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MichaelB wrote:I just broke the news to my wife as "that bald bloke who was in virtually every Australian film ever made has died".

Not only did she know exactly who I meant, but she immediately launched into an impression of Muriel's dad.

Not to mention Terence Stamp's love interest in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert! Or the Major from Gallipoli (My mum similarly didn't immediately recognise his name but apparently remembers him from Strictly Ballroom!)

And the Criterion connection here is that he was also in Stephen Frears's The Hit - the chap that the hit men steal Laura del Sol from at the beginning of the film.

Lovely obit of Bill Hunter in today's Independent:

His real break into the industry came as a stunt man when Hollywood made On the Beach in his hometown of Melbourne in 1959 - a movie about survivors of a nuclear war that starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire.

"He watched Gregory Peck do 27 takes and thought: 'A mug could do that'," Hunter's former wife Rhoda Roberts told Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper last week.

Hunter summed up his own approach to acting during a recent interview to promote his upcoming movie, The Cup.

"As long as the director told me where to stand and what to say, I was happy. Anyone who says there is any more to it than that is full of (expletive)," Hunter said in a quote released by his manager.

Hunter had a small role in last year's Hitchcockian crime film The Square, and got to unleash his uniquely terrifying rage in one scene near the end. Worth it just for that.

Joseph Brooks, the man behind the film and song "You Light Up My Life." Apparently, his other notable endeavors were not so innocent.

ambrose wrote:Hiroyuki Nagato.
Season of the Sun.

Don't forget "Pigs and Battleships", "Insect Woman" for Criterion selections

manicsounds wrote:

ambrose wrote:Hiroyuki Nagato.
Season of the Sun.

Don't forget "Pigs and Battleships", "Insect Woman" for Criterion selections

TORONTO J-FILM POW-WOW.

Huguette M. Clark
I hope she was a cinephile and left all her money to restoration projects.

perkizitore wrote:Huguette M. Clark
I hope she was a cinephile and left all her money to restoration projects.

Excuse my ignorance, but what was her relationship with cinema?

This was meant to be a joke, Duncan...

Oh, OK. A tremendous one, I'm sure.

perkizitore wrote:Huguette M. Clark
I hope she was a cinephile and left all her money to restoration projects.

Someone who apparently spent much of her time watching TV cartoons doesn't strike me as an obvious candidate. Still, I suppose Hanna-Barbera's back catalogue is as much in need of restoration as anything else.

Scottish actress Janet Brown who impersonated Margaret Thatcher in, amongst other things, For Your Eyes Only.

Playwright, TV and film scriptwriter Jeremy Paul.

Producer, film distributor and cinema owner David Stone.

Jeff Conaway.

Sad.
Of course, there's the great The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,
both vicious and hilarious. There's also a lesser known early version with minimal bongo accompaniment. Less successful than the insistent classic version, but an interesting look at its coffee house/spoken poetry roots.

Another gem is Winter in America, which always hits me as a refutation of Reagan's Morning in America, though it's from nearly a decade earlier. I guess I conflate it with his later anti-Reagan politics, and the James Watt/GOP-of-the-day assault on the environment. Winter always feels to me like a bleaker harsher followup to Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me.

And while he is best known for his early work, my favorite Gil Scott-Heron song is Give Her A Call from his 1994 comeback album/Cd Spirits, a wistful wise and weary love song. One of my favorite songs period.
GSH's later life is a testament to the grand pointlessness of Drug Prohibition.

And for those who like GS-H, also worth checking out Oscar Brown Jr. a forerunner of sorts, able to combine humor and politics and jazz. Some recs: Brother Where Are You?; A Dime Away From A Hotdog; Dat Dere; But I Was Cool; etc.

It's a relatively minor thing, but I always loved the appropriately irreverent way that he pronounced Agnew's given name.

Dancer and choreographer Flick Colby, best known for her work on the BBC's Top of the Pops in the 1970s.

Miriam Karlin (Catlady in A Clockwork Orange)

James Arness.

Josephine Hart whose first novel Damage was made into a film by Louis Malle.