Who's Next To Croak?

[MacGuffin]

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.

[grand theft sparrow]

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

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

The link is off limits or missing.

Horrible news, though.

[MacGuffin]

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.

[MacGuffin]

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.

[MacGuffin]

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."

[Ravi]

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.

[Ravi]

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.

[MacGuffin]

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.

[matt35mm]

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).

[Garam]

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?

[MacGuffin]

I 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:




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:

[grand theft sparrow]

This album would actually be more appropriate today.



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.

[modage]

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. 

[picolas]

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