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Good bye. Nothing to make you think about your own mortality like the death of a prominent atheist thinker. Now, I'm depressed.

This is really sad news to wake up to. Like many of you, I really loved his debates on religion. Today we lost one of the good ones.

Singer Cesária Évora

Václav Havel - only a few months after his film directing debut, though of course his wider cultural influence on his native country is pretty much incalculable.

MichaelB wrote:Václav Havel

Rather sad. I'll remember him best for Citizen Vaclav Havel goes on vacation

MichaelB wrote:Václav Havel - only a few months after his film directing debut, though of course his wider cultural influence on his native country is pretty much incalculable.

Havel and Masaryk tower over the Czech twentieth century. Havel was flawed man (who isn't?), but an utterly remarkable man, too. He's pretty much the opposite of every politician we have in the US.

I imagine the state funeral will draw crowds that rival even the legendary turnout for Masaryk's funeral.

During some interviews on the BBC News earlier there was some discussion of the way that Havel was on 'shakier ground in the modern era of realpolitik'. I think that they meant it as a criticism but it actually seemed like quite a compliment!

Have I just been 'rick-rolled'?

Edit: Legit news source

Expect war anytime.

Who's going to look at things now?

And now maybe a 27(?) years old dictator will help the country go over the communist-bloc synth disco it's stuck in.

At least Havel's safe from ever being visited by Norman Podhoretz again.

Saturnome wrote:Who's going to look at things now?

Kim Jong-Un.

And now maybe a 27(?) years old dictator will help the country go over the communist-bloc synth disco it's stuck in.

Or maybe not. Since China has a very strong interest in North Korea remaining as a functioning entity (since they neither want a flood of refugees over the border or a unified and US-backed Seoul-run Korea), the chances are very strong indeed that next to nothing will happen.

I remember when Kim Jong-Il took over in 1994, to the same speculation about reform. If anything, he's been far worse than his father.

Obviously, I've rarely been keener to be proved wrong, but pessimism would seem to be the sensible reaction for now.

I meant the actual music if I wasn't clear. I don't think anything else will happen. Except spend whatever 2$ is left in their bank for some gigantic funerals.

Come on everyone, lets get to the real issues - what might become of his reputedly enormous collection of films?

Sky News had a rather effective bit of editing - they showed the puppet Kim Jong-Il singing "I'm so ronery" for just long enough for us to have a good laugh, and then cut to visibly starving North Korean children. Which made the point that he really wasn't that funny better than any number of finger-wagging verbal lectures.

That said, I'd have preferred it if my six-year-old daughter hadn't been in the room at the time.

Farewell Kim Jong-il, cinematic icon from The Guardian

Wait, which Kardashian was he married to again?

There's more to Kim Jong-Il's cinema connection than his huge video collection. He also had one of South Korea's major directors kidnapped, so that he could make films that would earn North Korea glory. Here's an excerpt from one of the movies he made there, before escaping his handlers in Europe.

The greatest director of the past thirty years -- Morita Yoshimitsu -- has died at age 61.

I was surprised at how young Morita was -- I always assumed he was a good bit older than I was....

Only moderately liked his work, but still a very sad thing.

I'm still grieving the loss of Shinji Somai (who died too young over 10 years ago) and Jun Ichikawa (who died too young 3 years ago).