alfred the butler in Batman, dies aged 94
Source: The Playlist

Very sad news today with the announcement that Michael Gough, the actor perhaps best known for playing Alfred, Bruce Wayne's loyal butler in the two Tim Burton and two Joel Schumacher Batman movies, has passed away at the age of 94. He's survived by his fourth wife, Henrietta.

The actor was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1916, he then returned to England for his childhood, becoming an actor in 1936. Ten years of stage work followed, before making his screen debut in the melodrama "Blanche Fury." Consistent film and TV work followed, including one of the murderer in Laurence Olivier's adaptation of "Richard III," and the classic Powell & Pressburger WWII drama "Ill Met By Moonlight."

He became something of a staple of classic British horror, appearing as Arthur Holmwood in Hammer's seminal "Dracula," opposite Christopher Lee as the Count, as Lord Ambrose in the same studio's version of "The Phantom of the Opera," and in other genre pictures like "Dr. Terror's House of Horror" and "Horrors of the Black Museum."

Gough continued to work solidly, in theatre (winning a Tony for "Bedroom Farce" in 1979), in high-class pictures like Ken Russell's "Women in Love," Joseph Losey's "The Go-Between" and "Out of Africa" and on TV, racking up memorable appearances on "Doctor Who" and "The Avengers." One of our personal favorite roles was as the captured father in the Zucker Brothers' permanently unsung comedy "Top Secret!"

But it was probably his horror work was ensured his late, worldwide fame. Through Tim Burton—a notable fan of British horror—he was cast as Alfred in 1989's "Batman," and the actor would go on to reprise the role in "Batman Returns," "Batman Forever" and "Batman & Robin," remaining reliably excellent even as the films around him dipped in quality. As successfully as Michael Caine reinvented the role in Christopher Nolan's films, Gough perhaps remains the iconic representation of Alfred.

The films gave Gough a new lease of life with filmmakers—he cropped up in Martin Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence," and gave a wonderful performance as Feers in 1999's "The Cherry Orchard," opposite Alan Bates and Charlotte Rampling.  His last on-screen performance was again with Burton, nodding to his horror background with a lovely cameo in "Sleepy Hollow," and, although he was ill for the last few years of his life, worked again with Burton twice more, lending his voice to both "Corpse Bride" and last year's "Alice in Wonderland."

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 23, 2011, 08:30:22 AM
Elizabeth Taylor dead at 79

(CNN) --Elizabeth Taylor, the legendary actress famed for her beauty, her jet-set lifestyle, her charitable endeavors and her many marriages, has died, her publicist told CNN Wednesday. She was 79. Taylor died "peacefully today in Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles," said a statement from her publicist. She was hospitalized six weeks ago with congestive heart failure, "a condition with which she had struggled for many years. Though she had recently suffered a number of complications, her condition had stabilized and it was hoped that she would be able to return home. Sadly, this was not to be." Though a two-time Oscar winner --for "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966) --Taylor was more celebrated for simply being Elizabeth Taylor: sexy, glamorous, tempestuous, fragile, always trailing courtiers, media and fans. She wasn't above playing to that image --she had a fragrance called "White Diamonds" --or mocking it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 30, 2011, 01:51:35 AM
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-farley-granger-20110330,0,5937382.story

Farley Granger dies at 85; handsome leading man best known for roles in Hitchcock films
By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
March 30, 2011

Farley Granger, a handsome young leading man during Hollywood's post-World War II era who was best known for his starring roles in the Alfred Hitchcock suspense thrillers "Strangers on a Train" and "Rope," has died. He was 85.

Granger died of natural causes Sunday at his home in Manhattan, said a spokeswoman for the New York City medical examiner's office.

In a career that began as a teenager when he was discovered in a local play by a casting director for producer Samuel Goldwyn, Granger made his film debut as a Russian youth in the 1943 film "The North Star."

He went on to star in movies such as Nicholas Ray's 1949 noir masterpiece "They Live by Night," Anthony Mann's 1950 crime drama "Side Street" and Luchino Visconti's 1954 historical epic "Senso."

"Slim and handsome, he possessed a sensitivity that could suggest a dark side to his characters as well as their vulnerability," film reviewer Kevin Thomas, then a Times staff writer, wrote in 2003.

In the 1948 film "Rope" with James Stewart, Granger and John Dall play two young friends who commit a murder and hide the body in their apartment. Hitchcock famously shot the film in uninterrupted 10-minute takes.

In Hitchcock's 1951 classic "Strangers on a Train," Granger plays a tennis champion whose chance meeting with a suave psychopath on a train later threatens to destroy not only his career but his life.

"He played sensitive, romantic and sometimes doomed heroes," Thomas said Tuesday, noting that Granger "had a natural elegance and grace."

"He was very popular back in the day; he was sort of a heartthrob. The studios' publicity machines were still going full force, and he was all over the movie magazines in the late '40s and early '50s."

Granger recounted his days as a leading man in his 2007 memoir "Include Me Out: My Life From Goldwyn to Broadway," which included the revelation that he was bisexual. He wrote the book with Robert Calhoun, his partner since the early 1960s.

In the book, Granger candidly discussed his romances, flings and affairs with men and women, including actresses Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck and Shelley Winters, as well as composer Leonard Bernstein and playwright Arthur Laurents (who wrote the screenplay for "Rope").

"I had never hidden anything, and nobody asked me any questions," Granger told the Associated Press in 2007. "My only outing came eight or 10 years ago when I was an old man. Arthur Laurents gave an interview in which he outed me publicly."

The son of a successful car dealership owner, Granger was born in San Jose on July 1, 1925. After the 1929 stock market crash, the newly poor family moved to Los Angeles, where Granger was discovered at 17 and signed a $100-a-week contract with the Goldwyn studio.

After appearing in his second film, the 1944 World War II drama "The Purple Heart," Granger enlisted in the Navy and spent most of his wartime service in Hawaii.

Several years after resuming his film career, Granger became unhappy with some of the "junk" films he was required to appear in on loan from Goldwyn, who would suspend him without pay for refusing roles.

In 1953, Granger bought out his contract with Goldwyn and left Hollywood to study acting and try his hand at stage work in New York.

"It cost me every penny I had," he wrote in his book, but "I was following my heart and doing what I had to do."

In addition to starring in movies such as "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" and "The Naked Street," Granger spent most of the 1950s appearing frequently on live TV anthology series such as "Playhouse 90" and "The United States Steel Hour."

He later made occasional guest appearances on TV series such as "Matt Helm" and "The Love Boat" and appeared on soap operas including "The Edge of Night" and "One Life to Live."

Despite a number of Broadway credits, tours with the National Repertory Theatre and a 1986 Obie Award for his performance in the off-Broadway play "Talley & Son," Granger told the New York Times in 2007 that his years on stage never measured up to his hopes.

Looking back on his career in a 2007 interview with the Star-Ledger of New Jersey, Granger said: "It was just luck. And stubbornness. I wasn't going to listen to anyone saying you can't do this, you can't do that. I didn't care about that. I was just going to go my own way. I was just determined to live my own life."

Calhoun, Granger's longtime partner, who was an executive producer on "As the World Turns" and "Guiding Light," died in 2008.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on April 09, 2011, 10:32:54 AM
RIP Sidney Lumet, he was 86.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on April 09, 2011, 10:48:31 AM
Damn, he had one helluva carreer, and he beat Sydney Pollack! not that its a race...

I'm going to watch all his movies now
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on April 09, 2011, 10:59:57 AM
Quote from: Fernando on April 09, 2011, 10:32:54 AM
RIP Sidney Lumet, he was 86.
I've just begun to read Making Movies, and even though I am not well versed ("viewed"?) in his work, I have immense respect for the thought, care, and attention he displays for the craft in his writing. 12 Angry Men is wonderful, and Dog Day Afternoon was one of the first 70s Hollywood films I remember seeing--and who could ever forget Network?

I'm not sad to hear of his passing, just grateful that he was here long enough to leave us with indelible classics. I think I'll catch up on his work this weekend. :salute:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on April 09, 2011, 11:05:33 AM
Lumet was a pro. In the world of filmmakers and directors, he was more of a director. Rarely ever did he have a hand in crafting the scripts for his films, but his ability to understand scripts and discern what style was appropriate is amazing. Old Hollywood filmmakers are commended for being able to go from genre to genre, but they never had to make the stylistic decisions that Lumet had to. They also never had the studio insecurity Lumet had. He's the post-old studio version of the classical director since he had to make the most out of a career by going from studio to studio and relying on an unstable marketplace to direct enough films that his schedule looked almost regular. In an interview once, he said he had to just take projects sometimes to keep working. It's the story of almost every director these days, but Lumet managed a longer list of great movies with impeccable directing than almost anyone else. For the workman director, no one topped him in America.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: samsong on April 09, 2011, 11:20:25 AM
personally the great work horse american director is john ford, but to each his own.

sidney lumet's q&a after a screening of serpico is one of very few pleasant q&as ive attended, and not for my normal reason of enjoying facetious answers from the likes of david lynch and apichatpong weerasethakul in response to inane "what did this/that mean" questions.  he spoke with such fervor and very memorably talked shit about auteurism in cinema.  not that i agree but he made a compelling, cranky old man argument that i found endearing.  "un film de, what the fuck is that?"   

guess i should see 12 angry men now...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on April 09, 2011, 11:30:03 AM
yes, you should.  He really did go out with a bang doing 'Before the Devil Knows your dead' last, which I might argue is one of the best films of the past decade.  I wasn't sure if he did anything after that but the 80's is some age to still be directing in. How many have done it besides him and Altman? I also had no idea he did 'The Wiz' too, but in between that and 'the Devil' he did some really like, obscure stuff that's probably all pretty good. Any of it you guys can recommend?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on April 09, 2011, 11:41:00 AM
Quote from: samsong on April 09, 2011, 11:20:25 AM
personally the great work horse american director is john ford, but to each his own.

Well, Ford fell under the studio system and stuck to one genre. While he gave that genre its visual history to always be a reference to, I find him incomparable to Lumet. When I was lauding Lumet as a workman director, I was talking about the history after the studio system. In that sense, Lumet has had gone to considerable length to be a workman director in a unstable system. The accomplishment is standout for me compared to his peers. Mike Nichols is someone I think along the same lines in some ways, but he doesn't have the same number of great films and on some films, I think he was hired gun in very technical sense of the word. There is a Lumet grade of quality work with everything he does.

Reelist, if you haven't seen The Verdict, I'd watch it. Don't know what you have or haven't seen.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on May 01, 2011, 10:17:03 PM
This guy
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.september11news.com%2FOsamsBinLaden2Lrg.jpg&hash=645d5c2f91a818f94189e0265c132b2b8d72d504)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on May 02, 2011, 02:17:16 AM
Not Serpico!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on May 02, 2011, 03:21:47 AM
wow, i really did find out about this first on xixax. Nice.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on May 02, 2011, 03:54:07 AM
Wish they could've arrested him. An execution is much more romantic than a mere assassination.

So the dude who shot him is now a millionaire! Congrats!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pas on May 02, 2011, 07:03:25 PM
Wow nobody gives a shit about this it seems.

I guess everyone is fine with the US going around houses and killing people and whatnot. Nobody is wondering why gasing the shit out of the room he was in and capturing him alive for trial wasn't tried? I sure am.

This is all so cheap. The rejoicers are faking it. If someone slaughtered my whole family and then 10 years later he was shot in the face and dumped in the ocean, I would be seriously pissed off.

The whole point of the thing was to capture him, put him in a courtroom, judge him guilty of the murder of X thousand people and sentence him to death. Or better yet lock him in a cement box for 100 000 years. Now he's just another martyr for the jihadist, just another statistic.

I guess the whole point is that under no circumstance the US wanted to let Ossama Bin Laden talk in a courtroom. That says a lot about what he would have to say...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on May 02, 2011, 07:55:29 PM
ehh it's better that he's just dead. I would've liked to see him in handcuffs or something, at least that would prove it was true, but you think his boys are gonna let that happen? Naaahhh, you shoot for the kill.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: classical gas on May 02, 2011, 08:31:37 PM
I see what you're saying Pas, but can you imagine the tension, from all sides, surrounding that trial?  I doubt it would have been pretty.  So, I'm not saying that I disagree, but it could be for the best.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on May 02, 2011, 08:48:02 PM
Reports suggest special forces tried to take Bin Laden alive, but they were receiving fire so they returned the fire back. A woman was killed. She may or may have been used as a human shield by Bin Laden. Some reports indicate she was. Either way, I don't think Bin Laden was going quietly into the night. Also, congratulate the intelligence community for developing a thorough case before proceeding. You can argue civil liberties in this matter, but it's a minor operation by modern standards. The better civil liberty cause to take up is the use of drone airplanes in Pakistan and Mexico. I find little to argue with here.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Mr. Merrill Lehrl on May 03, 2011, 02:17:52 AM
Former Playboy pinup and B-movie actress Yvette Vickers died at the age of 82. But it wasn't until a year later—last Wednesday—that her mummified body was found in her Beverly Hills home.

Neighbor Susan Savage found the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman star lying on the floor of an upstairs room, after pushing open a barricaded front gate, "scaling a hillside", climbing through a broken window and pushing through stacks of "clothes, junk mail and letters" to reach her, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Although Vickers generally kept to herself in the neighborhood, Savage decided to check on her after seeing cobwebs and old letters in her mailbox.

"The letters seemed untouched and were starting to yellow," Savage said. "I just had a bad feeling."

Vickers' body, which was lying on the floor that entire time, was so decomposed that it was unrecognizable.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Mr. Merrill Lehrl on May 11, 2011, 08:52:30 PM
+ A Guardian article on this:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/11/film-industry-usa

Quote

The concerned neighbour suspected something amiss. She came to check on the old lady and saw the mailbox covered with cobwebs. The only letters in it were yellowing, untouched bills. Forcing open the barricaded front gate and peering through a broken window, she saw lights illuminating a formerly beautiful interior now in total disrepair, filthy clothes, junk mail and boxes strewn everywhere.

Once inside, the only sound she heard was the low hum of a space heater still running. Evidently, the utility company never turned off the power. In the bedroom, she noticed a dead cordless phone on the floor ... before she made the grisly discovery of a mummified, unrecognizable corpse. She knew instinctively it was the old lady.

The police said the woman, in her eighties, may have been dead for months. Lonely old women who die alone are a tragically common occurrence, not frontpage news. But this woman, Yvette Vickers, living a stone's throw from Hollywood, had a backstory unlike most others.

An acting major at UCLA, she sought Hollywood success like so many other beautiful young girls. In her early twenties, she was lucky when she caught the eye of the great director Billy Wilder. He gave her a brief cameo with William Holden in the 1950 classic, Sunset Boulevard. Ironically, Sunset Boulevard stars Gloria Swanson as an actress who becomes a star but is discarded by Hollywood when she loses her youth and beauty. She winds up living in an old house as a recluse.

With looks that Madison Avenue coveted, Yvette soon found success as a national model for White Rain shampoo. She could have morphed into the 1950s all-American darling of men in grey flannel suits. Instead, Yvette entered a parallel universe as her career provided the public a glimpse of the alternative 1950s, the dark side of the Eisenhower years of conformity, family entertainment and wholesome women.

Her first serious role was during the McCarthy era in the early television series, I Led Three Lives, the story of an FBI undercover agent who ferrets out Communists. Yvette played a lovely Communist co-ed, luring unsuspecting college boys on campus with her feminine wiles into the subversive trap of godless Communism.

Though beautiful, and with a fetching figure, Yvette was a middling actress. Still, she gained B-movie queen cult status in the low-budget horror flick, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958). She played "the other woman" to the title character (her co-star is the woman in the iconic poster). Yvette ultimately became the object of the 50 Foot Women's revenge. In the followup film, Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), she had an illicit affair and was then killed by leeches. Countless teenagers at American drive-ins watched her seduction of a married man followed by the retribution of errant women fifties' movies demanded.

In his book, On Writing, no less than Stephen King cites the influence Yvette Vickers had at that point in shaping his literary persona:

   "When I lay in bed at night under my eave, listening to the wind in the trees or the rats in the attic, it was not Debbie Reynolds as Tammy or Sandra Dee as gidget that I dreamed of, but Yvette Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leaches ... never mind sweet, never mind uplifting ... at 13 I wanted monsters that ate whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in black bras who looked like trailer trash."

Her B-movie queen status was further enhanced when Hugh Hefner selected her as Playboy's July 1959 "playmate". Back then, the fledgling magazine represented a challenge to middle-class mores. She featured in Playboy's "beatnik issue", and the shoot was done by future alternative filmmaker Russ Meyer. Her languorous pose on a couch, surrounded by jazz records, was risqué back then, though tame by today's standards. Yvette's "Playboy profile" featured her love of coffeehouses and the bohemian lifestyle – the beautiful rebel, shunning conformity.

Her final major film role was a brief scene in the 1963 western, Hud, with Paul Newman and Melvyn Douglas. She played – what else? – a married woman having an affair with Newman. When his father, the elderly Douglas, dies at the end of the movie, Newman says: "This world's so fulla crap, a man's gonna get into it sooner or later whether he's careful or not." Prophetically true for Yvette, as roles became scarce and she was replaced by younger vixens. She became reclusive and gradually receded from public memory, until her eerie death. If Stephen King is aware of Yvette Vickers's passing, he has said nothing publicly.

The Playboy readers and B-movie devotees who once admired her are now old or gone themselves. Even Hollywood greats like Gloria Swanson, Billy Wilder, Melvyn Douglas and William Holden are names almost forgotten today.

Hollywood can be cruelest to those it once favoured, who dare outlive their welcome (take heed, Lindsay Lohan). Even by Tinsel Town standards, Yvette Vickers's punishment seems especially vindictive – a mailbox full of cobwebs, a phone that never rang and, ultimately, a macabre denouement, alone among the detritus of a life once so full of promise.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 11, 2011, 09:31:51 PM
Dolores Fuller dies at 88; actress dated director Ed Wood
Source: Los Angeles Times

Dolores Fuller, the onetime actress-girlfriend of cross-dressing schlock movie director Ed Wood who co-starred with Wood in his low-budget 1950s cult classic "Glen or Glenda," has died. She was 88. Fuller, whose show business career included writing the lyrics to a dozen Elvis Presley movie songs, died Monday at her home in Las Vegas after a long illness, said her stepdaughter, Susan Chamberlin. As the former girlfriend and two-time leading lady for the legendary filmmaker who came to be known as the world's worst movie director, Fuller became something of a cult figure herself in her later years. "Ed always said he'd make me a star," Fuller told the Kansas City Star in 1994. "I just didn't realize it would take 42 years." At the time, Fuller was caught up in the flurry of publicity surrounding the release of director Tim Burton's biopic "Ed Wood," starring Johnny Depp as the eccentric D-movie director and Sarah Jessica Parker as Fuller. "Not in my wildest nightmares did I ever think I'd see the day when Eddie's movies would be popular," said Fuller, who was in Kansas City to appear at an Ed Wood Film Festival. She was a bit movie player, a model on TV's "Queen for a Day" and Dinah Shore's stand-in on the star's musical TV show when she responded to a casting call and met Wood in late 1952. "When I got to the casting call and first laid eyes on the young Edward, I just thought he was extremely handsome, and his personality was bubbly and fun," Fuller recalled in a 1994 interview with Tom Weaver for Fangoria magazine. "Then when I found out he was also a director and writer as well as a producer and actor, I was very impressed. ... I knew immediately that he liked me, too." The divorced Fuller soon moved in with Wood, who cast her in "Glen or Glenda," the 1953 film in which she played the fiancee of Wood's secret cross-dresser who has a passion for angora sweaters.

Fuller said in the Fangoria interview that she "didn't know Eddie was a transvestite when we first got together —even the first year, I didn't know." Her first clue, she said, "was when he was writing one evening and we were having a glass of wine together, and he said he'd like to borrow my white angora sweater. "I said, 'Why do you want to borrow it?' and he said, 'Well, it helps me write, I feel so much more comfortable. I hate men's hard clothes, I like soft, cuddly things. It makes my creative juices flow!' Well, we were all alone and I saw no harm in it. ... That was my first inkling that maybe he had a fetish. But I didn't realize it went any further." When she saw the final version of "Glen or Glenda," with Wood in a wig and women's clothing, she said, "I wanted to crawl under the seat!" Fuller, who described herself as the "breadwinner" while she and Wood lived together, went on to star in his 1954 crime thriller "Jail Bait." She also had a small part in his 1955 horror film "Bride of the Monster." Wood had written that movie for her to play the female lead, but then gave it to another actress. That, combined with his drinking, led Fuller to split up with him in 1955, according to the Fangoria article. She moved to New York, where she studied with Stella Adler at the Actors Studio. "I decided I needed lessons after seeing Ed's films," she told the Kansas City Star. A friendship with producer Hal Wallis led to her co-write (with composer Ben Weisman) "Rock-a-Hula Baby" for Presley's 1961 movie "Blue Hawaii." She went on to co-write other songs for Presley movies such as "Kid Galahad," "It Happened at the World's Fair," "Fun in Acapulco" and "Spinout" —as well as co-writing "Someone to Tell it To," which was recorded by Nat King Cole, and "Losers Weepers," which was recorded by Peggy Lee. Fuller also founded a record company, launched Johnny Rivers' recording career and served as a talent manager. She was born March 10, 1923, in South Bend, Ind., and moved to California when she was 10. Her family was staying in a motel in El Monte when she had her first brush with Hollywood, as a background extra in Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," which was shooting at the motel. Fuller, who began modeling at 16, chronicled her life in her 2009 autobiography, "A Fuller Life: Hollywood, Ed Wood and Me." She is survived by her husband, film historian Philip Chamberlin; her son, Don; three grandchildren and numerous stepchildren and stepgrandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on May 20, 2011, 01:00:33 PM
http://www.tmz.com/2011/05/20/randy-savage-car-accident-macho-man-dead-dies-died-killed-wwe-wrestler-florida/

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fll-media.tmz.com%2F2011%2F05%2F20%2F0519-macho-man-ex-getty.jpg&hash=63df7bf832ec3f2262d1aa2632a8b54632d867db)

MZ spoke with Randy's brother, Lanny Poffo, who tells us the wrestling legend suffered a heart attack while he was behind the wheel around 9:25 AM ... and lost control of his vehicle.

Earlier this month, Savage celebrated his 1-year anniversary with his new wife Lynn.

Savage was 58.

Macho Man began wrestling in the WWF in 1985 and became a superstar with his trademark catchphrase "Ooooooh Yeaahhhhh." Savage was so popular, he became the spokesperson for Slim Jim in the mid '90s ... and became virtually synonymous with the brand.

UPDATE: Florida Highway Patrol tells TMZ ... Savage was driving his 2009 Jeep Wrangler when he veered across a concrete median ... through oncoming traffic ... and "collided head-on with a tree."

Savage was transported to Largo Medical center, where he died from his injuries.

Savage's wife was a passenger in the vehicle during the collision -- but survived with "minor injuries." She was transported to a different local hospital where she was treated.

According to officials, Randy and Lynn were both wearing their seatbelts at the time of the accident.

Cops say alcohol was NOT a factor.

An investigation into the accident is underway.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on May 20, 2011, 06:50:39 PM
snapping one off for you, m'friend... oh yeyuh... oh... yeyuh-h-h-h  :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on May 21, 2011, 09:42:22 AM
Macho Man was highly underrated as a wrestler. He had some of the best matches in 1980s WWF history. Today the Hulk Hogan myth sucks and his old matches are awful to watch, but Macho Man gets better with age. I'm glad he didn't die in an apartment unconscious like other wrestlers do. It looked like he was going to have a longer lifer than others. Just too bad a "medical condition" contributed to his accident because I'm now waiting for autopsies to confirm it was steroid related.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on May 21, 2011, 03:05:44 PM
Summer Slam 1992, Macho Man vs. The Ultimate Warrior.....man i used to absolutely love that shit.

RIP Macho Man

after watching THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMDZihE-KrA), i realized that Macho Man was the white Dolemite.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on May 21, 2011, 08:35:09 PM
Quote from: walrus, the on May 20, 2011, 01:00:33 PM
MZ spoke with Randy's brother, Lanny Poffo, who tells us the wrestling legend suffered a heart attack while he was behind the wheel around 9:25 AM ... and lost control of his vehicle.

Earlier this month, Savage celebrated his 1-year anniversary with his new wife Lynn.

UPDATE: Florida Highway Patrol tells TMZ ... Savage was driving his 2009 Jeep Wrangler when he veered across a concrete median ... through oncoming traffic ... and "collided head-on with a tree."

Savage's wife was a passenger in the vehicle during the collision -- but survived with "minor injuries." She was transported to a different local hospital where she was treated.

According to officials, Randy and Lynn were both wearing their seatbelts at the time of the accident.

Cops say alcohol was NOT a factor.

An investigation into the accident is underway.


Hmm...only married one year to a wealthy(?) celebrity?  :ponder:

Then again, I guess it would be pretty dumb to try to murder the person who is in control of the vehicle you are presently in...unless the poison had a delayed effect and she could not back out of it or ask to drive without being suspicious....
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on May 22, 2011, 03:40:10 PM
what IN THEE FACK are you going on about with this one, big's????? i cant ever tell if you're serious or Von Triering to the tardest extreme. i picture that drunkard in your avatar going on about such loony notions.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on May 22, 2011, 03:47:17 PM
he's just trying to live up to his name, dude.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on May 22, 2011, 04:16:52 PM
Quote from: Pozer on May 22, 2011, 03:40:10 PM
what IN THEE FACK are you going on about with this one, big's????? i cant ever tell if you're serious or Von Triering to the tardest extreme. i picture that drunkard in your avatar going on about such loony notions.

HAHA. I always do this, too. When he asks one of his questions, I look at Torgo and imagine him asking it. It always cracks me up.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on May 27, 2011, 10:55:52 PM
Jeff Conaway Dies at Age 60

Jeff Conaway, the long-troubled actor from Grease and TV's Taxi who waged a public battle with cocaine, painkillers and alcohol, died Friday at age 60. The Celebrity Rehab alum had been in a medically induced coma in critical condition after he was found unconscious earlier this month. "Our beloved client Jeff Conaway passed away at 10:30 a.m.," his manager, Phil Brock, Tweeted. "We loved him as a person, respected him as an artist and he will be always remembered."Dr. Drew Pinsky, who had seen Conaway during the recent hospitalization, said the actor had suffered pneumonia and the effects of too much prescription medication.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on May 27, 2011, 11:17:04 PM
Gil Scott Heron died.  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 03, 2011, 04:51:56 PM
Jack Kevorkian and James Arness.  Separately, as far I know.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on June 14, 2011, 10:14:00 PM
Good night, sweet prince.

R.I.P. - Seth Putnam (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/13/seth-putnam-dies-aged-43)

Seth Putnam, founding member of grindcore band Anal Cunt, has reportedly died after suffering a heart attack. He was 43.

Grim Kim Kelly, who handled the publicity for the band's last album, posted a message confirming the singer's death: "Seth Putnam, one of the most infamous musicians that extreme metal has ever seen, the grindcore GG Allin, has passed away due to a heart attack."

Putnam had been a prominent force in various extreme metal groups, such as Executioner and Satan's Warriors, before forming Anal Cunt in Massachusetts in 1988. The band had a strong anti-conformity ethos, not just in their offensive choice of name but in songs such as Kill Women, Recycling Is Gay and Eazy E Got AIDS from Freddie Mercury.

In 2004, Putnam was hospitalised and went into a coma after reportedly overdosing on sleeping tablets.

An interviewer, citing the band's song You're in a Coma, asked him how the experience felt. "Actually, being in a coma was just as fuckin' stupid as I wrote it was," he said. "We did a show on 27 August in Albany and we played You're in a Coma for the first time ever live. I don't want people to think I'm a hypocrite. I don't want people to think that I can't make fun of myself."

In the message confirming Putnam's death, Kelly said: "I want to remind everyone that no matter how outrageous and controversial his musical career has been, Seth was still a human being with friends and family that loved him. I'm hoping that the internet will remember that.

This is a very sad and trying time for those that knew him, and the last thing they need to see is an outpouring of messageboard hate. The man lived and died by his own rules; if anything, respect him for that."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on June 19, 2011, 06:08:44 AM
E Street Band sax player Clarence Clemons dies aged 69

Clarence Clemons, saxophonist with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, has died aged 69.

The musician had been in hospital since suffering a stroke at his Florida home last weekend (June 11-12) and passed away yesterday (18), a spokesman for the band confirmed to BBC News.

Springsteen led the tributes to his "great friend" in a statement on his website, BruceSpringsteen.net, where he spoke of his "overwhelming" loss.

"Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage," the singer said.

Known as the 'Big Man', Clemons had been a key part in defining the sound of the E Street Band, contributing the iconic sax parts on hits like 'Born To Run' and 'Thunder Road'.

More recently he played on Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' album, performing on tracks 'Hair' and 'The Edge Of Glory'. He had a starring role in the video for the latter track, which was unveiled earlier this week - scroll down and click below to see it.

Clemons also performed as part of Gaga's band on the recent American Idol series finale.

He underwent two knee replacements and back surgery last year, and as a result described his last tour as "pure hell" due to the pain.

His last performance with the E Street Band was December. He was scheduled to perform the US National Anthem at the NBA Finals Game 2 last week, but had to pull out to due to a hand injury.

Virginia-born Clemons began playing saxophone at the age of nine after receiving one for Christmas.

"I wanted an electric train for Christmas, but he [his dad] got me a saxophone. I flipped out," he told the Associated Press news agency during a 1989 interview.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on June 19, 2011, 02:18:53 PM
keep on clappin, big man (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zv8k2qNwWQ&feature=related)

...but he's better on sax (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5xhgWqiJiE&feature=related)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: theyarelegion on June 19, 2011, 06:59:37 PM
Quote from: squints on May 27, 2011, 11:17:04 PM
Gil Scott Heron died.  :yabbse-sad:

I saw him at a festival last summer and he put on the best show I've ever seen...legend.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on June 20, 2011, 10:04:49 AM
Ryan Dunn, one of the stars of MTV's "Jackass," has died in a car crash. He was 34.

NBC Philadelphia reports that Dunn and another passenger died in a 3 a.m crash at Route 322 and New Street in West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania.

The news of the death was confirmed by April Margera, mother of "Jackass" star Bam, in an interview with a local radio show. TMZ also confirmed with Margera.

TMZ reported that Dunn posted to Twitter a photo of himself drinking with friends just hours before the crash; it has since been removed.

Dunn was perhaps best known for his parts in crashing golf carts and placing a toy car, in a condom, up his rectum in the original "Jackass" film.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on June 20, 2011, 10:07:25 AM
fuck man, enough with the recklessness already..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 20, 2011, 11:29:54 AM
What a life you've led when your obituary ends with "best know for sticking a toy car up his ass."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on June 21, 2011, 11:22:08 PM
Re: Ryan Dunn - http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/21/us-rogerebert-idUSTRE75K71H20110621

I don't know what I'm more disturbed by.  That, or what's happened to Ebert.  Wiki paints a quite bleak picture of his prognosis, too.  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on June 23, 2011, 11:43:01 AM
I certainly hope I'm missing something in this story.  Ryan Dunn, a member of a group of people who hurt themselves for fun and profit gets drunk at a bar, drives his Porsche 130 miles per hour in a 55 mile an hour zone.  Should we mourn his death simultaneously being grateful that no one else besides them in the car were hurt?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on June 23, 2011, 12:11:25 PM
Quote from: walrus, the on June 23, 2011, 11:43:01 AM
Should we mourn his death simultaneously being grateful that no one else besides them in the car were hurt?

YES!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on June 23, 2011, 06:43:50 PM
This is good:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2011/06/22/defending-roger-ebert.aspx
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: cronopio 2 on June 23, 2011, 07:02:00 PM
allow me to summarize that article, and this entire situation:

"don't drink and drive."

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on June 23, 2011, 09:16:34 PM
how ridiculous is his friend Bam sobbing out like that to news peoples? what a media whore. and did he ring them up to meet him there? it's not like the media just hangs around the scene long after the incident.

whatever. so who's next to croak?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on June 23, 2011, 09:50:21 PM
Quote from: Pozer on June 23, 2011, 09:16:34 PM
how ridiculous is his friend Bam sobbing out like that to news peoples? what a media whore. and did he ring them up to meet him there? it's not like the media just hangs around the scene long after the incident.

haha yeah Bam is pretty much the worst.

I remember a long time ago while he was first becoming popular, a sex tape that he made with some girl got out and when they asked him about it he said he made it because he wanted to prove to people that he wasn't gay! haha, this blew my mind. So some people are calling you gay so the way you combat this is by releasing a video on the internet of you having sex with a girl? Yeah, I guess it puts the question to rest, but is it really worth it?

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on June 23, 2011, 09:57:02 PM
I think people were mad at ebert (for the record I am not, and I really like what Slate said about America's entitlement to Weiner's tweets) not because he was wrong; but because they knew he was right. I think it's painfully obvious in this case and every case that lives lost to drunk driving were wasted and regrettable, with emphasis on the "painful".

I had a cop friend in Florida who wrote a letter to the son of a cop-killer (who was either killed or arrested for his crime), telling the kid how awful his father was for shooting an innocent cop. It was sensitively written, for his dark, anguished intent anyways; but it was still a bitter letter that was probably inappropriate and distasteful.

Ebert did, in my opinion, something similarly distasteful, but much more slight. He published something with no consideration for the loved ones of the dead, though he was well within his rights to do so. I just can't imagine anyone actually needing to be reminded that drunk driving is wrong when virtually everyone would arrive at the same conclusion, gleaning from the facts; Ebert taught no lesson.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on June 24, 2011, 11:21:46 AM
Writing personal injury blogs is part of my day job, so I play this balancing at every day.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ on June 24, 2011, 01:00:31 PM
Have any of your entries made Bam Margera cry?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on June 24, 2011, 01:16:38 PM
If there's a camera nearby, probably.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on June 24, 2011, 01:29:49 PM
 :cry:

Peter Falk, TV's rumpled Columbo, has died

LOS ANGELES – Peter Falk, the stage and movie actor who became identified as the squinty, rumpled detective in "Columbo," which spanned 30 years in primetime television and established one of the most iconic characters in police work, has died. He was 83.

Falk died Thursday in his Beverly Hills home, according to a statement released Friday by family friend Larry Larson.

In a court document filed in December 2008, Falk's daughter Catherine Falk said he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

"Columbo" began its history in 1971 as part of the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie series, appearing every third week. The show became by far the most popular of the three mysteries, the others being "McCloud" and "McMillan and Wife."

Falk was reportedly paid $250,000 a movie and could have made much more if he had accepted an offer to convert "Columbo" into a weekly series. He declined, reasoning that carrying a weekly detective series would be too great a burden.

Columbo — he never had a first name — presented a contrast to other TV detectives. "He looks like a flood victim," Falk once said. "You feel sorry for him. He appears to be seeing nothing, but he's seeing everything. Underneath his dishevelment, a good mind is at work."

NBC canceled the three series in 1977. In 1989 ABC offered "Columbo" in a two-hour format usually appearing once or twice a season. The movies continued into the 21st century. "Columbo" appeared in 26 foreign countries and was a particular favorite in France and Iran.

Columbo's trademark was an ancient raincoat Falk had once bought for himself. After 25 years on television, the coat became so tattered it had to be replaced.

Peter Michael Falk was born Sept. 16, 1927, in New York City and grew up in Ossining, N.Y., where his parents ran a clothing store. At 3 he had one eye removed because of cancer. "When something like that happens early," he said in a 1963 Associated Press interview, "you learn to live with it. It became the joke of the neighborhood. If the umpire ruled me out on a bad call, I'd take the fake eye out and hand it to him."

When Falk was starting as an actor in New York, an agent told him, "Of course, you won't be able to work in movies or TV because of your eye." Falk would later win two Oscar nominations ("Murder, Inc.," 1960; "Pocketful of Miracles," 1961) and collect five Emmys.

After serving as a cook in the merchant marine and receiving a master's degree in public administration from Syracuse University, he worked as an efficiency expert for the budget bureau of the state of Connecticut. He also acted in amateur theater and was encouraged to become a professional by actress-teacher Eva La Gallienne.

An appearance in "The Iceman Cometh" off-Broadway led to other classical parts, notably as Joseph Stalin in "The Passion of Joseph D." In 1971 Falk scored a hit in Neil Simon's "The Prisoner of Second Avenue."

Falk made his film debut in 1958 with "Wind Across the Everglades" and established himself as a talented character actor with his performance as the vicious killer Abe Reles in "Murder, Inc." Among his other movies: "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," "Robin and the Seven Hoods," "The Great Race," "Luv," "Castle Keep," "The Cheap Detective," "The Brinks Job," "The In-Laws," "The Princess Bride."

Falk also appeared in a number of art house favorites, including the semi-improvisational films "Husbands" and "A Woman Under the Influence," directed by his friend John Cassavetes, and Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire," in which he played himself. Falk became prominent in television movies, beginning with his first Emmy for "The Price of Tomatoes" in 1961. His four other Emmys were for "Columbo."

He was married to pianist Alyce Mayo in 1960; they had two daughters, Jackie and Catherine, and divorced in 1976. The following year he married actress Shera Danese. They filed for divorce twice and reconciled each time.

When not working, Falk spent time in the garage of his Beverly Hills home. He had converted it into a studio where he created charcoal drawings. He took up art in New York when he was in the Simon play and one day happened into the Art Students League.

He recalled: "I opened a door and there she was, a nude model, shoulders back, a light from above, buck-ass naked. The female body is awesome. Believe me, I signed up right away."

Falk is survived by his wife Shera and his two daughters.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on June 24, 2011, 01:33:34 PM
This is sad.

I just watched A Woman Under the Influence like three days ago for the fifth time. Such a great movie.

Think I should watch Wings of Desire now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 24, 2011, 03:15:16 PM
Damn it, I had Peter O'Toole in my death pool. Oh well. Let it ride!

As far as Peter Falk goes, he will be missed. After Princess Bride, he's the only guy who could drink out of a World's Greatest Grandpa mug and nobody could challenge his right to the title.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on June 24, 2011, 03:30:30 PM
; (
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 25, 2011, 11:34:07 AM
Quote from: polkablues on June 24, 2011, 03:15:16 PM
Damn it, I had Peter O'Toole in my death pool. Oh well. Let it ride!

ha! last year i had lindsay lohan, still think she probably should be on suicide watch.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on June 25, 2011, 08:27:31 PM
Quote from: Fernando on June 25, 2011, 11:34:07 AM
Quote from: polkablues on June 24, 2011, 03:15:16 PM
Damn it, I had Peter O'Toole in my death pool. Oh well. Let it ride!

ha! last year i had lindsay lohan, still think she probably should be on suicide watch.

Now that's a reality show!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on July 23, 2011, 11:45:46 AM
Amy Winehouse found dead, aged 27

Singer Amy Winehouse, 27, has been found dead at her home, the Press Association has reported.

Last month, the north Londoner pulled out of her European tour after she was jeered at her comeback gig in Serbia for appearing too drunk to perform.

For 90 minutes, she mumbled through parts of songs and at times left the stage - leaving her band to fill in.

The troubled singer had a long battle with drink and drugs which overshadowed her musical career in recent years.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed that a 27-year-old woman had died in Camden and that the cause of death was as yet unexplained.

London Ambulance Service had been called to the flat at 1554 BST and sent two ambulances but the woman died, it said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on July 23, 2011, 12:34:42 PM
Sad for anyone to die so young, but I don't think anybody in the world can say they're all that surprised.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on July 23, 2011, 03:43:38 PM
Quote from: Reelist on July 23, 2011, 02:11:13 PM
another 27 year old musician taken from drug abuse

Yup.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 23, 2011, 04:20:15 PM
Quote from: matt35mm on July 23, 2011, 03:43:38 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club

I'm 27 but I'm not a musician. Which means I can continue doing lots of drugs.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 25, 2011, 01:21:33 AM
http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/david-ngoombujarra-1967-2011

David Ngoombujarra (1967-2011)
By Patrick Frater
Thu, 21 July 2011, 16:26 PM (HKT)
Obituary News

Australian film star David Ngoombujarra was found dead on Sunday, age 44. One of Australia's best-known Aborigine actors Ngoombujarra appeared in major films including Rabbit Proof Fence, Ned Kelly, Crocodile Dundee and Australia.

Born in Meekatharra, West Australia, he was raised by a white family in Perth as David Bernard Starr.

As an actor he got his big break in 1993 film Blackfellas, for which he won his first Australian Film Institute Award. Apparently he felt the role was close to his own experience as an urban Aboriginal familiar with petty crime and living on the edge. The manner of his death appears to fit continue that sad tradition; he was found unconscious in a park in Fremantle, near Perth. Police are conducting toxicology tests, but say his death was not suspicious.

Ngoombujarra won his other AFI awards for supporting roles in 2002 film Black And White and the 2007 TV series The Circuit.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on July 25, 2011, 02:02:17 AM
I immediately thought that that guy was this (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0347858/) guy, whose filmography is a bit better.

Still sad that someone in the world died i guess?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on July 25, 2011, 09:42:23 AM
Yeah i think Ravi thought it was David Gulpilil, cos that guy is not really anyone.

I mean, I'm sure he's someone to his family, but that's about it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on July 25, 2011, 12:12:49 PM
More importantly, I had no idea the domain suffix ".asia" existed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 25, 2011, 12:48:53 PM
He was in a bunch of stuff (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0628954/). And no, I didn't think he was David Gulipilil.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 25, 2011, 06:52:39 PM
Steely Character Actor G.D. Spradlin Dies at 90

Former oilman appeared as authority figures in "Godfather: Part II," "One on One" and "Apocalypse Now."

G.D. Spradlin, a character actor who specialized in playing authority figures in such films as The Godfather: Part II and One on One, died July 24 at his ranch in San Luis Obispo, Calif. He was 90.

He also appeared as Maj. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger in MacArthur (1977); as an unofficial Coach Tom Landry in North Dallas Forty (1979); as the general who assigns Martin Sheen to the search mission in Apocalypse Now (1979); as a reverend in Ed Wood (1994); and as Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee in Dick (1999).

In Godfather: Part II (1974), Spradlin portrayed a corrupt senator from Nevada who is blackmailed by the Corleone family after he wakes up and finds himself drenched in a dead prostitute's blood.

In One on One (1977), Spradlin plays tough-as-nails college basketball coach Moreland Smith who gives small-town high school star Robby Benson a hard time.

A native of Oklahoma and a recipient of a Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Spradlin also appeared in such TV shows as Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.; Mannix; It Takes a Thief; Dragnet; and Adam 12. He directed two films, The Only Way Home and Outside In, both released in 1972.

Survivors include his wife, Frances; his daughters Tamara and Wendy; and five grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory may be made to Hospice Partners of the Central Coast.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on July 27, 2011, 05:07:52 PM
polly platt (http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-polly-platt-multitalented-producer-and-writer,59601/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on July 27, 2011, 06:06:23 PM
Whoa, I'm going to a screening of Paper Moon tonight and The Last Picture Show tomorrow. They'll probably talk about this.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 03, 2011, 06:01:58 PM
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/bubba-smith-nfl-star-police-academy-actor-found-dead-home.html

Hightower is dead, from Police Academy.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on August 03, 2011, 09:38:02 PM
"RIP Hightower. I hope they do the right thing and rip the front seat out of the hearse to make your casket fit comfortably inside."
- @MarylandMudflap (http://twitter.com/#!/MarylandMudflap)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on August 12, 2011, 02:56:02 AM
Warrant singer Jani Lane found dead

Jani Lane, the former singer with hair metal band Warrant, has been found dead. He was 47.

Lane's body was found yesterday (August 11) in a Comfort Inn motel room in the Woodland Hills area of California, near Los Angeles. No cause of death has yet been established.

He fronted the band until 2004 then appeared on the US reality show Celebrity Fit Club, rejoining the band in 2008 but leaving again only months later. Warrant's best known hit with Lane on board was 1990's 'Cherry Pie' which shot to notoriety, not least because of its saucy video.

Since leaving Warrant, Lane had been arrested twice for drink driving and had also spent time in jail, reports Billboard.

Lane was born in Ohio on February 1, 1964 as John Kennedy Oswald. He changed his name in 1983 before moving to Los Angeles to start a band.

He was married three times and is survived by a wife and four children.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 09, 2011, 03:23:28 PM
http://www.indiewire.com/article/2011/09/07/george_kuchar_filmmaker_and_provocateur_who_inspired_john_waters_dead_at_69

George Kuchar, Filmmaker and Provocateur Who Inspired John Waters, Dead at 69
By Bradford Nordeen (September 7, 2011)

indieWIRE has just learned of the passing late last night of George Kuchar, whose body of film and video work inspired many filmmakers, many of them his students and not the least of which is John Waters.  He is survived by his twin brother, Mike, with whom he resided in San Francisco.

Bradford Nordeen, the curator of New York's Dirty Looks queer screening series (which recently screened three of the Kuchars' films on the brothers' 69th birthday) has kindly shared his words about George to indieWIRE.

George Kuchar was a man of many careers. He began making 8mm films at the age of twelve, collaborations with his twin brother, Mike, on a camera gifted from their parents. These early works are sensational remakes of the movies that played in their local Bronx theaters. Even in their adolescence, the twins showed an alarming understanding of cinematic conventions, with special respect paid to woman's pictures (George's fave) and swords and sandals epics (Mike's). Fusing toilet humor with wrenching pathos, these early films were profoundly camp and made a huge impact on a young John Waters. "The Kuchar borthers," Waters would later explain in the introduction to George and Mike's illustrated memoirs, "Reflections in a Cinematic Cesspool," "gave me the self confidence to believe in my own tawdry vision." Throughout his early career, George worked by day in commercial arts, an industry he described as "that Midtown Manhattan world of angst and ulcers."

By the mid-sixties, however, the Kuchars were discovered by the burgeoning Underground Film movement and heralded by Jonas Mekas in his Village Voice column and in the magazine Film Culture. In the latter publication, George's writings appeared alongside prominent figures like Andrew Sarris, Jack Smith and Gregory Markopoulos. After accepting an invitation to teach a summer course at San Francisco Art Institute in the early 1970s, George met Curt McDowell, a student-then-lover, who campaigned to secure a permanent faculty position for George, where he would teach for the remainder of his life. The duo collaborated on many films, including George's "The Devil's Cleavage" and McDowell's experimental/horror/porno, "Thundercrack!," where George also stars - opposite his character's love interest, a gorilla.

George changed with the times, influencing a whole new generation when he embraced consumer grade video. He humorously described himself as "a traitor to his medium [film]," but George galvanized the video form with his signature gusto, yielding dozens of video diaries (most renowned were "The Weather Diaries," in which George documented seasonal – as well as emotional – storms in Oklahoma). Also a skilled visual artist, George worked alongside leading graphic artists like Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith, exhibiting internationally. Recent venues included [ 2nd floor projects ] in San Francisco, Mulherin + Pollard in New York and ADA Gallery in Virginia.

George inspired four decades of SFAI graduates, who played cast and crew to a yearly creature feature course, making movies like "The Fury of Frau Frankenstein" and "Jewel of Jeopardy." George was cherished, by his SFAI students and international audiences alike, for his wild humor, exuberant spirit and intuitive production ethic; if something didn't work in a "picture" (as George referred to all his works), he merely changed the story to suit the circumstance. This approach led to his magnum opus, "Hold Me While I'm Naked," 1966 an early solo venture which became a film about isolation and filmmaking when regular actress Donna Kerness abandoned the project. The result was named one of the 100 best films of the 20th Century by the Village Voice. Truly one of the most visionary artists of his time, George's impact on six decades of film, visual art and popular culture is immeasurable.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on September 09, 2011, 04:28:10 PM
He was great. I forgot which of his videos I saw, but it was so funny! I'd never seen anything like it, I'm gonna have to find more of those..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on September 11, 2011, 09:45:09 PM
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/spartacus-star-andy-whitfield-dies-233937

Former 'Spartacus' Star Andy Whitfield Dies of Lymphoma
6:49 PM PDT 9/11/2011 by THR staff

Andy Whitfield, the former star of Starz's drama series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, died Sunday of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in Sydney, his manager Sam Maydew told the Associated Press. He was 39.

Starz president and CEO Chris Albrecht said he and his network colleagues are "deeply saddened" over the news.

"We were fortunate to have worked with Andy in Spartacus and came to know that the man who played a champion onscreen was also a champion in his own life," Albrecht said. " Andy was an inspiration to all of us as he faced this very personal battle with courage, strength and grace. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family during this difficult time. He will live on in the hearts of his family, friends and fans."

Whitfield's wife Vashti in a statement called her husband a "beautiful young warrior" who died on a "sunny Sydney morning" in the "arms of his loving wife."

Whitfield -- who was born in Wales and lived in Australia -- was a virtual unknown when he was cast as the title hero in Spartacus, a hit original series that made waves with its graphic violence and sexuality.

Whitfield was preparing for the second season when he was diagnosed 18 months ago.

In January, the network announced that another Australian actor, Liam McIntyre, would take over the role.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on September 11, 2011, 09:46:59 PM
he was a cool dude:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKogQf9ooR8
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 11, 2011, 10:32:58 PM
Pete, please tell me you were involved with that video.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on September 12, 2011, 06:25:26 AM
sorry dude.
that guy that looks like a shorter much cooler version of me is currently a huge youtube star. they did this.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 12, 2011, 11:37:56 AM
I knew that wasn't you but I was still hoping you were behind the scenes. It has the feel of some of your videos and even a similar setting.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on September 12, 2011, 11:56:57 AM
that's really flattering. I wish I knew how to please 5 million people every week.
but anyways - this video was my only exposure of andy whitfield, and he seemed to be a very cool guy who contacted those videogame filmmaker kids just because he liked what he saw on youtube, and spent a day with them. that's a cool dude.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on September 14, 2011, 11:15:23 PM
kubrick's best friend

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Flatimesblogs.latimes.com%2F.a%2F6a00d8341c630a53ef01539191f5d4970b-pi&hash=0c7f09a4584f8c97ab6044daf7bf1dc9c109e34f)
John Calley, longtime studio chief and producer, dies at 81
September 13, 2011 |  8:54 am

John Calley, a well-known Hollywood figure who led three studios, including most recently Sony Pictures, and produced films such as "Catch-22," "The Remains of the Day" and "The Da Vinci Code," died Tuesday at age 81.

Calley had been ill for several years and his death was confirmed by Steve Elzer, a spokesman for Sony. The precise cause of death was not immediately available.

Born in Jersey City, N.J., in 1930, Calley began his career in the NBC mail room at age 21. He rose through the entertainment industry over the next several decades before becoming associated with the emergence of new voices in Hollywood during the 1960s and early 1970s. While at production company Filmways he produced "Catch-22," an adaptation of the satirical World War II novel written by Joseph Heller. It was directed by Mike Nichols, who became a longtime friend of Calley's.

In 1969 Calley began an 11-year tenure at Warner Bros., where he served as production chief, president and vice chairman and worked on movies such as "The Exorcist," "Dirty Harry," "A Clockwork Orange," "All the President's Men" and "Superman."

He shocked Hollywood in 1980 by quitting his job, beginning a nearly decade-long absence from the business. In 1989 he returned to produce films with Nichols.

"As a friend [John] was always there and always funny," Nichols said in a statement released by Sony. "As a studio head he was unfailingly supportive and didn't try to do the filmmaker's job. When he believed in someone he trusted and supported him and when very rarely he had a suggestion it was usually a life saver. In fact  that's what he was: a life saver."

In 1993 Calley became president and chief operating officer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, working there for three years before shifting to Sony Pictures. He was named president of the Culver City studio in 1996 and promoted to chairman and chief executive officer in 1998. In keeping with the times, he worked on big-budget blockbusters such as "Men in Black" and "Spider-Man" while running Sony before retiring in 2003.

He produced several films after leaving the studio, including the global hit "The Da Vinci Code" and its sequel, "Angels and Demons."

Calley was the recipient of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences' Irving G. Thalberg Award in 2009, an honorary Oscar given to producers. He was unable to accept in person due to illness.

Calley is survived by daughter Sabrina Calley and stepchildren Emily Zinnerman, David Zinnerman and Will Firth. Memorial arrangements are being planned and will be held at the Sony Pictures lot.


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/09/john-calley-longtime-studio-chief-and-producer-dies-at-81.html
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: O. on September 14, 2011, 11:23:05 PM
Not sure if he's the studio exec I remember seeing from Kubrick's biographical documentary, but if so, that's a damn shame.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on September 16, 2011, 03:56:33 PM
Character actress Frances Bay dies at 92. (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/09/character-actress-frances-bay-dies-at-92.html) She was in Twin Peaks, Seinfeld, Happy Gilmore, Happy Days and an episode of The X-Files.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on October 05, 2011, 06:42:12 PM
Steve Jobs. pretty sure.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Derek on October 05, 2011, 09:53:24 PM
Charles Napier
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Myxo on October 06, 2011, 01:55:54 AM
Quote from: Pozer on October 05, 2011, 06:42:12 PM
Steve Jobs. pretty sure.

Fucking hell man, 56 is way too young to die. At least he lived a life worth living.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on October 06, 2011, 02:24:11 AM
also, civil rights fighter Fred Shuttlesworth.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 09, 2011, 07:21:33 AM
Former Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh has died at the age of 40.

Welsh passed away "unexpectedly" yesterday (October 8 ) according to a posting by his family on his Twitter account Twitter.com/mikeywelsh71.

The statement added: We are deeply saddened to announce that Mikey Welsh passed away unexpectedly. He will forever be remembered as an amazing father, artist, and friend. May he rest in peace.

The band also paid their respects on their own Twitter account Twitter.com/Weezer, writing: "We are shocked and deeply saddened to hear the awful news, our friend and fellow Weezer rocker @mikeywelsh71 has passed away. We love you Mikey."

Current bassist Scott Shriner later added his own tribute to Welsh. "Really bummed about Mikey," he wrote on his Twitter page Twitter.com/sgs711. "My heart goes out to his family and friends. Such a talent... he made a special mark on the world with his art."

Drummer Patrick Wilson also wrote on his own Twitter account Twitter.com/patrickwilson: "Rest in peace Mikey Welsh, you deserve it."

The cause of Welsh's death is yet to be determined.
He joined the band in 2000 after original bassist Matt Sharp left in 1998. Welsh played with Weezer until August 2001 and appeared on hits from their self-titled album that year, also known as 'The Green Album', including 'Island In The Sun' and 'Hashpipe'.

In the same year, the Boston-based musician suffered a mental breakdown and later attempted suicide before he quit the band.

In his later years he dedicated himself to painting and he worked on large-scale figures and abstracts.

In the weeks leading up to his passing, Welsh posted a series of cryptic tweets writing on September 26: "Dreamt I died in Chicago next weekend (heart attack in my sleep). Need to write my will today."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on October 09, 2011, 02:04:44 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi55.tinypic.com%2F316xlx0.jpg&hash=5992f983c4e1672ed1801896f846a8e8f2f0b766)

( Krug from Last House on the Left )
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on October 20, 2011, 07:56:02 AM
Gaddafi

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.dailymail.co.uk%2Fi%2Fpix%2F2009%2F09%2F23%2Farticle-1215509-068C720C000005DC-316_468x286.jpg&hash=34643b06d6998acfc9ee9aba30d36b7a3e9a3deb)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on November 05, 2011, 07:40:37 AM
Andy Rooney died yesterday. I thought he was already dead  :ponder:  Oh well, bye Andy Rooney!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on November 05, 2011, 10:56:22 AM
What a odd threesome.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on November 05, 2011, 03:18:38 PM
more like hawt threesome
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on November 08, 2011, 05:42:03 PM
http://www.pitchfork.com/news/44578-rip-heavy-d/

R.I.P. Heavy D
Jamaican-born rapper/producer dead at 44
By Carrie Battan, November 8, 2011 4:40 p.m. CT

TMZ is reporting that rapper and producer Heavy D was pronounced dead at a hospital in Los Angeles this afternoon at the age of 44. The Jamaican-born artist led the hip-hop group Heavy D & the Boyz, an act that experienced huge success in the late-1980s and 90s.

Heavy D's final tweet was: "BE INSPIRED!" Below, watch Heavy D & the Boyz' video for "Now That We Found Love" [ft. Aaron Hall], a hit single for the group that appeared on their 1991 album Peaceful Journey, and was originally recorded by the O'Jays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NNEgUPKxk7A
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 28, 2011, 07:52:15 AM
Ken Russell dies aged 84

Ken Russell, the British film director, has died aged 84.

Russell, known for his controversial films such as Women in Love and The Devils, died in hospital on Sunday following a series of strokes, his son Alex Verney-Elliott said.

The director, who began his career in television, was praised today as an "innovative" director, who made a "unique" contribution to British film-making.

Russell had been battling illness for many years but died "peacefully" in his sleep with a smile on his face, friends and family said.

Fellow director Michael Winner said: "He had been terribly, terribly ill for some time.

"I've known Ken since 1968. He was the most innovative director.

"I persuaded Oliver Reed to work with him even though Oliver said 'I'm not a TV star, I'm a movie star'.

"His television was in a field of its own, it was absolutely extraordinary. Then he graduated to movies."

Winner added: "He was also a very nice person. He was very cheerful and very well-meaning.

"He had a very good run even though his style of picture-making became obsolete, but that happened to everyone, Billy Wilder and Hitchcock.

"His contribution to TV and cinema in this country is absolutely unique. He took it into areas it hadn't been before.

"They were riveting movies and TV because this strange mind was at work."

Winner said Russell would be best remembered for The Devils.

"What the censor took out of The Devils was almost as long as the rest of the movie," he said.


Mr Verney-Elliott added: "My father died peacefully. He had had a series of strokes. He died with a smile on his face."

Described as the enfant terrible of British cinema, Russell is regarded as one of the most acclaimed and controversial film directors of his generation.

He was born on July 3, 1927 in Southampton and, at the age of ten, was given a film projector which sparked his love of movies.

He was sent to Pangbourne Nautical College at the age of 15, but found the discipline irksome. Even so, he entered the Merchant Navy as sixth officer on a cargo ship bound for the Pacific.

After the Second World War, his fascination with the sea ended, and his family assumed he would enter the shoe business, a prospect which horrified him.

Russell tried without success to enter the film business, but in his early 20s he turned his attention to ballet and classical music.

For five years he attended dance school and toured with dance troupes, before finally accepting that he was not a good dancer.

Then he turned to fashion photography and started to make some black and white silent films. He took one of these films Amelia to the BBC and as a result he landed a job on the Monitor arts programme.

He continued to make movies and his film on composer Edward Elgar became one of the most popular shows on TV and was largely responsible for the revival of Elgar's music.

Overall, Russell made some 32 films for the Monitor and Omnibus programmes and established himself as one of the finest directors in British television.

He was then given the opportunity of directing outside TV and his film Women in Love was not only a landmark in British cinema but for Russell as well.

The sexually-graphic 1969 adaptation of D H Lawrence's novel earned him an Oscar nomination and international recognition with Glenda Jackson picking up the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the movie.

The late actor Oliver Reed, who wrestled naked with Alan Bates in the film, said that Russell "started to go crazy" when he worked with him on the film.

Reed said: "Before that he was a sane, likeable TV director. Now he's an insane, likeable film director."

The success - and notoriety - of Women in Love enabled Russell to cast aside any inhibitions and to embark on outlandish pseudo-biographical films which helped to earn him the reputation which he craved: that of an unconventional eccentric on the wild side.

In the 1970s his talents blossomed and over the next two decades he was to direct a succession of remarkable films, most of them containing his trademark flamboyance.

These included The Music Lovers, Savage Messiah, Mahler, Lisztomania and Valentino. In 1971 he moved from the X-rated The Devils to The Boy Friend which he turned into a homage to 1930s movie musicals.

In 1975 he turned his attention to The Who's rock opera Tommy, but later returned to small budget, but no less flamboyant fare, including Crimes of Passion, Gothic, Salome's Last Dance and the cult horror-comedy The Lair of the White Worm.

Later, he was to revisit Lawrence for a straightforward adaptation of The Rainbow followed by the gritty, Whore.

The following year he was to direct Richard Dreyfuss in the TV movie Prisoner of Honour. He also tried a music video, making Nikita for Elton John.

Russell was always vulgar and outrageous but seen, too, as a master stylist. He published an autobiography Altered States in 1992 and a broad-ranging collection of film critiques, The Lion Roars two years later.

One of the most unlikely chapters of his career was a stint in the Celebrity Big Brother house in 2007.

He lasted just four days, driven out in the wake of a row about contestants having to wait on Jade Goody and her family.

Russell had earlier started in good spirits, performing Singin' In The Rain as he entered the house. But as he left he spoke about the divisiveness created by being in the house, saying: "I don't want to live in a society riddled with evil and hatred."

In later years his film-making efforts were rather low-budget affairs such as his The Fall Of The Louse Of Usher which was panned by the critics.

Four-times married Russell also took a number of cameo roles in the past decade, appearing in his own films as well as movies such as Brothers Of The Head and Colour Me Kubrick.

In 2006, he and his fourth wife, Elise, lost almost everything when their home in the New Forest burnt down.

Russell was at a doctor's appointment when the fire at the 16th century cottage began, while she was in the bath. As well as his home and belongings, he also lost work on a number of ongoing projects.

Among those paying tribute today was broadcaster and film critic Jonathan Ross, who tweeted: "RIP Ken Russell. A film-maker of rare vision and unique talent. Also, a lovely man to spend time with. Sad day."

Choreographer and former Strictly Come Dancing judge Arlene Phillips, who worked on Ken Russell's The ABC Of British Music, wrote: "A sad goodbye Ken Russell and thank you for the crazy but extraordinary work I did with you."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on November 28, 2011, 09:06:43 AM
He was one of the great ones.

Kubrick used to mention him all the time, even after his fall from grace (maybe because of it).

Cue obligatory phoney sudden interest in him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on November 30, 2011, 10:09:51 PM
Patrice O'neal  :cry:

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1675116/patrice-o-neal-death.jhtml
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on December 01, 2011, 09:04:26 AM
Quote from: 72teeth on November 30, 2011, 10:09:51 PM
Patrice O'neal  :cry:

he was awesome. I mostly listened to him on the Opie and Anthony show. There's a collection of his guest spots here (http://struff.com/oaaudio/PatriceONeal-WorstOf-2006To2011/).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on December 04, 2011, 04:57:22 AM
Brazil football legend Socrates dies at 57

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbcimg.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F57103000%2Fjpg%2F_57103764_socrates.jpg&hash=2cc683ab61dcfcea12673d924d2eb9fa35aaeee2)

Former Brazil captain Socrates has died at the age of 57.

He had been in a critical condition with an intestinal infection since being admitted to intensive care on Friday at a hospital in Sao Paulo.

Socrates, who was widely regarded as one of the greatest ever midfielders, was moved onto a life support machine on Saturday.

He played in two World Cups, won 60 caps for his country between 1979 and 1986 and scored 22 goals.

The former Corinthians player, whose full name was Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Sousa Vieira de Oliveira, was taken to the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo with food poisoning on Friday, according to his wife.

A hospital statement said on Saturday that the former footballer was "in a critical condition due to a septic shock of intestinal origin".

It added he was breathing with a ventilator and using a dialysis machine.

Socrates was taken to hospital twice in August and September this year with bleeding in his digestive tract.

After these incidents he admitted he had problems with alcohol, especially so during his playing career. He is also well known for his smoking habit.

In a recent television interview, Socrates said he had considered alcohol his "companion" but believed its regular use did not affect his performance on the field.

"Alcohol did not affect my career, in part because I never had the physical build to play this game," he said.

"Soccer became my profession only when I was already 24. I was too thin and when I was young I did not have the opportunity to prepare myself physically for the sport."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 15, 2011, 11:02:09 PM
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011
by Juli Weiner 11:45 PM, DECEMBER 15 2011
BY GASPER TRINGALE

Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.

"Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic," Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last 12 months, he produced for this magazine a piece on U.S.-Pakistani relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, a portrait of Joan Didion, an essay on the Private Eye retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a prediction about the future of democracy in Egypt, a meditation on the legacy of progressivism in Wisconsin, and a series of frank, graceful, and exquisitely written essays in which he chronicled the physical and spiritual effects of his disease. At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else—just as he had been for the last four decades.

"My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends," he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: O. on December 15, 2011, 11:46:56 PM
Really, really unfortunate.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: chere mill on December 16, 2011, 12:52:35 AM
i was preparing for this day to come soon. he held on for as long as he could. i remember watching him take part in scholarly debates even when you could tell he was deathly ill. he was a true intellectual and his thoughts on religion and politics will have a lasting impact on me. we just lost one of the best.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on December 16, 2011, 02:12:34 AM
I tended to agree with him on religion and disagree on politics, but no matter what he was talking about, I was always happy to listen. He suffered no fools lightly.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Neil on December 18, 2011, 10:08:49 PM
Kim Jong Il


Dead.

well.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: O. on December 18, 2011, 11:06:27 PM
End of the cease fire?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on December 19, 2011, 01:49:28 PM
Now where's the other Kim Jong Il?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: theyarelegion on December 19, 2011, 09:45:32 PM
the best acting you'll see all year...(I hope) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSWN6Qj98Iw)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on December 20, 2011, 08:56:37 AM
That's so sad, for all the wrong reasons.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Neil on December 20, 2011, 05:32:34 PM
It's always sad when god dies.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on January 02, 2012, 11:58:27 AM
'Star Wars' and 'LOTR' sword master Bob Anderson dies at 89

Bob Anderson, a former Olympic swordsman who staged fights for films including the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings series, has died, British fencing authorities said Monday. He was 89. The British Academy of Fencing said Monday that Anderson died early New Year's Day at an English hospital.

Anderson donned Darth Vader's black helmet and fought light saber battles in two of the three original Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

The villainous character was played by David Prowse and voiced by James Earl Jones, and Anderson's role was not initially publicized.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: chere mill on January 24, 2012, 10:40:38 PM
Theo Angelopoulos dies in accident

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/greek-filmmaker-theo-angelopoulos-dies-in-accident (http://www.hitfix.com/articles/greek-filmmaker-theo-angelopoulos-dies-in-accident)

very sad day. landscape in the mist is one of my favorite films.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on January 28, 2012, 12:09:21 PM
Comedian Todd Lynn dies

After suffering two strokes and a heart attack this morning, comedian Toddy Lynn has died. Lynn, was who a divisive and outspoken comedian, had suffered from pancreatic cancer and was also a diabetic.

"He had been reaching out to a lot of people and was changing for the better," his manager tells Laughspin. "He always knew how some other people felt about him." Although his health wasn't entirely strong the last few years, Lynn had been amping up his comedic output, even developing a strong buzz within the industry at last summer's Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. "He was great," Paul continues. "He was a really smart and warm guy. But a lot of people didn't get to know him." Lynn even had a PhD in Literature.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fjokes.mtvnimages.com%2Fimages%2Fjokes_vertical%2Fvideo%2Fj_ccp%2Fj_ccp_09_0908%2Fj_ccp_09_0908_07_v6.jpg&hash=e8ca87f320eae5aff045b18afdb7ce114987ec99)

Comics are droppin' like flies
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Bethie on January 29, 2012, 11:31:43 PM
theres a joke in there somewhere
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on January 30, 2012, 01:48:15 AM
Quote from: Bethie on January 29, 2012, 11:31:43 PM
theres a joke in there somewhere

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"A dead comedian."
"Curse this enchanted monkey's paw and its cruelly ironic granting of wishes!"
*fart*
[laugh track]
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Figure 8 on February 03, 2012, 07:53:56 PM
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/movies/ben-gazzara-actor-of-stage-and-screen-dies-at-81.html">Ben Gazzara Is Dead at 81</a>
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on February 11, 2012, 07:20:04 PM
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.

Publicist Kristen Foster said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale."

She had the perfect voice and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.

She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.

Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.

"The time that I first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club ... it was such a stunning impact," Davis told "Good Morning America."

"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added.

Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with "Whitney Houston," which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. "Saving All My Love for You" brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. "How Will I Know," ''You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All" also became hit singles.

Another multiplatinum album, "Whitney," came out in 1987 and included hits like "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."

The New York Times wrote that Houston "possesses one of her generation's most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity."

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the "Soul Train Awards" in 1989.

"Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?" she told Katie Couric in 1996. "You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them."

Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop's pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.

But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.

"When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place," she told Rolling Stone in 1993. "You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that's their image. It's part of them, it's not the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy."

It would take several years, however, for the public to see that side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America's sweetheart.

In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with "The Bodyguard." Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success.

It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy's record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the "Bodyguard" soundtrack was named album of the year.

She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with "Waiting to Exhale" and "The Preacher's Wife." Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, "My Love Is Your Love," in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut "It's Not Right But It's Okay."

But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time "The Preacher's Wife" was released, "(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. ... I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. ... I wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself."

In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.

Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns.

She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown's reality show, "Being Bobby Brown," was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared "crack is whack," was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.

Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album "I Look To You." The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum.

Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on "Good Morning America" went awry as Houston's voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining her voice.

A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on February 12, 2012, 01:12:54 AM
Here's the dilemma I'm faced with: while I certainly wished no ill will upon the woman, at the same time I don't care in the least that she died. Yet when I tell people this, they act as though I should care for some reason! So you see, I'm the real victim here.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Neil on February 12, 2012, 02:27:46 AM
It's truly bizarre.  Especially based on the idea that most people will be more distraught over this, than if a member of their community died.  I mean, obviously this is a completely unfounded statement, but the point is, going with what polka said, I wish her family no ill and I am sorry for their loss; I just wish people would quit acting like this is important. And by important I mean necessary to worry about because it conflicts with our everyday lives.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: chere mill on February 12, 2012, 04:09:59 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcxP6vC6zog
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on February 18, 2012, 05:09:05 AM
Degrassi star Neil Hope, a.k.a. 'Wheels,' died four years ago

Article published feb 16, 2012

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Degrassi producers and former cast members have confirmed the death of Neil Hope, who played the character Derek "Wheels" Wheeler on the long-running show, having only learned of his passing in 2007 days ago.

As fans mourned Thursday, Stephanie Cohen, vice-president of marketing and communications for Epitome Pictures Inc., which produces the teen drama, said executive producers Linda Schuyler, who was involved in the original series, and Stephen Stohn were "incredibly saddened" by the news.

"Neil made an important contribution to our lives, to the lives of our television team, who are like a family to us, and indeed to the live of many Canadians and others around the world who were influenced by Neil and the roles he played starting from the early days of The Kids of Degrassi Street," the pair, who were on vacation Thursday, said in a statement.

"His life was not an easy one, but the time he spent with us was a shining example of determination, hard work and hopeful optimism and he is sorely missed."

Former Degrassi stars shared the news among themselves on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, said Dan Woods, who played teacher, and later principal, Mr. Raditch on the show.

Woods said he first met Hope when he was a teenager on the set of Degrassi Junior High.

"He was a quiet guy when we were off set, but full of energy, very bright-eyed," Woods said in a phone interview with the Star from California. "We're all pretty shocked about the news. We're saddened by it. Neil was a great guy and a great light."

Schuyler and Hope worked together over the past 32 years the show has been running, from The Kids of Degrassi Street to Degrassi: The Next Generation, where Hope appeared in three reunion episodes with old cast members Pat Mastroianni and Stefan Brogren, who play Joey Jeremiah and Archibald "Archie" "Snake" Simpson.

But Cohen said Epitome had lost touch with Hope in the past several years since his last appearance in 2003.

On Twitter Thursday, after tweeting a link to the Star's story of Hope's death, Stohn wrote: "We have respected the privacy of the family by not saying anything until now, but our entire team is very emotional about his passing."

On a Facebook page with only three members dedicated to getting Hope to join the social networking site, Tracy Northrup Hope, believed to be the wife of Hope's brother Danny, wrote in January: "It has been confirmed that Neil passed away Nov 25 2007. RIP You will always be in our hearts and always remembered. Now we all can be at peace. We miss you soo much !!!!xoxox"

A website commemorating Hope by web developer and self-proclaimed Degrassi fan Einat Razin, claims to have made it "with permission from Tracy Northrup Hope (Neil's brother Danny wife)."

On social media sites, fans and celebrities expressed shock at the sudden news of Hope's death.

"Neil Hope," "RIP Wheels" and "Zit Remedy" (the fictional band of which Hope's character was a member) were all trending on Twitter in Canada Thursday.

Hope died at age 35, reportedly of natural causes in Hamilton. His death was only made public today.

Hope's character on Degrassi faced challenges related to alcoholism, which mirrored his own life. Hope lost his real-life parents to the disease, while his character, "Wheels," lost his onscreen adoptive parents when they were killed in a drunk-driving accident.

His last appearance on the Degrassi series was in 2003 during a Season 3 episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation.

http://www.toronto.com/article/713932?bn=1
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on February 18, 2012, 02:08:52 PM
lol.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on February 18, 2012, 09:52:13 PM
ROFL ( get it? )



...wait thats not funny
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on February 25, 2012, 12:59:54 PM
can I wager on nelson mandela next, based on some headline that I didn't click on about him being sent to the hospital?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on February 25, 2012, 02:41:59 PM
i say ben stein
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on February 26, 2012, 04:52:15 AM
Erland Josephson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erland_Josephson
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on February 26, 2012, 12:01:22 PM
Damn. I had such a good feeling about Ben Stein.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on February 27, 2012, 12:56:37 AM
 :yabbse-sad: I loved Erland Josephson. I guess he had been suffering pretty bad from Parkinson's, so he gets to rest in peace now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 29, 2012, 06:24:15 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/arts/bruce-surtees-oscar-nominated-cinematographer-dies-at-74.html?_r=3''

Bruce Surtees, Oscar-Nominated Cinematographer, Dies at 74
February 28, 2012
By MARGALIT FOX

Bruce Surtees, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer known as the Prince of Darkness for his skill at summoning sharply etched figures from the inky depths of prisons, nightclubs and other inhospitably lighted places, died on Thursday in Carmel, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was complications of diabetes, his wife, Carol, said.

Known in particular for his long association with Clint Eastwood, Mr. Surtees (pronounced sur-TEEZ) shot more than a dozen films in which Mr. Eastwood starred. Many of these were also directed by Mr. Eastwood, including "Play Misty for Me" (1971), his first feature as a director; "High Plains Drifter" (1973); "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976); and "Sudden Impact" (1983), the fourth Dirty Harry movie.

Mr. Surtees dealt in shadows. Through his nuanced, often minimal use of lighting on the set, he meticulously conjured the stark contrast of lights and darks on the screen that he and his directors often sought.

"He was fearless," Mr. Eastwood said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "He wasn't afraid to give you sketchy lighting if you asked for it. He didn't believe in flat light or just bright, 'Rexall drugstore' lighting, which a lot of times you can get if you get somebody that isn't very imaginative."

Mr. Surtees's earliest work as a cinematographer was for the director Don Siegel, for whom he shot "Dirty Harry" (1971) and "Escape From Alcatraz" (1979), both starring Mr. Eastwood, and "The Shootist" (1976), starring John Wayne.

He had previously been a camera operator whose work included Mr. Siegel's pictures "Coogan's Bluff" (1968) and "Two Mules for Sister Sara" (1970) before he was named the cinematographer on "The Beguiled" (1971), a Civil War drama directed by Mr. Siegel and starring Mr. Eastwood and Geraldine Page.

Mr. Surtees earned an Academy Award nomination for his work on "Lenny" (1974), a biopic about Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman that was shot in black and white at the request of its director, Bob Fosse. In Mr. Surtees's hands, the finished film looked like a living photograph by Weegee. (The Oscar went to Fred Koenekamp and Joseph Biroc for "The Towering Inferno.")

Cinematography was part of Mr. Surtees's genetic endowment. His father, Robert Surtees, was a cinematographer who won Oscars for "King Solomon's Mines" (1950), "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952) and "Ben-Hur" (1959). The younger Mr. Surtees, born in Los Angeles on Aug. 3, 1937, was named Bruce Mohr Powell Surtees in honor of his father's mentor Hal Mohr, also an esteemed cinematographer.

Bruce Surtees studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and began working as a cameraman under his father.

Mr. Surtees's first marriage, to Judy Rucker, as she is now known, ended in divorce. Besides his wife, the former Carol Buby, whom he married in 1979 in Seoul while on location for "Inchon" (1981), directed by Terence Young and starring Laurence Olivier, he is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Suzanne Surtees; a brother, Tom; and a sister, Nancy.

His other films include "Blume in Love" (1973), directed by Paul Mazursky; "Night Moves" (1975), directed by Arthur Penn; "Leadbelly" (1976), directed by Gordon Parks; and "Beverly Hills Cop" (1984), directed by Martin Brest.

Mr. Surtees, who lived in Carmel, was also the cinematographer for "White Dog," Samuel Fuller's controversial film about a dog trained to attack black people. Made in 1982, it was not officially released — on DVD — until 2008 because of the studio's fears that it was inflammatory. (The film, which stars Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield and Burl Ives, is ardently anti-racist.)

In the 1990s and afterward Mr. Surtees shot several television movies, including "Dash and Lilly" (1999), starring Sam Shepard and Judy Davis as Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman, for which he received an Emmy nomination.

Mr. Surtees brought to his work not only an impeccable eye but also something directors found just as valuable: a gift for frugal improvisation.

"He was perfect for me, because we didn't have very big budgets in those days," Mr. Eastwood said on Tuesday, recalling his early directorial outings. "He'd make dollies by towing a blanket across the floor with the cameraman sitting on it."

Mr. Surtees's jury-rigged dollies worked spectacularly well, Mr. Eastwood said, provided the floor was smooth enough.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on February 29, 2012, 06:44:17 PM
and Davy Jones :( ... http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2012/02/appreciation-davy-jones-1945-2012-1.html
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on February 29, 2012, 07:03:49 PM
Quote from: Ravi on February 29, 2012, 06:24:15 PMBruce Surtees, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer known as the Prince of Darkness

I thought Gordon Willis is the Prince of Darkness.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 04, 2012, 07:37:13 AM
'Star Wars' conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie dies

Artist behind Darth Vader and Chewbacca passed away at age of 82

Ralph McQuarrie, the man who brought George Lucas' vision of Star Wars to the big screen, has died at the age of 82. McQuarrie designed some of the film franchise's most iconic characters and is credited with creating the look of Darth Vader, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3P0.

A statement was posted on McQuarrie's official website yesterday (Saturday, March 3], following his death.

It read:

It is with the deepest sadness that we announce the passing of Ralph McQuarrie. His influence on design will be felt forever. There's no doubt in our hearts that centuries from now, amazing spaceships will soar, future cities will rise and someone, somewhere will say 'that looks like something Ralph McQuarrie painted'

Leading the tributes was Star Wars director George Lucas, who said he was saddened by the passing of McQuarrie, calling him a "visionary artist and humble man".

Ralph McQuarrie began his career as a technical illustrator for Boeing and provided animation for CBS News coverage of the Apollo space program.

He was then asked by Lucas to work on designs for Star Wars, before the movie had been given the title, and subsequently worked on The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi. He turned down an offer to work on the prequels.

Outside of the Star Wars franchise, he contributed designs for Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and he won an Oscar for his work on Cocoon.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on March 10, 2012, 12:01:04 PM
French comic artist Jean Giraud aka Moebius (http://boingboing.net/2012/03/10/rip-moebius.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 17, 2012, 04:37:41 PM
Yoda, the ugliest dog in the world, dies at 15 in California

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.theweek.co.uk%2Fsites%2Ftheweek%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Ftheweek_article_main_image%2Fpublic%2FWorlds-ugliest-dog-picture.jpg&hash=3066390805b20968d98c988bb5fc45f9c202d355)

THE world's ugliest dog – a mutt so unattractive that its American owner mistook it for a rat when they first met – has died at the age of 15. Yoda, a Chinese crested and Chihuahua mix, died in her sleep, according to Terry Schumacher.

With her protruding tongue, skinny legs and ratty hair, Yoda was a dead cert to win the World Ugliest Dog contest in California last June. She picked up a $1,000 prize and enjoyed fame and fortune, even featuring in a television makeover show.

But her best years were behind her by the time Ms Schumacher entered her in the annual contest, and when she died at the weekend she weighed only 0.8 kilos.

As Schumacher's local paper the Hanford Sentinel remarked, normally one thinks of something nice to say when man's best friend passes away. But in Yoda's case, it's all right to say "She sure was ugly".

Vicki DeArmon, producer of the World's Ugliest Dog contest, said Yoda will keep her title until a new ugliest dog is crowned in June.

Terry Schumacher told the Sentinel she would miss Yoda's "funny little ways" but is comforted "knowing she will be joining my Mom and Dad who loved her so much. Her memories will live on forever."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on April 18, 2012, 11:22:21 PM
Dick Clark (http://tv.yahoo.com/news/dick-clark-dead-at-82.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on April 26, 2012, 03:57:11 PM
Amos Vogel  (http://www.filmlinc.com/blog/entry/amos-vogel-1921-2012)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on May 04, 2012, 01:07:46 PM
Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch dies aged 47

Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch has passed away at the age of 47, according to online reports today (May 4).

According to US website TMZ, Yauch's death was first reported by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons' website GlobalGrind.com, and has since been verified by people independently connected to the rapper who also say he is dead.

Yauch, who also known as MCA, was diagnosed with cancer of the preaortic gland and lymph node in July 2009 and has been fighting the disease ever since. There is no official word on his cause of death as yet.

Although his bandmates had said that Yauch has responded well to his treatment, he hadn't appeared publically with the band for some time and did not attend the band's induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame last month as he was too unwell.

Yauch co-founded Beastie Boys in 1979 with Mike D, Mix Master Mike, and Ad Roc and contributed to each of their eight studio albums. He is survived by his wife Dechen and his daughter, Tenzin Losel Yauch.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Stefen on May 04, 2012, 01:14:11 PM
No  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on May 04, 2012, 01:39:43 PM
 :yabbse-angry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 08, 2012, 08:27:41 AM
Maurice Sendak Dies at 83-Years Old
The famed children's books author and illustrator suffered a stroke on Friday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Maurice Sendak, the children's book author and illustrator who saw the sometimes-dark side of childhood in books like Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, died early Tuesday. He was 83.

Longtime friend and caretaker Lynn Caponera said she was with him when Sendak died at a hospital in Danbury, Conn. She said he had a stroke on Friday.

Where the Wild Things Are earned Sendak a prestigious Caldecott Medal for the best children's book of 1964 and became a hit movie in 2009. President Bill Clinton awarded Sendak a National Medal of the Arts in 1996 for his vast portfolio of work.

Sendak didn't limit his career to a safe and successful formula of conventional children's books, though it was the pictures he did for wholesome works such as Ruth Krauss' A Hole Is To Dig and Else Holmelund Minarik's Little Bear that launched his career.

Where the Wild Things Are, about a boy named Max who goes on a journey — sometimes a rampage — through his own imagination after he is sent to bed without supper, was quite controversial when it was published, and his quirky and borderline scary illustrations for E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker did not have the sugar coating featured in other versions.

Sendak also created costumes for ballets and staged operas, including the Czech opera Brundibar, which he also put on paper with collaborator Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner in 2003.
He designed the Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker production that later became a movie shown on television, and he served as producer of various animated TV series based on his illustrations, including Seven Little Monsters, George and Martha and Little Bear.

But despite his varied resume, Sendak accepted — and embraced — the label "kiddie-book author."
"I write books as an old man, but in this country you have to be categorized, and I guess a little boy swimming in the nude in a bowl of milk (as in 'In the Night Kitchen') can't be called an adult book," he told The Associated Press in 2003.

"So I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think."
During that 2003 interview, Sendak also said he felt as if he were part of a dying breed of illustrators who approached their work as craftsmen. "I feel like a dinosaur. There are a few of us left. (We) worked so hard in the '50s and '60s but some have died and computers pushed others out."

Sendak, who did his work in a studio at the Ridgefield, Conn., home he moved into in the early 1960s, never embraced high-tech toys. He did, however, have a collection of Mickey Mouse and other Walt Disney toys displayed throughout the house.

When director Spike Jonze made the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak said he urged the director to remember his view that childhood isn't all sweetness and light. And he was happy with the result.

"In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy" Sendak told the AP in 2009. "There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger. And I did not want to reduce Max to the trite image of the good little boy that you find in too many books."

Sendak's own life was clouded by the shadow of the Holocaust. He had said that the events of World War II were the root of his raw and honest artistic style.

Born in 1928 and raised in Brooklyn, Sendak said he remembered the tears shed by his Jewish-Polish immigrant parents as they'd get news of atrocities and the deaths of relatives and friends. "My childhood was about thinking about the kids over there (in Europe). My burden is living for those who didn't," he told the AP.

Sendak, his sister Natalie, and late brother Jack, were the last of the family on his father's side since his other relatives didn't move to the United States before the war. The only family member Sendak really knew on his mother's side was his grandmother.

Sendak didn't go to college and worked a string of odd jobs until he went to work at the famous toy store FAO Schwarz as a window dresser in 1948. But it was his childhood dream to be an illustrator and his break came in 1951 when he was commissioned to do the art for Wonderful Farm.
By 1957 he was writing his own books.

Sendak received the international Hans Christian Andersen medal for illustration in 1970. In 1983 he won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association.

But it was Brundibar, a folk tale about two children who need to earn enough money to buy milk for their sick mother that Sendak completed when he was 75, that he was most proud of. "This is the closest thing to a perfect child I've ever had."

Sendak stayed away from the book-signing bandwagon that many other authors use for publicity; he said he couldn't stand the thought of parents dragging children to wait on line for hours to see a little old man in thick glasses.

"Kids don't know about best sellers," he said. "They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on May 08, 2012, 11:27:12 AM
 :yabbse-angry: :yabbse-angry:


i hope im not setting up a running joke..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on May 09, 2012, 03:01:51 PM
Quote from: 72teeth on May 08, 2012, 11:27:12 AM
:yabbse-angry: :yabbse-angry:


i hope im not setting up a running joke..

Depends on how strongly you feel about Vidal Sassoon.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on May 09, 2012, 05:20:38 PM
 :ponder: :ponder: :ponder:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on June 06, 2012, 11:16:02 AM
Ray Bradbury dies at 91 (http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/06/showbiz/ray-bradbury-obit/index.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pwaybloe on June 06, 2012, 01:46:06 PM
So young...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 12, 2012, 10:52:43 PM
EXCLUSIVE: Henry Hill Dead -- Real Life 'Goodfellas' Mobster Dies at 69

Henry Hill -- the former mobster whose life story became the basis for the movie "Goodfellas" -- died today at the age of 69 ... TMZ has learned. TMZ spoke with Hill's girlfriend Lisa ... who told us Hill passed away in an L.A. hospital Tuesday after a long battle with an undisclosed illness. Lisa tells us, "He had been sick for a long time ... his heart gave out."We're told Hill had focused on mending relationships with estranged family members in recent years ... and Lisa tells us he had made tremendous progress before he died. Hill leaves behind two children. Hill was famously portrayed by Ray Liotta in the 1990 classic "Goodfellas."Hill's exploits in the mob world were legendary -- but he prided himself on reforming later in life ... and became a frequent guest on the Howard Stern show.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on June 17, 2012, 11:33:35 AM
Rodney King Dies at 47

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thewrap.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2FRodneyKingDead.jpg&hash=02e69e645ab01de6ce24edf96860bf8d9529b007)

Rodney King, whose videotaped beating by four LAPD officers sparked the events that led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, has died at 47, police said.

King, who appeared on VH1's "Celebrity Rehab" and "Sober House" in recent years as he battled a crippling addiction to alcohol, was found dead in a swimming pool, TMZ reported. The site said he was found by his fiancee.

King died in Rialto, Calif. Police there were investigating.

Four officers beat King in 1991 after he led them on a drunken high-speed chase. It was captured on camera by George Holliday, in one of the first cases of a private citizen's camcorder capturing what became a major news event. The release of the video sparked widespread outrage over the brutality and led to charges against the four officers.

When three of the officers were acquitted the following April 29 -- and jurors could not reach a decision on the fourth -- the outrage was immediate. It led to days of rioting that claimed 53 lives.

In one of the most heartbreaking moments of the riots, an obviously unnerved King briefly spoke to reporters, making a shaky plea for peace.

"Can we all get along?" he asked. "Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?

Story continues after the video:



In 1993, King testified against the officers in a federal trial in which they were accused of violating his civil rights. Two of them were convicted and two were acquitted.

King also sued the city of Los Angeles and was awarded $3.8 million in damages.

By then, King was in the midst of an ugly battle with alcohol. He said he turned to drinking as he dealt with the trauma of the beating. He crashed his car repeatedly and was accused of hitting his wife with it.

He joined "Celebrity Rehab" in 2008. Footage from the series showed him trying to work, but passing out on the job. But he announced in February 2010 that he had been sober for 11 months.

King most recently returned to the public eye this year, when he issued a statement saying he was "grieving" for Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.

"The horrifying sound of a young black male screaming for his life on a 911 call reminded me of my horrifying scream on a videotape 20 years ago," King said. "At that time, I thought I was going to die. Very, very gratefully, I survived.  Unfortunately, Trayvon Martin did not."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: modage on June 20, 2012, 12:41:59 PM
Later Sarris (http://t.co/cDsvy9VX). cc GT.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: chere mill on June 20, 2012, 01:43:56 PM
very sad news, but hardly unexpected. seems like just yesterday when he left the village voice. he was a strong critical voice - he wrote in depth about film, had his champions (the auteur theory) and foes (pauline kael). i didn't always share his film taste, but i enjoyed his books on the american cinema and film history. all in all, a sad day for film criticism.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on June 26, 2012, 07:14:52 PM
Well, she's not dead yet, but since this thread is called "Who's Next To Croak?," I figure it falls in line to post this:

Writer and Director Nora Ephron Gravely Ill, Friends Say

Source: Good Morning America

The writer and director Nora Ephron is gravely ill in her battle with leukemia, a source close to the family told ABC News.

Ephron, the writer of such iconic films as "When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless in Seattle,"  and "You've Got Mail," is 71 years old. Newspaper columnist Liz Smith told ABC that Ephron's funeral is already planned, and that Ephron is "deathly ill."

Writer Richard Cohen also confirmed to ABC News that Ephron's death is "imminent."

A source close to Ephron confirmed those reports.

Ephron is married to filmmaker Nicholas Pillegi, 79, and is the mother of two children from her previous marriage to journalist Carl Bernstein.

In recent years, Ephron earned acclaim for her novel about aging, "I Feel Bad About My Neck," as well as the play she coauthored with her daughter, "Love, Lost, and What I Wore."

She also wrote and directed the 2009 film "Julie and Julia," starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

Ephron has won three Academy Awards for her work.

---------------------------------------------

EDIT: Just read a breaking news thing that she has died.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Just Withnail on June 27, 2012, 02:13:59 AM
also

Quote from: MacGuffin on June 26, 2012, 04:57:20 PM
Charlie Kaufman's Ambitious Meta-Musical 'Frank Or Francis' Is Not Dead, But It Has Been Postponed
Source: Playlist
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on July 03, 2012, 05:59:12 PM
Andy Griffith.  Loved him when I was a lad.  The gentle comedy of the Andy Griffith show was great growing up, and I can't tell you how many times Matlock was there when I was home sick from school.  Heh.  RIP, Sheriff Taylor.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on July 09, 2012, 02:06:33 AM
Borgnine (http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/08/showbiz/obit-borgnine/index.html) at 95.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on July 13, 2012, 04:22:21 PM
Richard D. Zanuck (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118056567) has died of a heart attack at age 77.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on July 27, 2012, 03:18:20 PM
Lupe Ontiveros dies at 69
source: LA Times

Actress Lupe Ontiveros, who received an Emmy nomination for her role as a nosy mother-in-law on "Desperate Housewives," died Thursday night of liver cancer in a hospital in Whittier, said her agent, Michael Greenwald. She was 69.

Ontiveros, a longtime resident of Pico Rivera, was surrounded by friends and family, including actors Esai Morales and Edward James Olmos.

Though Ontiveros was seen most frequently in maid roles in everything from "The Goonies"to the sitcom "Reba," her most prominent role was in the 1997 movie "Selena," in which she played Yolanda Saldivar, the president of Selena's fan club who was obsessed with the singing sensation to the point of murder. More recently, she had a recurring role on the ABC hit series "Desperate Housewives," playing the mother-in-law of Eva Longoria's character.

Ontiveros once estimated she had played maids or domestics over 300 times in films, TV and theater. She told an NPR interviewer in 2009 that the maid roles had helped raise her level of fame beyond what any character actor would expect.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

my favorite role of hers was in 'Chuck and Buck.' Favorite movie she was in, 'Storytelling,' hands down. Sad day. She had it maid.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on July 27, 2012, 03:23:48 PM
 :cry:

R.I.P. Gramma doppleganger
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on July 27, 2012, 03:24:07 PM
Pun of the day IMO.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: tpfkabi on July 29, 2012, 05:29:34 PM
Sherman Hemsley seems to be virtually forgotten. He always cracked me up. I was watching episodes of Amen a few months ago just to watch the opening credits and cracking up.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: BB on July 29, 2012, 10:48:59 PM
Quote from: tpfkabi on July 29, 2012, 05:29:34 PM
Sherman Hemsley seems to be virtually forgotten. He always cracked me up. I was watching episodes of Amen a few months ago just to watch the opening credits and cracking up.

If this is real, and I have no reason to suspect that it's not, I desperately hope for a Sherman Hemsley biopic.

http://badassdigest.com/2012/07/24/sherman-hemsley-had-an-lsd-lab-in-his-basement/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on July 30, 2012, 07:05:50 AM
Chris Marker, 91 yesterday.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on August 07, 2012, 11:19:06 AM
Marvin Hamlisch at 68 (http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/obit/story/2012-08-07/Marvin-Hamlisch/56844358/1)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on August 10, 2012, 10:15:39 AM
David Rakoff (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/david-rakoff-humorist-and-essayist-dies-at-47/)

Mel Stuart, documentarian and director of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/mel-stuart-director-willy-wonka-dead-83-article-1.1133430?localLinksEnabled=false)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 26, 2012, 08:04:13 AM
First man on moon Neil Armstrong dead at 82

(Reuters) - U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong, who took a giant leap for mankind when he became the first person to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 82, his family said on Saturday.

Armstrong died following complications from heart-bypass surgery he underwent earlier this month, the family said in a statement, just two days after his birthday on August 5.

As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. As he stepped on the dusty surface, Armstrong said: "“That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

Those words endure as one of the best known quotes in the English language.

The Apollo 11 astronauts' euphoric moonwalk provided Americans with a sense of achievement in the space race with Cold War foe the Soviet Union and while Washington was engaged in a bloody war with the communists in Vietnam.

Neil Alden Armstrong was 38 years old at the time and even though he had fulfilled one of mankind's age-old quests that placed him at the pinnacle of human achievement, he did not revel in his accomplishment. He even seemed frustrated by the acclaim it brought.

"I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks but for the ledger of our daily work," Armstrong said in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" program in 2005.

He once was asked how he felt knowing his footprints would likely stay on the moon's surface for thousands of years. "I kind of hope that somebody goes up there one of these days and cleans them up," he said.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: InTylerWeTrust on August 26, 2012, 12:39:53 PM



R.I.P to the Man! A great American, A great human being.




P.S: Next time we go to the moon, we should really bring better cameras.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on August 26, 2012, 01:25:21 PM
Send Terrence Malick up there for christ sake.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on August 26, 2012, 01:42:51 PM
Well, Kubrick faked the moon landing so they were working with the best they had at the time..
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: InTylerWeTrust on August 26, 2012, 03:04:34 PM
Nah, Kubrick didn't fake it. That theory is flawed.

If Kubrick had faked the moon landings.... It at least would've looked cool. Instead what we get is some dudes in funny looking suits, jumping around slowly in a deserted area with darkness in the background. Boring and Horrible.

BTW (and I know I'm totally hi-jacking the thread) but I wonder, why haven't we gone back to the moon? What did they find up there that they don't want to encounter again?  :shock:

I say we go back with HD cameras and explore that motherfucker. I mean, they put billions of dollars into a bullshit war.. Why not take that money and put it to good spacial use? I'm just saying...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 26, 2012, 05:56:05 PM
The only scenario in which I can see people going back to the moon is if James Cameron decides he's bored with the ocean.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on August 27, 2012, 05:51:15 PM
A belated RIP.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: theyarelegion on August 27, 2012, 09:02:16 PM
Quote from: InTylerWeTrust on August 26, 2012, 03:04:34 PM
Nah, Kubrick didn't fake it. That theory is flawed.

http://www.sacredmysteries.com/public/263_2.cfm look at that front projection though!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: InTylerWeTrust on August 27, 2012, 09:15:24 PM
Quote from: theyarelegion on August 27, 2012, 09:02:16 PM

http://www.sacredmysteries.com/public/263_2.cfm look at that front projection though!


Oh yeah that totally proves Kubrick faked it *Rolls eyes*

You wanna talk conspiracy theories? Let's talk about Bush and the Skull and Bones boys.... 9/11 and the "war" for oil. But of course, NO ONE wants to talk about that.


P.S: Hi-Jacking the thread.... We're doing it right.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: theyarelegion on August 27, 2012, 09:33:58 PM
Quote from: InTylerWeTrust on August 27, 2012, 09:15:24 PM
Oh yeah that totally proves Kubrick faked it *Rolls eyes*

Yeah, totally.

Quote from: InTylerWeTrust on August 27, 2012, 09:15:24 PM
You wanna talk conspiracy theories? Let's talk about Bush and the Skull and Bones boys.... 9/11 and the "war" for oil. But of course, NO ONE wants to talk about that.

Yeah, no one talks about that.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: InTylerWeTrust on August 27, 2012, 09:46:23 PM
So, all you have to add to the conversation is basically agreeing with everything I say in a humor-lacking sarcastic way?............ Ok...

But don't worry dude, you'll probably get upvoted 4 or 5 times.... Because sadly, around these parts mediocrity always gets rewarded... But that's ok. Enjoy.



P.S:  I'm an asshole... *shrugs*
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: theyarelegion on August 27, 2012, 10:16:29 PM
Tyler...what the fuck are you talking about, guy! What exactly have you added to the conversation except for a few half-baked smartass replies? I mean, look what I was working with here! Not every reply in disagreement is a personal attack on you.

Chill, Winston...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on August 28, 2012, 03:56:38 AM
tyler - chill out buddy. just stop assuming everyone's dumb and stop overrating the originality of your comments. stop picking fights with people in general.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Neil on August 28, 2012, 01:28:20 PM
I love this board. and that love will never die. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on August 28, 2012, 01:51:46 PM
What's next to croak?

not Neil's love of this board, dag nabbit!

Maybe Tyler's tho.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on September 03, 2012, 04:47:46 PM
Michael Clark Duncan

R.I.P.

:yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: InTylerWeTrust on September 03, 2012, 05:32:58 PM




:laughing:   Probably the greatest part of the movie...


I also loved all his appearances in the Late Late Show, seemed like such a great guy....


R.I.P
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on October 11, 2012, 01:38:52 PM
Harris Savides at 55 (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/r-i-p-cinematographer-harris-savides-1957-2012-20121011?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alexandro on October 11, 2012, 04:50:03 PM
This guy was my favorite "young" cinematographer. I realize he's no kiddo, but he made some of the most outstanding visual work of the last decades with young or in a sense youthful directors. I can't think of one misstep in his resumé. Personally, his work in Gerry is my favorite. That's one hypnotizing film and it's all in the cinematography. I'm sad and depressed I will never see another film from his point of view.

Birth is also one of the most beautiful looking films I've ever seen.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on October 11, 2012, 08:35:37 PM
But what killed him?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alexandro on October 11, 2012, 08:47:57 PM
from the hollywood elsewhere comments:

"I knew Harris and he'd been sick for a very long time -- years, in fact. It should be up to his family to reveal the details if and when they choose..."

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on November 03, 2012, 09:28:46 PM
This really really really sucks...

Janusz Kaminski< He was right here. >Lance Accord

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: matt35mm on November 04, 2012, 10:07:07 AM
Goddamnit, you scared me. I thought you were saying that Janusz Kaminski and Lance Accord were dead.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ElPandaRoyal on November 04, 2012, 10:33:05 AM
Yeah. When I read Kamisnki I was like, "what the fuck?" Whenever I click on this page I get the chills...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on November 24, 2012, 12:59:18 AM
Larry Hagman
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on November 24, 2012, 01:18:30 AM
His eyebrows will be missed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 26, 2012, 09:02:24 AM
Charles Durning Dead: Beloved Character Actor Dies At 89

LOS ANGELES — Charles Durning grew up in poverty, lost five of his nine siblings to disease, barely lived through D-Day and was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge.

His hard life and wartime trauma provided the basis for a prolific 50-year career as a consummate Oscar-nominated character actor, playing everyone from a Nazi colonel to the pope to Dustin Hoffman's would-be suitor in "Tootsie."

Durning, who died Monday at age 89 in New York, got his start as an usher at a burlesque theater in Buffalo, N.Y. When one of the comedians showed up too drunk to go on, Durning took his place. He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as he heard the audience laughing.

He told The Associated Press in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working. "They're going to carry me out, if I go," he said.

Durning's longtime agent and friend, Judith Moss, told The Associated Press that he died of natural causes in his home in the borough of Manhattan.

"Not only was Charlie a World War II hero but he was also a hero to his family. Charlie loved Christmas and if he could have chosen a time to pass, he would have chosen this day," said a statement from his stepdaughter, Anita Gregory, released Tuesday by Ana Martinez, spokeswoman for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

"He loved that holiday and played Santa Claus many times in films and TV shows," Gregory said. "Charlie lived the spirit of Christmas each and every day of his life. He taught me to believe that nothing was impossible. He brought joy and a smile to everyone's life."

Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982's "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

Many critics marveled that such a heavyset man could be so nimble in the film's show-stopping song-and-dance number, not realizing Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career. Indeed, he had met his first wife, Carol, when both worked at a dance studio.

The year after "Best Little Whorehouse," Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks' "To Be or Not to Be." He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975's "Dog Day Afternoon."

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald in the TV film "The Kennedys of Massachusetts" and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Durning had begun his career on stage, getting his first big break when theatrical producer Joseph Papp hired him for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He went on to work regularly, if fairly anonymously, through the 1960s until his breakout role as a small town mayor in the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play "That Championship Season" in 1972.

He quickly made an impression on movie audiences the following year as the crooked cop stalking con men Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the Oscar-winning comedy "The Sting."

Dozens of notable portrayals followed. He was the would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in "Tootsie;" the infamous seller of frog legs in "The Muppet Movie;" and Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy." He played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television and was the pope in the TV film "I Would be Called John: Pope John XXIII."

"I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director," Durning told The Associated Press in 2008, when he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Other films included "The Front Page," "The Hindenburg," "Breakheart Pass," "North Dallas Forty," "Starting Over," "Tough Guys," "Home for the Holidays," "Spy Hard" and `O Brother Where Art Thou?"
Durning also did well in television as a featured performer as well as a guest star. He appeared in the short-lived series "The Cop and the Kid" (1975), "Eye to Eye" (1985) and "First Monday" (2002) as well as the four-season "Evening Shade" in the 1990s.

"If I'm not in a part, I drive my wife crazy," he acknowledged during a 1997 interview. "I'll go downstairs to get the mail, and when I come back I'll say, `Any calls for me?'"

Durning's rugged early life provided ample material on which to base his later portrayals. He was born into an Irish family of 10 children in 1923, in Highland Falls, N.Y., a town near West Point. His father was unable to work, having lost a leg and been gassed during World War I, so his mother supported the family by washing the uniforms of West Point cadets.

The younger Durning himself would barely survive World War II.

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

In later years, he refused to discuss the military service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

"Too many bad memories," he told an interviewer in 1997. "I don't want you to see me crying."

Tragedy also stalked other members of his family. Durning was 12 when his father died, and five of his sisters lost their lives to smallpox and scarlet fever.

A high school counselor told him he had no talent for art, languages or math and should learn office skills. But after seeing "King Kong" and some of James Cagney's films, Durning knew what he wanted to do.

Leaving home at 16, he worked in a munitions factory, on a slag heap and in a barbed-wire factory.
Durning and his first wife had three children before divorcing in 1972. In 1974, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann Amelio.

In addition to Gregory, he is survived by his children, Michele, Douglas and Jeannine. The family planned to have a private family service and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on December 26, 2012, 10:25:24 AM
guys, this was no ordinary no name character actor:

QuoteHe was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

he was a hero madcunt.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: DocSportello on December 26, 2012, 12:17:28 PM
It's true. Check out his iMDB. The dude never stopped working. I just recently re-watched Dog Day Afternoon and The Sting so those great characters are fresh in my mind.

Also, Pappy O'daniel from O Brother Where Art Thou? ("You slump-shouldered sack o' nuts!") hahah

RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on December 26, 2012, 12:47:19 PM
Gerry Anderson, Thunderbirds creator, dies

Gerry Anderson, the creator of hit TV shows including Thunderbirds, Stingray and Joe 90, has died at the age of 83.

He also created Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and his puppet superheroes fired the imaginations of millions of young viewers in the 1960s and '70s.

Thunderbirds, a science-fiction fantasy about a daring space rescue squad, ran from 1965 and was his most famous show.

Anderson had suffered from Alzheimer's since 2010 and the disease had worsened in recent months, his son Jamie said.

Jamie Anderson announced the news on his website, saying his father died peacefully in his sleep at noon on Wednesday.

"Gerry was diagnosed with mixed dementia two years ago and his condition worsened quite dramatically over the past six months," he wrote.

Gerry Anderson talked about the onset of the disease in June 2012.

Speaking on BBC Berkshire he said: "I don't think I realised at all. It was my wife Mary who began to notice that I would do something quite daft like putting the kettle in the sink and waiting for it to boil."

His other creations included UFO, Space: 1999, Supercar and Fireball XL5.

Actor Brian Blessed, who worked with Anderson on shows including The Day After Tomorrow and Space 1999, told BBC News: "I think a light has gone out in the universe.

"He had a great sense of humour. He wasn't childish but child-like and he had a tremendous love of the universe and astronomy and scientists.

"He got their latest theories, which he would expand on. He was always galvanised and full of energy."

'Great creation'

Celebrities paying tribute on Twitter included comedian Eddie Izzard, who wrote: "What great creation Thunderbirds was, as it fuelled the imagination of a generation."

TV presenter Jonathan Ross wrote: "For men of my age, his work made childhood an incredible place to be."

Anderson, who lived in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, began his career studying fibrous plastering, but had to give it up when it gave him dermatitis.

After a spell in photographic portrait work, a job in Gainsborough films and time spent in air traffic control, he set up AP Films with some friends.

Commissions were few, however, so he responded eagerly to the opportunity to make a puppet series called The Adventures of Twizzle in 1956. It was nine years before Thunderbirds came into being on ITV.

The action was filmed on Slough Trading Estate in Berkshire.

The story revolved around International Rescue, a futuristic emergency service manned by the Tracy family, often assisted by Lady Penelope - voiced by Mrs Anderson - and her butler, Parker.

It included the catchphrases "Thunderbirds are go!" and "FAB".

The show marked the career apex for Gerry and his wife Sylvia, who had honed their "supermarionation" technique on Fireball XL5 and Stingray.

Nick Williams, chairman of Fanderson, the Gerry Anderson appreciation society, described him as "a quiet, unassuming but determined man".

"His desire to make the best films he could drove him and his talented teams to innovate, take risks, and do everything necessary to produce quite inspirational works," he said.

"Gerry's legacy is that he inspired so many people and continues to bring so much joy to so many millions of people around the world."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 26, 2012, 04:48:52 PM
Jack Klugman Dies at Age 90   

Jack Klugman, one of television's most-loved actors, died today at the age of 90. He died peacefully at his home in Northridge, Calif., with his wife, Peggy, by his side, according to an announcement by his attorney.

In a career that spanned more than 60 years, Klugman epitomized the "everyman," and was best known for two popular television series of the 1970s and early 1980s: "The Odd Couple" and "Quincy, M.E."

In "The Odd Couple," about two divorced men living together -- a neat freak and a slob -- Klugman played Oscar Madison, the slob sportswriter to Tony Randall's overly fussy Felix Unger.

"The Odd Couple," which was based on Neil Simon's play of the same name, brought Klugman two Emmys, not bad for a man whose first drama teacher told him he was better suited to be a truck driver. The show ran for five years, and has lived on for decades in syndication.

In "Quincy, M.E.," a precursor to "CSI," Klugman became just as iconic playing the relentless Los Angeles medical examiner with a talent for forensics. "We had some wonderful writers," Klugman said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices."

A heavy smoker, Klugman fought throat cancer, and subsequent surgery left him with a raspy voice, which was worked into later movie and TV roles, including "The Odd Couple: Together Again" in 1993 and "Dear God" in 1996.

A year after his "Odd Couple" co-star, Tony Randall, died in 2004, Klugman published "Tony and Me," and told CNN: "A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."

Klugman began his career in 1954 on the soap opera "The Greatest Gift." In the same year he made several appearances on the NBC legal drama "Justice," whose episodes drew from actual cases of the Legal Aid Society of New York.

His major movies included "12 Angry Men" (1957), playing juror No. 5; "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962), starring opposite Jack Lemmon; and "Goodbye Columbus" (1969), based on the novella by Philip Roth, starring Ali MacGraw and Richard Benjamin.

Born Jacob Joachim Klugman on April 22, 1922, in Philadelphia to Russian Jewish immigrants, Klugman studied acting at Carnegie Insitute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). He served in the U.S. Army in World War II, and moved on to summer stock and off-Broadway, rooming with actor Charles Bronson, according to The Associated Press. He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in a revival of "Golden Boy." An early TV high point was appearing with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda in a production of "The Petrified Forest." He also had roles in several "Twilight Zone" episodes.

He was married to actress-comedian Brett Somers, who played his ex-wife Blanche in "The Odd Couple," from 1953 until her death in 2007. His survivors include their two sons, Adam Klugman and David Klugman, and two grandchildren.

He married Peggy Crosby, the ex-wife of Bing Crosby's son, Phillip Crosby, in 2008.

A memorial service has not yet been scheduled.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 72teeth on January 13, 2013, 04:47:04 PM



Huell Howser :(

...and i am so

so

so

saddened by this  :cry:

An Appreciation: Huell Howser, the great adventurer (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-0108-huell-howser-appreciation-20130108,0,1545800.story) -LA TIMEs

Lt. Dangle puts it best tho: He was the opposite of the internet. (http://www.kcet.org/shows/tvtalk/tv-news/why-huell-howser-was-the-opposite-of-the-internet.html)


R.I.P. Huell.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: squints on January 20, 2013, 03:12:35 PM
RIP Prop Joe  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on March 02, 2013, 01:33:12 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F0Z4tuEV.jpg&hash=50b5b246a4cee70ec715e908cb698b0809ec48ef)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on March 29, 2013, 07:39:36 AM
Richard Griffiths

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indiewire.com%2Fstatic%2Fdims4%2FINDIEWIRE%2F7dd3b1b%2F2147483647%2Fthumbnail%2F680x478%2F%3Furl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fd1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net%252Fc3%252Fde%252F6f0dd96e40889b929c3a52f272fc%252Frichard-griffiths.jpg&hash=46f4c212f25fbb16753eb57209ce86b1efc0f123)

Will mostly remember him as Dr. Albert S. Meinheimer in the indie movie "Naked Gun 2½".
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Just Withnail on March 29, 2013, 07:48:30 AM
Uncly Monty, no!  :cry:

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on March 29, 2013, 08:37:03 AM
Just heard about it, sucks.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on April 04, 2013, 02:44:06 PM
Roger Ebert (http://variety.com/2013/film/news/roger-ebert-dies-at-70-1200333136/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 07, 2013, 03:29:26 AM
Bigas Luna (http://m.deadline.com/2013/04/r-i-p-juan-jose-bigas-luna)

Bigas Luna obituary - The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/apr/07/bigas-luna)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 08, 2013, 11:56:34 AM
Margaret Thatcher dead at 87

London (CNN) - Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a towering figure in postwar British and world politics and the only woman to become British prime minister, has died at the age of 87.

She suffered a stroke Monday, her spokeswoman said. A British government source said she died at the Ritz Hotel in London.

Thatcher's funeral will be at St. Paul's Cathedral, with full military honors, followed by a private cremation, the British prime minister's office announced.

Thatcher served from 1975 to 1990 as leader of the Conservative Party. She was called the "Iron Lady" for her personal and political toughness.

She retired from public life after a stroke in 2002 and suffered several strokes after that.

She made few public appearances in her final months, missing a reception marking her 85th birthday hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron in October 2010. She also skipped the July 2011 unveiling of a statue honoring her old friend Ronald Reagan in London.

In December 2012, she was hospitalized after a procedure to remove a growth in her bladder.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on April 08, 2013, 02:01:01 PM
Ed Miliband sums it up pretty succinctly: "We can disagree and also greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on April 08, 2013, 02:33:57 PM
Quote from: Sleepless on April 08, 2013, 02:01:01 PM
Ed Miliband sums it up pretty succinctly: "We can disagree and also greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength."

Personal strength perhaps, but some achievements shouldn't be respected.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on April 08, 2013, 03:28:10 PM
I'm 100 times sadder about Ebert's death than Thatcher's, and about 1 1/2 times sadder about Annette Funicello than Ebert.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on April 08, 2013, 03:40:34 PM
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on April 08, 2013, 02:33:57 PM
Quote from: Sleepless on April 08, 2013, 02:01:01 PM
Ed Miliband sums it up pretty succinctly: "We can disagree and also greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength."

Personal strength perhaps, but some achievements shouldn't be respected.

I'm assuming being the first female to be elected to such a position in a Western civilization counts as a political achievement. Girl power!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on April 10, 2013, 06:41:50 AM
BBC news:

Glasgow City Council urged people to stay away from the city's George Square after hundreds gathered to mark the death of Baroness Thatcher.

In a statement posted on their website, the council said it was concerned the gathering was intended to be a "party".

The event was organised by posts on social media.

It's believed the gathering took inspiration from the song George Square Thatcher Death Party by the Glasgow group Mogwai.

The council said it had become aware of plans for an event circulating on social media, and about 250 people gathered in the square outside the city chambers by early Monday evening.

The statement said: "Regardless of whether or not it's appropriate to have a party to celebrate someone dying, this event was organised without involvement or consent from the council and we have safety concerns for anyone attending.

"We urge people to stay away."

By around 22:00, the crowd was reported to have dispersed without incident.

One member from Mogwai showed up (John Cummings).

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv720%2Fithica45%2F429758149288610042_54877897_thejohncummings_2457e015b1a3c5c739baebc56c10015c_zps2e6d438f.jpg&hash=1c842a7c9714fa246eec37c035baf4ca2e7ad63d)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 07, 2013, 02:07:28 PM
Special F/X Pioneer Ray Harryhausen Dies At 92
Stop-motion effects revolutionized Hollywood creature features
Source: Variety

Special f/x legend and stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen died Tuesday morning in London. He was 92.

Best known in the industry for his creature effects, Harryhausen began his work in the mid '30s with  "Cavebear" and various short films featuring dinosaurs. For the next decade, he worked on short films and various ad campaigns for television and films.

In 1949, Harryhausen got his big break with "Mighty Joe Young," a "King Kong"-esque pic that was able to show off the Harryhausen's stop motion f/x bag of tricks on the bigscreen. Once he breathed life into the skyscraper-sized monkey, he began working nonstop as Hollywood's main creature creator.

Harryhausen's best known creature features have included 1955 "It Came from Beyond the Sea," 1958′s "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad," 1959′s "The 3 Worlds of Gulliver," 1963′s "Jason and the Argonauts," 1966′s "One Million Years BC" and 1981′s "Clash of the Titans."

Harryhausen influenced generations of countless filmmakers and f/x artists, including Peter Jackson, Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, George Lucas, makeup maestro Rick Baker and Pixar guru John Lassater, who paid tribute to him in "Monsters, Inc." with an Easter egg shout-out.

"Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no 'Star Wars'," said George Lucas this morning.

"His patience, his endurance have inspired so many of us," stated Peter Jackson.

"What we do now digitally with computers, Ray Harryhausen did digitally long be4 but without computers. Only with his digits," said Terry Gilliam via Twitter.

His family announced his death in via the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation on their Facebook page.

"Star Wars" f/x guru Phil Tippett, who later mastered and the stop-motion techniques that Harryhausen used in his pictures, told Variety, "He was the guy that everybody was inspired by to do visual effects work. He was the singular creative person, so he inspired a lot of singular artists. It wasn't like the head of a studio turning out stuff. He was a singular craftsman who shaped all the movies he worked on from cradle to grave. He was there on the set making sure everything was shot the right way and finished it all up. He was a total filmmaker that had his hands in everything."

"Nobody else has done anything like that. Or had such an impact."

Helmer Henry Selick, who also was inspired by Harryhausen's work, said, "He studied under Willis O'Brien and went on to take special effects and fantasy films to a level they'd never been  taken to  in the United States before. There was nothing like it. Ray brought an intensity and magic to life that no one else did.

"Ray brought an intensity and magic to life that no one else did."

Selick remembers being frightened as a child by the battling skeletons in "Jason and the Argonauts" but many years later being charmed to find Harryhausen would carry one of them around with him.

"To Ray it was almost like a son, this fairly small skeleton that he'd carry around so lovingly and take out," remembered Selick. "All the menace that had been on screen was gone when you'd see Ray interact with this puppet. He was a very tender guy, very sweet."

Tippett said: "The epitaph I would like to leave for him is: "We should all be so lucky.' He was 93 years old and had a great run. He got do the stuff he imagined as a child all of his life. What's better than that?"

Harryhausen is survived by his wife, Diana, and daughter Vanessa.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 20, 2013, 04:28:34 PM
RAY MANZAREK, 'Doors' Founding Member, DEAD AT 74

Ray Manzarek -- who co-founded "The Doors" with Jim Morrison in 1965 and played keyboard -- has died, this according to the band's official Facebook page.

Manzarek was 74.

According to the website, Manzarek passed away today at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany after a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer.

At the time of his death, Ray was surrounded by his wife Dorothy and his brothers Rick and James.

Along with Jim ... Ray and The Doors churned out some of the most iconic rock songs in history -- including, "L.A. Woman," "Break On Through to the Other Side," "The End," "Hello, I Love You," and "Light My Fire."

Doors' guitarist Robby Krieger released a statement saying, "I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek."

He added, "I'm just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him."

According to the band's official Facebook page ... Ray's family has asked that in lieu of flowers, fans should make an in memoriam donation in Ray's name to Standup2cancer.org.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on May 23, 2013, 11:46:51 PM
i just realized this thread is incredibly depressing.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on May 23, 2013, 11:56:49 PM
It reminds us of our mortality. Also that we should do more with our lives so we get posted in this thread when we kick the the bucket.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on May 24, 2013, 08:38:13 AM
just look at it as a leveling of the playing field.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: HeywoodRFloyd on June 19, 2013, 06:42:38 PM
Guys, James Gandolfini reportedly died of a heart attack in Italy, how horrible, a tremendous actor

http://www.slashfilm.com/james-gandolfini-has-died/ (http://www.slashfilm.com/james-gandolfini-has-died/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 19, 2013, 06:48:14 PM
I was just about to post about how unexpected that is, but then I saw a recent picture of him. RIP, and eat your veggies.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on June 19, 2013, 07:03:47 PM
aw man. I thought we were going to be seeing a lot more of him after he popped up in 'Killing Them Softly' and 'Zero Dark Thirty' last year. I was still looking forward to his best performace, but I guess that will always be Tony Soprano. I still haven't seen that series, it should be fun to catch up with all these years later. Well James, you sure played some disgusting individuals onscreen. Thanks for the laughs, Rest In Peace.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on June 19, 2013, 07:07:36 PM
he wasnt that fat, I mean he doesnt look obese, anyway, really sad news and to me unexpected....
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on June 19, 2013, 09:24:23 PM
Yeah. This (http://ll-media.tmz.com/2013/06/19/0619-james-gandolfini-article-tattoo-wm-tmz-5.jpg) is apparently a picture from this month. Not excessively fat, although he looks really tired or something.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 19, 2013, 10:07:23 PM
Quote from: Fernando on June 19, 2013, 07:07:36 PM
he wasnt that fat, I mean he doesnt look obese, anyway, really sad news and to me unexpected....

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on June 19, 2013, 09:24:23 PM
Yeah. This (http://ll-media.tmz.com/2013/06/19/0619-james-gandolfini-article-tattoo-wm-tmz-5.jpg) is apparently a picture from this month. Not excessively fat, although he looks really tired or something.

Maybe the picture I saw wasn't current. He was like Chris Christie fat in that one.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on June 19, 2013, 11:56:26 PM
he looked fit-fat in that picture
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Cloudy on June 20, 2013, 07:23:38 PM
^Agreed. He looks the most fit I've ever seen him in that pic. This is sad.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on June 24, 2013, 06:16:55 PM
'I Am Legend' and 'Twilight Zone' writer Richard Matheson dies at 87 (http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/24/4460562/i-am-legend-and-twilight-zone-writer-richard-matheson-dies-at-87)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 24, 2013, 06:29:41 PM
Not to step on Richard Matheson's moment ("Hell House" is a great horror novel and everyone should read it), but this was the Gandolfini picture I had seen that prompted my original comment:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi35.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fd179%2Fpolkablues%2Fjames-gandolfini_zps7615a03b.jpg&hash=395d8dfee7631cda4f31621417f0fb1baad26458)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on June 24, 2013, 06:34:30 PM
rewatched true romances gandolfini scene.
jesus, i will miss him.
matheson was waiting to die for a while now, he already accepted his legendness.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on June 30, 2013, 02:15:40 AM
Photographer Bert Stern

Photographer and filmmaker Bert Stern, best known for shooting a collection of 2,500 images of Marilyn Monroe six weeks before her death, died Wednesday in NYC according to reports. He was 83. The commercial photog got his start at Look magazine, where he first befriended Stanley Kubrick; he'd later go on to shoot publicity stills on Kubrick's Lolita including the film's iconic poster image featuring starlet Sue Lyon, a lollipop, and a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses. In 1959 Stern co-directed the music docu Jazz On A Summer's Day, about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, which was later inducted into the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1999. Stern's Monroe snapshots, however, were his lasting legacy. First commissioned by Vogue magazine in 1962, the photo shoot dubbed The Last Sitting intimately captured Monroe in a room at the Hotel Bel-Air and was released in book form in 1982 and 2000. In 2010 Stern was the subject of the First Run-released documentary Bert Stern: Original Madman, directed by wife Shannah Laumeister.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 02, 2013, 02:10:16 PM
i'm bummed when people die. less bummed if i watch 36 chambers

QuoteLau died on 25 June 2013 at Union Hospital, Hong Kong. He had been battling lymphatic cancer for two decades
Quote

Lau Kar-leung (28 July 1934 – 25 June 2013), also known as Liu Chia-liang, was a Hong Kong-based Chinese actor, filmmaker, choreographer and martial artist. Lau is best known for the films he made in the 1970s and 1980s for the Shaw Brothers Studio. One of his most famous works is The 36th Chamber of Shaolin which starred Gordon Liu, as well as Drunken Master II which starred Jackie Chan.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on July 02, 2013, 05:23:20 PM
long time coming but you have officially won first place of cryptic confusing members over sickfins. it was close. emphasis on confusing.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 02, 2013, 06:03:25 PM
hmm. i think there are ~3 people here who watch movies like i watch movies, ~5 people who make stuff i like watching. they don't confuse me, i don't confuse them. the rest is social madness. internet. happens

a guy died and i'll watch his movie and remember him
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on July 02, 2013, 08:02:24 PM
more points earned
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 02, 2013, 08:20:29 PM
this is your day. you're having a good day. multiple board layers

you're going to get me back to "wtf is this place?" don't do that. what's the point? take away the points
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on July 03, 2013, 09:42:20 PM
one of my favorite scenes from Lau - in a movie called "Dirty Ho", in which a dude battles two assassins under everyone's nose, as if they were just drinking tea. really cool choreography and execution:



I always thought I'd get to meet him or something.

Quote from: trashculturemutantjunkie on July 02, 2013, 02:10:16 PM
i'm bummed when people die. less bummed if i watch 36 chambers

QuoteLau died on 25 June 2013 at Union Hospital, Hong Kong. He had been battling lymphatic cancer for two decades
Quote

Lau Kar-leung (28 July 1934 – 25 June 2013), also known as Liu Chia-liang, was a Hong Kong-based Chinese actor, filmmaker, choreographer and martial artist. Lau is best known for the films he made in the 1970s and 1980s for the Shaw Brothers Studio. One of his most famous works is The 36th Chamber of Shaolin which starred Gordon Liu, as well as Drunken Master II which starred Jackie Chan.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 03, 2013, 10:36:58 PM
mmmm. really glad you brought up dirty ho. i've seen that trailer in theaters multiple times, and i always wonder if they're being genuine or making fun of the title. sounds genuine to me. thanks for that
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on July 20, 2013, 02:20:51 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.metro.co.uk%2Fi%2Fpix%2F2006%2Fed06%2Fmelsmith_175x125.jpg&hash=b90160d64572d7fdb252a74e292366f08981bd25)

Mel Smith :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 22, 2013, 01:54:30 PM
Dennis Farina (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/rip-dennis-farina-1944-2013-20130722)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on July 22, 2013, 02:04:58 PM
Wtf is wrong in the water?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 30, 2013, 02:43:12 PM
R.I.P. Eileen Brennan
BY THE DEADLINE TEAM

Veteran actress Eileen Brennan, best known for her roles in Private Benjamin, The Sting and The Last Picture Show, has died. Brennan passed away Sunday of bladder cancer according to reports. She was 80. Brennan received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for her role as the tough Captain Doreen Lewis in Private Benjamin opposite Goldie Hawn. She also reprised the role for the CBS TV adaptation, winning an Emmy and Golden Globe for her performance. Brennan made her feature film debut in 1967′s Divorce American Style. Her most memorable film roles include brothel madam Billie in George Roy Hill's Oscar-winning 1973 film The Sting and Mrs. Peacock in 1985′s Clue. She also appeared in Peter Bogdanovich's classic 1971 film The Last Picture Show for which she received a best supporting actress BAFTA nomination, and his 1974 adaptation of the Henry James novella Daisy Miller. Brennan's other TV credits include Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Will & Grace, 7th Heaven, Newhart and thirtysomething.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 08, 2013, 05:04:02 PM
Karen Black Dies at 74
Actress-singer starred in 'Nashville,' 'Easy Rider,' 'Five Easy Pieces'

Karen Black, who was Oscar-nommed for "Five Easy Pieces" and starred in films including "Nashville," and "Easy Rider," died Thursday after a long battle with cancer. She was 74.

Her husband Stephen Eckelberry announced her death on Facebook, saying "It is with great sadness that I have to report that my wife and best friend Karen Black has just passed away, only a few minutes ago. Thank you all for all your prayers and love, they meant so much to her as they did to me."

She often played women on the edge, actresses and hookers, and though she had a memorable comeback in Robert Altman's "Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," she largely worked in dozens of B-movies after the early 1980s.

Her first major film role came in Francis Ford Coppola's 1966 "You're a Big Boy Now,"  and she also appeared in TV shows including "Adam 12," "Mannix," "Judd for the Defense."

Among her other roles were Nancy Pryor, the stewardess who is forced to fly the plane in 1974′s "Airport 1975," as an actress in John Schlesinger's "The Day of the Locust" and as a kidnapper in Alfred Hitchcock's last film "Family Plot."

Born Karen Blanche Ziegler in Park Ridge, Ill., she attended Northwestern U. and before moving to New York to appear in Off-Broadway productions.  She took the name Black from her first husband, Charles Black.

Black was also married briefly to actor Robert Burton and to screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, with whom she had a son, Hunter Carson. She married Eckelberry in 1987.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Frederico Fellini on August 19, 2013, 01:16:06 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages3.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20111103020410%2Fdoblaje%2Fes%2Fimages%2Fa%2Fae%2FLee-thompson-young-0.jpg&hash=d1df1635c991b44bda5b45002789244266cb664c)


Lee Thompson Young.

Death by Suicide. I couldn't even tell you what show he used to be on, or what movies he's been in... but I do know I've seen that face countless times. It's sad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on August 20, 2013, 02:04:46 PM
Crime novelist Elmore Leonard dies at 87

Elmore Leonard, one of America's best known crime novelists, died Tuesday morning due to complications from a stroke, according to Leonard's Facebook page and his longtime researcher at the Detroit News, Gregg Sutter.

Leonard, 87, was working on his 46th novel at the time of his death.

Born in New Orleans in 1925, Leonard and his family moved to Detroit when the writer was very young and his father was working for General Motors. Leonard made the city his longtime home, and was referred to as "the Dickens of Detroit" by fans.

His first book, "The Bounty Hunters," was published in 1953. His writing career began with pulp Westerns, only settling into the trademark Leonard realism, crime and wit with 1969's "The Big Bounce," which has been adapted for the movies twice. His most recent novel, "Raylan," was released in 2012.

Twenty-six of his books and short stories have been adapted for the screen, including "Hombre," "Get Shorty," "Jackie Brown," (based on 1992's "Rum Punch") and "Justified," a TV shows based on 1993's "Pronto," 1995's "Riding the Rap" and the 2001 short story 'Fire in the Hole."

Leonard's awards include the Grand Master Edgar Award in 1992, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for outstanding achievement in American literature in 2008, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, (for which he was complimented for his "uncanny ear for crooks, cops, and babes") and the National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution in 2012.

In his widely circulated rules of writing, Leonard said, "Never open a book with weather; avoid prologues; keep your exclamation points under control; use regional dialect sparingly; avoid detailed descriptions of characters, places, and things; and try to leave out the part the readers tend to skip."

Most important, however, he said, "if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on September 02, 2013, 06:41:55 PM
'ROCKY V' STAR TOMMY MORRISON DEAD AT 44

Tommy Morrison -- a former heavyweight boxing champ and star of "Rocky V" -- died in a Nebraska hospital Sunday night ... after a long battle with AIDS.

Morrison's longtime boxing promoter, Tony Holden, confirmed the death. He tells TMZ, Morrison had been in the hospital for several months battling an illness ... he wouldn't specify what. He died peacefully, his wife by his side.

Back in 1996 Morrison tested positive for HIV, thus ending his boxing career. He later denied having the disease or that it even existed.

In 1990 Morrison starred in "Rocky V" with Sylvester Stallone, playing a rookie boxer training under Rocky Balboa. In 1993 he took home a real title, defeating George Foreman for the heavyweight championship.

He was 44.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 02, 2013, 02:29:36 PM
Best-Selling Author Tom Clancy Dead at 66

Best-selling author Tom Clancy, whose political thrillers spawned films such as ""The Hunt for Red October" and "Patriot Games," died in a Baltimore hospital on Tuesday. He was 66.
 
The author expanded his reach into films adapted from many of his novels, a videogame company and ghost-written novels with his name attached. Most of his works focused on espionage and military science stories during the Cold War.

Movies based on his Jack Ryan series included "The Hunt for Red October," "Patriot Games," "Clear and Present Danger," and "The Sum of All Fears."

One of the top-selling authors of the modern era, he wrote more than 100 books, which were said to have sold more than 50 million copies in total. "A Clear and Present Danger" was the top-selling book of the 1980s, while in the 1990s he broke the two million sold in a single printing record. Though he wasn't considered a masterful writer, his fans appreciated his attention to the technical details of military and intelligence topics.

He founded the videogame company Red Storm Entertainment, which was sold to Ubisoft, which continued to use his name for games such as the "Ghost Recon" series, "Rainbow Six" and "Splinter Cell."

The upcoming Kenneth Branagh film "Jack Ryan: Shadow One" is based on the characters he created. Chris Pine and Kevin Costner star in the release set for Dec. 25. The latest Jack Ryan novel, "Command Authority," will be published December 3.

Born in Baltimore, the politically conservative author dedicated many of his books to figures such as Ronald Reagan, and came under fire after 9/11 for his criticism of the government and the CIA.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on October 10, 2013, 09:56:15 PM
 :(

http://www.undertheradarmag.com/news/r.i.p._wes_anderson_film_character_actor_kumar_pallana/

R.I.P. Wes Anderson Film Character Actor, Kumar Pallana
Passed away at the Age of 94
Oct 10, 2013 By Laura Studarus

Sad news tonight—character actor Kumar Pallana has died at the age of 94. He was best known for a series of roles in Wes Anderson films, perhaps most notably Pagoda in The Royal Tenenbaums. He also stole scenes in Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. Outside of Anderson's pastel universe, Pallana also appeared in a string of other Hollywood films, included The Terminal and Another Earth.

Born in colonial India, Pallana's life could have easily been the subject of one of Anderson's films—from making a living as a plate-spinning, magic, balancing, swordplay, and juggling entertainer in America in the 1950s (he was known as Kumar of India) to appearing on The Mickey Mouse Club in 1956 and Captain Kangaroo in 1961.




I met Kumar a few times over the past 5 or 6 years, and even in his advanced age he was lively and friendly. I met him when I shot video of him performing for an event at the AFI film fest in Dallas in 2007, and kept in touch with him every now and then when he was in town.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: samsong on October 11, 2013, 12:08:05 AM
this really bums me out...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: classical gas on October 26, 2013, 10:46:14 AM
Marcia Wallace aka Ms. Krabappel (http://www.tmz.com/2013/10/26/marcia-wallace-simpsons-newhart-show-dead-70/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on October 26, 2013, 02:35:54 PM
R.I.P. Antonia Bird (http://www.deadline.com/2013/10/director-antonia-bird-dead/#utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter)

English TV and film director Antonia Bird has died after a cancer battle. She was 54. Bird broke through as a director on episodes of EastEnders and worked extensively on the small screen helming television projects including BBC series Casualty, the Bill Nighy-starring miniseries The Men's Room, and a 2006 special telefilm episode of Cracker. In film she made a detour into teen romance with the 1995 drama Mad Love, starring Drew Barrymore and Chris O'Donnell. Bird frequently directed actor Robert Carlyle who appeared in her feature debut Priest (1994), Face (1997), and Ravenous (1999), the cannibal horror pic that amassed a cult following after initially opening to dismal returns. "Such a sad day today.. RIP Antonia Bird. Farewell my beautiful friend xxx," Tweeted Carlyle. BBC series The Village which debuted this Spring was Bird's final project. She directed four Season 1 episodes of the show created by Peter Moffat. "She said to me after filming finished on The Village: 'I shot the fuck out of it..' Anyone who knew Antonia would know what she meant – she gave EVERYTHING to the things she cared about," Moffat said in a statement. "From a writer's point of view she was wonderful because she listened so hard to the script. If she didn't understand what you were after she'd talk to you until she did and if she didn't agree with it you'd bash it through until you were both happy. You absolutely knew that she'd put what you'd both agreed on the screen. Film making is a collaborative process and it doesn't work if the writer and director don't trust each other. I trusted Antonia completely. Completely devastated that she's gone."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on October 27, 2013, 04:54:24 PM
Lou Reed, Rock 'n' Roll Pioneer, Dies at 71
Source: NY Times

Lou Reed, the singer, songwriter and guitarist whose work with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s had an impact on generations of rock musicians, and who remained a powerful if polarizing force for the rest of his life, died on Sunday at his home in Southampton, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 71.

The cause was liver disease, said Dr. Charles Miller of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where Mr. Reed had liver transplant surgery earlier this year and was being treated again until a few days ago.

"I've always believed that there's an amazing number of things you can do through a rock 'n' roll song," Mr. Reed once told the journalist Kristine McKenna, "and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat. The things I've written about wouldn't be considered a big deal if they appeared in a book or movie."

Mr. Reed played the sport of alienating listeners, defending the right to contradict himself in hostile interviews, to contradict his transgressive image by idealizing sweet or old-fashioned values in word or sound, or to present intuition as blunt logic. But his early work assured him a permanent audience.

The Velvet Underground, which was originally sponsored by Andy Warhol and showcased the songwriting of John Cale, as well as Mr. Reed, wrought gradual but profound impact on the high-I.Q., low-virtuosity stratum of alternative and underground rock around the world.

Joy Division, the Talking Heads, Patti Smith, R.E.M., the Strokes and numerous others were direct descendants. The composer Brian Eno, in an often-quoted interview from 1982, suggested that if the group's first record sold only 30,000 records during its first five years — a figure probably lower than the reality — "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band."

Many of the group's themes — among them love, sexual deviance, alienation, addiction, joy and spiritual transfiguration — stayed in Mr. Reed's work through his long run of solo recordings. Among the most noteworthy of those records were "Transformer" (1973), "Berlin" (1973) and "New York" (1992). The most notorious, without question, was "Metal Machine Music" (1975).

Beloved of Mr. Reed and not too many others, "Metal Machine Music" was four sides of electric-guitar feedback strobing between two amplifiers, with Mr. Reed altering the speed of the tape recorder; no singing, no drums, no stated key. At the time it was mostly understood, if at all, as a riddle about artistic intent. Was it his truest self, was it a joke, or was there no difference?

Mr. Reed wrote in the liner notes that "no one I know has listened to it all the way through, including myself," but he also defended it as the next step after La Monte Young's early minimalism. "There's infinite ways of listening to it," he told the critic Lester Bangs in 1976.

"I was serious about it," Mr. Reed said of the album more than a decade later. "I was also really stoned."

Not too long after his first recordings, made at 16 with a doo-wop band in Freeport, N.Y., Mr. Reed started singing outside of the song's melody, as if he were giving a speech with a fluctuating monotone in his Brooklyn-Queens drawl. That sound, eventually heard with the Velvet Underground on songs like "Heroin," "Sweet Jane" and in his post-Velvets songs "Walk on the Wild Side," "Street Hassle" and others, eventually spread outward to become one of the most familiar frequencies in rock. He played lead guitar the same way, hitting against the wall of his limitations.

Mr. Reed is survived by his wife, the composer and performance artist Laurie Anderson.

Dr. Miller said Mr. Reed decided to return to New York after the doctors could no longer treat his end-stage liver disease.

"He died peacefully, with his loved ones around him," Dr. Miller said. "We did everything we could," added Dr. Miller, the director of the hospital's liver transplant program. "He really wanted to be at home."

Sober since the 1980s, Mr. Reed was a practitioner of Tai Chi. "Lou was fighting right up to the very end," Dr. Miller said. "He was doing his Tai Chi exercises within an hour of his death, trying to keep strong and keep fighting."

"I am a triumph of modern medicine, physics and chemistry," Mr. Reed wrote in a public statement upon his release from the hospital. "I am bigger and stronger than ever." Less than a month later, he wrote a review of Kanye West's album "Yeezus" for the online publication The Talkhouse, celebrating its abrasiveness and returning once more to "Metal Machine Music" to explain an artist's deepest motives.

"I have never thought of music as a challenge — you always figure the audience is at least as smart as you are," he wrote. "You do this because you like it, you think what you're making is beautiful. And if you think it's beautiful, maybe they think it's beautiful."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on October 27, 2013, 05:02:11 PM
of course i don't in general like when someone dies. admit i feel an extra sadness at deaths like this, when a person dies who for so long meant so much to culture. lou reed was in what he helped make. he can't help make it anymore because he's dead. and shall we forget him? the tragic question: will we forget his culture?

lou reed, i won't forget you :( <33
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on October 27, 2013, 05:09:07 PM
Man, what a blow to music. It's the end of an era. Might as well be the death of Rock and Roll. Thanks Lou Reed, you opened doors for me in understanding what an auditory experience could be. You were the coolest, I will play your records loud in honor of the champion you remain. Rest In Peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs0BxTmQXA0
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on October 27, 2013, 10:28:15 PM
So far there's hasn't been any "Metal Machine music" tributes in the facebook/twitter feeds... yet.  :twisted:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on October 29, 2013, 06:05:01 PM
http://www.deadline.com/2013/10/british-actor-nigel-davenport-dead-man-for-all-seasons-chariots-of-fire/#utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

R.I.P. Nigel Davenport
By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Tuesday October 29, 2013 @ 3:15pm PDT

British veteran actor Nigel Davenport, whose screen career spanned five decades and included roles in Best Picture Oscar-winners A Man For All Seasons and Chariots of Fire, died October 25. He was 85. Davenport's early films included Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Tony Richardson's Look Back In Anger and The Entertainer; he also appeared in A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), Living Free (1972), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), Nighthawks (1981), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), and Caravaggio (1986). As a character actor his standout roles include the Duke of Norfolk in A Man For All Seasons, Lord Bothwell in Mary, Queen of Scots, Dr. Van Helsing in the Richard Matheson-penned Dracula, and Lord Birkenhead in Chariots of Fire. In 1974 Davenport starred in Saul Bass's lone directorial effort, the sci-fi bomb turned cult classic Phase IV.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on November 18, 2013, 10:15:42 AM
R.I.P. Syd Field
BY THE DEADLINE TEAM
   
Screenwriting guru Syd Field has died. Field, who authored several books about screenwriting and conducted workshops and seminars on the subject, passed away at his home in Beverly Hills on Sunday as a result of hemolytic anemia, according to a statement posted by the Raindance Film Festival. He was 77.

Field's first book on screenwriting, Screenplay, was published in 1979. It has since been published in 23 languages and is used in over 400 colleges and universities around the world. Field has been celebrated as the first writer to outline the paradigm that most screenplays follow, the three-act structure. He was born in Hollywood in 1935 and attended the University of California at Berkley. He began his career in the shipping department of Wolper Productions, before going on to research and write for the original Biography television series, among other Wolper productions. During his career, Field chaired the Academic Liaison Committee at the WGA West, was a lecturer on the faculty at University of Southern California and AFI and has been a special script consultant to 20th Century Fox, the Disney Studios, Universal and Tri-Star Pictures. He was inducted into the Final Draft Hall of Fame in 2006 and was the first inductee into the Screenwriting Hall of Fame of the American Screenwriting Association. He was also a special consultant to the Film Preservation Project for the Getty Center. In his final speaking engagement in September 2013, Field delivered the keynote address at Story Expo in Los Angeles. According to the BBC, he had been due to take part in a screenwriter's summit organized by the Raindance Festival last weekend in London, but was too ill to attend. Details of a memorial service will be announced soon.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on November 18, 2013, 02:41:12 PM
That's too bad. Once I got over my initial knee-jerk reaction against his methods, I ended up gaining a lot of useful knowledge on screenwriting from his books. Plus, his review/defense of Magnolia is one of my favorite things.

http://sydfield.com/film-analysis/magnolia-an-appreciation/ (http://sydfield.com/film-analysis/magnolia-an-appreciation/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on November 21, 2013, 05:57:13 PM
In honor of Sylvia Browne's passing, I'd like to say a few words.

Fuck Sylvia Browne. The end.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pubrick on November 21, 2013, 07:37:59 PM
Quiet she'll hear you and reply vaguely through her successor.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on November 23, 2013, 02:25:40 PM
R.I.P. Georges Lautner
22 November 2013
via Deadline

Veteran French director Georges Lautner has died. He was 87. Best known as the helmer of the classic 1963 film Les Tontons Flingueurs (Monsieur Gangster), Lautner passed away today in Paris after a long illness. Lautner was also a screenwriter and co-authored many of his films with Michel Audiard. Among them was black-and-white gangster comedy Les Tontons Flingueurs, an adaptation of the Albert Simonin book Grisbi Or Not Grisbi that includes one of the best kitchen table scenes ever committed to celluloid. That movie, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on November 27th — and which continues to draw big audiences in annual French television airings — starred Lino Ventura and Bernard Blier, among others. Lautner was more recently thanked in the credits to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and last directed 1992′s Stranger In The House which starred Jean-Paul Belmondo with whom he worked often, including in 1981′s The Professional and 1979′s Flic Ou Voyou (Cop Or Hood). Lautner also directed Robert Mitchum in 1990′s Presumed Dangerous. The son of actress Renée Saint-Cyr, he was born in Nice, France in 1926 and after moving to Paris made The Black Monocle which got him noticed by legendary Gaumont producer Alain Poiré who backed him to direct Les Tontons Flingueurs. French daily Le Figaro wrote this evening, "A symbol of the renewal of French post-war cinema, Georges Lautner knew, with Michel Audiard, how to impose a style of popular comedies that today remains inimitable."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: classical gas on November 30, 2013, 10:29:01 PM
Paul Walker died in a car crash.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/30/showbiz/actor-paul-walker-dies/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on December 01, 2013, 12:52:31 AM
and speed was a factor. is this real life
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on December 01, 2013, 01:24:40 PM
Way too young. By all accounts, he was a really nice guy. And with a young daughter, too. That's the saddest part.

I was just thinking about rewatching Running Scared the other day. Maybe I'll do that today.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on December 01, 2013, 02:31:33 PM
^ooh that's a good idea

joy ride sprung at me. thinking i'll double, then the throw the discs on the ground. this pour goes out to paul and [aww, some other dude also]

(edit) then i remembered another and now i'm just going to make a list stfu

***important list of my fondest paul walker movie memories***

the skulls
joy ride
running scared
into the blue
tammy and the t-rex
you guys slow down please, everyone is driving quickly and angrily [listed last 'cause there are too many, that'd be like another list]
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on December 02, 2013, 07:37:12 PM
http://variety.com/2013/film/news/christopher-evan-welch-actor-on-stage-and-screen-and-tv-dies-in-l-a-1200911109/

He will forever be our Pig Fuck.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on December 02, 2013, 08:33:30 PM
What the pig fuck
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch on December 03, 2013, 01:33:54 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HomxX7pmEQI

^Christopher Evan Welch^
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on December 04, 2013, 08:11:46 PM
i thought vin diesel got in the wreck at the end
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 15, 2013, 12:13:47 PM
Peter O'Toole, star of Lawrence of Arabia, dies aged 81 (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/15/peter-o-toole-dies-lawrence-arabia)
Actor who shot to fame in David Lean's 1962 masterpiece and received eight Oscar nominations has died in hospital in London
Robert Booth
theguardian.com, Sunday 15 December 2013 12.58 EST

The actor Peter O'Toole, who found stardom in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, has died aged 81, his agent has said.

The acclaimed leading man who overcame stomach cancer in the 1970s passed away on Saturday at the Wellington hospital in London following a long illness, Steve Kenis said.

O'Toole announced last year he was stopping acting saying: "I bid the profession a dry-eyed and profoundly grateful farewell."

He said his career on stage and screen fulfilled him emotionally and financially, bringing him together "with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits."

Early in his career O'Toole became emblematic of a new breed of hard-drinking Hollywood hellraiser.

"We heralded the '60s," he once said. "Me, [Richard] Burton, Richard Harris; we did in public what everyone else did in private then, and does for show now. We drank in public, we knew about pot."

Last month it was reported he had been coaxed out of retirement to act in a film about ancient Rome called Katherine of Alexandria in which he would play Cornelius Gallus, a palace orator.

O'Toole is believed to have been born in Connemara in County Galway in Ireland, and lived in London. He shot to stardom in the 1962 film of TE Lawrence's life story and went on to star in Goodbye Mr Chips, The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man and My Favourite Year. He received an honorary Oscar in 2003 after receiving eight nominations and no wins - an unassailed record.

He is survived by his two daughters, Pat and Kate O'Toole, from his marriage to actress Siân Phillips, and his son, Lorcan O'Toole, by Karen Brown.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on December 15, 2013, 04:04:57 PM
as a sign of remembrance, i will be referring to everyone as a 'toole' today.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on December 15, 2013, 06:54:33 PM
As a sign of remembrance, I will refer to him as Peter Tool star of Lawrence of Labia.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on February 03, 2014, 02:09:51 PM
less tragic, bc he was 92 years old, miklós jancsó died on january 31. tbh my sadness about this is heightened since it took me three days and a lit website to find out. the site has an excellent tributary piece and i'll just quote it

QuoteJancsó is perhaps best known for his work in the late 60s and early 70s, which saw him systematically exploring the question of how few takes he could use to make a film, while simultaneously exploring how complex those takes could be in terms of staging. The 87-minute-long Red Psalm consists of 27 elaborately designed shots[...]; in this way, the film was a forerunner of Aleksandr Sokurov's 2002 single-take feature Russian Ark, as well as Alfonso Cuarón's recent Gravity. (Cuarón named Jancsó as his primary influence in [an] Empire interview). Fellow Hungarian Béla Tarr was also much influenced by the man's work, and has called him "the greatest Hungarian director of all time."
http://htmlgiant.com/film/r-i-p-miklos-jancso/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on February 24, 2014, 11:30:27 AM
Harold Ramis, Chicago actor, writer and director, dead at 69 (http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-harold-ramis-dead-20140224,0,2259309.story)
Best-known as an actor for 'Ghostbusters', 'Stripes', writer/director for 'Caddyshack', 'Groundhog Day'
Mark Caro
Tribune reporter
11:22 a.m. CST, February 24, 2014

Harold Ramis was one of Hollywood's most successful comedy filmmakers when he moved his family from Los Angeles back to the Chicago area in 1996. His career was still thriving, with "Groundhog Day" acquiring almost instant classic status upon its 1993 release and 1984's "Ghostbusters" ranking among the highest-grossing comedies of all time, but the writer-director wanted to return to the city where he'd launched his career as a Second City performer.

"There's a pride in what I do that other people share because I'm local, which in L.A. is meaningless; no one's local," Ramis said upon the launch of the first movie he directed after his move, the 1999 mobster-in-therapy comedy "Analyze This," another hit. "It's a good thing. I feel like I represent the city in a certain way."

Ramis, a longtime North Shore resident, was surrounded by family when he died at 12:53 a.m. from complications of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a rare disease that involves swelling of the blood vessels, his wife Erica Mann Ramis said. He was 69.

Ramis' serious health struggles began in May 2010 with an infection that led to complications related to the autoimmune disease, his wife said. Ramis had to relearn to walk but suffered a relapse of the vaculitis in late 2011, said Laurel Ward, vice president of development at Ramis' Ocean Pictures production company.

Ramis leaves behind a formidable body of work, with writing credits on such enduring comedies as "National Lampoon's Animal House" (which upon its 1978 release catapulted the film career of John Belushi, with whom Ramis acted at Second City), "Stripes" (1981) and "Ghostbusters" (in which Ramis also co-starred) plus such directing efforts as "Caddyshack" (1980), "National Lampoon's Vacation" (1983), "Groundhog Day" and "Analyze This."

Previously he was the first head writer (and a performer) on Second City's groundbreaking television series "Second City Television (SCTV)" (1976-79). More recently he directed episodes of NBC's "The Office."

Ramis' comedies were often wild, silly and tilting toward anarchy, but they also were cerebral and iconoclastic, with the filmmaker heeding the Second City edict to work at the top of one's intelligence. This combination of smart and gut-bustingly funny led a generation of comedic actors and filmmakers — including Judd Apatow ("The 40 Year Old Virgin," "Knocked Up", Jay Roach ("Meet the Parents," the "Austin Powers" movies), Peter Farrelly ("There's Something About Mary," "Dumb and Dumber"), Jake Kasdan ("Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," "Orange County," both of which featured Ramis in small roles) and Adam Sandler (who starred in his own wacky golf comedy, "Happy Gilmore") — to cite him as a key inspiration.

"When I was 15, I interviewed Harold for my high school radio station, and he was the person that I wanted to be when I was growing up," said Apatow, who later would cast Ramis as Seth Rogen's father in "Knocked Up" and would produce Ramis' final movie, "Year One" (1999). "His work is the reason why so many of us got into comedy. We grew up on 'Second City TV' and 'Ghostbusters,' 'Vacation,' 'Animal House,' 'Stripes,' 'Meatballs' (which Ramis co-wrote); he literally made every single one of our favorite movies."

Ramis also left behind a reputation as a mensch and all-around good guy.

"He's the least changed by success of anyone I know in terms of sense of humor, of humility, sense of self," the late Second City founder Bernie Sahlins, who began working with Ramis in 1969, said of him in 1999. "He's the same Harold he was 30 years ago. He's had enormous success relatively, but none of it has gone to his head in any way."

Laurel Ward, vice president of development for Ramis' Ocean Pictures production company, called him "the world's best mentor." She recalled that when she first began working for him 15 years ago as his assistant, he had to be in California for a month, and he told her that although he didn't need an assistant out there, she should go anyway because it would be a good experience for her, and he'd make sure her expenses were covered.

"He just did it for me," she said. "He loved teaching people. He loved helping people. He loved seeing people succeed."

The son of Ruth and Nathan Ramis, who owned Ace Food & Liquor Mart on the West Side before moving the store and family to Rogers Park, Ramis graduated from Senn High School and Washington University in St. Louis. For his first professional writing gig, he contributed freelance arts stories to the Chicago Daily News in the mid-1960s. He also wrote and edited Playboy magazine's "Party Jokes" before and during his Second City days.

When, after some time off, he returned to Second City in 1972 to act alongside a relative newcomer in the cast, Ramis said he came to a major realization.

"The moment I knew I wouldn't be any huge comedy star was when I got on stage with John Belushi for the first time," he said in a 1999 Tribune interview. "When I saw how far he was willing to go to get a laugh or to make a point on stage, the language he would use, how physical he was, throwing himself literally off the stage, taking big falls, strangling other actors, I thought: I'm never going to be this big. How could I ever get enough attention on a stage with guys like this?

"I stopped being the zany. I let John be the zany. I learned that my thing was lobbing in great lines here and there, which would score big and keep me there on the stage."

With his round glasses lending a professorial air, Ramis would become the calm center of storms brewed by fellow actors, playing the bushy-haired, low-key wisecracker to Bill Murray's troublemaker in "Stripes" and being the most scientific-minded "Ghostbuster." Later roles included the sympathetic doctor of James L. Brooks' "As Good as It Gets" (1997) and the "Knocked Up" (2007) dad, whose dialogue, Apatow said, was almost all improvised.

Sahlins, who died last June, said he knew from the start that Ramis "would be an important factor in American comedy. He has all the skills and abilities to be funny and to write funny, but he also is a leader, a very nice guy. He was always looked up to, in Second City to being head writer at `SCTV.' He was never separate from anybody. He was always one of the boys, but he was the best boy."

Ramis followed Belushi from Second City to New York City to work with him plus fellow Second City cast member Murray (who would collaborate with Ramis on six movies) on "The National Lampoon Radio Hour." Those three plus Gilda Radner also performed in a National Lampoon stage show produced by Ivan Reitman, who went on to produce "National Lampoon's Animal House" and to direct such Ramis scripts as "Meatballs," "Stripes," "Ghostbusters" and "Ghostbusters II" (1989).

"I always thought he was a very talented writer who always had a very perceptive and intelligent point of view about the material," Reitman told the Tribune in 1999. "He managed to get the people to speak in a realistic way but still found something funny in their voices."

Apatow said he was captivated not just by the spirit of Ramis' movies but also his frequent collaborations with a collective of funny people.

"We noticed this group of friends who were making comedy together — all the 'SCTV' people and 'Saturday Night Live' people and National Lampoon people — and that seemed the most wonderful community you could ever be a part of," said Apatow, who has developed his own group of regular collaborators. "In addition to wanting to be comics, we also wanted to make comedies with our friends."

As zany as Ramis' early comedies were, they rigorously pursued a theme close to the heart of someone who grew out of the 1960s counterculture: characters rebelling against institutions, be they authoritarian college administrators and pampered rich kids ("Animal House"), a stuffy golf club ("Caddyshack") or the military ("Stripes"). After the collapse of his first marriage and the flop of his 1986 comedy "Club Paradise" (with greedy developers as the institutional villain), the Jewish-raised Ramis immersed himself in Zen Buddhism.

"It's my shield and my armor in the work I do," he said. "It's to keep a cheerful, Zen-like detachment from everything."

Ramis' later directorial efforts, starting with "Groundhog Day" and including "Stuart Saves His Family" (1995), "Multiplicity" (1996), "Analyze This" and his "Bedazzled" remake (2000), reflect a spiritual striving, exploring individuals' struggles with themselves more than outside forces.

Comparing his later to earlier comedies, Ramis told the Tribune: "The content's different, but it comes from the same place in me, which is to try to point people at some reality or truth."

He recalled that at the "Analyze This" junket, a writer told him his genre had become "goofy redemption comedy," to which Ramis responded, "OK, I'll take that."
Ramis had been living in Los Angeles since late '70s before he returned to Chicago, basing his production company in downtown Highland Park.

"In L.A., you're much more aware of an artificial pressure, just that you're in a race of some kind," Ramis recalled one morning over a veggie egg-white omelet at the coffee shop downstairs from his office. "You know, if you're not moving forward, you're dead in the water, because everyone around you is scheming, planning and plotting to advance themselves, often at your expense.

"I've compared it to high school: Am I popular? Am I cool? Am I in? Who's the in crowd? How do I get into that party? These are not things I ever wanted to worry about. Here I'm so liberated from that."

After unsuccessfully lobbying Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro to film "Analyze This" in Chicago, Ramis finally got his wish to shoot a movie locally with the 2005 dark crime comedy "The Ice Harvest," which starred Evanston native John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton.

Until his illness Ramis was out around town a fair amount, whether cheering on the Cubs and leading the occasional "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" or attending theater or appearing at local organizations' fundraisers or collecting honors, such as an honorary Doctorate of Arts from Columbia College Chicago in 2001 and a lifetime achievement award from the Just for Laughs festival in 2009. And when Second City celebrated its 50th anniversary in December 2009, Ramis joined "SCTV" cast members Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas and Martin Short in a Mainstage set that proved to be the weekend's hottest ticket.

Ramis was quiet about his illness, but friends did visit, including brothers and Second City castmates Bill Murray, from whom he'd been estranged for years, and Brian Doyle-Murray, who appeared in seven Ramis movies.

"He was like the campfire that we all gathered around for light and warmth and knowledge," his adult daughter Violet Stiel said.

"And that's the truth," added Erica Ramis.

He is survived by Erica Mann Ramis, Stiel, sons Julian and Daniel Ramis and two grandchildren. Erica Ramis said a private service is planned for this week with a public memorial in Chicago to take place probably in May.

mcaro@tribune.com

Twitter @MarkCaro
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on March 02, 2014, 08:49:48 AM
Alain Resnais.

Un maître de disparu.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on March 02, 2014, 04:11:28 PM
French Film Master Alain Resnais Dies

Alain Resnais, a cinema pioneer and a leading light of the French New Wave, died Saturday in Paris, his longtime producer and friend Jean-Louis Livi said. He was 91.

One of the most critically-aclaimed French helmers of all time, Resnais directed such arthouse masterpieces as "Hiroshima Mon Amour,"a flagship pic of the New Wave, which earned writer Marguerite Duras an Oscar nom for original screenplay in 1961, and "Last Year at Marienbad," a major influence on such directors as David Lynch.

Resnais, who began his career with a number of art documentaries and then broke through with the gripping 1955 "Night and Fog," about the Jewish Holocaust in WWII, was one of the more intellectually rigorous members of the new wave of filmmakers who overturned the French film industry in the late '50s.

The French cinema world is mourning Resnais today as critics, industryites, festivals' toppers and fans pay him homage.

"As Billy Wilder said of Lubitsch's death, 'No More Resnais.' But beyond that, 'No More Resnais Films,'" tweeted Thierry Fremaux, Cannes' director. "He talked a lot about others' films. He would say, 'Making films is fine, but seeing films is even better.'"

Agnes Varda, another cinema legend whose career spans over six decades, told Variety that Resnais "taught (her) to be radical."

"In 1954, Resnais accepted to edit my first film, "La Pointe Courte. " I'll never forget his punctuality, his patience and respect for my clumsy film. It's his generosity that impressed me the most in this film adventure, where money was lacking. Alain Resnais meant a lot to me at an age where we're still struggling to define ourselves.  We shared a taste for surrealism, Italian painting and wordplay," said Varda, whose credits include "Vagabond," "Les glaneurs et la glaneuse" and "Les plages d'Agnes."

France's culture minister Aurelie Fillipetti said "Resnais' work shone a light on French cinema throughout the world." Fillipetti added that "Resnais' films never gave in to trends and almost always won over audiences' favors as much as critics.'"

Meanwhile, Gilles Jacob, who will serve his last edition as president of Cannes Film Festival this year, wrote on Twitter that "If the French State fails to organize a national funeral for this modest and model artist as Italy did for Fellini, it will be an abandonment of glory."

Helmer had a deep relationship with the Cannes Film Festival: Among the flurry of awards he won throughout his long career, Resnais nabbed the grand jury prize in Cannes for Gerard Depardieu starrer "Mon uncle d'Amerique" in 1980 and competed in 2012 with "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." He also received a lifetime achievement honor in 2009.

Resnais, who was known as a bon vivant, maintained an active career until the end, culminating just a month ago with the Berlin Film Festival premiere of "Life of Riley" ("Aimer, boire et chanter"), an ensemble comedy of manners which marked Resnais' third adaptation of British playwright Alan Ayckbourn's work. Produced by Jean-Louis Livi and sold by Le Pacte, the film won a prize for innovation at the festival.

"For more than 60 years now, movie audiences have been privy to his moving-image test kitchen, where disparate stylistic and tonal collisions are par for the course, and the surprising aftertaste reliably reveals an underlying method to the apparent madness. From Resnais' earliest films, this has entailed seeing just how far he can ostensibly push an audience away by exposing his artistic scaffolding (particularly in the radical montage techniques of films like 'Hiroshima mon amour' and 'Muriel'), all the while stealthily drawing us closer in. And beginning with 'Melo' in 1986, this ongoing experiment has increasingly drawn on explicitly theatrical aesthetic devices to at once push and pull at the audience's attentions," wrote Variety's chief film critic Scott Foundas in his review of Resnais' "Life of Riley."

Unlike Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville and Francois Truffaut, Resnais was less influenced by Hollywood film genres and more by literary conceits. As with another New Wave filmmaker, Eric Rohmer, Resnais' films and images were thematically focused. Most of Resnais' movies were about the interplay of memory on the characters' lives, owing a debt to literary antecedents such as Marcel Proust and the philosopher Henri Bergson. Whereas Rohmer was narratively direct, Resnais was boldly experimental in telling his stories in nonlinear fashion, overlapping time and images.

While his first few movies, such as "Hiroshima," were international arthouse sensations, his later films, such as "Smoking/No Smoking," received sparse distribution abroad.

He was born June 3, 1922 in the town of Vannes and was already making 8mm films in his teens, including a teen version of "Fantomas." He originally studied acting and stagecraft before moving on, in his mid-20s, at the IDHEC French film school to study editing. After serving in the war, he began making short 16mm art films about such painters as Hans Hartung, Max Ernst, Felix Labisse and Lucien Coutard, some of which were shown on early French television. His first fictional film, 1945's "Schema d'une identification," starred Gerard Philipe.

He brought Marguerite Duras' script "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" to the screen as his first full-length feature in 1959. The film sought to reconcile memories of the nuclear attack on Japan in 1945 and was a sensation in a year that also produced such Gallic masterpieces as Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" and Godard's "Breathless." In 1961, he broke down the narrative structure even further with "Last Year at Marienbad," from a script by Alain Robbe-Grillet. The stylish romantic thriller won the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival and became a major influence on a generation of filmmakers looking for alternative ways to tell their stories.

The 1963 film "Muriel" also broke down its narrative, though his Prix Delluc winner, 1966's Yves Montand starrer "La Guerre est finie," is a straightforward and shattering reminiscence on the effects of the Spanish Civil War.

Resnais' next film, "Je t'aime, je t'aime," proved a financial setback and hampered his ability to raise funding for several years. When he returned it was with the conventional gangster story "Stavisky" (1974), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Three years later, he worked in English for the first time with "Providence," a contemplation on the creative process featuring John Gielgud's most satisfying screen performance.

Except for 1983's "Mon oncle d'Amerique," Resnais' films of the '80s and '90s, such as "Life Is a Bed of Roses," "Love Unto Death" (all three of which were written by Jean Gruault), "Melo" and "I Want to Go Home" rarely saw wide release outside France, where his stature as a filmmaker remained largely intact. His 1993 duet "Smoking/No Smoking" consisted of two complementary, stand-alone features adapted from Alan Ayckbourn's play "Intimate Strangers."

Resnais scored greater attention with 1997's "Same Old Song," a musical comedy written (like "Smoking/No Smoking") by the husband-and-wife team of Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnes Jaoui, who also appeared in the film. The helmer delivered another tuner with 2003's "Not on the Lips," a playful romp better appreciated at home than abroad, then returned to Ayckbourn with the well-received "Private Fears in Public Places" (2006), a Parisian take on the play of the same title.

Three years later, Resnais made a significant return to international prominence with "Wild Grass," a surreal, disorienting tale of l'amour fou adapted from Christian Gailly's novel "L'incident." Starring two of his longtime regulars, Andre Dussollier and Sabine Azema, the film was hailed as a late masterpiece by some critics and dismissed as confounding by others when it premiered at the 2009 Cannes fest, where Resnais received a lifetime achievement award.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on March 02, 2014, 07:12:31 PM
he was still alive?!?! wow. rip, such an amazing man.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on March 23, 2014, 03:36:45 PM
R.I.P. 'Homeland', 'White Collar' Thesp James Rebhorn Passes From Melanoma
via Deadline

UPDATED, SUNDAY 12:35 PM: James Rebhorn died Friday afternoon from melanoma. The actor was diagnosed with melanoma in 1992 and died at home in South Orange, N.J. peacefully around his family. He had been receiving hospice care after being released from NYU Hospital. "He was a wonderful, wonderful man. I represented him since 1990, and I represented him for my entire career," said his Leading Artist rep Dianne Busch. "He was an absolute joy to work with. He was very funny and was warm. He was drawn to projects with a social conscience. One of his favorite movies that he did was Lorenzo's Oil because it made a difference. He had a very strong faith and loved his family. His family was extremely important to him and I saw him make career sacrifices for them." His is survived by wife Becky, and two daughters Hannah and Emma. His family is planning a religious service arrangement to take place in New Jersey.

PREVIOUSLY: The longtime character actor, whose recent recurring credits include playing as Carrie Mathison's father Showtime's Homeland and Special Agent Reese Hughes on USA's White Collar, died Friday at his home. He was 65. James Rebhorn got his start in theater before moving to television where he starred on soaps Guiding Light and As The World Turns in the 1980s, earning a Soap Opera Digest Award nomination for the latter. As a character actor Rebhorn built a career playing figures of authority in films like Independence Day, Scent of a Woman, Carlito's Way, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Game, Regarding Henry, and Meet the Parents. During his prolific TV career he guest-starred as three different characters in on Law & Order, played the D.A. in the two-part series finale of Seinfeld, and appeared on Third Watch, The Book Of Daniel, 30 Rock, Big Lake, 2012′s Coma miniseries, and HBO's Enlightened. Rebhorn's recent big screen credits include Real Steel, Baby Mama, The Odd Life Of Timothy Green, and Sleepwalk With Me.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on April 07, 2014, 02:52:03 AM
Mickey Rooney died @ 93.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 17, 2014, 03:50:45 PM
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-27073911#TWEET1103746)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on April 17, 2014, 06:52:40 PM
That's a day ruiner. An incredible talent. Read his stuff folks.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch on April 23, 2014, 11:43:35 AM
Michael Glawogger (1959–2014) Acclaimed Austrian director Michael Glawogger, famed for his hard-hitting documentaries on the lives of the desperate poor, has died while on a shoot in Africa.

he has done some of my favorite docs, "Whores Glory", "Megacities", and "Workingman's Death." i think whores glory is still on netflix i highly recommend it, add to your instant queue great filmmaker
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on April 30, 2014, 08:36:52 AM
Actor Bob Hoskins Dead at 71   

LONDON — British actor Bob Hoskins, whose varied career ranged from noir drama "Mona Lisa" to animated fantasy "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" has died aged 71.

A family statement released Wednesday by agent Clair Dobbs said Hoskins died in a hospital after a bout of pneumonia.

A versatile character actor capable of menace, quiet poignancy and Cockney charm, London-raised Hoskins appeared in some of the most acclaimed British films of the past few decades, including gangster classic "The Long Good Friday."

He specialized in tough guys with a soft center, including the ex-con who chaperones Cathy Tyson's escort in Neil Jordan's 1986 film "Mona Lisa." Hoskins was nominated for a best-actor Academy Award for the role.

His Hollywood breakthrough came as a detective investigating cartoon crime in the part-animated 1988 hit "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." He also played the pirate Smee in Steven Spielberg's 1991 Peter Pan movie "Hook."

In 2012 Hoskins announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was retiring from acting.

His last role was as one of the seven dwarves in "Snow White & The Huntsman," starring Kristen Stewart.

"We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Bob," said a statement from wife Linda and children Alex, Sarah, Rosa and Jack.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on April 30, 2014, 09:49:39 AM
Was not expecting that. Damn.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: max from fearless on April 30, 2014, 12:21:27 PM
A sad sad day. Such a great actor. "The Long Good Friday" is an incredible gangster film and so much more, all held up by Hoskins' performance. I also love his bit part in "Brazil" He will be missed.

PS. I watched the scene where Freddie meets The Master and it just fucking broke me in two. As soon as PSH says: "Alright" This year has been nasty beyond belief...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on May 08, 2014, 08:35:39 AM
I loved Bob Hoskins' performance in Atom Egoyan's "Felicia's Journey". He walks such a fine line between a perfect gentleman and a violent brute. It's one of the most subtly disturbing films I've ever seen, and you won't find a more tasteful portrayal of a serial killer. Just realized he starred in it today, hadn't put a name to his face before. He does such an impressive job. Really good movie, I highly recommend it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2yPGlwHk_I
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on May 08, 2014, 04:38:04 PM
in which i overshare how my feelings responded to what reelist said:
egoyan and i have an overall patchy relationship, idk, when i watched the sweet hereafter i thought i was entering an adult-serious-movie realm. seemed next level to me at the time, but. pretty sure the best time i had with egoyan was the first time i saw him, and it's been some kinda cocaine addiction since then. so. i remember i owned the egoyan box set and sold that. four of his movies, gone from me. do i still own felicia's journey? yes. here it is, next to ararat, the adjuster, and exotica. those are the four egoyans i've kept for whatever reason. plus, felicia's journey is unopened! how strange. i netflix'd it in the past, then bought it cheaply somewhere and i haven't opened it or watched it since i bought it. now everything cosmic seems pointed at me rewatching felicia's journey. roger
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on May 11, 2014, 07:50:47 PM
R.I.P. 'Videodrome' Actor Les Carlson
via Deadline

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FbYmJpVZ.jpg&hash=0b9a87a312a9294c38aca573ca6be73231997343)

Actor Leslie "Les" M. Carlson, who starred in four David Cronenberg films including Videodrome during his 38-year career in film, television, and the stage, died May 3 after a battle with cancer at his Toronto home, under hospice care. He was 81. South Dakota-born Carlson began his screen career in the 1970s, with turns in films including 1974′s Deranged and the sorority slasher classic Black Christmas. Cronenberg cast him as Spectacular Optical Corporation head Barry Convex in 1983 sci-fi horror Videodrome, for which Carlson earned a Genie Award nomination. He'd go on to act in three more Cronenberg films: The Dead Zone, The Fly, and 2000′s Toronto Film Festival short Camera. Carlson's credits also include films High-Ballin', A Christmas Story, Rolling Vengeance, and K2, as well as TV appearances on 21 Jump Street, The X-Files, Highlander, Babar and the Adventures of Badou, Rookie Blue, and a recurring run on Disney's Road To Avonlea.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on May 13, 2014, 03:51:36 AM
On 12 May 2014, H. R. Giger died in a hospital after having suffered dangerous injuries when he tripped and fell down some stairs.

:(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on May 13, 2014, 03:59:52 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.kinja-img.com%2Fgawker-media%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fs--oslcHkmU--%2Fx28npqcxfoumstyy2prd.jpg&hash=0b93cd1772013ea0ef75650a2cbffe0bc4e59626)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 13, 2014, 09:50:13 PM
'Searching for Sugar Man' director Malik Bendjelloul dies at 36

STOCKHOLM — Malik Bendjelloul, the cash-strapped freelance film maker who shot to Hollywood stardom overnight with the Oscar-winning music documentary "Searching for Sugar Man," has died. He was 36. 

Swedish police spokeswoman Pia Glenvik told The Associated Press that Bendjelloul died in Stockholm late Tuesday, but wouldn't specify where his body was found or the cause of death.
She said no crime is suspected in relation to the filmmaker's death.

"Searching for Sugar Man," which tells the story of how American singer Sixto Rodriguez became a superstar in South Africa without knowing about it, won the Oscar for best documentary in 2013. It was the first time a Swedish film had won an Oscar since Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" in 1984.

The film also won several other prizes, including a British BAFTA for best documentary and the Swedish Guldbagge award.

Bendjelloul came across the story about Rodriguez, who had disappeared from public life in the U.S. but developed an unlikely cult following among white liberals in South Africa, during a trip to Cape Town.

"I had never heard anything close to this in terms of the emotional content and the spectacular way things evolved. My jaw just dropped," Bendjelloul told The Hollywood Reporter after winning the Oscar.
The soft-spoken, unassuming Bendjelloul worked as a reporter for Sweden's public broadcaster SVT before resigning to backpack around the world. He got the idea for "Searching for Sugar Man" — his first feature film — during one of his trips, but it would take him more than four years to complete the film.

Bendjelloul later recalled that when the film was 90 percent finished, after he had been editing it for three years, the main sponsor said the film was lousy and withdrew support.

At this stage he had already used up all his savings and borrowed money from friends, so he stopped working on the movie and took other jobs to make ends meet. In the end, he completed the film by shooting the final parts with his smartphone and making his own animations.

Bendjelloul was born in 1977 to Swedish translator Veronica Schildt Bendjelloul and doctor Hacene Bendjelloul and acted in the Swedish TV series "Ebba and Didrik" as a child during the 1990s. He studied journalism and media production at the Linnaeus University of Kalmar in southern Sweden before joining SVT where he worked as a reporter on the culture program "Kobra."

Bendjelloul's death came as a shock to many in the close-knit Swedish film community.

"This terrible news has put us all in a state of shock," Swedish Film Institute spokesman Jan Goransson told the AP.

"Malik Bendjelloul was one of our most exciting film makers, which the Oscar award last year was a clear proof of," Goransson said.

He said Bendjelloul had been working on a new movie before his death but wouldn't give any details.

The film director has previously said he escaped the Hollywood hype around him after the Oscar award to go on a safari and has been working on a film about a man who could communicate with elephants.
Swedish film critic Hynek Pallas, who traveled with Bendjelloul to Hollywood when he received the Oscar, described him as a modest, but very determined man.

"He was an incredibly talented storyteller," Pallas wrote. "He had the strength of a marathon runner; to work on his film for so many years and sometimes without money, then you have a goal."
Bendjelloul is survived by his parents and brother Johar Bendjelloul. Funeral arrangements weren't immediately known.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on May 18, 2014, 11:10:03 PM
R.I.P. 'Godfather' Cinematographer Gordon Willis
BY THE DEADLINE TEAM
   
Gordon Willis, ASC, whose lensing on films including Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather films, Woody Allen's Manhattan, Annie Hall, Zelig, Stardust Memories, and The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Klute, All The President's Men, Malice, and The Devil's Own, has died. He was 82.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch on May 28, 2014, 10:24:15 AM
Maya Angelou April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014

American author and poet Maya Angelou, who is best known for her groundbreaking autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," has died at age 86 in North Carolina, her publisher confirmed on Wednesday.

The prolific African-American writer penned more than 30 books, won numerous awards, and was honored last year by the National Book Awards for her service to the literary community.

"Dr. Angelou has passed in Winston-Salem," said Sally Marvin, of Random House.

No other details were immediately available.

Angelou provided eloquent commentary on race, gender and living life to its fullest in poems and memoirs. Her latest work "Mom & Me & Mom," about her mother and grandmother and what they taught her, was released last year.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on June 12, 2014, 12:10:00 PM
A few days late to post it here, but Rik Mayall died a few days ago. Heart attack. If you grew up in Britain during the 80s/90s then you know him best for Bottom. He was also in The Young Ones and appeared in Blackadder and other stuff too. Stateside, you might remember him from Drop Dead Fred. He was a true comic icon, and it's only just slowly dawning on me what a huge part his brand of comedy had on me in my formative years. Bottom was one of those forbidden fruit sort of shows which was far too mature for me when it originally aired, but myself and friends found ways to watch it anyway.

Here's a selection of clips from the two sell out Bottom Live tours:

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Garam on June 12, 2014, 03:47:00 PM
Yeah, he was a hero to everyone in our generation (and the one before) who was into out there comedy. As soon as it happened, about a dozen people on my Facebook were posting eulogies and changing their profile pictures to him, while non-UK people were wondering who he is. His role in The Young Ones is one of my favourite performances in anything ever, it's up there with like...Travis Bickle.

Bottom Live isn't great, if you don't know him, watch The Young Ones, Bottom series 1/2, The Comic Strip Presents: Bad News, Dirty Movie, Mr Jolly Lives Next Door. Classics.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: max from fearless on June 12, 2014, 04:18:48 PM
Oscar-Nominated Actress Ruby Dee Dies at 91 via Variety

Ruby Dee, best known for her role in 1961's "A Raisin in the Sun" and latterly for her Oscar-nominated turn as Denzel Washington's mother in 2007's "American Gangster," died Wednesday in New York. She was 91.

Dee's Oscar nomination in 2008 for her performance as the feisty mother of a Harlem druglord played by Washington in Ridley Scott's "American Gangster" was particularly impressive because the actress made an impression on the Motion Picture Academy with only 10 minutes of screen time. She won a SAG Award for the same performance.

Dee also won an Emmy in 1991 for her performance in the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" movie "Decoration Day."

She and her husband, Ossie Davis, who often performed together, were among the first generation of African-American actors, led by Sidney Poitier, afforded the opportunity for significant, dignified dramatic roles in films, onstage and on television.

When Dee and Davis (who died in 2005) were announced as recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004, the center described them as "one of the most revered couples of the American stage, two of the most prolific and fearless artists in American culture. As individuals and as a team they have created profound and lasting work that has touched us all. With courage and tenacity they have thrown open many a door previously shut tight to African American artists and planted the seed for the flowering of America's multicultural humanity."

Dee and Davis were civil rights activists beginning in the early 1950s during the controversy over the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Later they were involved in Martin Luther King's March on Washington.

In 1959 Dee starred alongside Poitier, playing Ruth Younger, wife to his Walter Younger, in the original, landmark Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," the first play by a black woman to receive a Rialto staging and the first Main Stem play to be directed by a black man, Lloyd Richards. The play, Poitier and Richards were all nominated for Tonys.

Dee, Poitier and others from the cast reproduced their performances for the 1961 film adaptation, which was selected for the National Film Registry in 2005.

Dee made her bigscreen debut with a prominent role in the all-black musical "That Man of Mine" in 1946. She starred opposite boxer Joe Louis, playing himself, in 1949 crime drama "The Fight Never Ends," but she came to prominence with her role in 1950's "The Jackie Robinson Story," with the first African-American in Major League Baseball playing himself and Dee playing his wife. She had an uncredited role in Sidney Poitier's first film, "No Way Out," the same year.

For seven months beginning in September 1961, Dee and Davis starred on Broadway in the racially charged, Davis-penned satire "Purlie Victorious," which attracted much controversy for, among other things, its setting: a modern Confederate plantation.

Dee starred with Davis in the 1963 film "Gone Are the Days!," an adaptation of "Purlie Victorious," and appeared in 1967 film "The Incident."

The actress first made her mark on the smallscreen in a 1963 episode of "The Doctors and the Nurses," drawing her first Emmy nomination. During the 1960s she had recurring roles on "Peyton Place" and daytime soap "Guiding Light" while guesting on other programs.

Dee won an Obie and Drama Desk Award in 1971 for her starring role opposite James Earl Jones in the original Off Broadway production of Athol Fugard's "Boesman and Lena." She won another Drama Desk in 1973 for her work Off Broadway in Alice Childress' "Wedding Band." She played Gertrude in a 1975 Shakespeare in the Park production of "Hamlet" that starred Sam Waterston.

On the bigscreen, Dee appeared in the Davis-directed "Black Girl" in 1972; she starred with Davis in the Davis-penned and -helmed 1976 film "Cool Red," whose tagline was "A Dynamite Story of African Revolution!" Dee also starred with Poitier and Harry Belafonte in Poitier's "Buck and the Preacher."

In 1974 the actress returned to the baseball biopic genre, co-starring with Paul Winfield in telepic "It's Good to Be Alive," about Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella's recovery from a tragic accident. (Indeed, Dee couldn't seem to get enough of baseball: In 1990 she starred in telepic "The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson," this time as Robinson's mother.)

Dee picked up Emmy noms in 1979 for her role in "Roots: The Next Generations" and in 1988 for her part in the miniseries "Lincoln," based on Gore Vidal's novel. Another highlight of the period was a TV adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in which Dee starred as Mary Tyrone.

The actress returned to Broadway after a long absence in 1988 with the comedy "Checkmates," starring with Denzel Washington and Winfield.
Dee and Davis were among the stars of Spike Lee's controversial "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever."

She was also Emmy-nominated for guest roles in 1990 on "China Beach" and in 1993 on "Evening Shade."

In 2001 Dee appeared in two Off Broadway productions, "Ruby's Eyes" and the Davis-penned "A Last Dance for Sybil." She received the Edith Oliver Award for Sustained Excellence at the 2002 edition of the Lucille Lortel Awards, which recognize achievements in Off Broadway theater.

In her mid-80s Dee was still a busy actress, appearing in at least eight films between 2007 and 2013.

In 2001 Dee and Davis shared a Grammy nomination with others for best spoken-word album for "The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets"; they won in the category in 2007 for "With Ossie And Ruby: In This Life Together."

Dee and Davis were awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 1995. At the presentation of their SAG life achievement award in 2001, SAG president William Daniels said: "For more than half a century, they have enriched and transformed American life as brilliant actors, writers, directors, producers and passionate advocates for social justice, human dignity and creative excellence."

Ruby Ann Wallace was born in Cleveland but grew up in Harlem and graduating from Hunter College with degrees in French and Spanish in 1944.

She began her career on the stage, making her 1943 Broadway debut playing a Native in a play called "South Pacific" (not the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical). She was a replacement in the American Negro Theater-produced hit "Anna Lucasta" and toured with the show. Dee appeared in three more plays in the late 1940s that had only brief runs on Broadway, including 1946's "Jeb." She first met Ossie Davis, who was playing the title character in "Jeb," at this time and married him two years later. Off Broadway she appeared in "The World of Sholom Aleichem," stage managed by Davis, in 1953.

The actress was first married to blues singer Frankie Dee Brown in the 1940s.

Dee was married to Davis for 56 years until his death in 2005. She is survived by their three children: daughters Nora and Hasna and son Guy Davis, an actor, blues musician and choreographer.

SAG-AFTRA released the following statement on Thursday: "SAG-AFTRA mourns the loss of SAG Life Achievement Award recipient Ruby Dee, who died yesterday at the age of 91. The multitalented Dee distinguished herself as an actor, writer and activist and received the Life Achievement Award in 2000 with husband Ossie Davis. They were only the second husband-and-wife team to win the award, the other being Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in 1985. Dee was predeceased by Davis in 2005."

SAG-AFTRA president Ken Howard also released a statement: "Ruby Dee was truly one of a kind. She was a woman who believed deeply in fairness, a conviction that motivated her lifelong efforts to advance civil rights. The acting community — and the world — is a poorer place for her loss."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on June 25, 2014, 01:17:12 AM
Eli Wallach, 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' Star, Dies at 98

Tony- and Emmy-winning actor Eli Wallach, a major proponent of "the Method" style of acting best known for his starring role in Elia Kazan's film "Baby Doll" and for his role as villain Tuco in iconic spaghetti Western "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," died on Tuesday, according to the New York Times. He was 98.

On the bigscreen Wallach had few turns as a leading man, but none was as strong as his first starring role in 1956's "Baby Doll," in which he played a leering cotton gin owner intent on seducing the virgin bride (Carroll Baker) of his business rival (Karl Malden). But he appeared in more than 80 films, offering colorful turns in character roles in movies such as "The Magnificent Seven," "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," "Nuts," "Lord Jim," "The Misfits" and "The Two Jakes."

The actor, who appeared in a wide variety of stage, screen and television roles, was often paired with his wife Anne Jackson, particularly onstage. In 1948 he was one of the core of 20 who joined Kazan, Cheryl Crawford and Bobby Lewis in starting the Actors Studio, where he studied with Lee Strasberg. Others included Jackson, David Wayne, Marlon Brando, Patricia Neal and Maureen Stapleton.

Wallach received an Honorary Academy Award at the second annual Governors Awards, presented on Nov. 13, 2010, for "a lifetime's worth of indelible screen characters."

His career began in earnest in the '50s, when he achieved triumphs in Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tattoo," for which he won a Tony, and the revival of George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara."

Times were lean early in Wallach's acting career until he got a role in "Mister Roberts," with which he stayed for two years until 1951, when Williams cast him opposite Stapleton in "The Rose Tattoo," directed by Kazan. After playing the role for 18 months he went right into Williams' "Camino Real" — for which he turned down the role of Maggio in "From Here to Eternity." Frank Sinatra did it instead and won an Oscar; "Camino Real" closed after 60 performances. But Wallach claimed to have no regrets.

Wallach starred Off Broadway in "The Scarecrow" with Jackson and Neal and in 1954 as Julien in Anouilh's "Mademoiselle Columbe" opposite Julie Harris. (He and Harris later starred in "The Lark" on TV).

Afterwards he went off to London, spending a year in "Teahouse of the August Moon." He then did "Major Barbara," with Charles Laughton and Burgess Meredith, on Broadway in 1956. Other stage roles included "The Chairs" and "The Cold Wind and the Warm," with Stapleton.

For Don Siegel he appeared in magnificent film noir "The Lineup." He played a bad guy, and did the same in "Seven Thieves" and "The Magnificent Seven." In 1960 he joined the cast of John Huston's "The Misfits" with Gable, Monroe, Clift and Thelma Ritter.

Over the next decade he appeared in supporting roles in a wide variety of films, including "How the West Was Won," "The Victors," "Act One," "Lord Jim," "How to Steal a Million," "MacKenna's Gold," "A Lovely Way to Die," "How to Save a Marriage," "The Brain" (in French and English) and Sergio Leone's classic "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

Stage work was also satisfying, including Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" with Zero Mostel and Jackson, "Brecht on Brecht," Murray Schisgal's "The Tiger and the Typist" (which he and Jackson made into a film in 1967 called "The Tiger Makes Out") and "Luv." They later did "The Typist" on television.

Also for TV he did Reginald Rose's drama "Dear Friends" on "CBS Playhouse" (drawing an Emmy nomination), Clifford Odets' "Paradise Lost" and "20 Shades of Pink." He played Mr. Freeze on two episodes of "Batman." He won an Emmy for his role in the TV film "Poppies Are Also Flowers."

Through the '70s he did several more spaghetti Westerns, as well as films including "The Angel Levine," "Cinderella Liberty," "The Deep," "Nasty Habits," "Movie, Movie," "Winter Kills" and "Girlfriends."

He also flourished in telepics such as "The Wall," "The Executioner's Song," "The Pirate" and "Seventh Avenue," while achieving a triumph with Jackson in 1973 in Anouilh's "Waltz of the Toreadors."

In the late '70s, Wallach and Jackson toured in "The House of Blue Leaves" and a revival of "The Diary of Anne Frank," with their two daughters.

He began to slow down in the '80s but still turned in some good work in "Tough Guys," "Nuts" and 1990's "The Two Jakes" and "The Godfather: Part III," and on the smallscreen he picked up another Emmy nom for the movie "Something in Common" with Ellen Burstyn.

Well into his 90s Wallach continued to draw supporting roles in prestige features, appearing in "Mystic River" (though uncredited), Lasse Hallstrom's "The Hoax," a segment of "New York, I Love You" as well as Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" and Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," both in 2010.

The actor continued to do occasional TV work, guesting, for example, on "Law and Order" in 1992, on Sidney Lumet's "100 Centre Street" in 2001, on "ER" in 2003, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" in 2006 and "Nurse Jackie" in 2009 (drawing two more Emmy noms for these last two perfs); he recurred on "The Education of Max Bixford" in 2002. More frequently he did voiceover work, including for 2006 Oscar-winning animated short "The Moon and the Son."

The Brooklyn-born Wallach was educated at the U. of Texas and City College of New York, where he received his B.A. and M.S. in education. Though he felt the odds were against him — "I was a little guy," he wrote in a New Yorker self-profile — he started studying acting as an avocation. He trained with Sanford Meisner, one of the early advocates of the Stanislavski method.

But his thespic ambitions were cut short by the draft. He entered the Army in 1941 and was a Medical Corps administrator for more than four years, serving in the Pacific and Europe and achieving the rank of captain by the time of his discharge.

One of his first acting jobs out of the Army in 1945 was in an Equity Library Theater production of Tennessee Williams' one-act "This Property Is Condemned." Also in the play was young actress Anne Jackson, whom he married in 1948.

His Broadway debut came at the end of 1945 in the drama "Skydrift." The following year he joined the American Repertory Theater, performing Shakespeare, Shaw and even "Alice in Wonderland," in which he played a duck and the Two of Spades. His stage career took off in the early '50s.

In 2005, the actor released his wittily titled autobiography, "The Good, the Bad and Me: In My Anecdotage."

Wallach and Jackson had three children, Peter David, Roberta and Katherine.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 01, 2014, 02:45:34 PM
Paul Mazursky (http://www.deadline.com/2014/07/r-i-p-paul-mazursky)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 02, 2014, 10:25:45 PM
R.I.P. Xixax
via Everyone

Beloved internet message board "Xixax" died quietly in its sleep in the early evening hours of July 2, 2014. Sources say the long-cherished discussion forum was surrounded by loved ones at the time of its death. Xixax member Kal shared the following words of rememberance: "I honestly can't think of any other site that I continue to visit on a regular basis for 11 straight years. And fuck, lots of you have been here the same or longer, and many were boys who became men in the past 11 years" and characterized Xixax as "one of the most interesting places to read about and discuss films, television, and more."

On December 20, 2013, in the thread 'To Newbs, introduce yourself (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=2.msg330448#msg330448)', brief member chimbo stated "I understand it takes balls to survive Xixax", and on July 21, 2009, in the thread 'is Xixax for teenagers (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=10502.0)', board member SiliasRuby remarked that "[Xixax has] always been for everyone, but if you can balance your immaturity with your maturity when it comes to writing about film people will respect you more around here", an apt summation of the kinds of people many Xixax regulars hoped to be and draw to participate in board discussions.

On July 30, 2007, 234 people visited the site, likely due to the release of the YouTube-posted teaser trailer for There Will Be Blood, a turning point in the way films in general were marketed, and the date marked Xixax's most-visitors-online ever.

Somewhere around 2008 Xixax went on permanent life support, with a few longtime devoted members and other loyal friends staying by its bedside even as most anticipated the curtain coming to a close. These next few years were trying times for Xixax, which resembled a near ghost town for weeks and months on end, a lone post here or there periodically breaking the silence.

In the site's later era, the notorious "Shoutbox" was added, a chatroom type feature which diverted much of the discussion away from the actual board itself, into a no-holds-barred, Wild West type zone, where members could post free-wheeling rants and vulgar diatribes with abandon, comforted by the probable notion that their (frequently drunken) indiscretions would ultimately be wiped clean and fade into digital obscurity. With the addition of the board topic 'Shoutbox Gold (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=12449.0)', these feelings of safety lessened somewhat, as humorous anecdotes, memorable conversations, or blatant shows of stupidity could be enshrined forever in the minds of all who visited the shoutbox memorial thread.

In late 2013 into the beginning months of 2014, when the board had lapsed into a nearly vegetable-like state, Xixax member Reelist attempted to awaken it from its coma by contacting posters who had since moved on with their lives and closed the youthful chapter where they participated in movie banter with virtual strangers to the neglect of other, possibly more productive aspects of their existence. On July 05, 2009, in the thread 'This place is BIPOLAR (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=10311.msg315677#msg315677)', Xixax member Pubrick explained that "a lot of people left after having kids, getting a serious job, or generally moving on to bigger and better things."

Older board members expect a welcome if transient resurrection period to coincide with the release of Paul Thomas Anderson's forthcoming film adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice, but years of watching Xixax's tide swell and recede in patterns following the releases of There Will Be Blood and The Master have granted them the wisdom to know that this surge too will eventually pass.

At the time of this press release a memorial had not yet been scheduled.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on July 02, 2014, 10:55:37 PM
I want to upvote that post so badly, but I can't bring myself to do it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on July 02, 2014, 10:59:39 PM
Most movies suck these days, television is where it's at, and since it's the off-season, there's not much to talk about.  Us stalwart owls are still here, and we'll who-ot and holler when there's something to make noise about.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Axolotl on July 02, 2014, 11:44:32 PM
Quote from: ono on July 02, 2014, 10:59:39 PM
Most movies suck these days, television is where it's at, and since it's the off-season, there's not much to talk about.
Most movies have always sucked. The percentage of good movies is now is just about the same as it's ever been. Maybe you're not trying to seek out good movies like you used to and are just lazily passing judgement because TV is so much easier to get into? This year, as jenkins has been futilely reminding everyone in his weird prose, has been great for movies. I can name 10 movies that I really really liked that came out this year and i can't even watch any new movies till the dvd comes out.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 03, 2014, 02:15:45 AM
the talent and creativity possible for an art can be as alive and as wonderful as ever, but new attractions appear and people simply flock to them instead. that's how it goes. bound by flesh reminded me tonight

from a cultural perspective television will endure now for quite a while. i hope everyone likes it as much as they say. it's not the cultural time to be appreciated as a movie. but that simply has nothing to do with it as an art. it's been a great year for movies

but that's not what killed xixax anyway. it's a combination of the members growing old, and discovering new territories for their personal lives, and the idea of a message board growing old and being replaced by new forms of internet communication. that's how it goes

the message board is still possible. i like the anonymity of it. i like the trail of mystery to anonymity, and it's better suited to a message board i think. although my personal details have been shared i don't mind that others haven't shared their own, because i get to imagine a person in a form i can only imagine. i think that's fun

and i chat movies with people who like movies, which i enjoy. and well i personally enjoy it like a teenager i must admit, because tbh i hope that's how i always enjoy it, that's how i like reading it, and anyway i'm terrible at growing old. people chat tv with people who like tv, which they enjoy

sometimes. sometimes there are things here for people to enjoy. it is rather dying. and i am rather repeating things wilder mentioned in that post of his which was written well and made me emotional

of course, was it such a big deal that it ever lived in the first place? no. nbd. is it such a big deal that it'll vanish one day? nbd. it means what it means while it means it, the same as anything else

it's cool. i'll see around whom i'll see around, i'll miss you when you're gone, and everyone's going to be ok

who wants to movie chat? lemme know
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on July 03, 2014, 12:14:37 PM
We're not dead.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: MacGuffin on July 03, 2014, 02:22:10 PM
Xixax has more lives than a cat.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: max from fearless on July 03, 2014, 05:06:45 PM
Xixax is simply, forever. But no, I felt that Wilder dropped it like it's hot and my feeling as a lurking-kinda-anonymous-been here but haven't gotten bloody yet-newbie with odd-random-post credentials, was simply that everything ebbs and flows, people get older and move on, things die and regenerate. But I did feel like an asshole, lurking and getting so much from this site. Incredible recommendations and sitting on the side of discussions about movies, amongst people who really give a damn and want to make a contribution whenever however to the culture. Yes, the way we discuss and digest stuff has changed. Yes, everyone is on a hype about how TV is now the thing. Fuck the thing, because after that guess what? Another spanking brand new: thing. TV and most definitely not True Detective (which I enjoyed but felt was way overhyped here, but like I said I lurk and I haven't even posted about the end of Louie so really I kinda can't say shit, but think Louie needs to get posted about because it wasn't about the cum shot finale but the build up, the melodies (those two playing their violins) those excursions into Louie's past...sorry where was I...oh yeah TV which) cannot do shot for shot mood and magic and adding shot 'A' with shot 'B' to create this incredible, delicious, mysterious thing called 'C' which happens between the shots. I just don't feel it in TV, maybe The Sopranos/Twin Peaks? got nearest, and Deadwood just had this delicious primal vibe and absolute savagery which occasionally imploded into a jaunty melancholy waltz that cannot be faulted, but deep down in my heart I felt was an extension and an amplification or growth of a seed Altman planted long ago with McCabe and Mrs. Miller: Cinema. The Wire, Breaking Bad and Louie (and so many others) have pushed the TV form forward in so many wonderful ways but is this shit replacing cinema? Movies? No. But anyways fuck-it. I'm going down the wrong road....

Now more than ever a place like Xixax is needed. I've more or less given up on most traditional movie magazines, some websites are on and off cool and some reviewers like Dargis at the NY Times (Jesus, for a second I felt like a supporting player in All the Presidents Men, those cutting rhythms, the way David Shire's score announces itself at the most bizarre time, cinema! movies!) but I mostly get tidbits and links, links to trailers for trailers and links to reviews written by critics forming their opinions just as the end credits on the movie go up the screen of the first press screening and ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's bullshit.

Here, people wrangle with the movies, live with them, break up to them, get married to them, let them seep into their pores, fart them out, exult them and fight for them (sometimes hilariously so but fucking great that's what movies'll do to ya) And that's where I want to be. So, I apologize for lurking more than posting and for not offering more contributions and that's not to say that my new blood is some rejuvenating 3rd Act, twist 'n' save the day bullshit. Of course not, but it's just another perspective, or feeling, or mood, or song on the playlist. Sometimes it feels like this message board is like holding cinema tight in your arms and dancing with her, all slow and manly like and hoping she digs it, as she looks over at some other cooler guy coming in...probably that bad ass motherfucker called Paul Thomas Anderson. Yes, I cannot wait for the new movie. Yes, I'm fucking dying to see the trailer. Like I cannot wait. But like others have said there have been so many great films this year. Just yesterday I fell under the spell of "Exhibition" by Joanna Hogg and the day before "Only Lovers Left Alive" and they'd be great in a double-bill as they both speak to cycles, rejuvenation, dying, seeing the things you love die and dealing with the void that absence leaves, a zombified - easy answers arts culture, interiors, how you view art and objects, how you feel your way around art, musical moments and the balance between high mindedness and just farting it all out in a playful pig-ass way and it all gels with my feelings about Xixax. I come here for the highly considered, encouraging sometimes inspiring perspectives, for surprised (Who saw "Gooses" coming?) and for ideas about movies and what they could be and I also come here to hear the bitching, moaning and sometimes Freddie Quell like farts and laughter about all the highly considered shit above. Fart. Fart. Fart. I fart in your mouth Xixax. More lives than a cat indeed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on July 20, 2014, 02:29:51 PM
Sooo yesterday Eric Garner was killed by NYPD from a chokehold a la "Do The Right Thing". Today James Garner who played a cop for many years on "The Rockford Files" dies of old age at 86.


Creeeeeeeepppppyyy.



Not really. Just what's in a name, you know?


Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on July 20, 2014, 07:10:07 PM
jennifer garner is next. she will also be choked to death by police.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on July 20, 2014, 07:10:50 PM
She'll be chocked to death by Affleck's Batsuit.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on July 28, 2014, 10:06:23 PM
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/thai-action-director-panna-rittikrai-719897

Thai Action Director Panna Rittikrai Dies at 53

Thai actor, stuntman, fight choreographer, producer and director Panna Rittikrai died in a Bangkok hospital on Sunday from acute renal failure following a short battle with liver disease. He was 53.

Rittikrai rose to global prominence alongside action star Tony Jaa after the breakout success of 2003's Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior, a film that put the spotlight on their energetic wire-free and realistic muay boran fighting style.

Rittikrai was a longtime mentor to Jaa and many other Thai action stars.

Born Krittiya Lardphanna in Thailand's North East, Rittikrai's career in the Thai movie industry spanned 30 years as he worked his way from stuntman to acting roles in martial arts films, eventually becoming a respected fight choreographer.

Rittikrai's distinctive and kinetic interpretation of muay boran, an ancient precursor to muay Thai, caught the eye of producer/director Prachya Pinkaew, who showcased the muay boran style in Ong-Bak and cast Jaa as the film's hero.

Following the huge international success of Ong-Bak, Rittikrai turned his hand to directing, helming 2004's Born to Fight as well as the less successful two sequels to Ong-Bak in 2008 and 2010.

Always in demand as a martial arts choreographer, Rattikrai worked on 2011's globally successful Tom Yum Goong (called The Protector in the U.S. and Warrior King in the U.K.), as well as the follow-up released late last year, Tom Yum Goong 2.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 31, 2014, 05:54:17 PM
R.I.P. Movie Makeup Icon Dick Smith
via Deadline

Legendary Hollywood makeup artist Dick Smith has died at the age of 92. His protege and fellow makeup genius Rick Baker tweeted the sad news this morning.

"The master is gone. My friend and mentor Dick Smith is no longer with us. The world will not be the same."

Smith's iconic transformations appeared in films such as The Godfather, Taxi Driver and The Exorcist, in which he created the device that allowed Linda Blair to projectile vomit. He also transformed the look of F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus, as he aged in the film from his 40s to his 80s. In 2011, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences presented Smith with an honorary Oscar (Smith's second, his first was for Amadeus) at the Governors Awards. It was presented by Baker who called Smith "my idol, mentor, and friend for over 40 years, the greatest makeup artist of all time". On accepting the award, an emotional, tearful Smith said "When I watch the wonderful films they just showed, I thought, 'What a wonderful career this fellow has had.' I have loved being a makeup artist. To have had so much kindness is just too much."

Earlier in his career, he worked on the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows, a project he credited with being valuable preparation for the 1970 film Little Big Man. In Dark Shadows, vampire Barnabas Collins was undergoing medical treatment to change him into a living human being. The experiment went awry and Barnabas began aging quickly, appearing as a man more than 175 years old.

His other notable work includes features The Sunshine Boys, The Deer Hunter, Starman and Altered States. Smith also won an Emmy for his work on Mark Twain Tonight! (1967).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Tictacbk on August 11, 2014, 06:09:01 PM
Was hoping this was an internet hoax, but it's looking like it isn't...

RIP Robin Williams.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/08/11/robin-williams-dead-at-63/ (http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/08/11/robin-williams-dead-at-63/)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: max from fearless on August 11, 2014, 06:16:13 PM
This is friggin sad as hell. Suicide? Depression? Really really sad.

RIP Robin.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on August 11, 2014, 06:25:40 PM
At first I thought it was a Carradine-type thing, but no, worse still.  It's a shame.  He even checked into rehab not too long ago, and still couldn't get things quite straightened out.  He had accomplished so much, and still had so much to give.  I would have loved to see him as an old man actor.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on August 11, 2014, 09:59:31 PM
This one cuts deep. As someone who's battled depression for ten years now, it confirms that the fight is truly never over, is it? You look at this guy who's had such a great career, made all of us laugh our asses off, and yet there was always this alcoholic-depressive side of him we only caught wind of because of his brief stints in rehabs over the years. I don't know how much he talked about it publicly, but I'm sure he found a way to put a funny spin on it. The way he turned himself on for a crowd, it was obvious he was chasing some dopamine rush. I was exhausted just to watch his edited down 2 hour 'Inside The Actors Studio' interview, when actually it was a marathon 5 hour session, the longest in the show's history. I wonder if that footage will turn up now?

He was a big part of how I became a cinephile. Aladdin and Mrs. Doubtfire are some of the first movies I watched religiously as a kid, and Doubtfire still stands as my all time 'sick day' movie. Then, discovering 'The World According To Garp' in my early teens set me on this journey to seek out films as wildly brash and unpredictable as that. It really opened my mind to what great movies could be. Then there's 'Dead Poets Society', 'Good Will Hunting', 'One Hour Photo', all movies that really stood out for me in my teens and left me wanting more. His character 'Sy' in 'One Hour Photo' is simply one of the saddest portrayals of a human being I've ever seen. He's so restrained and violent as opposed to the Robin we're used to, most of what's scary about that film is seeing him go to such a dark place with no sense of levity at all, it's almost like you're watching a man possessed in that performance.

Then we come to 'World's Greatest Dad' which in my opinion is by far his best movie, and reflecting on it's subject matter, so disturbing in light of this news today. He and Bobcat Goldthwait were supposedly really close friends and had both been going through a dark chapter in their lives at the time, Bobcat with a divorce and Robin having relapses. This movie just seems to be a giant 'fuck you' to everybody, there's such a bitter tone to it that you can't help but read as becoming directly from those guys. I can just imagine them giddy together talking about it in it's early stages, like "let's make this one HURT."

Aw, man... I knew it was a sad day for a reason, I'd been feeling 'off'. It's so shocking to see guys like him and Phillip Seymour Hoffmann go by their own hand. You feel like you know them so intimately from how they've bared themselves onstage and assume they have that sort of confidence in real life, but their willingness to go to such lengths in itself proves that there must be a deeply troubled person somewhere inside trying to get out. You just wish that these guys who've gained so much of your respect through their work could have left with a little more dignity. You want to see them winning and on top of it all before they reach their end, instead of being beaten down by life. Even so, it's always at times like this where we're forced to look back on their body of work, and you can't help but think "Goddamn, they gave a lot of themselves" and appreciate that they were at least a part of our lives in some small way. 

So, recently on the show 'Maron' ( which Bobcat Goldthwait directs ) there's a line where Marc says that his Robin Williams interview is what broke the show and brought it to a wider audience. I had been considering giving it a listen before, now, what else is there I can do?

http://www.wtfpod.com (http://www.wtfpod.com)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: BB on August 12, 2014, 07:54:39 PM
Lauren Bacall  :(

http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-lauren-bacall-208082
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Tictacbk on August 13, 2014, 02:41:01 AM
I watched this tonight (no offense to Lauren Bacall, I'll watch something for you too), and I thought I'd share it:



It's Robin William's standup special from 1978. It's the type of stuff we've come to associate with him - Batshit crazy, hard to follow sometimes, but usually very entertaining. Around the 34 minute mark he does a bit where he's playing himself in the future as an old man. It starts off as a fairly standard "the future is weird" bit, but then it transforms into a somewhat straight forward, well acted monologue.  It's great, and it's sad. RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: N on August 13, 2014, 05:22:38 AM
Robin Williams AmA from less than a year ago. He's pretty open about a lot of things. Worth reading if you haven't already, he makes some good jokes.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1n41x1/robin_williams_its_time_for_a_convoluted_stream/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on August 13, 2014, 12:02:55 PM
QuoteMan goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But Doctor... I am Pagliacci."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on August 13, 2014, 03:37:07 PM
like three weeks ago watched for the nth time Aladdin, that's the funniest animated performance I've ever seen, just incredible.

also, saw this clip today and made me want to watch Patch Adams, I think I have seen it only once, I liked it when it got out and was surprised that many ppl hated it. Hard to believe these two are gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNN6FI1Gcr8
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Pozer on August 14, 2014, 01:03:46 PM
Marc Maron's conversation with Robin Williams from 2010 that touches heavily on his struggles is really great.

http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/remembering_robin_williams (http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/remembering_robin_williams)

As I know it has with most of you, it felt like a part of my childhood died this week.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on August 18, 2014, 11:00:02 PM
http://deadline.com/2014/08/don-pardo-dead-saturday-night-live-821449/

R.I.P. Don Pardo

The longtime NBC announcer who did the voice-over on Saturday Night Live since its launch for all but one season died today. CBS Radio News confirmed Don Pardo's death today. He was 96. His voice was familiars to generations of Amercians on radio and TV, commercials and game shows, news and sports. When he'd introduce The Price Is Right, host Monty Hall would respond with a hearty, "Thank you, Don Pardo." He began his announcing career at NBC during World War II and remained at the network his entire life.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on August 24, 2014, 07:47:33 PM
Actor and director Richard Attenborough dies aged 90

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-28923074
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on September 04, 2014, 04:07:41 PM
Joan Rivers. :(  Her performance on Louie really made me appreciate her more.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch on September 04, 2014, 04:44:15 PM
Donatas Banionis (28 April, 1924 – 4 September, 2014)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on September 22, 2014, 04:57:42 PM
George Sluizer (http://deadline.com/2014/09/george-sluizer-dead-the-vanishing-director-dutch-838839/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on October 09, 2014, 09:06:26 PM
Jan Hooks.  Wow.  http://www.tmz.com/2014/10/09/jan-hooks-dead-dies-snl/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Axolotl on November 20, 2014, 06:54:34 AM
Mike Nichols (http://bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30129848)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Kellen on November 20, 2014, 03:37:25 PM
Such a bummer, Mike was one of my favorites  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch on January 07, 2015, 11:20:16 AM
French Anti-Colonial Film-Maker Dies

'René Vautier 15 January 1928 – 4 January 2015'
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on January 11, 2015, 02:43:20 PM
Taylor Negron
http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-taylor-negron-comedian-writer-and-self-describ-213691 (http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-taylor-negron-comedian-writer-and-self-describ-213691)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on January 12, 2015, 08:03:17 PM
Samuel Goldwyn Jr.
http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-indie-film-producer-samuel-goldwyn-jr-213755 (http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-indie-film-producer-samuel-goldwyn-jr-213755)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on January 14, 2015, 03:41:26 PM
Franceso Rosi (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/movies/francesco-rosi-giant-of-italian-cinema-dies-at-92-.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on January 14, 2015, 11:40:04 PM
welllllll iiiiiii meannnnn, i've owned "the moment of truth" for over 2 years and i've never watched it, because i'm afraid of what's going to happen to the bulls, but since rosi died i'm going to watch the moment of truth tonight. doin' it. and i've owned "salvatore giuliano" for at least six years, and it's today i learned or was reminded that they're by the same director. i've either forgotten about or haven't seen  "hands over the city" because i'm either remembering a bunch of procedural jargon in the movie, or remembering being afraid it'd be a movie with a bunch of procedural jargon

i'm sorry if you're sometimes intimidated by expansive movie knowledge and impeccable memory. anyway tonight some bulls'll die in front of me but i'll forgive rosi for filming it since he died today

[edit] rosi died two days ago. i'm "on fire" today
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on February 21, 2015, 01:45:18 PM
Harris Wittels, a writer on Parks and Rec (and one of the animal control guys), and a standup comedian, died of a drug overdose the other day.  Aziz Ansari eulogized him quite nicely:  http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/111613105129
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on February 24, 2015, 06:20:58 PM
sad, probaly only to me, because i guess i'm the only one here who actually watches this crazy show.

from tmz:

Ben Woolf from "American Horror Story: Freak Show" has died in an L.A. hospital from injuries suffered last week when he was hit by a passing car.

A source close to Woolf tells us he died from a stroke on Monday afternoon. He had been heavily sedated at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center since the accident last week.

TMZ broke the story ... Woolf -- who played Meep on the hit show -- got clipped in the head by the side view mirror of an SUV as he was crossing a street in Hollywood. The driver was not arrested or ticketed because Ben was jaywalking.

Woolf's family tells us -- "We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support from all over the world for our beloved Ben. He touched so many hearts in his 34 years."

Over the weekend, doctors upgraded his condition to stable -- but warned it was still touch and go since he had not woken up.

We're told Ben's organs are being donated and will help about 50 people.

Family members tell us they're planning a memorial service in Santa Barbara.

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/2015/02/23/ben-woolf-dead-dies-american-horror-story-hit-by-car/#ixzz3SiB2taVX
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on February 24, 2015, 06:26:51 PM
Quote from: ono on February 21, 2015, 01:45:18 PM
Harris Wittels, a writer on Parks and Rec (and one of the animal control guys), and a standup comedian, died of a drug overdose the other day.  Aziz Ansari eulogized him quite nicely:  http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/111613105129

again,  I couldn't more highly recommend his second appearance on You Made It Weird (http://youmadeitweird.libsyn.com/harris-wittels-returns). Having just listened to it a second time, I feel a lot of consolation that he knew the treacherous road he was headed down and actively seeking help , but just couldn't escape that cycle of addiction. It's probably the most in depth chronicle of someone's life unraveling I've ever heard. Seriously,  check it out guys.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on February 24, 2015, 08:15:24 PM
Seconded. And then check out his Comedy Bang Bang appearances with Adam Scott and Chelsea Peretti:

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/farts-and-procreation/ (http://www.earwolf.com/episode/farts-and-procreation/)
http://www.earwolf.com/episode/farts-and-procreation-2/ (http://www.earwolf.com/episode/farts-and-procreation-2/)
http://www.earwolf.com/episode/farts-and-procreation-3/ (http://www.earwolf.com/episode/farts-and-procreation-3/)

Followed by his final appearance with a heartbreaking intro/outro:

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/not-farts-procreation-4/ (http://www.earwolf.com/episode/not-farts-procreation-4/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on February 24, 2015, 08:36:24 PM
wow that pretty much verified what i was half joking about. you guys never cease to disappoint.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on February 26, 2015, 07:27:04 AM
'Brother's Keeper, 'Paradise Lost' Documentary Filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky Dies At 58 (http://www.npr.org/2015/02/25/389041402/brothers-keeper-paradise-lost-documentary-filmmaker-dies-at-58)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on February 27, 2015, 05:15:32 PM
Leonard Nimoy (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/television/leonard-nimoy-spock-of-star-trek-dies-at-83.html?_r=0)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on March 06, 2015, 11:37:59 AM
Albert Maysles (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/rip-albert-maysles-1926-2015-20150306)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on March 06, 2015, 11:39:44 AM
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on March 09, 2015, 06:18:45 PM
really? nobody yet? god i miss pubrick so much.

SAM SIMON (http://"http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/sam-simon-co-creator-of-the-simpsons-dies-at-59-1201448945/")
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on March 09, 2015, 09:29:20 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fcdejzeu.jpg&hash=6d5eff8f44c53ab9876c5e21685360063cb19420)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on March 11, 2015, 06:24:22 PM
Richard Glatzer :(
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/richard-glatzer-dead-still-alice-777223 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/richard-glatzer-dead-still-alice-777223)

"When Richard was diagnosed with ALS, Wash asked him what he wanted to do," Moore said in accepting her award. "Did he want to travel? Did he want to see the world? And he said he wanted to make movies. And that's what he did."

I was working in the same facility as he was last year. He had already lost the ability to speak and used an iPad to communicate. It was very inspiring to see someone, who knew he didn't have a lot of time, working so hard get his films completed. Incredibly sweet guy as well.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on March 12, 2015, 09:55:59 AM
There was a good interview with Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer on The Business podcast back in January.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on April 02, 2015, 06:03:29 PM
Manoel De Oliveira, Portugal Director, Dead at 106
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/manoel-de-oliveira-portugal-director-dead-106-30061788

QuoteOliveira's last film, a short feature called "The Old Man of Belem," had its premiere last November in Porto and was shown at last year's Venice Film Festival.

Oliveira's career began with a silent documentary about Porto, Portugal's second-largest city, in 1931. He made his first feature-length movie in 1942 but his output was sporadic until he was 76, when he began directing roughly a film every year.

Despite his huge output — more than 30 feature films and dozens of short films and documentaries — he achieved broad international recognition only in the 1990s and was best known as an art cinema auteur. He was over 100 years old when his last feature film, "Gebo and The Shadow," came out in 2012. It was in French and starred Michael Lonsdale, Claudia Cardinale and Jeanne Moreau.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F56AxaeR.png&hash=f13c343b4123c61495bfb280eea47a486a319808)
at xixax the banner of the man floating up through the sky is from oliveira's the strange case of angelica, and not only did a great filmmaker die but also a person with a romantic and poetic perspective on life. i'll miss him and what he means

reminder: alan resnais is 91, and when he dies we'll have to worry about romance's continued existence
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Axolotl on April 02, 2015, 08:38:15 PM
Quote from: jenkins on April 02, 2015, 06:03:29 PM
reminder: alan resnais is 91, and when he dies we'll have to worry about romance's continued existence
umm...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on April 02, 2015, 09:43:52 PM
referring to '09's eccentricities of a blond-haired girl and wild grass, and the legacy of romance within cinema -- cinema a part of romance's creation, for that matter
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Axolotl on April 02, 2015, 10:09:42 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on March 02, 2014, 04:11:28 PM
French Film Master Alain Resnais Dies
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on April 02, 2015, 10:17:20 PM
well now i got one question for you on this dark day my friend

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fu78jwPD.jpg&hash=0d6c03868e038cf6c4469417520886efe9d0abbb)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Axolotl on April 02, 2015, 10:23:02 PM
There there
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fyu9kZ1x.jpg&hash=b8a870838b6e97cea297e45fffde940ad6163dee)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on April 02, 2015, 10:26:39 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FrMZ1712.gif&hash=cafea0e1644cbbd8fbe00e114786c784a57501e3)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ElPandaRoyal on April 03, 2015, 01:13:20 PM
This is a particularly sad one for me, because Oliveira was from my hometown and was someone I was used to seeing once in a while on the street since I was a child, and he was already a famous local old-man filmmaker. A lot of people in Portugal respected his old age more than they did his work, which is slow and difficult, but let me tell you guys, if you don't know any of his films, he's made some fantastic movies, veeeery slow-paced, yes, but quite special for that as well. He worked in silent films, he made a neo-realist movie before neo-realism was a thing (with Aniki Bóbó, completed in 1942), wasn't really able to shoot a lot for decades due to conflicts with the dictatorship regime and only really became a prolific director at an age when most people start thinking about retirement. His passion for film was touching, the movies themselves were sometimes funny, others tragic, all carefully composed and crafted. There are a lot of titles in his filmography I'm yet to see, but highly recomend the ones I've seen.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on May 27, 2015, 03:15:50 PM
Mary Ellen Mark (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/05/26/409806219/photographer-mary-ellen-mark-dies-at-75)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on June 11, 2015, 03:42:46 PM
Christopher Lee (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/rip-sir-christopher-lee-1922-2015-20150611)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 30, 2015, 08:43:16 PM
Wes Craven (http://deadline.com/2015/08/wes-craven-dies-director-of-scream-nightmare-on-elm-street-was-76-1201510529/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on September 15, 2015, 04:32:36 PM
Janus Films' William Becker (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/theater/william-becker-who-transformed-janus-films-dies-at-88.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch on October 06, 2015, 09:00:39 AM
Chantal Akerman 6 June 1950 – 5 October 2015




Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on November 25, 2015, 10:58:35 PM
Setsuko Hara (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/25/tokyo-storys-setsuko-hara-dies-at-95)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on December 27, 2015, 05:46:30 PM
Haskell Wexler (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/rip-haskell-wexler-1922-2015-20151227)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on January 03, 2016, 07:02:29 PM
Vilmos Zsigmond (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/vilmos-zsigmond-dead-close-encounters-851754)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on January 03, 2016, 08:49:43 PM
Man, what are they putting in THOSE LENSES?!?!  :crazyeyes:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Axolotl on January 11, 2016, 01:41:39 AM
David Bowie.

This is the worst.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on January 11, 2016, 01:52:15 AM
Maaan, fuck this. He just released a great album. At least Blackstar is a hell of a final statement.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on January 11, 2016, 02:08:25 AM
i mean. dang.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on January 11, 2016, 02:52:48 AM
somehow this is an even bigger shock than Robin Williams. I can't imagine Earth without this guy on it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on January 11, 2016, 01:42:29 PM
QuoteDavid Bowie's last release, Lazarus, was 'parting gift' for fans in carefully planned finale

The producer of Blackstar confirms David Bowie had planned his poignant final message, and videos and lyrics show how he approached his death

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/12092542/Bowies-last-album-was-parting-gift-for-fans-in-carefully-planned-finale.html

it's so obvious it crushes me and others (anyone who listens to it). these are some of my favorite shares from the day:

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FrcSbbyW.gif&hash=c95ec7f3a78b99ddfcb86244d8f3677ff15d99ed)

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FE9Zn8Uz.jpg&hash=14171ae63017978aad3f67ae1bf67d04bf6cb40a)





Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Garam on January 11, 2016, 05:10:39 PM
this is shit and horrible and terrible and awful and



he was probably the greatest living Englishman. Now time to blast the new album and mope.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Just Withnail on January 11, 2016, 07:37:22 PM
This is about so much more than the music. Bowie was an unrivalled role-model and a big fucking beacon of hope for all the misfits out there. I would undoubtedly be a very different person today had I not had Bowie in my life in my adolescence.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on January 14, 2016, 07:01:33 AM
Alan Rickman. (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/14/alan-rickman-giant-of-british-film-and-theatre-dies-at-69)

Damn, man.



Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on January 14, 2016, 09:15:21 AM
I found out just over an hour ago, while listening to sports radio driving to work of all things. I'm stunned. Devestated. Still reeling from this. Fuck cancer.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on January 20, 2016, 12:55:02 AM
Ettore Scola (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/20/ettore-scola-italian-film-director-and-screenwriter-dies-at-84?CMP=twt_gu)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on January 25, 2016, 02:39:20 PM
still missing Bowie



Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on January 26, 2016, 06:36:47 PM
Abe Vigoda. (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/arts/television/abe-vigoda-actor-of-godfather-fame-dies-at-94.html?_r=0)


Quote from: polkablues on July 14, 2015, 04:37:40 PM
I think Ennio Morricone is tied with Abe Vigoda for the title of "Person I'm most surprised by when reminded they're still alive."

I guess Morricone takes the lead.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: BB on January 28, 2016, 07:32:18 AM
Shoulda gone with http://www.abevigoda.com
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on January 28, 2016, 08:25:49 AM
Yup. And remember to view the page source.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Gold Trumpet on January 28, 2016, 11:38:21 AM
Kirk Douglas is still #1 for me.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on January 29, 2016, 07:28:05 AM
Jaques Rivette. (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/29/jacques-rivette-film-director-french-new-wave-dies-aged-87)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: N on March 17, 2016, 05:17:13 AM
Frank Sinatra Jr.  (http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/16/entertainment/frank-sinatra-jr-dies/index.html)
:(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on March 24, 2016, 03:58:50 PM
Garry Shandling Dead at 66  :yabbse-sad:

huge bummer, I think The Larry Sanders Show was one of the shows that paved the way for today's current quality of TV.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Garam on March 24, 2016, 05:32:17 PM
:( this is a tough year. Phife Dawg too.

Larry Sanders is maybe the best sitcom ever? Definite top 5 anyway.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 21, 2016, 03:43:00 PM
Prince (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/arts/music/prince-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on April 22, 2016, 12:23:06 PM
Prince at 3:27...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on April 23, 2016, 08:22:31 AM
Patton Oswalt's wife died in her sleep on thursday at 46. Such a heavy blow, I wonder how this will impact the trajectory of his career from here on out

Michelle McNamara  (http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/michelle-mcnamara-crime-writer-married-comedian-patton-oswalt-dies-46-n560836)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on May 12, 2016, 07:53:47 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FfA4f4QH.jpg%3F1&hash=1912bfb9886dc849f6f98d8f551d96e8a7691ffe)

QuoteMcGurk was folding the chrome arm back over the turntable, feeding the control cable back into its hole, carefully closing the case, not paying any attention to Arty. Arty sucked his lower lip in between his teeth and popped it out again. He waves his right flipper vaguely. "You know you're taking the wrong road on those stumps. You're like a man with a beautiful voice taking a vow of silence. You're working hard to pretend they aren't there and you meet a girl in a bar and don't tell her about those knees until you get to take your pants off. You ought to tan your thighs and walk on them. Wear silver sequin pads and dance on a lit stage where they can see you. All those soft girlies come knocking on your door borrowing sugar in the dead of night and sliming for you. You could have that. Not as much as I get but plenty... You're just going along with what they want you to do. They want those things hidden away, disguised, forgotten, because they know how much power those stumps could have."

she changed my life for the better.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch on June 19, 2016, 01:20:39 PM
Anton Yelchin

http://www.thewrap.com/actor-anton-yelchin-dead-at-27-report/
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on June 19, 2016, 02:38:26 PM
Quote from: Punch on June 19, 2016, 01:20:39 PM
Anton Yelchin

http://www.thewrap.com/actor-anton-yelchin-dead-at-27-report/

This could be the single stangest celebrity death of all time. Was he in the car or not? I can't wrap my brain around what actually happened. Like, he's checking the mail and his car just comes barreling into him? WTF.. Maybe he left it running and got out to open the gate but forgot to put it in park, that sounds the most feasible. Has anyone in the public eye like him ever died from such a minor mistake? It's really eerie too, with how good his career was getting. He always landed pretty decent parts, but 'Green Room' seemed to really catapult him into leading man territory. After not having the kindest things to say about him over the years ( because of how he looked and talked ) that movie had me genuinely excited to see where he'd go next.

RIP Yelchster. There will be no more disrespect from me. You had a great life, as far as most of them go...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 02, 2016, 06:13:52 PM
Michael Cimino (http://variety.com/2016/film/people-news/michael-cimino-dead-dies-deer-hunter-heavens-gate-1201808052/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on July 02, 2016, 07:01:10 PM
I didn't realize until this happened that he's an Asian woman.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: samsong on July 04, 2016, 03:11:27 PM
this one hurts... abbas kiarostami (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/04/abbas-kiarostami-palme-dor-winning-iranian-film-maker-dies?CMP=twt_gu)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: 03 on July 05, 2016, 01:07:10 PM
whoa wait what the fuck
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on July 20, 2016, 02:40:49 PM
RIP Mr. Marshall

http://splitsider.com/2016/07/film-and-sitcom-legend-garry-marshall-dies-at-81/ (http://splitsider.com/2016/07/film-and-sitcom-legend-garry-marshall-dies-at-81/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 18, 2016, 03:30:22 AM
Arthur Hiller (http://deadline.com/2016/08/arthur-hiller-dies-love-story-director-academy-president-1201805019/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 29, 2016, 02:39:43 PM
Gene Wilder (http://deadline.com/2016/08/gene-wilder-dead-willy-wonka-young-frankenstein-blazing-saddles-mel-brooks-1201810331/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on August 29, 2016, 07:48:11 PM
You must be taking this one pretty hard
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on September 02, 2016, 02:07:37 PM
Jon Polito

http://deadline.com/2016/09/jon-polito-dies-big-lebowski-homicide-coen-brothers-1201812755/ (http://deadline.com/2016/09/jon-polito-dies-big-lebowski-homicide-coen-brothers-1201812755/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on September 21, 2016, 03:55:35 AM
Rest in Peace to Curtis Hanson... When I saw L.A. Confidential trending on twitter, I thought "oh god, tell me they didn't do a remake." I don't have an inkling of a memory from my one viewing of that film, it was too long ago and whatever cool spin on noir it was doing went completely over my head. If I saw it now, it'd be an entirely new experience. It's good to know there are movies out there that have always gotten a lot of respect, but I haven't given their proper due. Now it's considered his masterwork, so there's this added heft in watching it.

My favorite of his was always 'Wonder Boys', I love the structure of it and find it so easy to watch. It feels similar to a lot of other movies while still being completely it's own thing. A Little Lebowski with some 'Ice Storm' thrown in. It might be my favorite stoner film. The first time I saw it, I'd never seen a guy smoke that much onscreen and found it so interesting that he doesn't treat it like some pothead teenager and is obviously self medicating. It hits a lot of great notes and manages to achieve a drama that never gets too dark or self indulgent. It's actually a comedy about people going through hard times and just trying to keep each other afloat which lends to really sweet moments between characters. I think a lot of you would benefit from a rewatch if you haven't in awhile.


He also did the single best job of any director in capturing what that "Winter on the cusp of Spring" weather in the Northeast feels like


(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cinemaparadiso.nl%2Fwonderboys2.jpg&hash=ca59fab08fcc1089d35fe46a677f1a75c549cb38)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on September 21, 2016, 02:47:08 PM
Oh man I am a huge fan of Wonder Boys. LA Confidential is obviously a great film but I must have watched Wonder Boys 50 or 60 times as a teenager. I was in love with the perfectly satisfying story structure as much as the mood of it, that tender-yet-sardonic melancholy. People really don't talk about that film enough when Best Of The 00's lists come up. And you're right about the seasonal thing, I don't think I've seen another film nail that time of year as well.

I don't think I've seen a film of his since 8 Mile...Wonder Boys and LA Confidential are definitely getting a re-watch this week. RIP Curtis.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pete on September 26, 2016, 04:47:58 PM
Radio Raheem
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on October 23, 2016, 06:44:23 AM
Thom Jones (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/books/thom-jones-dead.html?_r=0)

His first book of short stories from 1993, The Pugilist at Rest (https://www.amazon.com/Pugilist-at-Rest-Stories/dp/0316473049/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477222584&sr=8-1&keywords=the+pugilist+at+rest), is one of my favorite books I've ever read, up there with Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. I don't know how to convey how special his writing is, just scan some of the Amazon reviews to get an idea of how it touches people. He only published three books total, and not since 1999, having suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.

Quote from: Wikipedia[Thom Jones'] stories deal with common themes of mortality and pain, with characters who often find a kind of solace in the rather pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. Boxing, absent or mentally ill fathers, physical trauma, and the Vietnam War are also recurring motifs.

Quote from: AmazonThom Jones made his literary debut in The New Yorker in 1991. Within six months his stories appeared in Harper's, Esquire, Mirabella, Story, Buzz, and in The New Yorker twice more. "The Pugilist at Rest" - the title story from this stunning collection - took first place in Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards and was selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 1992. He is a writer of astonishing talent. Jones's stories - whether set in the combat zones of Vietnam or the brittle social and intellectual milieu of an elite New England college, whether recounting the poignant last battles of an alcoholic ex-fighter or the hallucinatory visions of an American wandering lost in Bombay in the aftermath of an epileptic fugue - are fueled by an almost brutal vision of the human condition, in a world without mercy or redemption. Physically battered, soul-sick, and morally exhausted, Jones's characters are yet unable to concede defeat: his stories are infused with the improbable grace of the spirit that ought to collapse, but cannot. For in these extraordinary pieces of fiction, it is not goodness that finally redeems us, but the heart's illogical resilience, and the ennobling tenacity with which we cling to each other and to our lives.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reinhold on December 23, 2016, 04:00:06 PM
I heard carrie fisher died today of a heart attack.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on December 23, 2016, 04:31:53 PM
Quote from: Reinhold on December 23, 2016, 04:00:06 PM
I heard carrie fisher died today of a heart attack.

She suffered a heart attack on a London to LA flight and is in critical condition, but is still alive at the moment, apparently.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on December 27, 2016, 12:23:01 PM
RIP Carrie Fisher  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on December 27, 2016, 07:14:47 PM
Princess, noooooooooo.

(https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/leiasmile.gif?w=620&h=263&crop=1)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on January 19, 2017, 04:53:20 PM
Miguel Ferrer :(

http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-miguel-ferrer-248741 (http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-miguel-ferrer-248741)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on January 27, 2017, 07:32:43 PM
John Hurt (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4166046/Actor-John-Hurt-dies-cancer-aged-77.html)

Damn, man.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on January 28, 2017, 08:07:02 AM
Emmanuelle Riva (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jan/28/emmanuelle-riva-french-icon-who-starred-in-amour-dies-aged-89)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on February 22, 2017, 09:21:48 AM
Seijun Suzuki (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/22/cult-japanese-director-seijun-suzuki-dies-aged-93)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on February 26, 2017, 02:55:27 PM
http://io9.gizmodo.com/bill-paxton-dies-at-61-after-surgery-complications-1792760244

I'm still hopeful everyone got mixed up and it was actually Bill Pullman that died.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on March 07, 2017, 03:42:42 PM
TCM's Robert Osborne (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/movies/robert-osborne-dead-turner-classic-movies-host.html?_r=0)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on April 06, 2017, 06:42:49 PM
Don Rickles (https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/don-rickles-dead-dies-comedian-insult-vegas-1202025068/amp/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on April 06, 2017, 07:14:55 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD-1eCD7lkE
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Just Withnail on April 12, 2017, 02:07:16 PM
RIP Michael Ballhaus

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on April 12, 2017, 06:20:04 PM
Charlie Murphy (http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/charlie-murphy-comedian-and-chappelles-show-star-dead-at-57-w476365)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: RegularKarate on April 26, 2017, 10:06:07 AM
Jonathan Demme (http://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/jonathan-demme-dead-73-silence-of-the-lambs-1201809289/)
:yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fernando on May 23, 2017, 12:11:26 PM
Roger Moore (http://www.vulture.com/2017/05/roger-moore-dead-at-89.html)

This is a good story about someone meeting Roger Moore.

https://twitter.com/MrKenShabby/status/867036448037511169

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on May 31, 2017, 12:25:30 AM
Denis Johnson (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/books/denis-johnson-dead-author-of-jesus-son.html?_r=0)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on June 10, 2017, 01:03:19 PM
Batman.  :(

RIP, Mayor West.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on June 16, 2017, 09:30:43 PM
John G. Avildsen (https://variety.com/2017/film/news/john-g-avildsen-dead-dies-rocky-karate-kid-1202469349/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on June 28, 2017, 01:49:40 AM
Michael Nyqvist (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40426177/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 16, 2017, 04:45:57 PM
George A. Romero, Father of the Zombie Film, Dies at 77 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/george-a-romero-dead-night-living-dead-director-was-77-945346)

r.i.p.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 16, 2017, 08:31:24 PM
Martin Landau, Oscar Winner for 'Ed Wood,' Dies at 89 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-landau-dead-ed-wood-811318)

:(

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 16, 2017, 08:35:52 PM
Feel you. Grateful for the insights about acting he was able to impart during his interview on WTF (http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-779-martin-landau) earlier this year.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on July 16, 2017, 08:45:37 PM
He one of those dudes I'd assumed was dead for years and I think it's just for how brilliantly he played Bela Lugosi dying that the thought crept in.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on July 17, 2017, 08:37:53 AM
Sorry for our loss. He was one of those actors who did so much, but generally people only connected with him through a small slice of his career. For me, it was Ed Wood, X-Files, and Entourage. A legend, fondly remembered.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on July 20, 2017, 02:40:56 PM
Chester Bennington, 'Linkin Park' Lead Singer, found dead by hanging (http://www.tmz.com/2017/07/20/linkin-park-singer-chester-bennington-dead-commits-suicide/)


This is a particularly rough one on me, I was never the biggest Linkin Park fan but always appreciated the sincerity of his lyrics. I got the impression that he was pretty well adjusted despite all the self doubt and frustration that comes across through their songs. He put a lot of himself into the music and always seemed to be reaching for some deeper truths. As hackneyed as it seemed at times, it wasn't something we were very used to hearing on the radio. I've grown more of a fondness for their older songs the further we get away from them being popular. There's always a sense of fallibility in them, never just going for the kick ass rocker guy image.

Now, not to make this about me, but I have these kind of self defeating thoughts all the time but have never seriously considered suicide. When you see people who were presumably living out their dreams, making tons of money, meeting their heroes, it's baffling to me how they chose to tap out while I'm still plugging away with my shitty life. Maybe it's that the highs were too high and could never be matched, or they'd seen the top of the mountain and achieved everything they'd wanted in their careers and simply couldn't accept the current lull they were going through. Linkin Park hadn't had a hit in ten years. I have to assume he was extremely unhappy with the reception they were getting on tour, and it just makes you wish he'd consider retiring, or backing away from it all for a year to try and find yourself outside of that grueling schedule. Then there's the chance he could come back reinvigorated with something new and interesting to say. It just sucks to see people have to succumb to the constraints their careers put on them from living a simple, happy life.

I'm going to enjoy revisiting his songs, this time around listening and thinking "Wow, I guess he really meant it."

R.I.P
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on July 31, 2017, 01:25:32 PM
Sam Shepard. :yabbse-sad:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/sam-shepard-playwright-and-actor-dead-at-73.html?utm_campaign=vulture&utm_source=fb&utm_medium=s1 (http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/sam-shepard-playwright-and-actor-dead-at-73.html?utm_campaign=vulture&utm_source=fb&utm_medium=s1)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on July 31, 2017, 02:41:01 PM
Jeanne Moreau (http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-jeanne-moreau-french-cinema-legend-258787), too.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 27, 2017, 03:25:02 AM
Tobe Hooper (http://variety.com/2017/film/news/tobe-hooper-dead-dies-texas-chain-saw-massacre-poltergeist-director-dies-1202539868/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on August 27, 2017, 03:32:52 AM
Undeniably a master of horror, and responsible for most of my nightmares growing up.
I'll think I'll go put on LIFEFORCE
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on September 13, 2017, 04:58:26 PM
Frank Vincent, damn.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/frank-vincent-goodfellas-sopranos-actor-dead-at-78.html (http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/frank-vincent-goodfellas-sopranos-actor-dead-at-78.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on September 15, 2017, 06:39:40 PM
Harry Dean Stanton (http://deadline.com/2017/09/harry-dean-stanton-dead-twin-peaks-big-love-pretty-in-peak-1202170886/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on September 15, 2017, 07:39:10 PM
Will The Return kill David Lynch too?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 15, 2017, 08:12:41 PM
Don't even.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on September 16, 2017, 06:30:29 AM
Even though he'd done so much more, it was HDS's work with Lynch that I know him best for. He really got under my skin and made it itch in Wild At Heart, he was the perfect foil for Richard Farnsworth at The Straight Story's emotional conclusion, and it even turned out his role in Twin Peaks had so much going on that we're still all trying to piece together. He was 91 and still going strong. I salute you, sir.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on October 06, 2017, 02:15:23 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/05/anne-wiazemsky-french-actor-novelist-and-muse-to-jean-luc-godard-dies-aged-70


Anne Wiazemsky, French actor, novelist and muse to Jean-Luc Godard, dies aged 70

Actor appeared in films by Bresson, Pasolini and Godard, to whom she was married for 12 years and whose memoir of their relationship was adapted into the 2017 film Redoubtable

(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d294c7cf39b271702fd8cf9ea4701e0c123975bd/0_102_3927_2354/master/3927.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=5063ed5a947c0a7e8566adaece9c7c48)

Anne Wiazemsky, the actor best known for her appearances in films of the French Nouvelle Vague and marriage to director Jean-Luc Godard, has died aged 70 after a battle with cancer. "Anne died this morning. She had been very sick," her brother Pierre told AFP.

Born in Berlin in 1947, Wiazemsky was the granddaughter of novelist and Nobel literature laureate François Mauriac. At 18, she made her debut in Robert Bresson's celebrated 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, about a farm girl's relationship with her pet donkey. During the film's production Bresson became obsessed with Wiazemsky, regularly propositioning her on set. "At first, he would content himself by holding my arm, or stroking my cheek. But then came the disagreeable moment when he would try to kiss me ... I would push him away and he wouldn't insist, but he looked so unhappy that I always felt guilty," she recalls in her memoir Jeune Fille.

A year later Wiazemsky met Godard, at the time at the height of his fame, and appeared in his 1967 film La Chinoise, a tale of Maoist revolutionaries living in Paris. The pair married during the film's production, and Wiazemsky went on to appear in other Godard films, including black comedy Weekend and One Plus One, an agitprop collage that featured scenes of the Rolling Stones recording Sympathy for the Devil interspersed with documentary footage of revolutionary insurrection. Yet, as Godard became more immersed in the social uprising in France and elsewhere in 1968, the marriage became strained. "The further it went on, the more our paths diverged," she told AFP in an interview earlier this year. The pair divorced in 1979.

Wiazemsky continued to perform in films, most notably alongside Terence Stamp in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Italian arthouse work Theorem. The film was banned for obscenity in Italy in 1968 for its story of a mysterious stranger who seduces a whole family.

In her later years Wiazemsky published more than a dozen novels, including 2015's Un an après, about her relationship with Godard. The book became the basis for Michel Hazanavicius's Redoubtable, and one of Wiazemsky's last public appearances was at the film's premiere at the Cannes film festival in May. According to Hazanavicius, Wiazemsky was reluctant to allow him to adapt her book but relented when he said that the film would be funny. "She said, 'I think it was a funny relationship and a funny time,'" Hazanavicius recalled.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on October 09, 2017, 11:28:10 AM
Jean Rochefort.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on November 16, 2017, 04:08:30 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/OiKfAcf.jpg?1)

i was fully prepared to watch him conquer his personal struggles through a successful music career. i thought maybe we shared some problems but he had a certain unteachable knack. something within him. i was prepared to watch him make tremendous evolutions, and now there's just the past.

RIPEEP. tears my friend.

Rapper Lil Peep dies aged 21 of suspected overdose (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/nov/16/rapper-lil-peep-dies-aged-21-suspected-overdose)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on November 20, 2017, 12:24:16 AM
Charles Manson (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/obituaries/charles-manson-dead.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on November 27, 2017, 06:05:57 PM
'Groove Tube' director Ken Shapiro (http://deadline.com/2017/11/ken-shapiro-dies-the-groove-tube-modern-problems-chevy-chase-1202215209/)

QuoteThe Groove Tube was probably Shapiro's crowning achievement. Starring Richard Belzer and Chevy Chase, the absurd film was a benchmark for comedy and Shapiro's career. Playboy magazine said that the movie was the "most stinging assault on television since it was invented." Not only did the low-budget film receive an X-rating but it satirized media and counterculture of the early '70s, eventually paving the way for like-minded films like Tunnel Vision and The Kentucky Fried Movie. On the TV side of things, it set the precedence for sketch comedy shows like SCTV and Saturday Night Live.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 30, 2017, 02:38:52 PM
Jim Nabors

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/obituaries/jim-nabors-87-tvs-gomer-pyle-is-dead.html

QuoteMr. Nabors's health had been declining for a year and that his immune system had been suppressed since he underwent a liver transplant in 1994.

At the time, Mr. Nabors announced that he had contracted hepatitis B in India several years earlier when he cut himself shaving with a contaminated straight razor, which he had bought there.

QuoteIn various episodes Gomer connected with the movie and TV industries, the music business, the surf scene, the Beverly Hills rich — all the easy symbols of modernity. Everywhere he went he left a trail of fond smiles and innocence — at least temporarily — restored."

But "one thing Gomer never, ever connected with," Mr. Jones added, "was the Vietnam War," which was raging at the time, just as he and his neighbors in Mayberry had remained isolated from the civil rights movement in the South. "He somehow existed in the peacetime military when there was no peace."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on December 13, 2017, 05:01:43 PM
https://www.avclub.com/r-i-p-pat-dinizio-lead-singer-of-the-smithereens-1821269423

One of the great underrated songwriters. Time for a Smithereens listening party:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5wxubRFpVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVuI3kVbdOc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu2qppByIY4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5nZazm2sWU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4JFqfqIPKA
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 19, 2017, 12:35:20 AM
http://www.animationmagazine.net/people/bugs-bunny-designer-bob-givens-dies-at-99/?doing_wp_cron=1513652256.5439219474792480468750

Bugs Bunny Designer Bob Givens Dies at 99
Mercedes Milligan Dec 15th, 2017

Robert "Bob" Givens, an animator whose long and celebrated career brought him through the gamut of 20th century animation milestones from Walt Disney's Snow White, to the first Bugs Bunny cartoon, to Hanna-Barbera's Quick Draw McGraw, died on December 14 at St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank at age 99. His death was announced by his daughter, Mariana Givens, on Facebook.

Givens graduated high school in southern California in 1936, working as a freelance artist for a year before joining the Walt Disney Studio. He was an animation checker on several shorts before joining the team of Disney's groundbreaking feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Givens then joined Warner Bros., where he worked under legends Chuck Jones and Tex Avery. One of Givens' biggest career moments came in 1940, when Avery asked him to review designs of a new character — a grey rabbit that was coming across "too cute" for the slapstick cartoons. Givens went on to create the first official design for Bugs Bunny, now the iconic lead character of the Looney Tunes franchise, in the Merrie Melodies short A Wild Hare.

Ironically, after completing WB short The Draft Horse (1942), Givens was drafted into World War II, working on military training films as part of his service. He returned to WB in the '50s, working as a layout artist until the studio shuttered in 1954. Givens went on to work at various studios including UPA and Hanna-Barbera, then followed other former WB staff to the newly formed DePatie-Freleng shop. As WB continued evolving, Given cycled through top studios and returned to Bugs' home base when the studio reformed.

Givens worked with Jones one last time on Chuck's 2001 direct-to-video feature Timber Wolf; Jones died the following year and Givens afterward mostly retired from the field, although he continued to teach and give talks into his 90s.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 24, 2017, 01:48:04 PM
Clifford Irving, author of notorious Howard Hughes literary hoax, dies at 87

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-clifford-irving-20171221-story.html

Later adapted into this film:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462338/

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on January 15, 2018, 11:02:44 PM
The singular Joe Frank (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=4227.0)  :yabbse-cry:

His wife, Michal Story, just posted the news (https://www.facebook.com/JoeFrankcom/posts/10155898652082508). She's been detailing his battle with illness (https://www.gofundme.com/joefrank) for the past year. My heart goes out to her.

I had tickets to see him perform a couple years ago at Cinefamily, when the event was cancelled shortly prior...

Thanks for everything, Joe. You were one of a kind.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on January 16, 2018, 01:56:54 AM
xx
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on February 05, 2018, 07:45:22 PM
John Mahoney aka....Marty Crane 😢
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on February 09, 2018, 09:38:45 PM
Reg Cathey

(https://heroichollywood.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/reg-e-wire.jpg?x42694)


of 'The Wire', 'House Of Cards', 'Horace and Pete'
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: BB on February 09, 2018, 11:22:40 PM
Oh damn, that guy was great. I loved him as a kid. The Mask. "The doctor is about to operate." A reading that's stuck with me for almost 25 years. "Don't fuck with Querns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53VTNkoQ-5w&t=0m29s)."

Miss him.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on February 10, 2018, 12:42:43 PM
Johann Johannsson at 48. This is awful news. His scores were incredible.

http://deadline.com/2018/02/johann-johannsson-dies-obituary-the-theory-of-everything-composer-1202284591/ (http://deadline.com/2018/02/johann-johannsson-dies-obituary-the-theory-of-everything-composer-1202284591/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on March 01, 2018, 12:07:20 PM
Comedian Barry Crimmins (https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/barry-crimmins-comedian-and-activist-dead-at-64-w517272)

JB Reelist recommended a Netflix-available documentary (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=13440.msg343467#msg343467) about him, Call Me Lucky, a couple years ago, and Louis CK has one of Barry's stand-up specials, Whatever Threatens You, available to buy (https://louisck.net/purchase/barry-crimmins-whatever-threatens-you) on his website (great special)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on March 01, 2018, 12:24:05 PM
   :cry:

I'm glad I got the chance to see him perform live when he was in town. It ended abruptly when a Man in the front row started having a seizure and Barry stopped to help him. I consider "Call Me Lucky" the best documentary on stand up comedy ever made.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on March 01, 2018, 12:25:08 PM
I think I must've misquoted you in that other thread and it was you who recommended the documentary, wasn't it?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on March 01, 2018, 12:27:03 PM
Yeah it was probably me. Bobcat's from my city and Barry grew up a town away so I had to champion it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 03, 2018, 10:33:18 PM
Actor David Ogden Stiers (http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-ln-david-ogden-obit-20180303-story.html)

QuoteActor David Ogden Stiers, best known for his role as the snooty Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester III on the popular TV show "M*A*S*H," died Saturday. He was 75.


Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 13, 2018, 11:30:15 PM
 :yabbse-sad: Stephen Hawking

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/13/221053162/stephen-hawking-who-awed-both-scientists-and-the-public-dies (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/13/221053162/stephen-hawking-who-awed-both-scientists-and-the-public-dies)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 01, 2018, 07:26:06 PM
Steven Bochco (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steven-bochco-dead-hill-street-blues-la-law-nypd-blue-creator-741199) at 74.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 10, 2018, 04:04:35 AM
Juraj Herz (https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20799395/filmmaker-juraj-herz-has-died.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 11, 2018, 02:38:57 PM
Mitzi Shore (http://variety.com/2018/biz/news/comedy-store-owner-mitzi-shore-dead-dies-1202750338/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on April 14, 2018, 03:02:08 AM
Milos Forman (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/milos-forman-dead-cuckoos-nest-amadeus-director-was-86-861207/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on April 14, 2018, 09:12:17 AM
 :(

the loves of a blonde will always be my favorite I think, which also contains one of my favorite stills in cinema ever (https://i.gifer.com/J513.gif)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 15, 2018, 08:57:51 PM
R. Lee Ermey (http://www.slashfilm.com/r-lee-ermey-dead/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on April 20, 2018, 12:44:40 PM
Avicii, swedish DJ. Dead at just 28.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on April 20, 2018, 05:25:16 PM
Quote from: mogwai on April 20, 2018, 12:44:40 PM
Avicii, swedish DJ. Dead at just 28.

woah
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on May 10, 2018, 11:02:02 AM
Anne V. Coates (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/anne-v-coates-dead-lawrence-of-arabia-film-editor-was-92-908441/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 14, 2018, 04:59:02 PM
Actress Margot Kidder (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-me-margot-kidder-20180514-story.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 15, 2018, 11:42:31 AM
Author Tom Wolfe (http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-tom-wolfe-20180515-story.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on May 22, 2018, 11:35:48 PM
Philip Roth. 85.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 23, 2018, 03:09:05 PM
Fuck. That's a hard one. By far my all-time favorite novelist. Looks like it's going to be a Roth: Revisited kind of summer.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on May 23, 2018, 04:10:25 PM
Quote from: eward on May 23, 2018, 03:09:05 PM
Fuck. That's a hard one. By far my all-time favorite novelist. Looks like it's going to be a Roth: Revisited kind of summer.

Do you have a favorite?

If I had to take three, it would be: Sabbath's Theater, Operation Shylock, The Human Stain. In that order. (The Counterlife is great, too.)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 23, 2018, 05:22:13 PM
Quote from: Drenk on May 23, 2018, 04:10:25 PM
Quote from: eward on May 23, 2018, 03:09:05 PM
Fuck. That's a hard one. By far my all-time favorite novelist. Looks like it's going to be a Roth: Revisited kind of summer.

Do you have a favorite?

If I had to take three, it would be: Sabbath's Theater, Operation Shylock, The Human Stain. In that order. (The Counterlife is great, too.)

The Human Stain was the first one I read - that and Portnoy's Complaint, which is a furious comic joy, back to back - so aside from its being a plainly excellent novel through and through it also has that brilliant shine of first discovery for me. But I think if I had to name an absolute FAVORITE it'd take the form of not one, not two, but THREE books, those that comprise the official Zuckerman trilogy: The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, and The Anatomy Lesson.

But his greatest work is probably Sabbath's Theater.

Also love Everyman, The Professor of Desire, Goodbye Columbus, American Pastoral, Our Gang, The Dying Animal...

I, incredibly, have not yet read The Plot Against America - want to pick that up next but, given the way the world has gone these past 18 months, I now find the prospect a bit frightening.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on May 23, 2018, 05:41:44 PM
Oh, I haven't read The Plot Against America too, I always had a weird feeling about it, as if it were "fast food" after The Human Stain. But I will. Of course I will. I'm missing a few of them now: Our Gang, When She Was Good, etc.

Even if Letting Go isn't fully fleshed Roth I loved that book. There's everything in it.

And I often return to the letter by Zuckerman to Roth—yes, weird thing...—at the end of The Facts.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fitzroy on June 02, 2018, 01:07:14 PM
I caught a two part BBC documentary about Roth a couple of years ago when he announced he was through with writing. I quickly found myself fascinated by him, and read as much as I could about him. Despite this, I haven't read any of his novels. I guess his oeuvre seemed intimidating to me; there was no clear point of entry.

So, now the man is gone - where should I start?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch Drunk Hate on June 08, 2018, 09:30:25 AM
Anthony Bourdain (https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/08/us/anthony-bourdain-obit/index.html?no-st=1528468279)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on June 09, 2018, 12:22:32 PM
Quote from: Fitzroy on June 02, 2018, 01:07:14 PM
I caught a two part BBC documentary about Roth a couple of years ago when he announced he was through with writing. I quickly found myself fascinated by him, and read as much as I could about him. Despite this, I haven't read any of his novels. I guess his oeuvre seemed intimidating to me; there was no clear point of entry.

So, now the man is gone - where should I start?

I missed this somehow. So...Difficult to say. Roth wrote many books, many different books, so I don't think there's a clear point of entry. I'd say Portnoy's Complaint—the book that made him extra-famous—isn't a good entry, though. Even if it's one of the good ones—it's just too much of a farce all the time (almost all the time) it can give a wrong first impression.

He wrote his best books at the end of the eighties and throughout the nineties.

American Pastoral is his most beloved book. It is a masterpiece. It is also weirdly tame and I wonder if that didn't help its reception. If Roth had only written American Pastoral you can be sure that he would be laying in his grave with a Nobel Prize. It introduces you to his main alter-ego, Nathan Zuckerman, when he became for Roth a way to narrate other people's lives. You're in 1997.

You can also begin with the first Zuckerman book: The Ghost Writer. In this one, Zuckerman is the main protagonist, he's a young writer and it begins to explore the tricks of fiction. You're in 1979.

The Ghost Writer has three sequels, but a Zuckerman books stands by itself after them: The Counterlife. As Roth said, it was the first time that he was fully integrating Zuckerman's intelligence inside the book. The Counterlife is full of meta-narratives—it explores the tricks of fiction, its purpose. Something that is at the heart of Roth. It might be a difficult entry but a rewarding one. You'd be in 1986.

Sabbath's Theater is my favorite Roth, it was written before American Pastoral: this one isn't tame at all. An avalanche of twisted sex is incorporated inside this book. Mickey Sabbath is not a nice man. But he's dealing with grief. And this is a book about death. It can be as funny as Portnoy's Complaint but is also the saddest book I've ever read. The writing is spectacular. The energy. It's unique. 1995.

Operation Shylock is so Roth the main character is Philip Roth chasing a false Philip Roth in Israel. Presented as a "confession" it is full of insanity. And fiction. It also confronts judaism, also an important theme of his work. And that's 1993.



Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on June 10, 2018, 04:37:03 PM
^^ Everything Drenk said. Also, see Listen Up Philip! Jonathan Pryce's character Ike Zimmerman is very much inspired by Roth.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on June 21, 2018, 12:28:40 PM
Koko died today, i feel emotional, respect xx

(https://i.imgur.com/j3fW2cV.jpg?1)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on July 04, 2018, 10:00:32 AM
Robby Muller (https://www.indiewire.com/2018/07/robby-muller-dead-cinematographer-jim-jarmusch-lars-von-trier-1201981096/)  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on July 05, 2018, 08:11:15 AM
Claude Lanzmann. 92.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 09, 2018, 09:37:35 PM
that one time my friend for some reason waited until days after Robby Müller died to post on gram about him, throwing me off
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Lottery on July 20, 2018, 12:27:06 AM
Shinobu Hashimoto (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/shinobu-hashimoto-dead-screenwriter-seven-samurai-rashomon-was-100-1128623)

Screenwriter that worked on masterpieces such as Harakiri, The Seven Samurai, Rashomon and Ikiru.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on August 26, 2018, 01:12:51 PM
Neil Simon (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/obituaries/neil-simon-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 26, 2018, 05:19:35 PM
Perhaps not entirely appropriate here, but I think John McCain's death is a pretty big deal.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on September 06, 2018, 01:55:14 PM
Burt Reynolds has passed. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/burt-reynolds-dead-deliverance-boogie-nights-star-was-82-831093?utm_source=twitter&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on September 06, 2018, 02:06:20 PM
Damn. Was not expecting that.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 06, 2018, 02:17:01 PM
82 year old piece of gold. RIP. Damn.

Wonder if he wrapped his scenes for Tarantino yet or not?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 06, 2018, 02:17:43 PM
Godspeed, you magnificent bastard.


(https://i.imgur.com/noKl1kS.jpg)


"This is the film...I want them to remember me by."


(https://i.imgur.com/jVSZ2tB.jpg)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on September 06, 2018, 02:47:06 PM
R.I.P. You'll be missed!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch Drunk Hate on September 06, 2018, 02:59:46 PM
Quote from: eward on September 06, 2018, 02:17:01 PM
82 year old piece of gold. RIP. Damn.

Wonder if he wrapped his scenes for Tarantino yet or not?

https://twitter.com/Borys_Kit/status/1037775727033122816
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 06, 2018, 05:26:09 PM
Fuck. Was really looking forward to that.

Any guesses who replaces him? Christopher Plummer?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on September 06, 2018, 05:39:25 PM
There's only one logical choice.

(https://i.imgur.com/BWas2H0.gif)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on September 06, 2018, 05:42:21 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/9zByB6F.jpg?1)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 06, 2018, 05:42:55 PM
Oooooh that'd be nice.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on September 06, 2018, 09:36:24 PM
i learned this today (https://heavy.com/entertainment/2018/09/what-was-burt-reynolds-final-film-posthumous/):

QuoteTarantino never worked with Reynolds, but he often spoke highly of the actor and the impact that he had on his life. "I've always been a big fan of his as an actor and a person and everything," Tarantino said. "I was named after him actually... My mom had me when she was only 16, and Burt Reynolds at that time was on Gunsmoke and he played a half-breed Indian named Quint."

i heard the story a different way, and it turns out they combine (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/20/the-movie-lover-2)

QuoteShe named her child after two fictional characters: Quint Asper, the Burt Reynolds character on the TV show "Gunsmoke," and Quentin in Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on September 07, 2018, 06:30:21 PM
RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsKT0s5J8ko
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 24, 2018, 07:47:50 PM
Gary Kurtz (https://variety.com/2018/film/news/gary-kurtz-dead-dies-star-wars-1202954316/), Film Producer


"The toy business began to drive the [Lucasfilm] empire," he said. "It's a shame. They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It's natural to make decisions that protect the toy business, but that's not the best thing for making quality films."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on October 20, 2018, 07:49:52 PM
Danny Leiner, Director of 'Dude, Where's My Car,' Dies at 57 (https://variety.com/2018/film/obituaries-people-news/danny-leiner-dead-dies-dude-wheres-my-car-director-harold-and-kumar-1202986804/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 24, 2018, 06:48:22 PM
Character Actor James Karen, age 94 (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/james-karen-dead-poltergeist-china-syndrome-actor-was-94-722368).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on October 26, 2018, 10:16:31 AM
Filmstruck....on Nov 29  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Something Spanish on October 26, 2018, 10:36:44 AM
fuck, man. for 10 bucks a month that was a pretty sweet deal. i actually watch at least a movie or two a week on that. and their adventures in moviegoing series is really fun.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on October 26, 2018, 11:17:18 AM
First Moviepass hangs itself, now this. 2018, you best unfuck yourself or I will definitely fuck you up.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 11, 2018, 08:11:23 PM
Douglas Rain (https://www.cochranetimespost.ca/entertainment/local-arts/stratford-festival-pioneer-douglas-rain-dies-at-90/wcm/71ee165f-de23-4b3f-937c-715ff091ef68), Voice of HAL 9000 in "2001".
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on November 12, 2018, 07:41:41 AM
Daisy, Daisy
Give me your answer do...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 12, 2018, 11:56:43 AM
I actually cried at HAL's death scene a few months ago during the 50th Anniversary screening.  Probably my 40th viewing of the film over all these years--but it moved more this time than any of the previous times I've seen it.  I guess HAL felt like a much older friend after all this time.  Mortality is a bitch.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on November 12, 2018, 12:15:11 PM
Same! He does not strike me as even remotely villainous these days. I found him wholly sympathetic.

The IMAX 70 screening I attended this past summer was by far the most profound experience I have ever had with this film. And I've seen it many many times, on practically every format. It's beyond cinema; simply one of the great works of art of the modern age. Not sure anything else even comes close.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 12, 2018, 12:53:54 PM
I saw the film first-run in Cinerama as a tender, science-NASA nerd--all of 15 years old. Grew up watching Carpenter, Glenn, et al launch LIVE--without knowing what was going to happen at each launch.   

I'm not exaggerating when I say watching 2001 that first time was one of my first religious experiences.  (The other would have been my first planetarium show at the age of 9 or 10.)   I think I went 3 more times while it was still in it's reserved-seating engagement.  One of the things I'm proudest of regarding my viewings of this film is that I've never seen it on a small screen.  Every single one of my 40-ish viewings has been in a theatrical setting.   Anything else would feel....disrespectful, somehow.   
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on November 12, 2018, 01:07:20 PM
Stan Lee died, so get ready for every Marvel movie to have a CGI version of him show up.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on November 12, 2018, 02:50:43 PM
He has a cameo in Teen Titans Go To The Movies (which is actually a great film btw). Even though it's a DC film. Just shows what a huge figure he was in the industry.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 16, 2018, 12:57:41 PM
William Goldman (https://variety.com/2018/film/news/william-goldman-dead-dies-butch-cassidy-and-the-sundance-kid-1203030474/)

Ouch.


[edit]  Cool story (https://deadline.com/2018/11/william-goldman-dies-oscar-writer-butch-cassidy-and-the-sundance-kid-all-the-presidents-men-1202503283/amp/) related by Jonathan Demme about Goldman and "Silence of the Lambs".
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on November 16, 2018, 09:53:50 PM
Tonight we just so happened to be screening "The Princess Bride" at the theater where I work. No, we did not plan to show it on the day that he died, things just worked out that way. Wouldn't it be cool if we had that power though? It was a real honor to be showing one of his most beloved films today, even though the crowd was small it just really felt like we were doing him a solid.

RIP William Goldman
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on November 17, 2018, 01:33:07 AM
Show Rush Hour next.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on November 17, 2018, 05:51:04 PM
Quote from: Reelist on November 16, 2018, 09:53:50 PM
Tonight we just so happened to be screening "The Princess Bride" at the theater where I work. No, we did not plan to show it on the day that he died, things just worked out that way. Wouldn't it be cool if we had that power though? It was a real honor to be showing one of his most beloved films today, even though the crowd was small it just really felt like we were doing him a solid.

RIP William Goldman

Quote from: polkablues on November 17, 2018, 01:33:07 AM
Show Rush Hour next.



Were doing a double feature of Annie Hall and Rosemary's Baby
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 18, 2018, 06:36:12 PM
Jerry Ohlinger (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/obituaries/jerry-ohlinger-dead.html), Colorful Dealer in Film Memorabilia
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on November 24, 2018, 09:30:14 AM
Nicolas Roeg  :yabbse-sad:

Wildly underappreciated poet of the cinema
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 24, 2018, 08:24:35 PM
Ricky Jay (https://variety.com/2018/film/news/ricky-jay-dead-dies-magician-boogie-nights-1203035879/)


Fuck. 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on November 24, 2018, 09:17:46 PM
Fuck Fuck Fuck

That beautiful motherfucker. RIP.

(Nevertheless, he had some tough shadows to deal with. And so it goes and so it goes...)

Go to the card, go to the fucking card.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on November 26, 2018, 07:00:36 AM
Bertolucci

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/26/entertainment/bernardo-bertolucci-italy-director-intl/index.html (https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/26/entertainment/bernardo-bertolucci-italy-director-intl/index.html)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on November 29, 2018, 01:49:02 AM
Gloria Katz died (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gloria-katz-dead-american-graffiti-writer-star-wars-script-doctor-was-76-1164737) and the news is coming out today, she died on the 25th, i've heard the news was delayed until her daughter was told, she died on her wedding anniversary
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on December 18, 2018, 01:16:54 PM
Penny Marshall, who played feisty Laverne in 'Laverne & Shirley' before directing movies, dies at 75 (https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-penny-marshall-dies-at-75-story.html)
By DENNIS MCLELLAN
DEC 18, 2018 | 10:45 AM
 
Penny Marshall, who costarred as a Milwaukee brewery worker in the top-rated 1970s and '80s sitcom "Laverne & Shirley" before becoming a director of hit movies such as "Big" and "A League of Their Own," has died. She was 75.

Marshall died peacefully on Monday night in her Hollywood Hills home due to complications from diabetes, Michelle Bega, a spokeswoman for Marshall's family, told The Times on Tuesday.

"Our family is heartbroken over the passing of Penny Marshall," the Marshall family said in a statement.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated," Marshall and costar Cindy Williams famously chanted as they skipped down the sidewalk in the opening sequence of "Laverne & Shirley."

A spinoff of "Happy Days," "Laverne & Shirley" starred Marshall as the feisty Laverne De Fazio and Williams as the idealistic Shirley Feeney, two 1950s working-class roommates who worked on the assembly line at the Shotz Brewery in Milwaukee.

The midseason replacement was launched on ABC in January 1976 and soared to the top of the ratings. Known for its broad physical comedy, it was the No. 1-rated show for the 1977 and '78 seasons and aired until 1983.

"There were no blue-collar girls on television" when "Laverne & Shirley" debuted, executive producer Garry Marshall, Penny's brother, once said in an interview for the Archive of American Television. (Garry Marshall died in 2016.)

Viewers, he said, "were dying for somebody that didn't look like Mary Tyler Moore or all the pretty girls on TV. They wanted somebody who looked like a regular person. And my sister looks like a regular person — talks like a regular person — and Cindy Williams was brilliant as Shirley."

With her deadpan demeanor and flat-toned Bronx accent that a TV Guide writer once described as sounding like "a groan filtered through a whine," Marshall had been making minor inroads in Hollywood for several years before the Laverne and Shirley characters debuted as Richie and Fonzie's double dates on an episode of "Happy Days" in 1975.

That included being a semi-regular on "The Odd Couple" as Oscar Madison's secretary and a regular on the short-lived "Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers."

Marshall's career received big boosts from brother Garry, who had been an executive producer on "The Odd Couple." He also created "Happy Days" and co-created "Laverne & Shirley."

"I'm sure people thought I got parts because my brother was being nice, and at first I probably thought the same thing," Penny Marshall told The Times in 1988. "But my brother finally told me, 'I'm not giving you a job 'cause I'm nice. I'm not that nice.'"

At the time "Laverne & Shirley" debuted, Marshall was married to Rob Reiner, who had gained fame on "All in the Family" playing Archie Bunker's liberal son-in-law. They later divorced.

Marshall's work on her hit series drew the admiration of her then-father-in-law, Carl Reiner.

"She has all the tools," he told TV Guide in 1976. "She can be the clown one moment, all nutsy crazy, and be very touching the next."

"Laverne & Shirley" had been off the air three years when Marshall made her feature film debut as a director of the 1986 Whoopi Goldberg comedy "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

She had directed four episodes of "Laverne & Shirley" and the pilot for the short-lived 1979 sitcom "Working Stiffs" when she received an unexpected offer to replace director Howard Zieff 10 days into the shooting of "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

"It was real scary," Marshall told the New York Times in 1992. "I was hired on a Friday and went to work on a Monday. I didn't know you had to shoot from so many angles!"

"Big," a fantasy tale in which a boy wakes up in the body of an adult man played by Tom Hanks, earned Hanks an Oscar nomination and made Marshall the first female director in Hollywood history to direct a movie that grossed more than $100 million.

"Awakenings" (1990), a medical drama starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, came next. It received three Oscar nominations, including for best picture and actor in a leading role (for De Niro).

Marshall went on to direct "A League of Their Own" (1992), "Renaissance Man" (1994), "The Preacher's Wife" (1996) and "Riding in Cars with Boys" (2001).

Marshall appeared in a handful of roles in recent years, most related in some fashion to her late brother Garry Marshall. That same year, Penny Marshall appeared in a special episode of the rebooted CBS series "The Odd Couple" memorializing her brother, in addition to serving as a narrator on her brother's final film, "Mother's Day."

As for her directing career, Marshall had a documentary in post-production about former NBA superstar and recent international diplomat Dennis Rodman. "Rodman" is scheduled for release Sept. 1.

A dedicated sports fan — she had Lakers season tickets and a large collection of sports memorabilia — Marshall was known among longtime friends for being intensely loyal.

She also has been described as a worrier, insecure and self-effacing.

Asked by a Times reporter in 1988 how deep her insecurities were, she joked: "I was born with a frown."

"I always feel like somehow I'm going to be a failure," she said in that interview. "I'm from the negativity and depression school. When I see bad reviews, I say, 'Yeah, they're probably right.'

"With directing, I know people on movie sets want leadership, but I don't exude that captain-of-the-ship image. I'd get on the phone with ['Big' producer] Jim Brooks and apologize all the time and say, 'I'm no good at this.'"

Countered Brooks at the time: "Penny has an iron will, which is a thing that almost everybody misses.

"You can't do the job she's done and have it be dictated by insecurities," Brooks said. "Penny has great creative instincts and a real openness to the creative process. She would talk to her actors very honestly and I think that made her actors trust her."

She was born in the New York borough of the Bronx on Oct. 15, 1943. Her father, Tony, was an industrial filmmaker — he later was a producer on "Laverne & Shirley" — and her mother, Marjorie, ran a tap dancing school.

A tomboy who loved baseball, Marshall began taking dance lessons at age 3.

As a member of her mother's troupe of precision tap dancers, Marshall appeared on "Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour" and "The Jackie Gleason Show."

But she wasn't interested in pursuing a career in show business.

"I just thought of it as one of my mother's weirdnesses," she told New York Newsday in 1990. "I ran away from it."

Penny, Garry and their sister, Ronny Hallin, who became a TV producer, got their humor from their mother.

"My mother was funny but destructive," Marshall told the New York Times in 1992. "She had a very sarcastic sense of humor. She used to call me things.... Things like 'the bad seed.'"

Marshall majored in psychology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she met and married UNM football player Michael Henry, with whom she had a daughter, Tracy, her only child, who was born in 1964.

To support the family, Marshall dropped out of college and worked as a secretary and dance teacher.

In 1967, the by-then-divorced Marshall moved to Los Angeles, where older brother Garry already had carved out a successful career as a TV comedy writer.

Marshall didn't know what to do with her life, but she had enjoyed the laughter and applause she received playing Ado Annie in a production of "Oklahoma!" in Albuquerque, and she started taking acting classes at night.

She made her film debut in a small part in the 1968 biker film "The Savage Seven" and slowly began landing other small roles in films and television.

But she wasn't sure she had what it takes to succeed in Hollywood, later complaining in an interview that she was "all nose and teeth."

At one point early in her career, she appeared in a Head & Shoulders commercial as the plain girl with the lifeless brown hair opposite the beautiful girl with the gorgeous blond mane: Farrah Fawcett.

"I just cannot bring myself to accept that the homely person on the screen is me," Marshall told TV Guide in 1976. "I grew up believing an actress is supposed to be beautiful. After I saw myself in a 'Love American Style' segment, I cried for three days. I've had braces put on my teeth twice, but they did no good."

Despite her later career success as a director, her days on "Laverne & Shirley" had an enduring impact.

"I must say that it seems that people remember or have watched it from reruns on TV Land or Nickelodeon," she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2007. "I go to the basketball game, and they all still yell, 'Laverne!'"

Marshall is survived by her sister Ronny, daughter Tracy Reiner and three grandchildren, Spencer, Bella and Viva. Plans for a memorial service have yet to be made.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on December 29, 2018, 03:15:50 PM
Hong Kong Director Ringo Lam Dies at 63 (https://variety.com/2018/film/news/ringo-lam-dead-dies-city-on-fire-1203096650/)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 31, 2018, 09:39:49 PM
Don Lusk, Animator on 'Pinocchio,' 'Fantasia' and Charlie Brown Specials, Dies at 105 (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/don-lusk-dead-pinocchio-fantasia-charlie-brown-animator-was-105-1172027)

Quote...his output was staggering. He drew Geppetto's pet goldfish Cleo and pet tuxedo cat Figaro for Pinocchio (1940), the Arabian Fish Dance to the "Nutcracker Suite" for Fantasia (1940), the dog chase for Bambi (1942), the mice for Cinderella (1950) and the title character floating down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland (1951).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on January 23, 2019, 12:17:29 PM
Jonas Mekas (http://www.artnews.com/2019/01/23/jonas-mekas-key-experimental-filmmaker-dies-96/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on January 23, 2019, 01:18:56 PM
Oh shit. Guess I'm going to Anthology this week.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 28, 2019, 09:16:45 PM
Dusan Makavejev (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dusan-makavejev-dead-yugoslavian-director-montenegro-was-86-1180528), director of "Montenegro".
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Punch Drunk Hate on January 30, 2019, 10:28:20 PM
Dick Miller
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on February 08, 2019, 09:15:20 AM
Albert Finney (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/08/albert-finney-dies-film-tom-jones-orient-express-millers-crossing)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on February 16, 2019, 09:17:06 AM
Bruno Ganz.  :yabbse-sad: He's already been an angel though, so I guess it's fine?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on February 16, 2019, 10:39:32 AM
This clip of him from last year moved me when I saw it. More so now.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on February 16, 2019, 11:59:43 AM
Good role to bow out on.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on February 16, 2019, 01:05:11 PM
At least it's not Hitler.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 21, 2019, 10:15:00 PM
Peter Tork (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-peter-tork-obituary-appreciation-20190221-story.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 23, 2019, 10:04:15 PM
Stanley Donen (https://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/stanley-donen-1924-2019)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on February 26, 2019, 06:46:17 PM
Mark Hollis.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 26, 2019, 08:02:38 PM
Ross Lowell (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ross-lowell-dead-oscar-recipient-inventor-gaffer-tape-was-92-1190871),
Inventor of Lowel-Light and Gaffer's Tape
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 04, 2019, 05:40:07 PM
Luke Perry.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on March 04, 2019, 10:29:30 PM
Too handsome for this world.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 08, 2019, 08:31:06 PM
Jan Michael Vincent (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/obituaries/jan-michael-vincent-dies.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on March 08, 2019, 09:18:25 PM
Rough week to be a handsome guy who was famous in the 90s.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 11, 2019, 11:00:48 PM
Hal Blaine (https://variety.com/2019/music/news/hal-blaine-studio-drummer-dies-at-90-1203160849/), "Wrecking Crew" drummer extraordinaire.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 18, 2019, 06:09:55 PM
Dick Dale (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-dick-dale-obit-20190317-story.html)

(Pulp Fiction would have been a lesser film without Dick's contribution.)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 18, 2019, 06:39:05 PM
Damn. Truly.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on March 24, 2019, 01:18:56 PM
https://news.avclub.com/r-i-p-larry-cohen-legendary-cult-filmmaker-behind-the-1833526921

Trying really hard to find a tasteful way of making an "It's (Not) Alive" joke. But for real, Cohen was great and this is sad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Just Withnail on March 25, 2019, 07:37:30 AM
what a journey

perhaps the clearest loss of innocence in pop

























Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on March 25, 2019, 09:19:41 AM
<333
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 25, 2019, 09:24:49 AM
Damn, RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Ravi on March 29, 2019, 09:51:55 AM
Agnes Varda (https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-47745841)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on March 29, 2019, 09:55:11 AM
:(

Everyone should watch Faces Places. It's very sweet and good.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 29, 2019, 10:28:37 AM
I had the pleasant fortune of bumping into her last fall in the lobby outside Francesca Beale during NYFF - she was very small and cute, seemingly falling into herself as cameras snapped her from every angle. RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on March 29, 2019, 10:36:21 AM
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on March 29, 2019, 10:39:49 AM
Is she the only one in Closet Picks who has asked for a DVD player, so she could watch the movies as well?

Yeah, she was adorable.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on April 08, 2019, 02:43:11 PM
Seymour Cassel  :(

https://www.showbiz411.com/2019/04/08/famed-character-actor-seymour-cassel-dies-at-84-in-los-angeles-oscar-nominated-for-john-cassavetess-faces-appeared-in-rushmore-many-hits-tv-staple (https://www.showbiz411.com/2019/04/08/famed-character-actor-seymour-cassel-dies-at-84-in-los-angeles-oscar-nominated-for-john-cassavetess-faces-appeared-in-rushmore-many-hits-tv-staple)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Something Spanish on April 08, 2019, 05:23:14 PM
all the Husbands are now gone
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 14, 2019, 07:36:36 PM
Bibi Anderssson (https://deadline.com/2019/04/ibi-andersson-dies-swedish-actress-was-83-1202595704)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on April 29, 2019, 06:02:15 PM
John Singleton
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 02, 2019, 05:49:25 PM
Peter Mayhew  :(

https://wtkr.com/2019/05/02/peter-mayhew-original-chewbacca-actor-dies-at-74/ (https://wtkr.com/2019/05/02/peter-mayhew-original-chewbacca-actor-dies-at-74/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 11, 2019, 10:29:38 PM
Peggy Lipton

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-me-peggy-lipton-dead-20190511-story.html (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-me-peggy-lipton-dead-20190511-story.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 14, 2019, 12:00:35 AM
You've probably seen this by now, but

Doris Day (https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-doris-day-dead-20190513-story.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 14, 2019, 02:08:18 PM
Tim Conway (https://www.latimes.com/ct-ent-tim-conway-dead-20190514-story.html)


PTA faithful (which is most of us) will recall that Tim is the one that told Ernie Anderson to move to L.A. from (was it Cleveland?).   In some way, Tim is responsible for PTA's valley-centric worldview in his early career.  (Something this boy who grew up and lives not far from the Anderson homestead especially appreciates.) )
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Something Spanish on May 14, 2019, 03:55:47 PM
since no one else posted it: Alvin Sargent

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/obituaries/alvin-sargent-dead.html
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 14, 2019, 04:24:06 PM
Aw shit. Paper Moon is one of the best scripts ever written.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 09, 2019, 10:07:49 PM
Rip Torn (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rip-torn-dead-larry-sanders-887059)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on July 10, 2019, 11:16:04 AM
Quote from: wilberfan on July 09, 2019, 10:07:49 PM
Rip Torn (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rip-torn-dead-larry-sanders-887059)

This man is a comedy legend. If any of you are looking for a show to get hooked on and you haven't seen THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW, seek it out!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on July 10, 2019, 12:17:20 PM
https://twitter.com/GriffLightning/status/691125595938406401
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on July 24, 2019, 07:38:37 PM
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die."

RIP Rutger Hauer.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 06, 2019, 01:43:57 PM
Belated: D.A. Pennebaker

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on August 06, 2019, 02:29:35 PM
The most ripped off (homaged) music video in history?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on August 06, 2019, 02:31:05 PM
It's simple, but sooo iconic.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 06, 2019, 02:49:07 PM
The track wherein Bob Dylan invents rap? B-D
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on August 06, 2019, 02:51:04 PM
Quote from: eward on August 06, 2019, 01:43:57 PM
Belated: D.A. Pennebaker




"We borrowed one of the Beach Boys' tape recorders. To us at the time, 8-track was some fantastic possibility"  (https://www.scribd.com/document/149392592/Monterey-Pop-home-video-D-A-Pennebaker-interview)


RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on August 07, 2019, 12:38:50 AM
Quote from: eward on August 06, 2019, 02:49:07 PM
The track wherein Bob Dylan invents rap? B-D

cringe comment
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 07, 2019, 09:50:36 AM
Oh well.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 07, 2019, 10:04:10 AM
Also belated:

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1159106419561398272
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on August 07, 2019, 06:27:33 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZKMa-ByLBQ
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on August 07, 2019, 06:45:52 PM
No, just no...

Fuck.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 07, 2019, 07:13:18 PM
Sorry, Drenk. I was similarly gutted when Leonard Cohen died (it was also the week Trump won the election so it really felt like the last fucking straw.)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 07, 2019, 07:25:34 PM
Found this to be quite striking:

https://twitter.com/CarolineBirdUK/status/1158454484760182784
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on August 08, 2019, 01:45:43 AM
the final song he played live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONbooypFSd4
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on August 08, 2019, 06:48:39 AM
That video now gives the impression that he was eulogizing himself, looking at his life from a distance, empty and resigned—but smirking...

From what I know, he was looking forward to the tour. He was supposed to play this weekend. But sometimes the fear is so strong it leaves you gasping.

Depression is a tricky thing, you just don't know when it'll get you. He didn't pass this particular day. He might have lived another decade or two. Or a year.

May he rest in peace, if it exists.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 16, 2019, 05:34:33 PM
https://twitter.com/THR/status/1162491198390624256
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on September 11, 2019, 04:13:40 PM
Daniel Johnston.

https://pitchfork.com/news/daniel-johnston-dead-at-58/ (https://pitchfork.com/news/daniel-johnston-dead-at-58/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 11, 2019, 04:31:28 PM
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 23, 2019, 10:07:27 AM
https://twitter.com/KerrangMagazine/status/1176075123159392261

I'll always remember him best as the judge with a heart who takes it easy on Jackie Brown.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on October 11, 2019, 09:41:27 PM
Robert Forster  :yabbse-sad:

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 12, 2019, 12:27:07 AM
Dammit.  And there he is in all his glory just over an hour into the new Breaking Bad movie which I happen to be watching at this exact moment.  I adored him in JACKIE BROWN...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on October 14, 2019, 11:06:50 AM
Watched El Camino Friday night, then woke to this news on Saturday morning. He was the quiet heart of Jackie Brown, of course, and brought a perfect blend of calm and gravitas to his role in Twin Peaks The Return. Sounds from all the tributes pouring in that he was a quality bloke in real live.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 14, 2019, 11:55:49 PM
Scotty Bowers (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/scotty-bowers-dead-male-madame-stars-was-96-1247422)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on October 28, 2019, 01:43:37 PM
Robert Evans (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/10/robert-evans-dies-1202185612/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on October 28, 2019, 02:42:56 PM
Add one to the list of people dying whom I have clear memories of having died several years ago.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on October 28, 2019, 03:08:42 PM
The kid has left the picture
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on October 28, 2019, 03:12:56 PM
A reminder that Jean-Luc Godard is still alive.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on October 28, 2019, 03:18:44 PM
And active!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on October 28, 2019, 03:19:09 PM
Quote from: Drenk on October 28, 2019, 03:12:56 PM
A reminder that Jean-Luc Godard is still alive.

I appreciate this. It will save me a moment of confusion.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on October 28, 2019, 04:49:48 PM
JLG and Frederick Wiseman are the same age and they're both still bringing the goods
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on October 30, 2019, 05:09:10 PM
John Witherspoon

https://deadline.com/2019/10/john-witherspoon-dead-obituary-comedian-friday-star-77-1202772258/ (https://deadline.com/2019/10/john-witherspoon-dead-obituary-comedian-friday-star-77-1202772258/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 23, 2019, 12:42:30 AM
Michael J. Pollard

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/movies/michael-j-pollard-dead.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/movies/michael-j-pollard-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on December 08, 2019, 05:31:41 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzB1VGEGcSU
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on December 08, 2019, 05:51:14 PM
These kids should have watched Requiem for a Dream at 12.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on December 08, 2019, 07:37:24 PM
Rene Auberjonois  :(

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 08, 2019, 08:51:32 PM
That screenshot of Rene is probably my favorite roll of his.  Probably the first time I ever noticed him, too...  RIP.

[edit] Well, technically, I guess I would have first seen him in M*A*S*H, but his Brewster McCloud role really stuck with me.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 13, 2019, 10:07:38 AM
Danny Aiello (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/danny-aiello-dead-do-right-thing-moonstruck-actor-was-86-1168765)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on December 13, 2019, 10:29:03 AM
Aw shit
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on December 13, 2019, 11:37:49 AM
Quote from: wilberfan on December 13, 2019, 10:07:38 AM
Danny Aiello (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/danny-aiello-dead-do-right-thing-moonstruck-actor-was-86-1168765)


I've needed an excuse to rewatch Do The Right Thing for so long.. I guess this is it!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 14, 2019, 12:24:24 AM
This is at least a week old.  I'm surprised I missed it.  I think Ron deserves a moment.   I don't remember the Rachel's dad thing--he'll always be Billy Pilgrim's tormentor to me (Slaughterhouse Five). 

Ron Liebman (https://www.thewrap.com/ron-leibman-who-played-rachels-dad-on-friends-dies-at-82/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on December 15, 2019, 10:46:29 AM
Anna Karina

[instagram]https://www.instagram.com/p/B6F7ugfAJSe/?igshid=19fsho3imfon2[/instagram]
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on December 15, 2019, 01:46:26 PM
Quote from: Drenk on October 28, 2019, 03:12:56 PM
A reminder that Jean-Luc Godard is still alive.

And Godard is still kicking.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on December 15, 2019, 02:26:51 PM
 :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on December 16, 2019, 09:49:32 AM
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on December 16, 2019, 10:48:48 AM
 :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 30, 2019, 11:55:26 PM
Neil Innes (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2019-12-30/neil-innes-monty-python-rutles-bonzo-dog-band-obituary)

Among other things, his songs for "The Rutles" were especially brilliant parody.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 08, 2020, 09:10:38 PM
Buck Henry (https://deadline.com/2020/01/buck-henry-dead-saturday-night-live-the-graduate-get-smart-1202825337/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on January 08, 2020, 10:53:00 PM
Aw shit
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 10, 2020, 04:17:51 PM
Neil Peart (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/arts/music/neil-peart-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on January 10, 2020, 04:50:31 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJPAjiSX7Rk
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 22, 2020, 09:50:05 AM
Terry Jones (https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51209197)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on January 26, 2020, 07:37:44 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkDUt3NyjEE
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 05, 2020, 05:59:20 PM
Kirk Douglas (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kirk-douglas-dies-spartacus-670526) 

1916 - 2020  (103 years old)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 02, 2020, 12:51:22 PM
James Lipton  :yabbse-sad:

Most decidedly not scrumtrulescent
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on March 02, 2020, 01:59:40 PM
Quote from: eward on March 02, 2020, 12:51:22 PM
James Lipton  :yabbse-sad:

Most decidedly not scrumtrulescent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ880Slk3xg&feature=youtu.be
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: poopooboy on March 08, 2020, 07:49:42 AM
Timothee chalamet might die of the corona 😂😂😂😂
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 08, 2020, 09:08:44 AM
With any luck, you'll beat him to it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 09, 2020, 11:48:49 AM
Max von Sydow (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/movies/max-von-sydow-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 09, 2020, 12:00:12 PM
Damn
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on March 25, 2020, 04:19:06 AM
Stuart Gordon (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/stuart-gordon-dead-dies-1203544356/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on March 25, 2020, 12:01:35 PM
when Stuck (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758786/) came out it opened at the Nuart with Gordon there. i was rather new to LA and went feeling hyped. it was shocking to me that it didn't sell out. what also didn't sell out around this time was Tobe Hooper/Mick Garris doing live commentary for TCM at the Aero, Romero at the Nuart for Diary of the Dead, and Roger Corman at The New Bev for Ski Troop Attack, to provide perspective and illustrate why i don't trust the tastes of other people. RIP Gordon. From Beyond is my favorite and Space Truckers is my gotta mention that one
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on March 30, 2020, 02:11:21 PM
Penderecki??

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/03/krzysztof-penderecki-dies-1202221242/ (https://www.indiewire.com/2020/03/krzysztof-penderecki-dies-1202221242/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 07, 2020, 10:38:18 PM
Alan Garfield (https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2020/04/nj-actor-allen-garfield-from-nashville-and-the-conversation-dies-of-coronavirus.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 13, 2020, 12:00:59 AM
RIP Swingers (https://la.eater.com/2020/4/9/21213913/swingers-closure-beverly-los-angeles-diner)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on April 13, 2020, 12:10:01 AM
it's where matt35mm and i first met. i mentioned to him, and had prepared for reading, that it's in the first line of Elmore Leonard's Be Cool

they weren't doing takeout so i was worried. it's a loss but even more frightening is what might happen to Greenblatt's. Swingers was a fixture but Greenblatt's is iconic. Canter's is doing takeouts
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 13, 2020, 12:22:35 AM
Quote from: jenkins on April 13, 2020, 12:10:01 AMit's where matt35mm and i first met.

"snuck a cigarette" -- I remember that post.

I never made it to Greenblatts, for whatever reason. Definitely spent several nights a week in Swingers' booths during the 2000s, though. Many a half-written screenplay was discussed there over burgers, diet cokes, and peanut butter banana shakes, and I generally associate the diner with the pre-YouTube/IG LA: a place I would go during an era when the city still felt like it had the dandruff of Old Hollywood on its shoulders.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on April 13, 2020, 12:34:32 AM
<3

there's that story about Refn thinking up Drive while Gosling drove him back from the 101 Coffee Shop, and probably a lot of other great 101 Coffee Shop stories, and the two Cafe 50s, Johnie's Coffee Shop being a basic movie invention, plus other diners here and gone, but Swingers was overall the most, well, as its name implies
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 13, 2020, 01:15:35 AM
OK, I'll chime-in.  Not Corona-related, but another profound death this week:  They completely demolished (https://la.curbed.com/2020/4/8/21213755/lacma-demolished-los-angeles) the Bing Theatre at LACMA (https://losangelestheatres.blogspot.com/2017/03/bing-theatre.html).  (Other iconic surrounding buildings, too.)  My very first date(s) with a girl were for a Hitchcock Festival at the Bing.  One of his features every Thursday night for several weeks. (Probably 1973-ish.)  It was a revelation.  With the added bonus that Linda and I would make out in the car before driving her back to Highland Park. I also saw Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm with near Elizabeth Perkins a several decades later. We chatted in line while waiting to get tickets.  She drove herself home.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on April 13, 2020, 01:26:23 AM
<3

it is a bummer of a loss. that's where i saw decline of the western civilization with penelope spheeris, the restoration of that lost early orson welles movies they found or whatever, plus that's only a short intro to the many blessings that came to me through Bing. the only consolation here is that sweet as fuck globular theater that's taking over
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 13, 2020, 01:44:22 AM
Quote from: jenkins on April 13, 2020, 01:26:23 AM
...the only consolation here is that sweet as fuck globular theater that's taking over

Ah, I'd forgotten about that, you're right.  Just in time to test whether, and to what extent, people will actually want to watch films in close proximity to strangers ever again.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 13, 2020, 05:03:11 AM
One more...

Vulcan Video Is Dead—Long Live Vulcan Video (https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/vulcan-video-shutdown-austin/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 16, 2020, 03:41:06 PM
Brian Dennehy (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/brian-dennehy-dead-dies-tommy-boy-first-blood-1234582309/) and Allen Daviau (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/allen-daviau-dead-dies-e-t-empire-of-the-sun-1234582518/).
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 26, 2020, 02:04:29 AM
Matt Holzman (https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/the-business/jeffrey-katzenberg-quibi/matt-holzman-business), creator of KCRW's The Business
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 29, 2020, 08:04:48 AM
Irrfan Khan (https://m.timesofindia.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/irrfan-khan-passes-away-at-53-battling-colon-infection/articleshow/75444038.cms)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 06, 2020, 12:17:13 AM
Matty Simmons (https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2020-05-01/matty-simmons-national-lampoon-animal-house-co-founder-dies), Producer of ANIMAL HOUSE and co-founder of National Lampoon.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 09, 2020, 10:45:42 AM
Little Richard (https://variety.com/2020/music/news/little-richard-dead-dies-1234602762/) 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on May 09, 2020, 01:45:43 PM
This one hits hard.  Not even that I can say I know his music  very well, but I'm aware he practically invented Rock and Roll and we more often look to Chuck Berry as doing that. Such an iconic, positive force of nature, R.I.P.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 11, 2020, 10:00:14 AM
Jerry Stiller   :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on May 16, 2020, 03:41:42 PM
Lynn Shelton (https://www.indiewire.com/2020/05/lynn-shelton-dead-humpday-glow-director-1202231743/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 16, 2020, 03:50:42 PM
Just horrible.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 16, 2020, 05:37:04 PM
WHAT?!  Jesus!  I just listened to Marc Maron (whom she was dating) yesterday describe how she was sick (not COVID) and how he was taking care of her.  Frequent listeners to WTF feel like Marc is part of their extended family (at least *I* do), so this one hits home REALLY hard.   

[edit]  Heavy echoes for me--having also lost a girlfriend suddenly (also undiagnosed condition) back in April '91.   I suspect Marc is more open to the grieving process than he was, say, 8 or 10 years ago--but the next year at least is going to be a big challenge for him.  It took me a solid 18 months to get back to a 'normal' place, and I understood the importance of letting my feelings happen.

And one of his cats isn't doing well either.  I just feel so bad for him...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 16, 2020, 05:48:26 PM
FWIW, there's a digital card/message board thing making the rounds amongst his fan groups on Facebook. Sign, if you're so inclined. I did. https://www.kudoboard.com/boards/6yjloSCr (https://www.kudoboard.com/boards/6yjloSCr)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 16, 2020, 06:48:34 PM
Fred Willard (https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/fred-willard-best-in-show-actor-dead-obit-1000942/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 18, 2020, 04:14:35 PM
Quote from: wilberfan on May 16, 2020, 05:37:04 PM
I just feel so bad for him...


Marc put up a gut-wrenchingly honest tribute to Lynn very early this morning--in keeping with the WTF schedule.  They reposted the episode with Lynn from 2015--which is when they met.  I was so proud of him for continuing to be as honest and open and self-reflective as he has been over the past few years.  I wasn't sure that he wouldn't take some time off.  It was tough to listen to without joining him in his tears...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 18, 2020, 06:26:57 PM
Yep, I'm proud of him, too. And man, his voice, so thin and quavering, had an eerily familiar quality to it that brought me back ten years. Going from distress to relative calmness when speaking about her to even a light chuckle at one point then careening back to sobbing distress in endless circles...poor guy.  :(  But he'll get through it. It ain't gonna be quick, and it ain't gonna be easy, but he will.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 04, 2020, 08:18:06 PM
Bruce Jay Friedman (https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2020-06-04/bruce-jay-friedman-oscar-nominated-writer-splash-stir-crazy-dies)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 19, 2020, 08:07:39 AM
Ian Holm (https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/19/ian-holm-dies-alien-chariots-of-fire-bilbo-baggins)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 22, 2020, 01:45:03 PM
Joel Schumacher (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/joel-schumacher-dead-batman-robin-st-elmos-fire-flatliners-director-was-80-1137490)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on June 22, 2020, 02:14:32 PM
These Batman were so fun to watch as a kid.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 22, 2020, 03:48:08 PM
To me, Lost Boys, Phone Booth, and (especially) Tigerland more than make up for any of his misfires.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Fuzzy Dunlop on June 22, 2020, 04:06:30 PM
Batman Forever was a big deal for me as a kid. This interview is great, he had a wild life. https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/joel-schumacher-in-conversation.html (https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/joel-schumacher-in-conversation.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on June 22, 2020, 06:39:45 PM
<3

I don't think I've disliked any of his movies. Was the perfect age for his Batman when they came out - then discovered Flatliners, Falling Down, Lost Boys, St Elmos Fire, Phone Booth in my teens. Genre fillmmaking at a mainstream scale - in a form that I appreciate more than Cameron's.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 22, 2020, 07:47:35 PM
Quote from: Fuzzy Dunlop on June 22, 2020, 04:06:30 PM
Batman Forever was a big deal for me as a kid. This interview is great, he had a wild life. https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/joel-schumacher-in-conversation.html (https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/joel-schumacher-in-conversation.html)

Jesus.  "Wild" seems like an understatement!  Great interview, indeed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 30, 2020, 09:28:09 AM
Carl Reiner (https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2549162/carl-reiner-comedy-legend-and-dick-van-dyke-show-creator-is-dead-at-98)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on June 30, 2020, 03:30:35 PM
Man, Carl Reiner is one of those dudes who makes you want to give up, because you're never going to be as good at anything as he was at everything.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 06, 2020, 03:01:48 AM
Ennio Morricone (https://variety.com/2020/film/global/ennio-morricone-oscar-winning-hateful-eight-composer-dies-at-91-1234698707/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on July 06, 2020, 02:27:52 PM
Damn. RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 13, 2020, 12:41:05 AM
Kelly Preston (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kelly-preston-actress-jerry-maguire-more-films-dies-at-57-1302960) (Mrs. John Travolta)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on July 13, 2020, 09:29:51 AM
Quote from: wilberfan on July 13, 2020, 12:41:05 AM
Kelly Preston (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kelly-preston-actress-jerry-maguire-more-films-dies-at-57-1302960) (Mrs. John Travolta)

He'll need a team of masseuses to get through the grief
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 26, 2020, 12:12:28 AM
Regis (https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2020-07-25/regis-philbin-dead) and Peter Green (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-07-25/peter-green-fleetwood-mac-music-reactions-twitter-social-media)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 26, 2020, 12:53:09 PM
Olivia de Havilland (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/olivia-de-havilland-dead-died-gone-with-the-wind-1234716790)

104 damn years old, too.  Bless her heart.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 26, 2020, 02:44:59 PM
John Saxon died yesterday, pneumonia, aged 84

sucks that i'm now old enough to be familiar with enough people that every day i look to see if a "friend" died
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 26, 2020, 03:06:01 PM
Quote from: jenkins on July 26, 2020, 02:44:59 PM
John Saxon died yesterday, pneumonia, aged 84

sucks that i'm now old enough to be familiar with enough people that every day i look to see if a "friend" died


Oh, yeah, I saw that we lost Saxon, too.   And welcome to my world...   All my 60s and 70s cultural heroes are really gettin' up there.  (As am I!)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 26, 2020, 03:29:16 PM
each person being a part of the world, losing them is losing part of the world, which is exactly what it feels like
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 31, 2020, 02:55:54 PM
Alan Parker (https://deadline.com/2020/07/alan-parker-dies-director-of-bugsy-malone-midnight-express-evita-was-76-1203000762/)

PT had a conversation (https://youtu.be/f3It380DGqk) with him a couple years back
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Freddie Dodd on August 14, 2020, 09:19:52 PM
Linda Manz, famously from Days of Heaven, died of Lung Cancer.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 14, 2020, 09:22:51 PM
 :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 14, 2020, 10:20:21 PM
FUCK. I'll always love her for Out of the Blue. She's also great in Gummo. RIP. 😔
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 15, 2020, 04:18:19 PM
The restored trailer for the forthcoming 4K restoration of Out of the Blue:

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 15, 2020, 04:29:23 PM
I donated to the Kickstarter! Sucks it's been delayed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on August 16, 2020, 01:14:35 PM
Kurt Luedtke (https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2020-08-10/kurt-luedtke-journalist-out-of-africa-absence-of-malice-dies)

(screenwriter, "Absence of Malice" and "Out of Africa")
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Axolotl on August 28, 2020, 09:21:58 PM
What the fuck
https://twitter.com/chadwickboseman/status/1299530165463199747?s=19
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on August 29, 2020, 02:17:53 AM
Absolutely wild. This is the most caught-off-guard I've felt about a celebrity death since Heath Ledger. The dude starred in at least seven movies while secretly fighting terminal cancer. Transforming himself, bulking up, slimming down... I can't even fathom the dedication required to keep yourself going through all that.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on August 29, 2020, 10:28:21 PM
Quote from: Axolotl on August 28, 2020, 09:21:58 PM
What the fuck
https://twitter.com/chadwickboseman/status/1299530165463199747?s=19

Today this became the most "liked" tweet in Twitter history to date.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on August 31, 2020, 02:41:08 PM
Chadwick Boseman's genius was to embody black pride, in all its forms
Elvis Mitchell

For African-Americans, always braced for news about our own being taken from us early, the unexpected impact of Chadwick Boseman's death, from colon cancer – and the shoulder-to-the-grindstone dignity of his decision to work through his illness and keep it quiet – encapsulated the grim reality of black life in America. We didn't lose Boseman to the ongoing calamity of street violence that extinguishes so much black life – and gets so much media coverage that we have been conditioned to expect it. That's what many of my friends said as we emailed and texted about the actor's sudden passing.

But what made Boseman's death hard to take was that he'd made his breakthrough as a black actor playing adults, grown men who had to wrestle with their own expectations, as well as the diminished expectations others had for them. There was something in Boseman that understood the power of pride: his performances doubled as meditations on the allure and dangers of self-regard. That is what we responded to in him, especially as African Americans – whose pride can be maligned, treated as effrontery, and turned into a felony because it reflects the ownership of self that white America still has a hard time embracing. It's the reason that race riots have peppered America's history from the late 1800s to the present. (Our nation likes to pretend such upheavals are a new thing, or at least, part of the modern civil rights movement, but they precede that.)

This is the journey of black culture, from the blues to hip-hop, from Lead Belly to Billie Holiday to Nipsey Hussle, the last two lost far too young. Because for so long, pride was the sole territory we could claim as African Americans. And Boseman massaged so many variations of that pride into the shoulders of the characters he acted.

He could satirise pride, as he did in a small role as a street punk in the TV series Justified, when he made an entire comic turn from the bruised ego of having his car stolen by someone who was even more small time than him. Or he could show someone growing into it, as he did as Jackie Robinson in 42, when the dawning of that power and its effects on a nation – creating a tsunami of upraised-head happiness for the black fans and a tropical storm of resentment in fearful whites – have to be reckoned with.

As an actor he was physically expressive – playing the young Thurgood Marshall, he took the temperature of a courtroom with a sly turn of the head. In Boseman's portrayal, pride could also be a close-to-the-chest celebration, as Marshall pursued justice within a legal system that denied him the respect due an American citizen.

Boseman made his A-list breakthrough in 42, in a genre that is often looked down upon – historical drama featuring black protagonists. Hollywood's sense of pouty obligation about such films is telegraphed in the way they are advertised, with an almost audible sigh of "at least we tried ..."

Hugely resourceful, he had a wry, intense decency that communicated his pleasure and love of craft. That's why it was such a thrill to see him as T'Challa in Black Panther, surrounded by such a richly gifted cast, any one of whom – Michael B Jordan, Daniel Kaluuya, Sterling K Brown, Forest Whitaker – could have played the title character. Boseman was so singular that not for a moment was he lost in such an assemblage of talent. (And if you'd followed him since programmes such as Lincoln Heights, your patience was rewarded.) Boseman's Black Panther endured pride as if it were the five stages of grief, with the finality of acceptance feeling like enlightenment.

He effortlessly pulled us into whatever state he was experiencing. As James Brown in Get on Up, his gaze shifted seamlessly from faintly amused twinkle to a flinty stare. We felt the weary misery in the supple but upright demeanour of an African king.

What links all the firsts he played – baseball's first, soul brother No 1, the lawyer on the way to being the first black supreme court justice, the first black Marvel character to get a big-budget movie (no one's forgetting Blade here) – is that he embodied the awareness of a man who realised that he had to prove himself to himself, first and foremost.

He played them all as people aspiring to move on to the next challenge, rather than taking shallow delight in accomplishments at hand. That intersection of joy and drive is still at the heart of African American achievement; it's the line that connects Ryan Coogler to Betye Saar. It's using everything you have because part of you didn't expect to get the chance; it's grabbing the next opportunity before it's snatched away.

But there was never anything hurried in Boseman's pride, that eager grace at the heart of the actor and the man. That quality is what made me spend the night I got the news of his death listening to African American artists who died too young: Pop Smoke, dead at 20, with a voice that sounded a decade older, and whose mature work we'll never hear; or the tragedy of the sneaky-cool J Dilla, whose diminishing weight due to a combination of a rare blood disease TTP and lupus was uncomfortably visible in the last few years before his death of a rare blood disease at 32.

Mostly, I thought of the exceptional jazz saxophonist Eric Dolphy, who died in 1964 in Berlin, at 36, after falling into a diabetic coma. He was a teetotaller who neither smoke nor drank, but doctors saw needle marks on his arms and assumed this black jazz musician was a junkie. But his transcendent desire for mastery was something he passed on to his listeners. On Friday night, I thought about the remarks attributed to Charles Mingus after Dolphy's sudden death. When people die, Mingus said, we tend to remember just the good, but with Dolphy that was all there was to remember. That is also the legacy of Chadwick Boseman.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 10, 2020, 09:10:08 AM
Diana Rigg (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/diana-rigg-dead-82-dies-avengers-game-of-thrones-1234765209/)

One of my earliest crushes (as Emma Peel on the Avengers).

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alma on September 10, 2020, 09:59:18 AM
Oh no. I'm really shocked by this, though she was in her 80s, as she was still working very recently (she's in Edgar Wright's upcoming film, for example). And yes, she was stunning as Emma Peel.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 18, 2020, 06:51:04 PM
Not film-related, but

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2020-09-18/ruth-bader-ginsburg-supreme-court-rbg-dead)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 18, 2020, 06:56:32 PM
Oh fuck.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 21, 2020, 05:14:08 PM
[twitter]https://twitter.com/newbeverly/status/1308125855449714688[/twitter]
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 22, 2020, 05:17:50 PM
Pamela Hutchinson (//http://)

https://youtu.be/CkIcHvjQFSo

I only exaggerate slightly when I tell people I want this song to open my memorial service (and "Livin' Thing" to close it).  For my money, the two most exhilarating needle drops in cinema history.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 06, 2020, 05:11:56 PM
Eddie Van Halen
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 21, 2020, 10:31:01 PM
Quibi (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-10-21/quibi-shutting-down-after-subscriber-struggles)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on October 21, 2020, 11:10:11 PM
Quick death. Or should I say...

Quide.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Rooty Poots on October 22, 2020, 01:40:14 AM
Quote from: wilberfan on October 21, 2020, 10:31:01 PM
Quibi (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-10-21/quibi-shutting-down-after-subscriber-struggles)

I'm honestly a little surprised they didn't do the one thing most companies in the throes of death do: announce a new logo a month before going under.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Sleepless on October 22, 2020, 09:10:05 AM
Quote from: wilberfan on October 21, 2020, 10:31:01 PM
Quibi (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-10-21/quibi-shutting-down-after-subscriber-struggles)

(https://media.giphy.com/media/qMqjZkmMi8wFO/giphy.gif) (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/93/cd/da/93cdda3f3ded29563c371d1dcd2c58e1.gif) (https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NOV19-Gervais-Laughing.gif)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 31, 2020, 09:34:07 AM
 Sean Connery (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/entertainment-arts-54761824)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 08, 2020, 01:02:30 PM
Alex Trebek (https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/hollywood-jeopardy-contestants-mourn-alex-trebek-1234825597/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on November 08, 2020, 06:18:09 PM
Ouch :(
:salute:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on November 09, 2020, 12:12:21 AM
I hesitate to post this but just had to point out that Connery was robbed. He made the cut in the Endgame video though (where Boseman was replaced, ironically).

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on November 09, 2020, 02:52:40 PM
 :shock:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on November 25, 2020, 10:44:47 AM
(https://cdn.britannica.com/76/124976-050-E03E50CE/Diego-Maradona-1986.jpg)

:(((
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on November 25, 2020, 11:55:03 AM
Who's gonna draw God and Maradona doing a line of coke?
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on November 25, 2020, 01:51:16 PM
Maradona would take it and say "It was taken with my nose, and a little with the nose of God"
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 07, 2020, 11:02:56 PM
Chuck Yeager (https://www.thewrap.com/chuck-yeager-first-pilot-to-break-the-sound-barrier-dies-at-97/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on December 08, 2020, 12:49:16 PM
Lucky for Chuck, many people immediately think of Sam Shepard when they hear his name.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on December 20, 2020, 07:28:05 PM
Mike McPadden

(https://i.imgur.com/MtNFyjI.jpg)

Quote from: Kier-La JanisseVery early in my career Mike McPadden was one of the first people to ever offer me paid work as a writer. He asked me to pitch a piece for the magazine Celebrity Skin, which I did ("Sexadelic Seventies Euro-Starlets") which ultimately they rejected, Mike told me, because believe it or not the magazine was a bit square. But it was important to me that someone believed in me, even though I had very little to my name at the time other than an error-riddled fanzine. When House of Psychotic Women came out, he was the very first person to feature it - even though it was on the Mr. Skin website and my face appeared next to a giant penis and I made him take it down because I was afraid my grandmother would see it. For years Mike would weave in and out of my professional life, and he wrote the endorsement we featured on the back of SATANIC PANIC, and I wrote something for his Teen Movie Hell book, and we planned to do more of this back and forth if he didn't have a million projects in the works all at one time like a madman. We both had pretty diverse interests and they intersected a lot. He always championed the unloved, the unloveable even - those misunderstood sleaze auteurs behind the camera, the awkward teenage horndogs in the sex comedies featured in his encyclopedic book TEEN MOVIE HELL, and the quiet, slightly terrified kids who never knew where they fit into any of this. He could see the things that linked the experiences of these underdogs all together and he wrote about them like gospel. One thing you could never say about Mike McPadden is that he was insincere. As I wrote to David Gregory earlier, his enthusiasm was boundless and contagious and that's why he needed four podcasts and all these book projects, because he just couldn't share his love of this stuff fast enough. I regret that we argued sometimes. Over dumb things like who loved LITTLE DARLINGS more. If you have someone in your life that you can even argue with about dumb shit like that then you better cherish them, that's all I'm saying, because most people don't give a fuck what you are talking about. Rest in Power, Mike.

An excerpt from an interview (http://schlockmania.com/mike-mcpadden-interview/) with Schlockmania:

QuoteIs it possible for a provocateur to have a second act in their career? It's worth addressing that question to author Mike McPadden, who has enjoyed a wild, often controversial career in print form since the dawn of the '90s. He appeared on the underground pop culture radar during the 'zine revolution with his infamous Happyland. From there, he straddled the worlds of print and online media via gigs for Hustler magazine and MrSkin.com amongst others.  Both his life and his writing were wild during these times.

Somewhere along the line, McPadden found a way to reconcile the wild interests of his youth and his brash voice as a writer with the changing directions of media and modern life. He got married, added crime journalism to his resume and entered the world of book publishing with books like his popular Heavy Metal Movies. His most recent work is Teen Movie Hell, a look back at the history of the teen sex comedies of the '70s and '80s filtered through a modern perspective.  In a way, it brings the reconciliation of his past and present full-circle.

Mr. McPadden graciously agreed to an interview with Schlockmania and the results are informative, witty and at times soul-baring.





Once upon a time, you were best known for the controversial zine Happyland and writing for Hustler. Teen Movie Hell finds you collaborating with several feminist pop culture writers and dealing with timely topics like #metoo in the context of discussing teen sex comedies. Could you describe the career/life trajectory that led you from the first extreme to the current one?

Basically, I started publishing when I was a kid—a bombastically immature, booze-soaked, drug-inflamed 23-year-old "kid," to be exact—and now I'm a 50-year-old married man who's been clean and sober for nearly 20 years.

Back when, though, in 1991, Happyland was my contribution to punk rock—specifically the form of punk that that stressed nihilism, decadence, and sick humor, as embodied the Butthole Surfers, the Melvins, Big Black, Fear, and the Dwarves as well as National Lampoon and the films of John Waters.

With that in mind, it was important for me to take aim at the anti-fun political crusaders that I felt co-opted punk and reformed into obnoxiously self-righteous do-gooder nonsense full of rules. I quit going to church without even having to get molested, so I had no time for anybody who swapped out that brand of moralism for the shit being peddled by Joe Strummer and Maximum Rock-n-Roll.

In terms of Hustler—first and foremost, I was a pervert. Beyond that, growing up in the 1970s, I perceived pornography as being equally opposed by the political right and the political left. Therefore, I reasoned that if both Jerry Falwell and Andrea Dworkin fought so vehemently against pornography that it had to resemble something close to The Truth.

Hustler combined everything I loved and lusted for most: dirty cartoons, gross-out gags, profiles of sickos, conspiracy reporting, horrifying imagery, underground artists, and an absolute commitment to always being the most extreme in sparking outrage and offending absolutely all points of view. Thus, Larry Flynt and his berserk publication very much seemed in the spirit of my take on punk.

Plus it was the most sexually explicit option on the newsstand. And again, first and foremost, I was a pervert.

All that stated, I am an outsider and I am on the side of other outsiders. I wrote repulsive, sexually unhinged material not because I was a misogynist, but because I wanted to defy "proper decorum" and lash out at constrictions I felt kept us all locked down. More than that, though, I thought that stuff was funny—because it was wrong and I KNEW it was wrong and, at the time, an audience could understand what was funny about that, too.

That's what's lost in today's discourse: offensive humor works because we KNOW it's offensive! THAT's the joke!

So in terms of my evolution, per se, after a brief panic and some of my own moral outrage—ugh—over the apparent embrace of censorship and public shaming that has come to dominate society, particularly in creative areas, I accepted the new reality.

"Political correctness"—for lack of a less heinous term—was an idea whose time had come and to attempt to fight against that is a fool's errand. Plus, I started to see good resulting from these changing mores. Not entirely, of course, but also not entirely NOT, either.

Just as the extreme elements of the '90s underground had, by the decade's end, come to define the mainstream via South Park, Family Guy, and There's Something About Mary, the young generation would dictate today's terms of engagement, and, to be sure, those rules seemed to be the actual opposite of what I had been used to—and I liked some of what was happening.

Politeness benefits everyone and that includes, as is most important to me, ME!

Also, I was already 40 when all this took flight. I practiced a lot of acceptance when it came to kicking alcohol and drugs, and I enabled myself to feel empathy and not just view the rest of humanity exclusively as targets.

Plus, it's pathetic and even disgusting to witness middle-aged men—and, yes, it's always men—kicking against those they deem "the pricks" of the present day. Twitter is full of such buffoons, as well as the at-least-as-awful pricks who kick in reverse. That's why I only use Twitter to promote stuff and then I zip the hell out of that cess-pond.

Toward the end of 2017, in light of the #metoo movement, it struck me hard that for Teen Movie Hell to work, it would require points-of-view other than that of a middle-aged married man for whom these films were made, and which almost universally revel in the objectification, humiliation, and exploitation of females.

Fortunately, I am blessed to know some brilliant film and culture writers who just happen to be women. I offered to hire them to contribute essays and this cabal of geniuses honored me and improved Teen Movie Hell immeasurably by agreeing to do so.

QuotePublisher To Send Proceeds of Mike McPadden Book Box Set to Family

Recently McPadden had been the host of the podcasts Crackpot Cinema (https://soundcloud.com/user-155342494) and 70 Movies We Saw in the 70s, which explored countless near-forgotten films like Audrey Rose and Silent Running.

Bazillion Points announced that proceeds from sales of McPadden's "Silver Scream Shock box" (https://www.bazillionpoints.com/books/the-silver-screen-shock-box-heavy-metal-movies-teen-movie-hell-swedish-sensationsfilms-book-set/) set of his books would go to McPadden's family.

We spoke to McPadden last year on the release of Teen Movie Hell, and it was an eye-opening conversation. The book is an extensive look at the pre-internet era of teen comedies. We talked about why there's no longer such a thing as a teen sex comedy, why some people think Ferris Bueller is the worst, and whether Valley Girl is the most or least woke movie of the 80s.

Listen here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPHwzCvEoWo).


(https://i.imgur.com/zsgTpHz.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/VzEWJrM.jpg)

Quote from: Patrick DoyleI'd give this six stars if that was an option

This needs to be said up front- I'm NOT a big fan of rock n roll in general and I particularly dislike heavy metal. I'm also not that into trashy post 1970 B movies. I brought this book anyway because I've followed this writers career for several decades and knew that with a talent like his the 'what' he's writing about isn't nearly as important as the 'how' he does it. Mcbeardo is a rare talent these days- his insights range from insanely hilarious to seriously thought provoking, but are always unique and all his own. Every word rings true with the sincerity of a guy who really did sit down and watch every damn movie in this book with his own two eyes and makes you want to do the same. No matter what kind of movies you like- if you like movies at all- you will love this book.


Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on December 20, 2020, 08:31:07 PM
Quote from: wilder on December 20, 2020, 07:28:05 PM
Plus, it's pathetic and even disgusting to witness middle-aged men—and, yes, it's always men—kicking against those they deem "the pricks" of the present day. Twitter is full of such buffoons, as well as the at-least-as-awful pricks who kick in reverse. That's why I only use Twitter to promote stuff and then I zip the hell out of that cess-pond.

Toward the end of 2017, in light of the #metoo movement, it struck me hard that for Teen Movie Hell to work, it would require points-of-view other than that of a middle-aged married man for whom these films were made, and which almost universally revel in the objectification, humiliation, and exploitation of females.

Fortunately, I am blessed to know some brilliant film and culture writers who just happen to be women.

women are better people lmao I mean they just are. if a woman can't confirm it you're probably wrong. I suspect you already noticed it wilder but like I said my entire hardcore enterprise was validated by a woman (https://justthediscs.libsyn.com/episode-186-vinegar-syndrome-favorites-samm-deighan). this context is funny because it's not that men had previously been bashing them, the fact is male employees didn't talk about hardcore movies. it was almost as if they didn't exist until she appeared (the um podcast theme that month was vinegar employees recommending vinegar releases)

respect to Mike McPadden
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on December 21, 2020, 11:13:25 AM
Very, very dope interview and excerpts.
Thanks for sharing that, I'm eager to check out all of Mike "Mcbeardo" McPadden's writing now.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 30, 2020, 02:00:18 PM
Mary Ann Summers (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/dawn-wells-dead/2020/12/30/c7546744-b84a-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 08, 2021, 08:24:39 PM
Michael Apted (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-apted-dead-coal-miners-daughter-director-seven-up-documentarian-was-79-1292671)

His "Up" series was particularly powerful for me--being close to the same age (and going thru some of the same struggles) as those 'kids' he was following.   RIP.

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 11, 2021, 10:43:25 PM
Pat Loud (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/pat-laud-dead/2021/01/11/6268eb54-5413-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html)

"An American Family" was a very big deal back in '73.  My (American) family devoured the show when it ran.  Albert Brooks parodied it with "Real Life".
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on January 11, 2021, 11:02:54 PM
I never knew or forgot about this

QuotePat Loud, a California housewife who became known to millions of television viewers in the 1970s as the matriarch of "An American Family," a PBS documentary series that was by turns celebrated and blamed for ushering in the era of reality TV with its frank depiction of her private life....

Created by television producer Craig Gilbert, "An American Family" was a sensation when it aired over 12 one-hour installments in 1973. Decades before the Kardashians became famous for being famous, or the Gosselins of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" announced their divorce, Mrs. Loud and her then-husband, Bill Loud, allowed a camera crew to film their daily lives with their five children for 300 hours over seven months in 1971.

...Filmed in a cinema verité style, it followed the Louds of Santa Barbara through events both ordinary and monumental, among them a wildfire that menaced their house, Mrs. Loud's decision to divorce her philandering husband, and the revelation that their oldest son, Lance, was gay.

At the time, the anthropologist Margaret Mead declared the documentary-style genre "as new and significant as the invention of drama or the novel." Nearly four decades after the program aired, Washington Post television critic Hank Stuever wrote that it "remains one of television's most memorable and emotionally conflicted events."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 17, 2021, 04:07:11 PM
Phil Spector (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-17/phil-spector-dead)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on January 17, 2021, 04:16:01 PM
So long, you piece of shit.
Thanks for the good sounds
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on January 17, 2021, 05:00:28 PM
Wonder what his hair will look like at the funeral...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on January 17, 2021, 05:34:56 PM
A Wall of Hair.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 27, 2021, 04:28:44 PM
Cloris Leachman (https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/cloris-leachman-dead-1234893925/), 94

I've always considered her turn as Frau Blücher in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN to be one of the most underrated comedic performances of all time.  So many brilliant performances. Heartbreaking in LAST PICTURE SHOW.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on January 30, 2021, 08:10:37 AM
SOPHIE slipped and died at 34. Rest in peace.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on January 30, 2021, 09:46:44 AM
no way! what the fuck? nooooo
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on January 30, 2021, 09:49:43 AM
I am so shocked by this. This is so sad.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on January 30, 2021, 09:55:37 AM
Yeah. A lot of awful stuff is happening, but my eyes literally opened wide when I read the news.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 02, 2021, 12:18:56 AM
Hal Holbrook (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/theater/hal-holbrook-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on February 02, 2021, 08:12:32 AM
Cicely Tyson (https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/31/cicely-tyson-obituary) at 96

Very underrated Great Actress! I’m always happy to see her face show up in a film.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on February 02, 2021, 11:31:51 AM
Also, Dustin Diamond (aka "Screech") from cancer at 44.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: pynchonikon on February 05, 2021, 01:12:05 PM
Christopher Plummer at 91  :yabbse-sad:
RIP legend
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/02/christopher-plummer-dead-sound-of-music-actor-91-1234615158/amp/?__twitter_impression=true (https://www.indiewire.com/2021/02/christopher-plummer-dead-sound-of-music-actor-91-1234615158/amp/?__twitter_impression=true)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: putneyswipe on February 08, 2021, 06:12:01 PM
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/jean-claude-carriere-dead-unbearable-lightness-of-being-1234903570/

Jean-Claude Carriere.  A strong contender for the best to ever do it as far as Screenwriting goes, IMO. Worked with names like Forman, Godard, Bunuel, Garrel, Schlöndorff, Wadja, Kaufman, Babenco, Glazer, Malle
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on February 09, 2021, 03:56:10 AM
S. Clay Wilson (https://www.cbr.com/s-clay-wilson-underground-comix-obituary/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 10, 2021, 05:14:23 PM
Larry Flynt (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/larry-flynt-porn-king-and-self-styled-first-amendment-champion-dies-at-xxx/2021/02/10/5240626c-6bf0-11eb-ba56-d7e2c8defa31_story.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 13, 2021, 09:27:17 PM
Lynn Stalmaster (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-02-13/legendary-casting-director-lynn-stalmaster-dies-at-93)

(I think all this time I assumed Lynn was female.)   I've been seeing his name my entire film-watching career.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 14, 2021, 07:21:31 PM
Rupert Neve, Grammy-Winning Architect of Modern Recorded Music (https://variety.com/2021/music/obituaries-people-news/rupert-neve-dead-dies-audio-pioneer-console-1234907734/)

Rupert is the dude that designed and built the board that the Dirk Diggler version of "You've Got the Touch" and "Feel My Heat" were recorded through in the early 80s.  It has a storied history (as does it's designer).  Dave Grohl made a documentary about it (and the famous Valley recording studio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_City_(film)) where it lived and worked).

It was given to Dave Grohl by the owners because they knew he would continue to actually USE it, as opposed to the many that probably would have sold it piece by piece for thousands and thousands of dollars.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on February 26, 2021, 03:55:44 PM
Comedian Erik Myers. Struck by a van (https://www.myhighplains.com/news/local-news/pedestrian-hit-killed-on-us-87-after-being-struck-by-van/) in Texas.

https://twitter.com/TheComedyStore/status/1365104717781733380

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on February 27, 2021, 12:54:33 PM
Damn, he was hilarious. Lost his dad just a few weeks ago too...  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 16, 2021, 08:35:36 PM
Yaphet Kotto (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/arts/yaphet-kotto-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on March 17, 2021, 09:58:51 AM
Damn, I love this guy! Blue Collar just arrived today 😄🥲
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 23, 2021, 08:46:58 PM
George Segal (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/george-segal-dead-wheres-poppa-owl-pussycat-just-shoot-me-goldbergs-star-was-87-1199045)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on March 23, 2021, 09:48:46 PM
Long Live Segal!
:bravo: :bravo: :bravo:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on March 24, 2021, 12:48:24 AM
Time to rewatch California Split.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alma on March 24, 2021, 06:24:12 AM
Aw man. So many great performances.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 25, 2021, 03:24:40 PM
Jessica Walter (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-03-25/jessica-walter-dead-obituary-arrested-development)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Axolotl on March 25, 2021, 04:13:26 PM
RIP. Legitimately added so much laughter to my life.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 26, 2021, 12:03:09 PM
Larry McMurtry (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/books/larry-mcmurtry-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on March 26, 2021, 12:34:39 PM
Ugh... im feeling all 3 of these past losses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UXircX3VdM

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 26, 2021, 11:34:55 PM
Bertrand Tavernier (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/movies/bertrand-tavernier-79-french-director-with-wide-appeal-dies.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on April 21, 2021, 01:49:27 AM
Monte Hellman
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on April 23, 2021, 12:10:32 AM
Tempest Storm (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/arts/tempest-storm-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 01, 2021, 09:41:45 PM
Olympia Dukakis (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/olympia-dukakis-hollywood-tributes)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 11, 2021, 06:31:27 PM
Norman Lloyd (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/norman-lloyd-dead/2021/05/11/0041ec7c-402f-11e4-b03f-de718edeb92f_story.html), age 106  Worked with Chaplin, Welles, Hitchcock, Scorsese ...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on May 18, 2021, 01:15:31 PM


https://twitter.com/benmekler/status/1394714092074536961

https://twitter.com/fauxbeatpoet/status/1394709540789182469

https://twitter.com/BrianLynch/status/1394709027360149506
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on May 18, 2021, 01:44:00 PM
Ah fuck. Just rewatched Midnight Run the other night. Heartbreak Kid recently, too.  :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alma on May 19, 2021, 05:41:19 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT6HIfhwtKo
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on May 19, 2021, 01:04:26 PM
That was great. They're clearly doing a bit that they both enjoy, but I think Grodin was genuinely trying to cut through the talk show BS and might have preferred less jokey responses from Carson. A level of realness you don't see often.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 09, 2021, 02:45:13 PM
Graeme Ferguson (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/business/graeme-ferguson-dead.html), developer of IMAX
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 13, 2021, 07:30:14 PM
Ned Beatty (https://variety.com/2021/film/news/ned-beatty-dead-dies-deliverance-network-actor-1234995509/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on June 14, 2021, 04:47:31 AM
That's really sad. Watch his performance in 'Network' again!!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on June 14, 2021, 11:46:45 AM
Yes.
Yes i think i will do that today.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on June 14, 2021, 03:34:59 PM
YOU HAVE MEDDLED WITH THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE, MR BEALE, AND I WON'T HAVE IT! IS THAT CLEAR???

Also love him in Mikey and Nicky
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 29, 2021, 07:05:23 PM
Greg Noll (https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2021-06-29/greg-noll-south-bay-surfer-legendary-big-wave-rider-dies)

If you ever saw RIDING GIANTS by Stacy Peralta (highly recommended, if you haven't), you'll recall that Greg was just a massive fucking legend in the surfing world.  RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 05, 2021, 11:00:57 PM
Richard Donner (https://variety.com/2021/film/news/richard-donner-dead-dies-superman-the-goonies-lethal-weapon-1235012025/)

(I had no idea he directed "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". Watched that first-run with my Dad.  Freaked us both out!)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on July 06, 2021, 07:23:21 AM
^^ Wow me neither!! I honestly didn't even know he directed 'The Omen'. He directed my favorite Tales From The Crypt episode too, "The Ventroliquist's Dummy" starring Don Rickles and Bobcat Goldthwait. I rewatched "Conspiracy Theory" awhile ago and found it a lot of fun. He kicked ass.
RIP!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on July 07, 2021, 11:09:24 AM
Robert Downey Sr.  (https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/ny-robert-downey-sr-20210707-zmhxgw22ffd4dh2jrlgpn4vpu4-story.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 07, 2021, 11:24:52 AM
A prince.   Ouch.   :cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: jenkins on July 08, 2021, 04:11:41 PM
MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN / GREASER'S PALACE at the Aero (https://americancinematheque.com/now-showing/monty-pythons-life-of-brian-greasers-palace/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 19, 2021, 01:41:56 PM
https://twitter.com/TheFilmStage/status/1428353770228903943
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on August 21, 2021, 10:07:39 PM
Tony Mendez (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/arts/television/tony-mendez-dead.html)

(Dave was My Guy--so this hits home.)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on August 24, 2021, 02:51:28 PM
Charlie Watts  (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/charlie-watts-rolling-stones-drummer-dead-obit-1161926/)


Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on August 29, 2021, 01:59:36 PM
Ed Asner (https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/ed-asner-dead-lou-grant-1235051373/)

Back in the day, I worked 2nd shift in a computer data center (look it up), and always looked forward to watching The Lou Grant Show on my little portable 9" B&W TV (look that up, too). 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on August 30, 2021, 07:00:52 PM
Lee Scratch Perry, 85 :idea:

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 06, 2021, 01:07:02 PM
Jean-Paul Belmondo (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jean-paul-belmondo-breathless-star-dies-at-88-1235008952/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 06, 2021, 03:30:31 PM
Michael K. Williams

Wow...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on September 06, 2021, 03:34:28 PM
Fucking drugs. It's awful. He was always such a bright and unique presence in whatever he appeared.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on September 07, 2021, 09:41:29 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpST8KE3vSI
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on September 14, 2021, 01:44:55 PM
Norm MacDonald.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 14, 2021, 01:45:52 PM
woah
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on September 14, 2021, 01:48:06 PM
Towering comedic presence. RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c87OK6oJydM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZIt6ELSOJE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A848xpsDJbw
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on September 14, 2021, 02:13:56 PM
Fuck. I loved Norm... spent many youtube hours with him :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 14, 2021, 02:16:51 PM
Yeah this sucks. RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 14, 2021, 02:20:41 PM
Shit.  I loved Norm.  Most recently as Pidgeon on The Mike Tyson Mysteries.   I thought his stint on SNL Weekend Update was just brilliant.   :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Robyn on September 14, 2021, 02:47:34 PM
Norm was a legend indeed.  :(

Sad couple of pages in this thread
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Rooty Poots on September 14, 2021, 03:36:52 PM
Man, this just ruined my day. My favorite comic of all time, he had such a huge influence on my sense of humor and personality. Obsessed.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: PinkTeeth on September 15, 2021, 01:58:06 PM
Fuck. Still really feeling this one :( Had the pleasure of catching 3 or maybe even 4 of his shows, i am very grateful for that. 
Aw man... fucking death.
And cancer! FUCK CANCER!
I lost a friend who fought her battle privately as well.
Dont mean to turn this into attention for myself, but as long as i do have some attention, ill just say what he often said to so many such strangers, and i say it sincerely as well: I love you.
Hope yalls have something great happen today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmOpcJVO1PU

PS/ His little dance! Hahaha
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: polkablues on September 22, 2021, 06:04:39 PM
Melvin Van Peebles. (https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/melvin-van-peebles-influential-director-actor-writer-dies-89-n1279897) One of the true great renaissance men.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 26, 2021, 06:21:13 PM
Mort Sahl (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/arts/television/mort-sahl-dead.html)

Not sure how aware of this gentleman some of you were, but Mort was a major figure in Comedy in the last half of the 20th Century.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on November 09, 2021, 07:36:20 AM
 :(

https://twitter.com/CriterionDaily/status/1458001429281579009
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 09, 2021, 10:49:03 PM
Wakefield Poole

https://twitter.com/DougJones100/status/1453826154205491201

I'd never heard of him until listening to an episode of The Rialto Report recently that replayed an interview with him to mark his death.  His BOYS IN THE SAND predated DEEP THROAT by 6 months.

What an astonishing life this guy had.  Also currently watching I ALWAYS SAID YES (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2766846/)--a documentary about him made in 2013.

Who is Wakefield Poole and Why Haven't You Heard of Him? (https://www.indiewire.com/2014/07/who-is-wakefield-poole-and-why-havent-you-heard-of-him-216218/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on November 26, 2021, 11:35:10 PM
Stephen Sondheim (https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2021-11-26/stephen-sondheim-dead-at-91)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 10, 2021, 05:02:28 PM
Michael Nesmith (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/michael-nesmith-dead-monkees-1235060806/)

An interesting life...

Michael Nesmith, Singer, Songwriter and Guitarist of The Monkees, Dies at 78

After starring with his bandmates on TV for two seasons, he won a Grammy, produced films and was a music video pioneer.

Nesmith died Friday of natural causes, his family told Rolling Stone.

"With Infinite Love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes," they said.

A Texan whose mother invented Liquid Paper, the Grammy winner also founded a multimedia company through which he created the prototype for MTV and produced several films, most notably the 1984 cult classic Repo Man.

Nesmith was 24 and an up-and-coming musician getting noticed for penning such tunes as "Different Drum" — recorded in 1967 by the Linda Ronstadt-led Stone Poneys — when he was cast as one of the four carefree youngsters living in a California beach house looking to make it in the music world on NBC's The Monkees.

The brainchild of producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the comedy was designed to cash in on the popularity of The Beatles by mirroring the zaniness of Help! and A Hard Day's Night. An immediate hit upon its September 1966 debut, it won the Emmy for outstanding comedy series after its first season and became a pop culture phenomenon.

"The Monkees was the first TV show that had only young people in the lead, with no 'adult' figure in sight (no parent, no manager)," Gwen Ihnat wrote in a 2016 article for The A.V. Club. "It was also unusual that the four didn't have any character names but essentially played themselves: Mike the older leader, Davy the heartthrob, Micky the wacky cutup and Peter the childlike innocent."

Dubbed the "Prefab Four," The Monkees each received $400 a week for the show. Nesmith got in after answering an ad in the trades. "Madness!! Auditions," read a blurb published Sept. 8, 1965. "Folk & Roll Musicians for acting roles in a new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys age 17-21."

Nearly 450 aspiring actor-musicians tried out. Nesmith won over producers with his nonchalant demeanor. He also was very funny — so much so that after test audiences didn't connect with the pilot, the producers added his and Jones' screen test, and approval ratings soared.

There's another reason Nesmith might have gotten the gig: he rode a motorcycle. To keep his hair out of his face, he wore a green wool hat. That look on a sunny California day made an impression during his audition.

Producers intended on calling his character "Wool Hat," but Nesmith hated that idea. Schneider and Rafelson agreed to call him Mike but insisted he keep the hat.

Realizing the series could be a record-selling gold mine, the show's production company, Screen Gems, featured two songs in each episode. Three Monkees singles — "I'm a Believer," "Last Train to Clarksville" and "Daydream Believer" — made it to No. 1, as did their first four albums — The Monkees, More of the Monkees, Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

In 1967, The Monkees outsold The Beatles and Rolling Stones, combined.

Music producer Don Kirshner ran the recording sessions, chose the songs and solicited tunes from the likes of Neil Diamond, Carole King & Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka & Carole Bayer Sager and Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart. The Monkees sang, but others played the instruments.

This irked Nesmith, the group's most accomplished musician; he thought The Monkees could become a real band had they been given the opportunity. He would lead the charge to give the boys a bigger say.

The series ended in March 1968 after its second season, but The Monkees took a final on-screen bow with Head (1968). Written by Rafelson (who also directed) and Jack Nicholson, the counterculture film was purportedly conceived during an LSD- and pot-fueled weekend.

Head was intended to be an edgy satire that poked fun at war, Hollywood phoniness and The Monkees themselves, but it was a box office disaster. "They work very hard and they aren't any good," Renata Adler wrote in her review for The New York Times.

The soundtrack was equally disappointing. Head peaked at No. 45 — the first time a Monkees LP had failed to break the top five.

"We all were — very tired — and the show was starting to repeat itself," Nesmith said in a 2018 interview. "Things like The Monkees show have a specific lifetime, and when it's through, it is through, left for history to assess."

Robert Michael Nesmith was born in Houston on Dec. 30, 1942. His parents, Warren and Bette, divorced when he was 4, and Nesmith moved with his mother to Dallas. His mom did office work to make ends meet, but that all changed in 1951 when she came up with the idea for Liquid Paper (originally called "Mistake Out").

She used the product to build a multimillion-dollar company before selling it to Gillette in 1979 for $49 million but died of a stroke shortly after, leaving half of her fortune to her son.

After two years in the U.S. Air Force, where he earned his GED, Nesmith enrolled in San Antonio College, but he was most interested in writing songs and playing guitar. He and another aspiring musician, John Kuehne, began performing together and headed to Los Angeles to try to break into the music business.

In 1963, Nesmith recorded his first single, "Wanderin'," followed in 1965 by other songs released under the name Michael Blessing.

Meanwhile, Frankie Laine recorded Nesmith's "Pretty Little Princess" in 1965, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band included his "Mary, Mary" on its 1966 album, East-West, and The Stone Poneys released a version of his "Some of Shelly's Blues" in 1968.

Nesmith's "Papa Gene's Blues" and "Sweet Young Thing" (co-written with King and Goffin) were featured on the first Monkees album, while their second LP included "Mary, Mary" and another song he wrote, "The Kind of Girl I Could Love." But it was Kirshner calling the shots, and that angered Nesmith.

As detailed in Randi L. Massingill's 2005 book, Total Control: The Mike Nesmith Story, Kirshner unveiled his pick for The Monkees' next single during a 1967 party inside his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When Nesmith objected, Screen Gems attorney Herb Moelis defended Kirshner's track record. Nesmith retorted that The Monkees could record "Happy Birthday" with a beat and it would sell a million copies. If he didn't get a bigger say in the band's music, he would quit.

"Moelis then made the mistake of telling Michael that he had better read his contract," wrote Massingill. "With that, Michael exploded in anger and WHAM! He put his fist right through the wall of the bungalow. In the midst of the dust and the shock of it all, Michael turned to Moelis and said, 'That could have been your face, motherfucker.'"

Schneider agreed to give The Monkees control of the B-side of each single, but when Kirshner broke the deal with the very next release, he was gone. Going forward, The Monkees, led by Nesmith, had complete control of their music.

In 1969, Nesmith bought out his Monkees contract at considerable expense to join Kuehne, drummer John Ware and pedal steel guitarist Red Rhodes in Michael Nesmith & the First National Band. They released three albums, enjoying minor successes with the singles "Joanne" and "Silver Moon," both written by Nesmith, before disbanding in 1971.

In 1974, Nesmith founded Pacific Arts Productions, which distributed his solo albums and promoted such artists as Kaleidoscope, Fresh and Pacific Steel Company.

He began creating videos around his songs, most notably 1977's "Rio," and approached Warner Communications with the idea for a TV series featuring music videos. From that, Popclips was born, and it ran for six episodes on Nickelodeon in 1980. (Howie Mandel was among the veejays on the show.)

John Lack, the Warner executive overseeing the project, thought the program would work better as a cable channel, and Popclips would become MTV. Lack wanted Nesmith to run it, but he declined, more interested in creating content than being a TV executive.

His biggest direct-to-video success was 1981's Elephant Parts, a wacky lineup of comedy parodies weaved around videos of five Nesmith songs. A hourlong product for VHS, it won Nesmith a Grammy for Video of the Year. (He spoke with David Letterman in 1983 about the project.)

Pacific Arts also dabbled in features. In addition to Repo Man (which featured a cameo by Nesmith as a rabbi), the company produced Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982), which Nesmith co-wrote, Square Dance (1987) and Tapeheads (1988).

Seeking to expand its library, Pacific Arts reached a deal to acquire the home video rights to the PBS library; after the network reneged, Nesmith sued and won a $47 million settlement.

Nesmith returned to the comedy/music video format in 1985 with Television Parts, a lively summer series featuring performances by Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, Whoopi Goldberg and Garry Shandling.

In 1986, Nesmith joined Jones, Dolenz and Tork during the encore of a Greek Theatre concert that marked The Monkees' 20th anniversary. He later appeared as Santa Claus in a Monkees MTV video, performed with his bandmates at the Universal Amphitheatre and was there when The Monkees received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1989.

A year after Nesmith was nominated for a Grammy for best new age album for 1994's The Garden, The Monkees reunited with Justus, its first studio album since Head. Nesmith then wrote and directed Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees, an hourlong special that blended interviews with videos of Justus songs.

After Jones' sudden death in 2012, Nesmith joined Dolenz and Tork for a U.S. tour. And after Tork died in 2019, he and Dolenz toured in 2021.

"Monkees fans ... are a joy to perform for, and I particularly enjoyed channeling 'Monkee Mike,'" Nesmith said in 2013. "It was a lot of fun when I was a kid — and it has its charm for me even now. The four of us were discussing going out and playing when David died. That was a real surprise — very unexpected — and it seemed that if we were ever going to do it, we should do it now. Each of us had his own agenda with the tour, I think, but mine was to give the fans another pass at their Monkees — which for many was a big part of their childhood — and to perform the songs."

Nesmith was married and divorced three times. Survivors include his children, Christian, Jonathan, Jason and Jessica.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 11, 2021, 11:02:52 AM
How did we miss this?

Lina Wertmüller (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/movies/lina-wertmuller-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 23, 2021, 12:06:21 PM
Joan Didion (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/joan-didion-dead-screenwriter-iconic-american-author-1235066986/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 31, 2021, 01:49:01 PM
Betty White (https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/betty-white-dead-dies-golden-girls-mary-tyler-moore-show-1235145407/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on January 06, 2022, 11:52:31 AM
Peter Bogdanovich  :yabbse-sad:

https://twitter.com/QuadCinema/status/1479147851619999744
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on January 09, 2022, 07:36:12 AM
Michael Lang, co-creator of the original Woodstock festival.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on January 09, 2022, 09:01:43 AM
That's crazy, I just watched the Woodstock '99 HBO doc with him in it last night!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on January 09, 2022, 10:12:43 AM
Quote from: Reelist on January 09, 2022, 09:01:43 AM
That's crazy, I just watched the Woodstock '99 HBO doc with him in it last night!

Don't feel guilty. When I bought the Sopranos box set on dvd, it was the day before James Gandolfini passed away
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on January 09, 2022, 08:11:44 PM
Bob Saget (https://twitter.com/i/events/1480337878689333248) :(

(He was one of Norm's best friends, too.)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on January 10, 2022, 04:48:49 PM
Robert Durst (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/obituaries/robert-durst-dead.amp.html)

Rest in Hell
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on January 10, 2022, 05:21:21 PM
Truly one of the worst.

Also he was a 78-year-old who legitimately looked 98.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: mogwai on January 14, 2022, 02:45:37 PM
Jean-Jacques Beineix. He directed "Betty Blue 37,2" and also "IP5: L'île aux pachydermes" which is a underrated one if you ask me. I'm almost wandering into The Gold Trumpet territory here!
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on January 21, 2022, 10:54:14 AM
Meatloaf (https://deadline.com/2022/01/meat-loaf-dead-bat-out-of-hell-rocky-horror-picture-show-1234917056/)

Louie Anderson (https://deadline.com/2022/01/louie-anderson-dead-obituary-comedian-baskets-family-feud-emmy-winner-1234917040/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 03, 2022, 11:24:05 AM
Jimmy Johnson (https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/02/03/jimmy-johnson-blues-guitar-dead/), blues guitarist

I got seriously into the blues (the music and, unfortunately, the feeling) in the 80s...so I'm shocked that I don't think I'd ever encountered this particular Mr. Johnson...  RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 08, 2022, 07:16:55 PM
Douglas Trumbull (https://www.rogerebert.com/tributes/douglas-trumbull-1941-2022)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on February 08, 2022, 08:54:51 PM
Wow, as someone who's had 2001, Close Encounters, and Blade Runner queued to rewatch for the past couple years, it will really heighten the experience knowing he's the visionary behind all those effects. I'm sure I've known about him, I just forgot the name.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 08, 2022, 09:58:30 PM
I was quite a fanboy of his--devoured everything I could find on him and the making of those 3 films especially, in those pre-Internet days.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 13, 2022, 10:12:07 PM
Ivan Reitman (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ivan-reitman-dead-animal-house-ghostbusters-1235092959/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on February 28, 2022, 06:02:53 PM
Nick Zedd

https://twitter.com/FilmLinc/status/1497968923232411652
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 02, 2022, 06:27:29 PM
Alan Ladd, Jr. (https://variety.com/2022/film/news/alan-ladd-jr-dead-braveheart-1235194351/)

(Star Wars, Braveheart, Once Upon A Time in America, Blade Runner...)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on March 13, 2022, 06:08:16 PM
William Hurt (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/william-hurt-dead-body-heat-broadcast-news-1235110394/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on April 12, 2022, 02:53:10 PM
Gilbert Gottfried (https://www.tmz.com/2022/04/12/gilbert-gottfried-dead-dies-comedy-comedian-67/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on May 19, 2022, 05:03:44 PM
Vangelis (https://variety.com/2022/music/news/vangelis-dead-chariots-of-fire-blade-runner-1235272061/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on May 26, 2022, 12:33:01 PM
Ray Liotta (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ray-liotta-dead-goodfellas-1235154615/)   :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Freddie Dodd on June 13, 2022, 12:16:11 PM
Philip Baker Hall

 :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Find Your Magali on June 13, 2022, 04:59:55 PM
So many loving memories of Philip Baker Hall circulating the internet today. I especially love that a whole new generation is discovering Robert Ridgely breaking character and cracking up in the background as PBH delivers the lollipop line in Boogie Nights.

So many PBH threads to mention, but one that really struck me was Zodiac. It's so great for being against type. When PBH shows up in a film, you always think intelligence and competency (whether his character is good or bad). In Zodiac, we're preconditioned to believe him, until the jarring moment we realize he's an incompetent old fool.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 14, 2022, 10:21:37 PM
The American Dream, Period: Philip Baker Hall (1931-2022) (https://www.rogerebert.com/tributes/philip-baker-hall-tribute-2022)

QuoteHe was in the film "Midnight Run" briefly, had a memorable guest spot on "Seinfeld," and made many more TV movies. He was making one of them when one of the production assistants caught him off guard one day while delivering his coffee. The PA was barely 21 and looked younger. He said with much enthusiasm that "Secret Honor" was his favorite movie. Could they talk about it? How do you say no to that. The kid's name was Paul Thomas Anderson and he had a script and a little money cobbled together from the usual collections of rich relatives and acquaintances. The kid had dropped out of film school to work for TV stations and on film sets. He shot his first real short "Cigarettes and Coffee" starring Hall in 1993. He parlayed that into money to make a feature. One that would star Hall, naturally.

"Hard Eight" was a stunning showcase for everyone in the cast, from co-leads Hall and John C. Reilly who was about to hit the big times like Hall after a few years in the trenches playing sidekicks and silent texture, to supporting players Gwyneth Paltrow, Samuel L. Jackson, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hall, Hoffman, and Reilly would appear in Anderson's next two films "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" as their stars rose alongside Anderson's quirky Altman-inspired character studies. Hall, Reilly, and Hoffman were like anchors that kept the sprawling narratives routed to the spot, to humanity. In "Hard Eight," Hall's intention remains a mystery until the final act, and his harsh professionalism masks his angelic nature. A scene where Paltrow imagines he's about to coerce her for sex is genuinely suspenseful, because we don't know if his character Sidney is who he tries to make himself out to be. His soulful interiority and avuncular care (his near undoing) for Reilly's big dumb hustler is like the low bass notes that allow the more flamboyant performances to take solos. Hall didn't solo like some actors. He was the whole song.

In "Boogie Nights" Hall has precious little screen time, but he's spectacular as porn producer Floyd Gondolli. He's even more heartbreaking in "Magnolia" as a crooked game show host who's losing his mind, suffering from an onset of an Alzheimer's like disorder from years of hard living. His daughter says he molested her, but he can't remember doing it. Anderson specialized in broken characters and in Hall he had a guy who could project brokenness with the stuttering he perfected playing his apoplectic drunken Nixon, or with the simplicity of a syllable, his voice like the scotch he pounds in "Secret Honor," old and grim and middle shelf, a man who should have become more, a man who projects the air of a king, but has no kingdom to call home.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on June 18, 2022, 03:58:30 AM
Jean-Louis Trintignant (https://variety.com/2022/film/news/jean-louis-trintignant-dead-dies-man-and-woman-amour-1235297442/amp/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on July 07, 2022, 02:20:45 PM
James Caan :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on July 07, 2022, 07:53:01 PM
Just the absolute greatest. What a legend. End of tweet.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 24, 2022, 03:59:10 PM
Bob Rafelson (https://variety.com/2022/film/news/bob-rafelson-dead-the-monkees-five-easy-pieces-1235324320/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 25, 2022, 04:13:02 PM
Paul Sorvino (https://variety.com/2022/film/news/paul-sorvino-dead-goodfellas-1235324940/amp/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on July 26, 2022, 09:38:20 PM
Slicing my garlic extra thin tonight, RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 28, 2022, 07:21:05 PM
David Warner (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-07-25/david-warner-titanic-and-time-after-time-super-villain-dies-at-80)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 31, 2022, 08:27:16 PM
Nichelle Nichols (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/nichelle-nichols-dead-star-trek-lieutenant-uhura-1235189880/)

Bill Russell (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/bill-russell-dead-boston-celtics-1235189861/)

Pat Carroll (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/pat-carroll-dead-ursula-little-mermaid-1235189916/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on August 08, 2022, 03:55:10 PM
Olivia Newton John (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/olivia-newton-john-dead-grease-1235194880/)

David McCullough (https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/08/david-mccullough-dead-american-history/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 16, 2022, 05:48:59 PM
Wolfgang Petersen (https://variety.com/2022/film/news/wolfgang-petersen-dead-air-force-one-1235342734/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 21, 2022, 04:25:19 PM
Leon Vitali (https://variety.com/2022/film/obituaries-people-news/leon-vitali-dead-barry-lyndon-stanley-kubrick-1235346727/)


Edit - Kino just put the full documentary (https://youtu.be/oxBQZ2e1py0) online for free
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on September 13, 2022, 11:18:05 AM
Jean-Luc Godard (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jean-luc-godard-dead-french-director-1235219353/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on September 13, 2022, 11:20:55 AM
Quote from: WorldForgot on September 13, 2022, 11:18:05 AMJean-Luc Godard (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jean-luc-godard-dead-french-director-1235219353/)

The ultimate boss of this thread.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on September 13, 2022, 06:25:32 PM
William Klein (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/arts/william-klein-dead.html)


(https://i.imgur.com/ncJ74J8.jpg)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 24, 2022, 12:27:24 AM
Louise Fletcher (https://variety.com/2022/film/news/louise-fletcher-dead-one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-1235382490/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on September 29, 2022, 10:07:28 AM
Coolio  :yabbse-sad:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 11, 2022, 04:29:48 PM
Angela Landsbury (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/angela-lansbury-dead-murder-she-wrote-1235239215/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on October 12, 2022, 06:14:40 AM
Quote from: wilberfan on October 11, 2022, 04:29:48 PMAngela Landsbury (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/angela-lansbury-dead-murder-she-wrote-1235239215/)

Hahahaha that's a freudian slip if I ever heard one
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 12, 2022, 09:56:20 PM
Touche.  I spelled it that way several places before I caught it.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: HACKANUT on October 14, 2022, 01:16:43 PM
Robbie Coltrane

Time to rewatch Mona Lisa :(
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 07, 2023, 10:42:28 PM
Owen Roizman (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/owen-roizman-dead-french-connection-exorcist-1235293000/), Cinematographer
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 30, 2023, 09:02:57 PM
Cindy Williams (https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/cindy-williams-dead-obituary-1234671284/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Find Your Magali on February 03, 2023, 08:56:04 PM
RIP, Melinda Dillon.

This one hurts. And coming less than a year after Philip Baker Hall.

To me, she's the moral center of the final hour of Magnolia, topped by that shattering scene with PBH. You should know better!

She doesn't sing Wise Up, but maybe she was the cue for the chorus.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Reel on February 04, 2023, 04:18:55 AM
"But you won't say..."

One of the best line deliveries ever
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on February 10, 2023, 07:09:40 PM
Carlos Saura (https://variety.com/2023/film/global/carlos-saura-dead-1235519347/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on March 17, 2023, 02:39:22 PM
Lance Reddick (https://variety.com/2023/film/obituaries-people-news/lance-reddick-dead-the-wire-john-wick-1235557886/)

Absolute legend. RIP
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on April 02, 2023, 06:09:31 PM
Ryuichi Sakamoto (https://variety.com/2023/music/news/ryuichi-sakamoto-dead-last-emperor-1235570971/)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on May 25, 2023, 12:46:04 AM
Kenneth Anger (https://variety.com/2023/film/news/kenneth-anger-dies-fireworks-1235623957/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 15, 2023, 08:23:36 PM
Glenda Jackson (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/world/europe/glenda-jackson-dead.html)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 16, 2023, 08:22:19 PM
Not cinema related, but a big deal back in the day...

Daniel Ellsberg (https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2023-06-16/daniel-ellsberg-pentagon-papers-vietnam-dead)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on June 24, 2023, 08:54:08 PM
A figure from my young cinephile days...  :cry:

Frederic Forrest (https://www.thewrap.com/frederic-forrest-apocalypse-now-rose-dies-86-obit/)

He'll always be Chef to me...
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on June 30, 2023, 11:29:44 AM
Alan Arkin (https://www.playbill.com/article/tony-winner-alan-arkin-passes-away-at-89)

QuoteTony winner Alan Arkin, known for his dynamic understanding of comedy and tragedy, has passed away. News of his death was confirmed by his children to The New York Times. He was 89.

The son of a set designer and a teacher, Mr. Arkin had a somewhat tumultuous adolescence: His father, a union worker in Hays Code Hollywood, was fired for participating in an eight-month strike, and it didn't take long before both of Mr. Arkin's parents were targeted during the Red Scare, leading to a familial battle for justice that was not served until long after his father's death.

In spite of this (or perhaps, in part, because of it), Mr. Arkin put down deep roots in the arts, and began training at various drama academies when he was barely 10 years old. On the side, he formed a band with two friends called The Tarriers, where he sang and played lead guitar on the band's two hit records, "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" and "Cindy, Oh, Cindy." Music remained a side hobby for Mr. Arkin for most of his life following The Tarriers' success in the 1950's, but he did continue to perform and record upon occasion throughout the 20th century.

An early member of the Second City comedy troupe, he made his Broadway debut in From the Second City in 1961 before starring in the Joseph Stein comedy Enter Laughing, which catapulted him from the margins and into the artistic elite of his day, honoring him with both a Tony and Theatre World Award. Mr. Arkin performed in one final Broadway comedy, 1964's Luv, before transforming into a new kind of star.

Known initially for his comedic skills, Mr. Arkin could navigate between tragedy and humor with an innate sense of how the two disciplines fed directly into each other.  Working closely with director Mike Nichols on Luv, he perfected the role of the unintentionally comedic misfit, an archetype with which he would continue to engage throughout his career.

It did not take long for the screen world to take notice of his talents, and Mr. Arkin became a star in the Hollywood industry that had previously rejected his family. In all, Mr. Arkin would become an eight-time Golden Globe nominee, a six-time Emmy nominee, a three-time BAFTA nominee, and a four-time Academy Award nominee, taking home the Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine in 2006. As a performer, his resume of films and co-stars was impressive: the triple hit of The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming opposite Carl Reiner, Wait Until Dark opposite Audrey Hepburn, and Women Times Seven opposite Shirley MacLaine would have been career-making for many other actors, but for Mr. Arkin, it was simply 18 months of work.

When he returned to the stage, it was as a director, guiding Hail Scrawdyke!, The Sunshine Boys, Molly, and Taller Than a Dwarf to the Broadway stage, with Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys netting him an additional Tony nomination. In a rare musical appearance, he appeared opposite Madeline Kahn in a concert staging of Leonard Bernstein's operetta Candide in 1968.

Mr. Arkin was a popular writer as well, with his ouvre including Tony's Hard Work Day (illustrated by James Stevenson, 1972), The Lemming Condition (illustrated by Joan Sandin, 1976), Halfway Through the Door: An Actor's Journey Toward Self (1979), and The Clearing (1986). In the 21st century he released two memoirs, An Improvised Life (2011) and Out of My Mind (2018).

Mr. Arkin continued to act up until the COVID-19 pandemic, starring in the animated series BoJack Horseman and The Kominsky Method opposite Michael Douglas. Married three times, all of his sons, Adam, Matthew, and Anthony, have  become successful actors in their own right.

Mr. Arkin is survived by his sons, his wife Suzanne Newlander Arkin, and four grandchildren.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on July 26, 2023, 07:55:45 PM
Bo Goldman (https://deadline.com/2023/07/bo-goldman-dead-two-time-oscar-winning-screenwriter-obituary-1235449073/)

Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Scrooby on July 31, 2023, 05:06:47 AM
If Content Slowdown is any indication, how about . . . Xixax?

Please let me know if you want some new posts.

Best wishes.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on July 31, 2023, 09:08:30 AM
Quote from: Scrooby on July 31, 2023, 05:06:47 AMIf Content Slowdown is any indication, how about . . . Xixax?

Please let me know if you want some new posts.

Best wishes.

This iz the memoriam thread. For people.

Maybe we don't hold ourselves to some hallucinatory standard of exposure.
If you care about your readership numbers, a film forum started two decades ago iz not the scene.

Find tiktok or touch grass, Scrooby.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on July 31, 2023, 12:40:32 PM
Paul Reubens (https://variety.com/2023/film/news/paul-reubens-dead-pee-wee-herman-1235683504/) (Pee-wee Herman)  :cry:  :salute:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on August 07, 2023, 04:42:43 PM
William Friedkin (https://variety.com/2023/film/news/william-friedkin-dead-the-exorcist-1235689676/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: HACKANUT on August 09, 2023, 07:11:54 PM
Robbie Robertson (https://consequence.net/2023/08/robert-robertson-dead-at-80/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Rooty Poots on August 11, 2023, 01:22:31 PM
Quote from: HACKANUT on August 09, 2023, 07:11:54 PMRobbie Robertson (https://consequence.net/2023/08/robert-robertson-dead-at-80/)
I read this as "Pat Robertson" at first and got happy, then noticed my mistake and got sad, then remembered Pat Robertson already died and got happy again.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Alethia on August 11, 2023, 04:03:39 PM
Take a load off, Rooty  :yabbse-smiley:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on September 28, 2023, 08:41:25 PM
Michael Gambon (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/michael-gambon-dead-dumbledore-harry-potter-actor-1235603225/)

Dumbledore?  Sure, fine.  But for me, he will always be Philip Marlow in THE SINGING DETECTIVE (https://youtu.be/7HwCp6yGwfk).  RIP.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilder on October 07, 2023, 02:59:24 PM
Terence Davies (https://variety.com/2023/film/news/terence-davies-dead-distant-voices-still-lives-1235748176/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 14, 2023, 09:17:41 PM
Piper Laurie (https://variety.com/2023/film/news/piper-laurie-dead-carrie-1235756354/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on October 24, 2023, 09:57:32 PM
Richard Roundtree (https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/10/24/richard-roundtree-shaft-dies/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on October 25, 2023, 05:24:50 PM
Just thought for the first time that it is possible to do a nasty hoax in this thread. An invasive thought, I suppose.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: ono on October 28, 2023, 07:57:05 PM
Matthew Perry.   :yabbse-cry:
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Rooty Poots on October 29, 2023, 02:11:04 AM
Quote from: ono on October 28, 2023, 07:57:05 PMMatthew Perry.   :yabbse-cry:
I wasn't even remotely a fan and this one hit me in the chest like a sharp knife.
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on November 11, 2023, 09:24:36 AM
John Bailey (https://variety.com/2023/film/obituaries-people-news/john-bailey-dead-academy-president-cinematographer-1235787930/)

Quote"All of us at the Academy are deeply saddened to learn of John's passing," said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang in a joint statement. "John was a passionately engaged member of the Academy and the film community. He served as our president and as an Academy governor for many years and played a leadership role on the cinematographers branch. His impact and contributions to the film community will forever be remembered. Our thoughts and support are with Carol at this time."

Bailey's credits as a cinematographer led him to collaborating with notable directors like Robert Redford, James L. Brooks, Wolfgang Petersen and Harold Ramis. In 1985, he earned recognition for best artistic contribution at the Cannes Film Festival for his work lensing Paul Schrader's "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters." He also collaborated with Schrader on "American Gigolo" and "Cat People."

In 2015, he was honored with a lifetime achievement award by the American Society of Cinematographers. Bailey also shot films including "As Good as it Gets," "In the Line of Fire" and "Racing With the Moon."

Other notable credits include "The Big Chill," "Silverado" and "The Accidental Tourist."

Born Aug. 10, 1942, Bailey first began working in show business in 1971 as an assistant cameraman on Monte Hellman's "Two Lane Blacktop." His first credit as cinematographer came in 1972 on Alan Rudolph's "Premonition."
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 06, 2023, 02:15:21 PM
Norman Lear (https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/norman-lear-dead-dies-tv-legend-all-in-the-family-1235823995/) is certainly worth mentioning here.  A giant of American Television, to be sure
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on December 08, 2023, 08:50:52 PM
Ryan O'Neal (https://variety.com/2023/film/news/ryan-oneal-dead-love-story-paper-moon-1235831519/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 22, 2024, 09:41:57 PM
Norman Jewison (https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/fiddler-on-the-roof-director-norman-jewison-dies-at-97)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on January 30, 2024, 11:43:13 PM
MELINDA WILSON (http://archive.today/2024.01.31-051206/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/arts/music/melinda-wilson-dead.html) (wife of Brian Wilson) 

This one hits a little harder than some. I had a 2 or 3 year Brian Wilson obession, and Melinda basically saved his life (or at least a bit of his sanity). 
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: wilberfan on February 02, 2024, 09:25:29 PM
Carl Weathers (http://archive.today/2024.02.02-224101/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/arts/television/carl-weathers-dead.html) ("Apollo Creed")
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: WorldForgot on February 28, 2024, 04:56:23 PM
Richard Lewis (https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/richard-lewis-comic-curb-your-enthusiasm-dead-1234977977/)
Title: Re: Who's Next To Croak?
Post by: Drenk on February 29, 2024, 02:03:35 PM
Quote from: WorldForgot on February 28, 2024, 04:56:23 PMRichard Lewis (https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/richard-lewis-comic-curb-your-enthusiasm-dead-1234977977/)

Well. I somehow haven't started the last Curb season yet but here is a reason to: the dead are living.