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What a terrible shame. One of those things that you always expected to happen, a la Elliott Smith, but it doesn't leave any better of a feeling in your gut about it.

What a shock. I was just watching his tribute to Benjamin on the Benjamin Smoke DVD last night...

UPDATE: "Vic Chesnutt, singer, dies"

Roland S. Howard, RIP.

One of the more influential guitarists and songwriters of his time lost his battle with cancer today, aged 50. He can be seen in a couple of films, most notably in Wender's Wings of Desire, playing with his beloved cohorts in Crime and the City Solution. Other bands included The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party and These Immortal Souls.

Zelda Rubenstein dying.

david hare wrote:George, hasn't the "Marnie" statement become an axiom of cinephilia, even if too many people misread it as a form of exclusivism?

David,
Yes, I'm sure you are right. Though it is meant as a provocation, I think it is also a sincere statement. Substitute VERTIGO or REAR WINDOW for MARNIE and far fewer people, if any, would wonder at what he could have meant. Yet, I think that MARNIE, like the other two films functions as a self-reflexive statement about the nature of cinema, spectatorship, voyuerism, and art generally. Wood's lifelong appreciation of MARNIE as a major work of Hitchcock's always led me to hope that he would write about it more extensively. (A few years ago, Richard Dyer, whom I had the great pleasure of getting to know slightly while he guest lectured at NYU, mentioned that he thought Wood might be working on a monograph for the BFI series.) I would assert that MARNIE is both more complex in its formal strategies than the two earlier films, if arguably less successful in this regard, and more challenging (little argument on this point unless one dismisses the film altogether). In fact, I've always imagined that part of the pleasure for Hitchcock, in making MARNIE, was constructing a film that sought to frustrate and challenge all of the strategies of visual pleasure developed by the cinema to that point and return to something more fundamental with regard to the relationship between the subject and the object; what I tend to think of as the trompe l'oeil effect, wherein the viewer understands and fully accepts the illusionistic nature of the work, something that the realism(s) of classical and contemporary cinema continue to move further and further away from (CGI anyone?); something that needs little or no contextualizing to grasp when discussing painting, music, literature, etc.

This no doubt seems a bit of a muddle here; perhaps, now, I must write it all out, because I continue to see MARNIE as Hitchcock's supreme statement on the nature of cinema, art and life.

In Africa, in Kenya, there’s quite a beautiful flower. It’s coral colored with little green-tipped blossoms, rather like hyacinth.
If you reach out to touch it, you discover that the flower was not a flower at all, but a design made up of hundreds of tiny insects called fatid bugs.
Now, they escape the eyes of hungry birds by living and dying in the shape of a flower. -Mark Rutland, MARNIE

Marnie and Gertrud are easily available.

I am not that familiar with the late or last movies of major 'Golden-era' American directors like Billy Wilder, but maybe you have to reach a certain age in your life to appreciate them. You will have seen all their 'major' films many times by then and reached a certain kind of awareness.

Artie Lange, possibly

Derek says:
January 3, 2010 at 8:22 am

Buddy on Hoboken amb squad said that he drank bleach, and had tried to commit suicide. I know that sounds outlandish, but person it came from is not one to sensationalize. He really didn’t even know who he was, so far as his celebrity is concerned. He just knew I was a fan of show. Said call involved self inflicted wounds on wrists and torso, and purposeful ingestion of bleach. Also let me know it did not look like the wounds were bad enough to be fatal. But could not speak for what was going on internally. I know it sounds out there. But I got this phone call a full hour before any news broke. I hope that guy can reel it in. He is a great talent. I wish him the best.

Iván Zulueta

A great, unerappreciated director. I just recently watched his Arrebato and several of his shorts. The utterly hypnotic A Mal Gam A (1976) is epecially interesting; I was struck by how many images and sounds it shared with Lynch's work, particularly Eraserhead and INLAND EMPIRE: muffled soundtrack, needle on spinning record, a tree's leaves undulating in slow motion, decaying images of starlets, etc.

Donal Donnelly has died. He'll probably be best remembered around here for his role as Freddie Mallins in John Huston's The Dead.

Critic and filmmaker Ron Holloway, one of the few native English-speaking experts in eastern European cinema. He's probably best known round these parts for his Paradjanov documentary, the major extra on Kino's The Color of Pomegranates.

I had no idea Lhasa was battling cancer - what a shock! The music community has taken too many blows lately...

Caligula wrote:Donal Donnelly has died. He'll probably be best remembered around here for his role as Freddie Mallins in John Huston's The Dead.

Sad to hear this...I was able to see him on Broadway in two Brian Friel plays, Dancing at Lughnasa and Translations.

Michael Dwyer film critic/correspondent of The Irish Times & founder Dublin Film Festival... Daniel Day Lewis gave the eulogy at the funeral...

knives wrote:Music producer William Mitchell.

Aw, shit. Calling him William (who are you, his mother?) meant this didn't sink in at first. He's responsible for some of the greatest music of the 70s.

This slice of perfection seems about the most appropriate tribute.

I just don't like how Willie looks. I know how absolutely important he is to not just Al Green, but that whole, I'm not sure what the appropriate name is, sound.

Albert Green, surely?

Aljoscha Zimmermann, accompanist and composer of scores for many German silent films like Dr. Mabuse or Oyster Princess died aged 65. A major presence on the silent film circuit and a great loss.

WOW... that was totally unexpected, eh? He also did the Transit/FWMS edition of Der Golem, which I think was the first time I'd heard him.

I do think his Mabuse one of his best. Many Americans don't get the chance to hear much of his work broadcast on Arte that never makes it to DVD. I don't know if it's Der Rosenkevalier or Mr West In The Land of the Bolsh..., but I recall a very good score from him on that front.

Certainly enjoyed his work far more than Donald "Nyquil PM" Sosin.

RIP.