Gaston Glock has passed away at 94. TFB. NYT (gift link, should work for others). Glock website.
Tom Smothers, of the Smothers Brothers. THR.
Lee Sun-kyun, Korean actor (“Parasite”).
Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
Obit watch: December 27, 2023.
Wednesday, December 27th, 2023Puppies!
Thursday, December 21st, 2023Over the weekend, we got into a discussion: why are bullpup rifles called “bullpups”?
Quote of the day.
Saturday, December 9th, 2023[David Mamet] was once “phone pals” with legendary director Stanley Kubrick for the briefest of times, for instance. “He called me from his home in England. We spoke for two afternoons, mostly about guns,” he recalls.
“He was a competitive pistol shot; I was too. I of course wanted to steer the conversation to film gossip, but firearms, like aviation and sexual dish among their aficionados, trump all.”
(I knew that Mamet was a shooter, and I’d love to sit down and talk guns with him sometime. I had no idea that Kubrick was also a shooter. And frankly, I have all sorts of questions about that, mostly about how you can be a competitive pistol shot in England. I suspect money helps a lot.)
Obit watch: December 9, 2023.
Saturday, December 9th, 2023I’ve said this before, but: “Barry Lyndon”, even though it is long, is a hugely entertaining movie, and one I recommend watching on home video.
Random question.
Friday, December 1st, 2023This is prompted by an email I got from Kino Lorber about their current sale. (Not an affiliate link.)
One of the things they have on sale is “Goldengirl“, a movie I remember from the 1980s but never saw. Check out that cast: James Coburn! Robert Culp! Harry Guardino! Michael Lerner! And Susan Anton, who I also remember from the 1980s but never saw.
I got curious about the plot and went over to Wikipedia, which describes “Goldengirl” as a “American drama sci-fi sports film“.
Which got me to racking my brain. Perhaps I am getting senile, but: how many sci-fi sports films are there? “Goldengirl” and “Rollerball” are really the only two I can think of. (I don’t know that I’d call “Field of Dreams” sci-fi, though I think there’s a strong argument for it being fantasy.)
Gentle readers, what sci-fi sports films am I missing that will cause me to slap my forehead and say “Of course! How could I have forgotten about that one!”
Obit watch: November 30, 2023, part 2.
Thursday, November 30th, 2023Shane MacGowan. Pitchfork. NYT. THR.
I’ve never been a Pogues fanatic. I pretty much missed them when they were an operational band, and the first thing I ever heard from them was “Fairytale Of New York”. I think we can play that now. After all, it is the Christmas season.
Later on, I picked up some more Pogues by way of “The Wire”. Unfortunately, I can’t find a clip of a drunk McNulty (not the valued commenter here, the other one) repeatedly ramming his car into a bridge abutment while playing “Transmetropolitan”…
And Shane MacGowan was Irish, but I think I’d be willing to grant him honorary US citizenship just for this song, which should probably be the national anthem. (Well, either that, or “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”.)
Frances Sternhagen, actress. THR. Other credits include “Law and Order”, “Up the Down Staircase”, and “Communion”.
Obit watch: November 29, 2023.
Wednesday, November 29th, 2023This is being well covered, but for the historical record: Charles Munger, generally described as Warren Buffett’s right hand man. ZeroHenge obit by way of Lawrence.
Marc Thorpe, “Robot Wars” guy.
Victor J. Kemper, cinematographer. Pretty impressive body of work.
(The Saturday Movie Group watched “They Might Be Giants” before Thanksgiving. I like George C. Scott, and I’d never really realized how good looking Joanne Woodward is. But the movie seems interesting but flawed. I don’t want to spoil the ending because there really isn’t one.)
Obit watch: November 20, 2023.
Monday, November 20th, 2023Rosalynn Carter obit roundup: NYT (archived). WP (archived).
I’ve had one person complain to me that they can’t access archive.is links, and I’ve seen reports of this on Hacker News as well. The problem from what I’ve read is a DNS issue between archive.is and CloudFlare, and I don’t know how to tell folks to resolve it. I would love to be able to use another archiving service, but I’m not aware of another one. I feel like my choice is: knowingly post paywalled links (which has gotten me griped at in the past) or post archived links and take the complaints on that. If someone knows of another archiving service, please leave me a comment or drop me a line, and I’ll try switching to that as an alternative.
And I’m not linking to the Atlanta newspaper because, you guessed it, they’re excessively aggressive about ad blockers.
Bobby Ussery, jockey. Mostly noted here because I don’t get to use the “horses” tag as often as I would like, but he did win the 1967 Kentucky Derby (on Proud Clarion, a 30-1 shot). He won a total of 3,611 races between 1951 and 1974.
Joss Ackland, actor. Other credits include “K-19: The Widowmaker”, “The Hunt for Red October”, and “The Apple“.
Obit watch: November 6, 2023.
Monday, November 6th, 2023Peter White, actor. Other credits include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “I Want to Live” (the TV movie), and “The Bold Ones: The Senator”.
Evan Ellingson, actor. IMDB.
Robbin Bain (also Robbin Mele Gaudieri), former “Today Girl” and Miss Rheingold 1959.
Obit watch: October 31, 2023.
Tuesday, October 31st, 2023Judy Nugent, actress.
Other credits include “The Greatest Show on Earth”, “77 Sunset Strip”, and the “The Thin Man” TV series.
Obit watch: October 29, 2023.
Sunday, October 29th, 2023It turned into a busier weekend than I thought it was going to be, and it also turned out that there was more going on this weekend than I expected. I wanted to get these up today, as I have an eye doctor’s appointment tomorrow and am not sure how things are going to go afterwards.
Richard Moll. THR. I’ve mentioned before how much I liked the original “Night Court” and what a great ensemble those folks were.
Moll had a shaved head — he did that to play the warrior Hurok in the sci-fi film Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983) — when he auditioned for the role of Shannon on Night Court, created by Reinhold Weege.
“They said ‘Richard, the shaved head looks good. Will you shave your head for the part?” he recalled in a 2010 interview. “I said, ‘Are you kidding? I’ll shave my legs for the part. I’ll shave my armpits, I don’t care.’”
IMDB.
Joan Evans, actress who was shot by Farley Granger.
This is in the obit, but I did want to note that she was the love interest for Charles Drake’s character in “No Name On the Bullet“, about which I have written before and probably will again.
IMDB.
Matthew Perry. THR. IMDB. Everyone is on this like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation, and I don’t have anything to add.