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Eastern Sounds and Cry-Tender! are fantastic albums. I had no idea he was still alive, but will certainly put those on when I get home.

'Booty Call' Director Jeffrey Pollack Dies at 54 (actual headline)

Marta Eggerth at 101 (German)

Wojciech Kilar, hugely prolific Polish composer probably best known internationally for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

John Fortune.

antnield wrote:John Fortune.

Interesting to see that he turned up in Woody Allen's Match Point. He's most famous for playing in the deluded (veering into the blithely offensive as he twists himself into convoluted arguments) politician sketches teamed up with John Bird on the Rory Bremner shows. They're kind of the political equivalents to the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketches, especially when they start trying to make each other laugh!

Bird and Fortune were also inspired casting in the roles of the Painter and Poet, exploiting their patron for all he's worth, in the BBC Shakespeare adaptation of Timon of Athens!

colinr0380 wrote:Bird and Fortune were also inspired casting in the roles of the Painter and Poet, exploiting their patron for all he's worth, in the BBC Shakespeare adaptation of Timon of Athens!

Given that Jonathan Miller was the director, it might not have been so much inspired casting as an old mates' reunion - all three went back a very long way even then.

James Avery aka Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Also the voice of Shredder on the 80s Turtles show!

Lidiya Vertinskaya

Well, meow.
Interestingly, she was born in Harbin, China when that was one of the major Russian outposts in northeastern China. 1923, so it's likely that her family was part of the large number of White Russians who fled there after the Communist victory. Though there were tens of thousands of Russians in Harbin prior to 1923, so her family could have been there earlier (prior to 1917).

Juanita Moore.

jindianajonz wrote:Reserving a spot for Ariel Sharon

...although in his case it won't make any real difference if he died in 2014 or back in 2006, except to the hospital keeping him alive.

jindianajonz wrote:Reserving a spot for Ariel Sharon

Shouldn't that go in the "Infighting and Navel Gazing" thread?

domino harvey wrote:James Avery aka Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

The only other thing I remember him from is The Brady Bunch Movie, I even remember one of his lines ("they don't even have a bathroom") despite having not seen it for a long time. The show was quite goofy, but he definitely seemed to be the glue that held it together.

I was going to mention that as well! It is only a very small role but I've always enjoyed his priceless double-take reaction to the line at the end of the film as Mr Brady is trying to foster a sense of community togetherness and looking out for each other by describing how it is common knowledge that his wife regularly parades naked in front of her windows at a specific time of day!

These days it is much more common to see The Brady Bunch Movie on UK television than The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but I fondly remember how through much of the 90s (really until they belatedly picked up The Simpsons in 1996) that BBC2 always used to run an episode on weeknights at 6 p.m.!

I also remember that whilst doing a bit of work experience at the BBC Oxford Road studios in the early 2000s and given the grimy task of rooting through piles of dusty archives that there seemed to be a surprisingly large number (row after row!) of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air tapes in their archives! (I guess that they may have disappeared since then now that the BBC has moved premises to Salford, with the original Oxford Road site demolished and turned into a car park)

Something Weird founder Mike Vraney, of cancer at 56, according to Tim Lucas on Facebook.

Kay Mander.

Gutted at the news of Mike Vraneys passing. Something Weird is/was a superb label, offering a window into a hidden slipstream of cinema that was virtually unknown to me then (19 years old when I brought the superb Beauties & Beasties box-set), but one that now feels as familiar to me as anything I was taught at film school. I own a ridiculous amount of SWV titles, with a good few still unwatched, but the amount of love and enthusiasm that went into each release is always evident (watched Monsters Crashed the Pyjama Party before Xmas and that release is a pure labor of love, a nostalgic and pretty innovative attempt to redefine the potential of the DVD format). I'll always be grateful for Vraney for introducing me to this flipside of American cinema; Wishman, Mahon, Milligan, Lewis, Freidman, Friedel etc.My thoughts are with his family.

It's terrible news. I hope that he made arrangements for stewardship of all the rare materials he owned.