Some brief comments on several recent movie-related deaths, plus random observations about an eclectic group of recently watched Blu-rays in various different genres.
Random thoughts: Summer 2017
Category: Obituary
Time, paradox and loss
Artsploitation Films has released George Moises’s Counter Clockwise (2016), a new low-budget addition to the time travel paradox sub-genre; and several notable cinema personalities have recently departed.
Discovery and loss: Pierre Etaix 1928-2016
The French comic filmmaker Pierre Etaix, whose work spanned the decade of the ’60s only to vanish for 40 years before being rediscovered and restored in 2010, has died at the age of 87.
Dan Ireland and The Whole Wide World
Dan Ireland, director of The Whole Wide World (1996), died on April 14, aged 57.
Andrzej Zulawski 1940-2016
Polish director Andrzej Zulawski has died, age 75, just as a restored version of his ambitious science fiction epic On the Silver Globe is scheduled to premiere in New York.
Patrick Macnee and Christopher Lee, 1922-2015
Two distinguished British actors passed away in June after long and varied careers in film and television: the imposing Christopher Lee and the debonair Patrick Macnee, both at age 93.
Three recent losses
The work of the great English cinematographer Oswald Morris, in both colour and black-and-white, added enormously to the films he worked on. He had a long and fruitful association with John Huston (his work on Moulin Rouge in 1952 pushed the boundaries of what Technicolor was supposed to be able to do), and also shot […]
Alain Resnais 1922-2014
The great French filmmaker Alain Resnais died March 1st at the age of 91, leaving behind a remarkable body of emotionally and intellectually resonant work.
Harold Ramis 1944-2014
Harold Ramis, who died on February 24, seemed like a modest guy with a quietly effective comic talent as a performer and a pleasantly old-fashioned style as a director.
Miklós Jancsó … and others: RIP
Word of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s untimely (and possibly drug related) death earlier today comes quickly after news of the (more timely) deaths of three European giants. Yesterday, award-winning Austrian actor Maximilian Schell died at age 83 in Innsbruck. The day before, the influential Hungarian filmmaker Miklós Jancsó died at 92, and just over a week […]
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