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RIP Frances Sternhagen

She was great in Raising Cain. Her interview scene with the multiple Lithgows was creepy and campy at the same time, and the long tracking shot following her down several flights of stairs is another highlight.

I seem to remember that her character is treated particularly roughly at the end of that tracking sequence in Raising Cain, just as the convenient passing provider of a new wig for the main character(s)! Which may be De Palma's ultimate brutal statement on what should be done with the somewhat over-confident explanatory Psychiatrist characters similar to the one who appears at the end of Hitchcock's Psycho!

I particularly like Sternhagen's role as the tough talking, chain smoking cynical doctor foil to Sean Connery's idealist in a space colony near to Jupiter in the Peter Hyams sci-fi remake of High Noon, Outland. Weirdly coincidentally the Cartoonist Kayfabe channel tackled the comic book adaptation in Heavy Metal just today!

Sternhagen is terrific in a pair of Stephen King adaptations, Misery and The Mist. I have long wanted to listen to her audiobook recording of Dolores Claiborne. She will be greatly missed.

I totally forgot she was in The Mist which I had watched only last week when the 4k & BD bundle arrived!

Scott “Top Ten” Kempner, the Bronx-born guitarist, songwriter and band leader, passed away today at a nursing home in Connecticut at the age of 69. The cause of death was complications related to early onset dementia.

Love The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!, he went on to form a fine, heartfelt roots-rock band called the Del-Lords and recorded some acclaimed solo albums on his own.

Billy O'Riodan (a.k.a. Joylene Thornbird Hairmouth), 67, singer and keyboard player for the Australian cabaret/punk band Jimmy and the Boys. He was also a fighter for gay rights and ran for the Senate in 1980: https://eveyoga.com/2023/11/26/rip-bill ... -23-11-23/

Sadly received virtually no coverage in the mainstream Australian media.

Shane MacGowan - the Pogues, the Popes and Straight to Hell (film).

Will be playing all of Hell's Ditch and "Haunted" (his duet with Sinead) in his honor.

Not entirely unexpected, given his ongoing health issues, but this one's a heartbreaker for me.

Along with New Order and The Feelies, The Pogues are a band that changed my life and how I appreciated/absorbed culture. I managed to see them at Toronto's Masonic Temple in 1989 for the Peace & Love tour. One of the absolute greatest shows of my life, and Shane, it could be argued, one of the greatest songwriters.

Finding The Pogues at the end of the 80s and at the cusp of adolescence was life-changing. Even knowing he was in bad helath, I’m hit hard by this one.

I just love that their most famous Christmas song is probably classified as a form of hate speech now!

The Pogues of course are one of a number of musical figures who appear throughout Alex Cox's wonkily bizarre take on the spaghetti western, 1987's Straight To Hell.

colinr0380 wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2023 4:59 pm I just love that their most famous Christmas song is probably classified as a form of hate speech now!

Amusingly, they authorised a less homophobic version, about which professional arsehole Laurence Fox complained, and their reply was one of the greatest tweets ever (albeit slightly stymied now by the fact that Fox deleted the tweet that they were replying to).

colinr0380 wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2023 4:59 pm I just love that their most famous Christmas song is probably classified as a form of hate speech now!

The Pogues of course are one of a number of musical figures who appear throughout Alex Cox's wonkily bizarre take on the spaghetti western, 1987's Straight To Hell.

Cox also directed this great video for the Pogues’ “A Pair of Brown Eyes”

I hadn't seen him in a while, so when photos of him starting popping up on social media this past year, it was a grim shock to see him in such a poor state.

Love, love the Pogues. I even tracked down the first Canadian CD pressing of their great EP Poguetry in Motion just to get a decent mastering of the alternate mix of "A Rainy Night in Soho" with the oboe (producer Elvis Costello's preference, and IMHO the better choice) instead of the flugelhorn. I've been playing that EP and Rum Sodomy & the Lash a lot this year - the opening track, Shane's own "The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn," already felt like it had become a tribute to Shane himself.

Kim Soo-yong . One of the last living directors from the golden age of Korean cinema. Vastly prolific with many great films under his belt.

ksmred2 wrote: Mon Dec 04, 2023 4:25 am Kim Soo-yong . One of the last living directors from the golden age of Korean cinema. Vastly prolific with many great films under his belt.

Ten of which are streaming on the Korean Film Archive YouTube channel with English subs.

Canadian filmmaker Charles Officer, director of Nurse.Fighter.Boy among other film and TV projects, age 48

Denny Laine, best known for Wings but best heard on the Moody Blues cover of “Go Now,” their finest moment and his as well IMHO.

Daniel Langlois, National Film Board of Canada artist turned entrepreneur and software developer who founded Softimage, which was a crucial component of many VFX-heavy films. His death is being handled as a potential homicide

Douchebag out.

Howard Stern’s Ralph Cirella has passed away at 58.

Actress Marisa Pavan, 91, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 235715265/

Jane Wodening. (Also known as Jane Brakhage)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/book ... -dead.html

Here's a nice interview with Jane Wodening, covering childhood, love of nature, her story writing.