Pour out a 40 of Coors for the man.
Burt Reynolds: NYT. LAT. THR. WP.
Also among the dead: Richard DeVos, co-founder of Amway.
Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
Obit watch: September 7, 2018.
Friday, September 7th, 2018CanCon.
Monday, August 27th, 2018That’s “Canadian Content” for those of you in my audience unfamiliar with the term.
I don’t remember how I stumbled across this, but yesterday I discovered “The Devil at Your Heels”, a 1981 documentary by Robert Fortier which is available at the National Film Board of Canada’s website.
Perhaps surprisingly to some people, this is not a movie about blues music. “Devil” is a documentary about Ken Carter, a semi-famous Canadian stunt driver, and his attempt to jump a car from the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence River to the US side: a distance of about one mile.
According to the background blog entry on the film, Fortier originally intended this to be a short documenting the jump.
It took five years just to get to the point where Carter was actually able and ready to make the attempt. And Fortier kept filming in spite of the setbacks: rain interfering with construction of the jump ramp, exploding rocket fuel tanks, Carter’s attempts to raise money…
I “watched” about 55 minutes of it yesterday while puttering around doing other things, and plan to finish watching it in the next couple of days. There is a twist at the end which I spoiled for myself, but I won’t do that to you. (If you search for “Ken Carter” or “The Devil at Your Heels” on Wikipedia, you’ll find the twist.) From what I saw, I think this is another Canadian documentary that’s worth your attention. It isn’t quite as bat guano insane as “Project Grizzly“, but it’s still fun.
The whole movie is also available in high-def on YouTube, again thanks to the NFB:
Somehow, while searching around looking for more stuff about Ken Carter and the jump, I ran across this article on AutoFocus, a Canadian auto news site, about Jacques Ostiguy. Ostiguy was a Canadian designer, noted for his work on the Chrysler Cordoba and for Bombardier (the company that made Ski-Doo snowmobiles).
I wanted to note this because I love this quote in the article:
(Content warning: article may not be 100% safe for work in some environments. There are no explicit drawings in the article itself, but some people might take offense at the headline.)
Obit watch: August 16, 2018.
Thursday, August 16th, 2018The cause was advanced pancreatic cancer, her publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn, said.
Also among the dead: Morgana King, who was somewhat famous as a jazz singer. She was better known, however, as Mama Corleone in the “Godfather” movies.
Herbert Sperling died in early July at a federal prison hospital near Boston. He’d been in prison since 1973.
He also had a reputation for violence.
In 1977, he was indicted on charges of hiring three fellow inmates at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta to murder Mr. [Vincent C.] Papa, whom he suspected of turning police informant. Mr. Sperling was acquitted in the conspiracy, but two other defendants were convicted of fatally stabbing Mr. Papa in the back and chest at least eight times in a prison courtyard.
Mr. Papa had been convicted of choreographing the audacious theft by rogue police officers of tens of millions of dollars worth of drugs from the New York Police Department’s evidence room in Lower Manhattan in the early 1970s and replacing it with bags of flour and cornstarch. The crimes kick-started a consequential corruption investigation of the police.
Much of the heroin had been seized in 1962 in the Bronx from the car in which it had been shipped from the French port city Marseille. The successful investigation in the case inspired the Oscar-winning 1971 movie “The French Connection.”
Mr. Sperling was also suspected in the death of Louis J. Mileto, whom police identified as a courier for the Sperling heroin ring. Mr. Mileto’s frozen, headless and limbless torso was found in 1972 in the trunk of a gutted car in the Hudson Valley. He was identified by his teeth, which were found in his stomach. Investigators said he had swallowed them during a vicious beating.
There’s your telling detail, right there.
Obit watch: July 22, 2018.
Sunday, July 22nd, 2018Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic for the LA Times and Pulitzer Prize winner. NYT.
This hit me kind of hard, and I’m not exactly sure why. I don’t live in LA, I barely even consider California to be part of the United States these days, and the LAT website has become so obnoxious I rarely read it. At most, I was an intermittent follower of Gold’s.
I know obituaries generally concentrate on the positive about the subject – I’ve seen very few that say, “Christ, what an a–hole” – but the tributes to him make him sound like an incredibly kind and funny guy who loved food, and even more loved telling people about food.
…
…
He preferred to praise chefs rather than pan them. If Gold wrote about you, he generally liked your food. Earnest and slightly awkward in person, he would voice displeasure with a gentle rebuke instead of the gleeful excoriating that other critics tend to dabble in.
“He wasn’t looking down his nose at the world, he was looking out from the table and trying to put restaurants, meals and cuisines in context. Empathy, understanding, commensality: That’s what he brought to the game,” Meehan said. “Jonathan didn’t write restaurant reviews, he wrote about who we are and how we feed each other. He wasn’t just a better writer than the rest of us, he cared more, too.”
Also, he was only 57: pancreatic cancer got him so fast most people didn’t even know he was sick, according to the obits. I’ve linked to them before, but The Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research still gets four stars from Charity Navigator.
Also among the dead: Shinobu Hashimoto, screenwriter perhaps most famous for his work with Akira Kurosawa (including “Rashomon”, “Ikiru”, and “Seven Samurai”.
Madeleine Kamman, noted French chef and author.
Last, least, and burning in Hell: Barry Mills, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood.
Obit watch: July 20, 2018.
Friday, July 20th, 2018Adrian Cronauer, the inspiration for “Good Morning, Vietnam”.
Mr. Cronauer, who in reality was not quite the wild man the film suggested — later in life he worked for Republican causes and became a lawyer — admitted to some unease when he first saw the screen portrayal. But he got over it.
“Finally I said: ‘Wait a minute. It was never intended to be a biography. It’s a piece of entertainment. Sit back, relax and enjoy it,’ ” he said. “And that’s what I did.”
Annabelle Neilson. I can’t stand celebrity for celebrity’s sake, and I don’t worship celebrities in general. But there’s something about this story I find touching.
She eventually got over her heroin problem, became a model, and was introduced to fashion designer Alexander McQueen. She went on to become his model, muse, and girlfriend until his death in 2010.
She also wrote children’s books. Ms. Neilson was 49 when she died.
Obit watch: July 16, 2018.
Monday, July 16th, 2018Nancy Barbato Sinatra, Frank Sinatra’s first wife and mother of Nancy, Frank Jr., and Christina.
This is a fascinating and kind of sad obituary. They were married from 1939 until 1951, when Frank finally left her (after years of philandering) to chase Ava Gardner. In spite of that, they remained extremely close after the divorce until Frank’s death.
Pat Swindall, former congressman convicted of perjury, and who ended up losing his seat to Ben “Cooter” Jones.
Alan Johnson, choreographer. He did a lot of work for Mel Brooks, including choreographing numbers in “Blazing Saddles”, “Young Frankenstein”, and “Springtime for Hitler” in “The Producers”. (I would embed that here, but it’s already in the NYT obit.)
More quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore.
Monday, July 16th, 2018Half-Price Books had another coupon sale this week, and I picked up a few things that I feel like documenting here.
I picked up a lot of “popular culture”…stuff, I’d say, though other people might call it “crap”. Specifically, I got:
- Volumes four, five and eight of Mannix, which puts me halfway towards having a complete run. We watched “A Ticket to the Eclipse” Saturday night, and Darren McGavin is quite creepy in it, even if he can’t decide what his accent should be. And speaking of Darren…
- Finally found a copy of Kolchak: The Night Stalker the series for 50% off with coupon. We’re still watching the midnight showings on MeTV (Hi, Pat!) but this will let me catch up: for example, I’ve managed to miss “They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…” in the last two cycles. Now all I need is the two TV movies, though I plan to wait for the rumored 4K Blu-Ray remasters that are supposedly coming from Kino Lorber.
- Mister Roberts. I have actually never seen this, but I have been known to use the “I just threw your stinking palm tree overboard” line on managers.
- Hellfighters. John Wayne! Jim Hutton! On Blu-Ray, for $5 with the 50$ off coupon.
- Tony Rome. Found cheap plus coupon, and I actually added this to the list a few weeks ago. Frank Sinatra PI film: the late Deanna Lund supposedly plays a “redheaded lesbian stripper”, though she’s not credited anywhere on the jacket copy.
Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t picked up some gun books, too…
Obit watch: July 9, 2018.
Monday, July 9th, 2018Tab Hunter, noted actor and Hollywood idol.
Obit watch: July 6, 2018.
Friday, July 6th, 2018Claude Lanzmann, noted film director (“Shoah”).
Saman Gunan, former Thai Navy SEAL. He volunteered as part of the rescue mission for the trapped soccer team, and apparently ran out of air while delivering fresh air tanks to the cave.
Shoko Asahara is burning in Hell, along with six of his followers.
I’m not very well read in Haruki Murakami, but Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche impressed me, and I commend it to your attention.
Obit watch: June 28, 2018.
Thursday, June 28th, 2018Daisy Kadibil, Aboriginal Australian.
When she was eight…
Daisy was taken from her home in Jigalong, an Indigenous community in the Pilbara region in northwestern Australia, where she had grown up. A sister, Molly, and a cousin, Gracie, were also seized, and all three girls were sent to an Indigenous settlement near the Moore River, just north of Perth, the nearest city, about 800 miles to the south.
There, longing for home, they sought to escape. In 1931 they succeeded, embarking on foot on a treacherous nine-week trek north across rough terrain and using as their guide a barbed-wire fence that had been built to keep rabbits away from pastureland — an astonishing feat that inspired a book and the acclaimed 2002 Australian movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence.”
Daisy was the last survivor of the three.
For the historical record: Joe Jackson.
Obit watch: June 26, 2018.
Tuesday, June 26th, 2018For the record: Richard Benjamin Harrison, of “Pawn Stars” fame.
Deanna Lund, noted for “Land of the Giants”.
Obit watch: June 21, 2018.
Thursday, June 21st, 2018NYT obit for Matt “Guitar” Murphy.
Richard Valeriani, noted NBC news correspondent.
The paper of record still has not published an obit for Gardner Dozois.
Obit watch: June 18, 2018.
Monday, June 18th, 2018A large handful of interesting obits showed up over the weekend. I decided I’d save them and do a round-up today.
Officer Norberto Ramon of the Houston Police Department passed away on Friday. He had been undergoing treatment for colon cancer, but was told it had spread and was incurable. He intended to seek medical treatment in Oklahoma, but, as it turned out, this was right before Harvey hit Houston…
Prior to the storm, Ramon had been assigned desk duty. Flooding prevented him from getting to the office, so he went to the nearest station, the Lake Patrol, to help while the storm raged.
At Lake Patrol, he filled in for an officer of the seven-man squad. He worked nonstop for three days, seeing adults, seniors and mostly children to safety.
The HPD estimates he rescued 1,500 people during the storm. Officer Ramon was 55 years old, and had been with HPD for 25 years.
Reinhard Hardegen, German submarine commander who sank two ships off Long Island in 1942.
Yvette Horner, noted French accordion player.
William Reese, rare book dealer. I was previously unaware of Mr. Reese or his shop, but after reading his obit, I want a copy of Six Score: The 120 Best Books on the Range Cattle Industry. Stuff like that is already up my alley anyway.
Stephen Reid, bank robber and author.
Along with Patrick Mitchell, who was known as Paddy, and Lionel Wright, Mr. Reid was a member of a group of well-dressed bandits who came to be known as the The Stop Watch Gang. The name appeared to have come from F.B.I. investigators who noticed that at least one gang member, usually Mr. Reid, wore a stopwatch around his neck to keep holdups within the group’s self-imposed two-minute time limit.
While there is no precise accounting of their crimes, the police have estimated that the gang participated in at least 100 holdups during the 1970s and ′80s, getting away with about $15 million.
Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Blues Brother and noted sideman.
Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has published an obit for Gardner Dozois, as best as I can tell.
After action report: Reno, NV.
Wednesday, June 13th, 2018Yet another excuse to post photos and links and some ramblings. I’ll put a jump here since some of the photos might take time to load…
Short note from the legal beat.
Tuesday, June 12th, 2018Rose McGowan has been indicted in Virginia on one count of felony possession of cocaine.
Apparently, she left her wallet on an airline flight in January of 2017: when it was found, there were two “baggies” of coke inside.
Ms. McGowan’s defense: there weren’t any drugs in her wallet when she saw it last, and she thinks the drugs were planted by…
…wait for it…
…Harvey Weinstein.
I usually don’t buy the “b—h set me up” (or “b—–d set me up”) defense. And I’m unlikely to be called to sit on a jury in Virginia. And if I were called, I would listen to both sides of the case, and try to render a fair judgement based on the facts.
But: given that this is Harvey Weinstein we’re talking about, I’m more than a little inclined to throw some reasonable doubt Ms. McGowan’s way.