Passages

[colinr0380]

I'm just left wondering what making your film debut in Norman Mailer's Maidstone does to your idea of filmmaking!

[JSC]

I'm just left wondering what making your film debut in Norman Mailer's Maidstone does to your idea of filmmaking!

I guess it depends on whether your first day of filming was the day that...

Spoiler

...Rip Torn attempts to smash in the skull of the director with a hammer.

[FrauBlucher]

Ace Frehley from Kiss

[hearthesilence]

I never got into Kiss, but I can't deny quite a few of my favorite bands have enjoyed their music enough to either cover them (Nirvana and more memorably the Replacements covering "Black Diamond" on Let It Be) or name check them in song (Wilco on "Heavy Metal Drummer" on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). Both the 'Mats and the Wilco albums are not only my favorites from those bands, they're among my absolute favorites, period - two of the greatest rock albums ever to come out of the Midwest.

[Lemmy Caution]

Yuriy Tarnawsky, Founder of New York Group of Poets, Dies at 91
A seminal figure in Ukrainian literature during the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries, Tarnawsky was hailed as Ukraine’s foremost literary innovator.

[flyonthewall2983]

Ace Frehley from Kiss

Maybe the most talented of the original four, and the only one with a solo hit “New York Groove”

[Matt]

Samantha Eggar (d. October 15, 2025) discussion moved here

[GaryC]

Rather late news, as he died on 18 August, but this obituary is from last week: John Russell Taylor, film critic, writing for The Times from the late 1950s, also the Monthly Film Bulletin and Sight & Sound, aged 90. He wrote books on Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Alec Guinness, Vivien Leigh and Ingrid Bergman. He was also a theatre critic, and his book Anger and After (1962) was one of the earliest accounts of the British theatrical new wave or "Angry Young Men" (and one woman, Shelagh Delaney).

With his passing, there's likely only one of his generation of British critics left, born before World War II. That's David Robinson, who is still with us at 95.

[MichaelB]

I saw David Robinson on screen only the other day, courtesy of his unexpected cameo (complete with dialogue!) in István Szabó's Mephisto.

(Robinson was none too impressed with his own performance, I seem to recall.)

And I'm inevitably racking my brains trying to think of someone else, but I think you're right - certainly, all the big names like Philip French, Derek Malcolm, Tom Milne, Alexander Walker et al are all gone, and the older generation now is more likely to be represented by Tony Rayns (b. 1948). 35 years ago, a significant part of my job involved having to suck up to all these people in an attempt to get favourable coverage on a marketing budget of nothing.

[GaryC]

And I'm inevitably racking my brains trying to think of someone else, but I think you're right - certainly, all the big names like Philip French, Derek Malcolm, Tom Milne, Alexander Walker et al are all gone, and the older generation now is more likely to be represented by Tony Rayns (b. 1948). 35 years ago, a significant part of my job involved having to suck up to all these people in an attempt to get favourable coverage on a marketing budget of nothing.

Nigel Andrews is another post-War baby, born 1947, though I'm unsure how active he is as a critic these days. I don't know how old Alan Jones is, but I think he was born late 1940s to early 1950s. All men, as the women of that generation that I can think of are long departed.

[MichaelB]

Geoff Brown is another one who's still around – he was David Robinson's successor at The Times circa 1991 when Robinson resigned in protest at an editorial policy that required him to lead on the big Hollywood film even if there were far more interesting and worthwhile films opening on the same day – but I don't know how old he is. Definitely younger, possibly postwar younger.

[GaryC]

Geoff Brown is another one who's still around – he was David Robinson's successor at The Times circa 1991 when Robinson resigned in protest at an editorial policy that required him to lead on the big Hollywood film even if there were far more interesting and worthwhile films opening on the same day – but I don't know how old he is. Definitely younger, possibly postwar younger.

And like Alan Jones someone hard to look up in places like FreeBMD, and they'd only be on there if their births were registered in England or Wales.

I left out David McGillivray (born 1947). I also don't know how old Richard Combs is, but he was writing for the MFB from 1969. Peter Cowie just misses the pre-WW2 cut-off, as he was born in December 1939.

ETA: I've found another one - Eric Rhode, a MFB contributor in the late 50s/early 60s, born 1934 and still alive.

ETA2: I'll keep this to this post to avoid cluttering up the thread, but David Quinlan seems to be still with us, apparently born in 1942.

[fdm]

Sam Rivers, Limp Bizkit bassist.

[cantinflas]

Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky

[zedz]

Klaus Doldinger, German jazz great and regular film composer (probably best known for Das Boot). I spent a very enjoyable evening with him once when he introduced a screening of the film. We had a lovely dinner while he regaled us with great stories. Driving him back to his hotel, I had one of the Miles Davis Bootleg Series discs on in the car, and he immediately recognized Wayne Shorter's playing, even though he didn't know the recording, so the conversation took a welcome detour into jazz nerd territory (Wayne sleeping on Klaus's floor on his first trip to Europe, Klaus supporting Miles when he played at Antibes . . . )

[Yakushima]

Klaus Doldinger, German jazz great and regular film composer (probably best known for Das Boot). I spent a very enjoyable evening with him once when he introduced a screening of the film. We had a lovely dinner while he regaled us with great stories. Driving him back to his hotel, I had one of the Miles Davis Bootleg Series discs on in the car, and he immediately recognized Wayne Shorter's playing, even though he didn't know the recording, so the conversation took a welcome detour into jazz nerd territory (Wayne sleeping on Klaus's floor on his first trip to Europe, Klaus supporting Miles when he played at Antibes . . . )

Thank you for sharing this, Zedz. Both his Das Boot and The Neverending Story scores were so memorable. R.I.P.

[pistolwink]

Geoff Brown is another one who's still around – he was David Robinson's successor at The Times circa 1991 when Robinson resigned in protest at an editorial policy that required him to lead on the big Hollywood film even if there were far more interesting and worthwhile films opening on the same day – but I don't know how old he is. Definitely younger, possibly postwar younger.

On that note, does anyone know how David Robinson is doing? He's well up into his nineties at this point. I recall reading some things he'd written as recently as five or so years ago. A very nice man in my recollection.

[GaryC]

On that note, does anyone know how David Robinson is doing? He's well up into his nineties at this point. I recall reading some things he'd written as recently as five or so years ago. A very nice man in my recollection.

I wasn't there, but he was at the Le Gionarte de Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone (Italy) earlier this month, as they had a Chaplin strand. He's 95.

[Fiery Angel]

Ace Frehley from Kiss

Maybe the most talented of the original four, and the only one with a solo hit “New York Groove”

I'll never forget Lester Bangs' review in Creem magazine of the '78 Ace Frehley solo album that "New York Groove" was on. He loved it, calling "Rip It Out" the best punk song ever and saying how good Frehley was unshackled from the other three. Then, the last line of his review: "Of course the lyrics suck. Who in the world cares?"

[Lemmy Caution]

Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky

I didn't realize it was a young guy. Just 29. Became a grandmaster at 18.
I sometimes follow Anna Cramling who is 23, and from her vids have gotten to know Levy Rozman aka Gotham Chess (30), the Botez sisters (30 & 23), in that young generation of chess players, teachers, youtube content creators. I'm sure they all knew Noriditsky well.

This year I started playing on chess.com.
And I've learned a good deal, make fewer blunders, have developed a pretty fair endgame, etc. One interesting aspect is you start off at 800 rating. And a lot of folks in the 800's play really well and it's a struggle to not get crushed. But then the 900's -1100 folks are just okay. My theory is that there aren't many folks with a rating in the 800's, so you're mostly playing new joiners who unsurprisingly have some chess background/ability and will likely settle into the 1500+ range. But then when you play opposition in the 1000 range, that's often their real rating level. So oddly 900 - 1100 opponents are easier than playing folks in the 800's. If that makes sense ...

[Matt]

Dave Ball of Soft Cell and The Grid

[captveg]

Ace Frehley from Kiss

Maybe the most talented of the original four, and the only one with a solo hit “New York Groove”

I'll never forget Lester Bangs' review in Creem magazine of the '78 Ace Frehley solo album that "New York Groove" was on. He loved it, calling "Rip It Out" the best punk song ever and saying how good Frehley was unshackled from the other three. Then, the last line of his review: "Of course the lyrics suck. Who in the world cares?"

It's the best of those four solo albums.

[Never Cursed]

Centenarian June Lockhart. She worked between 1938 and 2021, unbelievable

[GaryC]

Actor, writer and disability rights advocate Nabil Shaban, aged 72.

[Gregory]

Björn Andrésen, 70, who was an icon as Tadzio in Visconti's Death in Venice.

It's tragic how many people get such a difficult start in life: he was abandoned by his mother at an early age, never knew who his father was, and was raised by a grandmother who was a complete stage-mother. Despite that family background, a documentary about his life released a few years ago, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, claims that it was specifically the fame that followed Death in Venice that ruined Andrésen's life.

The film doesn’t move in strict chronological order. Instead, Lindström and Petri follow Andrésen over five years as he struggles with his life today and returns to the key locations in his career....The first act cuts between memories of his work on Death in Venice...and the struggle to avoid eviction from his apartment. He travels to Japan, where his performance as Tadzio made him the first Western star to become a teen idol there; then to France, where he was kept for a year by a series of men who simply wanted to be seen with him in public.

(source)