Passages

[Randall Maysin Again]

It's funny how he got an Academy Award nomination for Barton Fink when John Goodman amazingly did not (surely this is Goodman's richest role ever?), though I do think they both deserved one. RIP

[dwk]

Richard Ng

[Mr Sausage]

Legitimately funny as the comic relief in Magnificent Warriors.

[therewillbeblus]

Legitimately funny as the comic relief in Magnificent Warriors.

Agreed, his early introduction in the gambling den might be the film’s highlight- a surprisingly layered farce, borrowing from Tashlin’s visual skills and Marx brothers’ verbal ‘logic’ in equal measure. Exhibit A on a shortlist of examples for how you create an effective comedy scene in HK action cinema

[Buttery Jeb]

Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee

[Caligula]

Sandro Panseri, who many here will remember as the lead in Olmi's magical Il Posto, has died

[otis]

Murray Melvin

[GaryC]

Mary Quant, influential fashion designer, aged 93. Her cinematic credentials are that she provided clothes for a few films, including Claire Bloom's in The Haunting, Charlotte Rampling's in Georgy Girl and Audrey Hepburn's in Two for the Road. She was the subject of the 2021 documentary Quant, directed by Sadie Frost.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Murray Melvin

Quite a career: A Taste of Honey. the Ken Russell films, Barry Lyndon, but also contributing to the rise and success of the Theatre Workshop under Joan Littlewood. He was also its archivist much later.

[colinr0380]

Murray Melvin

Quite a career: A Taste of Honey. the Ken Russell films, Barry Lyndon, but also contributing to the rise and success of the Theatre Workshop under Joan Littlewood. He was also its archivist much later.

Plus among the supporting cast in a couple of films by Lewis Gilbert - the Alec Guinness and Dirk Bogarde starring Damn The Defiant! and in the original 1966 version of Alfie. And in two films by Stephen Weeks with the 1973 version of Gawain and the Green Knight and 1974's Ghost Story (a few years before I got to see A Taste of Honey or his performance as the wide-eyed priest falling into complicit corruption in The Devils, it was Murray Melvin wandering around in his crisp white suit in that film which first made an impact on me!)

[hearthesilence]

The great jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal.

[Lemmy Caution]

Ahmad Jamal turned the lounge piano trio into high art.
During the pandemic, I made a terrific AJ playlist, but just looking for it now, seems it's trapped on my computer that died last year. I'll need to do something about that. I was going to offer a few song recs, but I'm more or less back to square one myself.

[hearthesilence]

At the Pershing: But Not for Me is probably the best place to start - so accessible that it actually went platinum, and it has his signature track, "Poinciana." The chronological series of live releases he had going, Emerald City Nights: Live At The Penthouse, is really good - IIRC there's one more installment left.

[Lemmy Caution]

I think I preferred Jamal's 70's period best, when he was doing more of his own compositions.
I think Ahmad's Waltz was a standout.

Pittsburgh was the birthplace for many influential jazz pianists, back when the steel city was a major black city, and an important stopover between Chicago and NY.
Check out this photo:

That's Earl Fatha Hines, Erroll Garner and Mary Lou Williams (with Billy Eckstein and Maxine Sullivan, with eyes open).
Also, Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal were from Pittsburgh.
That's quite a quintet of talent.

Ahmad Jamal as a child prodigy pre-WWII:

[colinr0380]

Prolific crime novelist Anne Perry, aka Juliet Hulme, the real life participant in a notorious murder pact who was played by Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures.

[beamish14]

Mark Stewart of post-punk outfit the Pop Group

[MongooseCmr]

Y was an album that hit me so hard a few years ago. It really resurrected an interest in exploring new music after lifestyle changes put it on hold. I can’t remember what made me revisit it and have it click the way it did but I’m happy I did.

[Feego]

Prolific crime novelist Anne Perry, aka Juliet Hulme, the real life participant in a notorious murder pact who was played by Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures.

I've long been fascinated by this case of real-life murderer becoming an internationally successful writer (albeit before the world knew her real identity). Has anyone here ever read any of her books?

[MichaelB]

Australian cinema giant Barry Humphries, whose collaborations with Bruce Beresford were surely pivotal in Beresford going on to helm a multiple Oscar winner a couple of decades later.

I believe he did a bit of comedy as well.

[Caligula]

Australian cinema giant Barry Humphries, whose collaborations with Bruce Beresford were surely pivotal in Beresford going on to helm a multiple Oscar winner a couple of decades later.

I believe he did a bit of comedy as well.

His recording (as Dame Edna) of Prokofiev's Peter & The Wolf is an absolute hoot. Many will also remember him as the voice of Bruce, the shark from Finding Nemo

[colinr0380]

It would be great if we could get a set of the two early Edna Everage films (when she was just an "Aunt" rather than a "Dame") The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (where she makes the transition to Damehood), which are incidentally also the first two feature films directed by Bruce Beresford! (Humphries is also in a couple of Beresford's other feature films Side By Side and in a very unorthodox role in The Getting of Wisdom)

And the other big film is Les Patterson Saves The World where he plays his other famous character as well as Dame Edna, which was directed by George Miller (not the Mad Max one, but the recently deceased director of Andre). Dame Edna does turn up for a brief cameo in a later film: at the end of Howling III: The Marsupials which re-does the televised transformation ending of the original film in a more comic (and Academy Award ruining!) manner!

And Humphries also appears in a couple of period films: Bernard Rose's Immortal Beloved and in the star studded 2002 adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby.

But of course its the Dame Edna chat show that he'll probably be most remembered for (perfectly suited to the 1980s as the only person able to play Margaret Thatcher at her own game), with the long running joke of Dame Edna constantly denigrating her long suffering maid and companion Madge Allsop!

[colinr0380]

Also with the loss of Paul O'Grady and now Barry Humphries within a matter of weeks, I hope someone is looking out for Brendan O'Carroll to keep him safe, as he and Tyler Perry are the last famous female impersonators left!

[knives]

Australian cinema giant Barry Humphries, whose collaborations with Bruce Beresford were surely pivotal in Beresford going on to helm a multiple Oscar winner a couple of decades later.

I believe he did a bit of comedy as well.

I was reading that Beresford actually thought those films nearly killed his career.

Curious Americans can stream the first film on Kanopy.

[MichaelB]

If anyone genuinely thinks that Barry Humphries was an Australian cinema giant, any random sampling of a couple of minutes of one of the Barry Mackenzie films should disabuse them of that notion very quickly indeed.

But sarcasm seemed to be a wholly appropriate way of paying tribute to one of its all-time black-belt champions, and that wasn’t sarcastic.

[GaryC]

I was reading that Beresford actually thought those films nearly killed his career.

Beresford has said that, but I suspect that story's been exaggerated to some extent. The Barry McKenzie films did make money, after all. Beresford seems to think he'd been typecast as a maker of lowbrow comedies, and said that Side by Side was all he could get at the time. He thought that film was a complete disaster and I'd agree - but if you want to see Humphries perform a musical number in blackface, here's your chance. What Beresford really wanted to make through most of the 1970s was The Getting of Wisdom and only agreed to the Barry McKenzie sequel so that he could make it - and then Wisdom went into turnaround. Fortunately he was able to make it a few years later and was fortunate after Side by Side that the script for Don's Party landed in his letterbox.

It would be great if we could get a set of the two early Edna Everage films (when she was just an "Aunt" rather than a "Dame") The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (where she makes the transition to Damehood)

Umbrella have a good Blu-ray of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, which is incidentally the full-length version of 114 minutes - there's another version in circulation of some seven minutes shorter. I watched it the other week and there is some good observation of the English and Australians amongst the lowbrow chundering, percy-pointing and (yes) homophobia and racism.

Umbrella have also released Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, but only on DVD so far. I know people who will vouch for this film, but it's to me more of the same only more of it, and rather oddly in Scope too. (Beresford seems to have forgotten this, as I've more than once heard him claim Puberty Blues was his first Scope film.)