Haskell Wexler, noted cinematographer.
Edited to add: NYT obit wasn’t up previously, but is now.
Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
Obit watch: December 28, 2015.
Monday, December 28th, 2015Obit watch: December 27, 2015.
Sunday, December 27th, 2015I hadn’t heard of him before the NYT obit, but he led an interesting life: he became an Eagle Scout in 1925. In 1928, he and two other Eagle Scouts were selected to go on a safari with Martin and Osa Johnson; the three Scouts later published a book about their experience. He later went hunting for whales and bears off the Alaskan coast (and wrote another book), flew with Amelia Earhart in an early autogyro, and spent more time in Alaska stomping around with “the Glacier Priest” (and got another book out of that).
This has been floating around for a few days, but I finally found an obit I was willing to link to: George Clayton Johnson. Johnson wrote several of the best “Twilight Zone” episodes (odds are, if the episode you’re trying to remember wasn’t a Matheson episode, it was one of his). He also wrote “The Man Trap” for “Star Trek”, the story that “Ocean’s 11” was based on, and co-wrote “Logan’s Run”.
A Christmas Story.
Thursday, December 24th, 2015I’ve been threatening to tell this one for a while now. What pushed me over the edge was this (because, hey, Christmas story), and a conversation with my mother about the first “Star Wars”, which filled me with nostalgia. (Or that may have been indigestion from a combination of three cup chicken and the pills I’m taking; sometimes, I can’t tell the difference.)
(We were trying to reconstruct the circumstances around seeing “Star Wars”. My father took my sister and I to the theater at Greenspoint Mall in Houston (which was the closest good one) to see it first run. My younger brother didn’t go with us, because he was roughly 2 1/2. So the questions that came up were: what did we do with him, and when did he first see it? I always thought my dad took us as just a nice gesture, while my mother thinks she had a Tupperware party going on that night and wanted to get us out of the house.)
End of introductory digression.
One year, over the Christmas break from school, I decided I wanted to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Anyway, I checked it out of the school library and brought it home with me.
TMQ Watch: December 22, 2015.
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015Cahiers du cinéma: The Library of Congress recommends…
Wednesday, December 16th, 2015I just have one thing to say about the latest list of movies added to the National Film Registry…
TMQ Watch: December 8, 2015.
Thursday, December 10th, 2015Instead of snark, and before jumping into this week’s TMQ, we wanted to throw up a link to something we found by way of a retweet from Popehat:
…
When I tell people the insane details of my childhood, they have the same two questions.
Why in the hell would anyone do this to their own son?
And then …
Why in the hell didn’t anyone put a stop to it?
Please go read this now, if you haven’t already. This week’s TMQ will be here when you return…
Obit watch: November 25, 2015.
Wednesday, November 25th, 2015The NYT is reporting the death of actor Rex Reason.
Mr. Reason was perhaps most famous for playing Cal Meacham in “This Island Earth”, which I almost think I’d like to watch again for real (as opposed to the MST3K movie version).
Well!
Thursday, November 12th, 2015I wasn’t blogging the trial, nor was I following it very closely, but this is just too good to pass up:
That’s right. Aquitted.
Heh. Heh. Heh.
(You may remember the Lufthansa robbery from such movies as “Goodfellas”.)
Edited to add 11/13:
I’m just going to leave this here…
Note from the police blotter…
Sunday, November 8th, 2015I’m sorry I didn’t make note of this yesterday, but I was running from sunrise to midnight: first, hanging out with family at WurstFest, then diiner with friends and hanging out watching creepy stuff.
(Seriouly. I like to think I have a high tolerance for creepy, but Island of Lost Souls
Anyway, this is kind of a local story, but it may have broader implications: somebody tried to kill a local judge late Friday night.
The judge in question, Julie Kocurek, is a district judge and is heavily involved with criminal prosecutions:
I’m not saying it was Clark or his buddies that were behind this, but the speculation is that this was some form of retaliation, and not just a robbery gone bad. She was with other people, and:
Judge Kocurek is currently in stable condition, according to reports. We hope she makes a full recovery, and we’ll be watching this story with great interest.
Obit watch: November 2, 2015.
Monday, November 2nd, 2015Obit watch: October 16, 2015.
Friday, October 16th, 2015There’s a really nice obituary in today’s NYT (written by Bruce Weber, one of the paper’s best obit writers) for Sybil Stockdale.
Mrs. Stockdale was the wife of James B. Stockdale. You may remember him as Ross Perot’s vice presidential candidate in 1992. But before that:
During his captivity, Mrs. Stockdale became a leading advocate for the POW/MIA cause. She also worked with the CIA to gather information. This story brings a smile to my face:
Speaking of the CIA and other bits of history, Ken Taylor has also passed away. Mr. Taylor was the Canadian ambassador to Iran during the hostage crisis:
When the U.S. embassy in Tehran was stormed by Islamist students and militants, six American diplomats escaped and found sanctuary in the homes of Taylor and his first secretary John Sheardown. In addition to shielding the Americans from Iranian capture, Taylor also played a crucial role in plotting their escape.
Working with CIA officials and Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, Taylor obtained for the Americans six Canadian passports containing forged Iranian visas that ultimately allowed them to board a flight to Switzerland. He undertook all these covert actions at a high personal risk, as he and his team would have been taken hostage themselves in the case of discovery by the Islamist militants.
Last, but by no means least: “fresh-faced ingénue” of the 1940s, Joan Leslie.
At 9, touring with her sisters, she played Toronto. Their act included her impression of Durante.
One night after the show, her dressing room door opened to reveal a man armed with nothing but criticism. Her Durante was all wrong, he told her. Unbidden, he showed her the right way to do it.
Read the obit for the punchline, if you haven’t already guessed it.
TMQ Watch: October 6, 2015.
Wednesday, October 7th, 2015Yes, we know, we’re late again. We have a worse excuse this time: we put off TMQ Watch so we could go to the Alamo Drafthouse and watch “Sicario”.
It has actually been a big movie week for us: in addition to “Sicario”, we watched “Black Mass” with Lawrence on Saturday. We may have some more thoughts on both later on. (And “The Martian” is on our list. We don’t expect that to vanish from theaters any time soon. Yes, this is relevant to TMQ; see below.)
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Obit watch: September 14, 2015.
Monday, September 14th, 2015Moses Malone, legendary NBA player with the Philadelphia 76ers, Houston Rockets, and San Antonio Spurs (among other teams). NYT. HouChron.
Frank D. Gilroy. Interesting story. He knocked around television for a while in the 1950s and 1960s, then had a huge Broadway hit with “The Subject Was Roses”…and then was unable to replicate that success, and spent the rest of his life knocking around movies and theater.
Obit watch: September 3, 2015.
Thursday, September 3rd, 2015I was thinking this morning: the first movie I have any recollection of seeing was the original The Love Bug at a drive-in somewhere in Virginia. NYT. Nice article in the WP.
Also among the dead: Ruth Newman, who passed away at the age of 113. Ms. Newman was a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
There is one known survivor still alive.
Smart woman.
Obit watch: August 31, 2015.
Monday, August 31st, 2015Noted film director Wes Craven. LAT. A/V Club. NYT.
Dr. Wayne Dyer, author (“Your Erroneous Zones”) and perennial fixture on PBS. Quoted without comment:
…
Often promoted as “public television’s favorite teacher of transformational wisdom,” Dyer was a fixture on PBS for almost 40 years and became embroiled in a controversy over complaints beginning in 2006 that he was promoting a specific religious worldview in violation of PBS’ editorial policies.
Michael Getler, PBS’s ombudsman at the time, wrote in 2012 that it was “my sense” that Dyer’s advocacy strayed outside PBS’ editorial standards but that the PBS board disagreed with him.
An Oliver Sacks obit is coming, but his death was kind of personal for me, so I want to take a little more time.