Passages

[hearthesilence]

When I first started exploring country, it was Hank Williams first, then him via Rhino's old single disc compilation (great but woefully too short) and Sony's Spirit of Country set (far too little of the pre-Epic years). I used to listen to him quite a bit, but I haven't heard much country in recent years.

I was pleasantly surprised that Time-Life finally brought a good chunk of his Musicor recordings back into print. Despite his short stay there, he recorded a ridiculous amount of records for them - I think far more than any other label. "Things Have Gone to Pieces" and some other big hits on that label were actually hard to find, much less in decent sound quality. Bear Family was the first to bring them all back into print from the original master tapes (with a series of comprehensive and expensive box sets), and Time-Life issued a handy, affordable two disc set called The Great Lost Hits. That set and Cup of Loneliness probably make up the bulk of my favorite George Jones records.

[dadaistnun]

Janos Starker

[Timec]

Deanna Durbin

[L.A.]

Chris Kelly of rap duo Kris Kross.

[mfunk9786]

Jeff Hanneman of Slayer

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Il Divo

[knives]

I didn't know Satan could die.

[MichaelB]

The Guardian obituary mentions the film more than once.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Jeff Hanneman of Slayer

What a bummer, and what a terrible way to go, if his necrotizing fasciitis was responsible. Meanwhile, south of Heaven:

[mfunk9786]

Man, people just don't know how to ignore them yet, do they?

[MacktheFinger]

Don't think anyone posted this yet. Mike Gray of The Murder of Fred Hampton and The China Syndrome among others.

[antnield]

Ray Harryhausen (announced by the family on the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation Facebook page)

[Kirkinson]

British composer Steve Martland, whose piece Street Songs was set to animation by the Brothers Quay as Songs for Dead Children. He also co-directed a film about Louis Andriessen called A Temporary Arrangement with the Sea.

[Feego]

Ray Harryhausen (announced by the family on the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation Facebook page)

Obit. His films have meant so much to me literally all my life. I've been watching them longer than I can remember. He will remain one of the greats.

[Arthur House]

Pinstriper and Custom Car Legend Dean Jeffries. He built the Monkeemobile, the Black Beauty from "The Green Hornet", and was also the guy who painted "Little Bastard" on James Dean's Porsche Spyder.

[warren oates]

Robert K. Ressler, who along with his FBI colleague John Douglas, pioneered the criminal profiling work that helped capture untold bad guys and that spawned even more crime novels and film & television procedurals, starting with The Silence of the Lambs.

[antnield]

Bryan Forbes.

[Feego]

And so another childhood giant is gone. Forbes' The Slipper and the Rose is not great cinema and will never be remembered as one of his best films, but it is still an indelible part of my childhood.

[knives]

Dangit, his films weren't my favorite, but they were always fun which is hard to pull off across any career.

[colinr0380]

Whistle Down The Wind is a beautiful Biblical allegory and perhaps Hayley Mills' greatest film role (the Disney films she did are fine but they lack the gritty edge that this has which helps counter the sentiment), Seance On A Wet Afternoon is also excellent. The L-Shaped Room is a very early film tackling abortion.

Perhaps the most underrated of these early 'social unrealist' films is the fantastic The Whisperers, which features what seems like a slight Repulsion influence as Dame Edith Evans goes steadily more senile and gets abused by her carers over the course of the film. It's kind of the antidote to Coronation Street!

And speaking of 'social unrealist' then there's the wonderful adaptation of The Stepford Wives, which is amazingly 70s, glossy and superficial yet also dark and deeply sad as characters (the women) find out too late that they only thought that they finally gotten control over their lives and households.

Look out for the regular appearances by Forbes' wife, Nanette Newman, throughout his films, although perhaps her most famous appearance is in The Stepford Wives as the lady who wanders through a party declaring beatifically that "I'll just die if I don't get that recipe"! (I often think that the later Fairy Liquid adverts that Newman did, in which she waxes lyrical about its wonderful cleaning properties, were a sly call back to that scene!)

[Antares]

Jeanne Cooper

[dadaistnun]

Taylor Mead

[zedz]

Sad news. But as good a reason as any to rewatch The Nude Restaurant.

[gcgiles1dollarbin]

Sorry to hear about Taylor Mead. I love that scene in Coffee and Cigarettes where he's drinking coffee at the Armory with Bill Rice and imagines hearing a Mahler symphony.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Rossella Falk