Passages

[EddieLarkin]

Richard Attenborough

[Finch]

RIP Dickie Attenborough - your performances in Brighton Rock and 10 Rillington Place were sensational, and your 1993 film Shadowlands one of the most heartpiercing films I've ever seen, not to mention featuring one of Tony Hopkins' last good performances.

[otis]

He was also terrific in Seance on a Wet Afternoon.

[Movie-Brat]

I was introduced to him thanks to Jurassic Park. Over the years I became aware of the films he was either in or directed like Gandhi and A Bridge Too Far to name a few. I did see Chaplin when I was either 11 or 12. Thing is, that was purely out of chance. Basically I wanted to see some Charlie Chaplin films and probably at the suggestion of a friend of my mother's, I basically rented Chaplin instead and I didn't even get bored. I watched it all the through with no problem.

I also saw him in Miracle on 34th Street, the 90's remake and whether you like the movie or not, I found him to be one of the best actors for the role of St. Nick. I thought he had the charm and warmth required for the line. He played it with such dignity. I did also see, at least parts of Magic at 13 on AMC. I didn't know what to think of it as it seemed different from the Horror films I was watching at the time like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Friday the 13th.

[colinr0380]

Gandhi was one of those films along with Schindler's List that it was compulsory for us to watch in R.E. lessons at school, so I remember well sitting in the classroom watching it (and that lesson of packing the painfully well meaning British friend off on a train to say that independence was an 'Indian fight' is something that many political films of recent decades which mainly focus on a white audience identification figure - a journalist or so on - could learn from). Then decades later (only a few years ago) I somehow convinced my conservative dad, still grumbling about Gandhi being a violent terrorist and blaming him for Partition, to watch it. Which ended up with him fascinated by Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence. Although he did then end up transferring his annoyance at the failures of post-independence Partition onto Nehru and Jinnah, who Attenborough's film seems to suggest failed to properly pick up on Gandhi's legacy, instead sullied it somewhat with opportunism.

As Finch said, he pulled some great performances out of Anthony Hopkins. You couldn't get a wider range than Magic and Shadowlands!

In terms of acting he was often in 'working class made good' roles but was unafraid to twist that kind of role into darker and more dangerous areas. With the Boulting Brothers - for John Boulting the magnificent defining role as a spiv in Brighton Rock but also The Magic Box (about the life of early filmmaker William Friese-Greene) and comedies about army life, Private's Progress, and unions in I'm All Right Jack; and for his brother Roy Boulting the lawyer comedy Brothers In Law and social class drama The Guinea Pig.

Then there are the Basil Dearden films (in Criterion's Eclipse set): The League of Gentleman (working class heist film) and All Night Long (Jazz version of Othello)

Then there were all the war films: from cowardly stoker in In Which We Serve to cowardly submariner in Morning Departure to grumpy seaman in The Gift Horse. To heroically manning a boat to rescue stranded soldiers from Dunkirk. In terms of his early 60s roles in big Hollywood war films, I particularly liked him as part of the ensemble cast of Robert Aldritch's The Flight of the Phoenix. And he is magnificent in a rare lead role in Guns At Batasi.

And these roles eventually went quite dark and despairing, as in Seance on a Wet Afternoon and the magnificent 10 Rillington Place. And we shouldn't forget his one role in a Satyajit Ray film, The Chess Players, years before he explored India further in Gandhi.

So it was kind of wonderful that after all that acting 'darkness' he remerged in the early 90s as a wonderful 'fatherly' (yet often just as flawed) figure in Jurassic Park and Miracle On 34th Street and the ineffectual Sir William Cecil in Elizabeth. I would also throw in the perfect late role as "The Old Gentleman" on the train in the mid-2000s adaptation of The Railway Children (also the adaptation in which Jenny Agutter returned to the material, this time as Mother rather than as the lead girl Bobbie she had played in the 1970 film).

[Ovader]

William Greaves

[GaryC]

Bill Kerr, at the age of 92.

This BBC obituary understandably emphasises his work with Tony Hancock, but I will always remember him from his part in this dialogue exchange:

”What are your legs?”
“Steel springs.”
“What are they going to do?”
“Hurl me down the track.”
“How fast can you run?”
“As fast as a leopard?”
“How fast are you going to run?”
“As fast as a leopard!”
“Now let’s see you do it!”

(First speaker is Kerr, the second Mark Lee.)

[colinr0380]

He was great in Vincent Ward's Vigil too.

And he's also in one of the funniest scenes in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum as the trainee gladiator!

[MichaelB]

Michael Kustow, Channel 4's first commissioning editor for the arts (i.e. the golden age of the 1980s, when it's now quite hard to believe in retrospect what C4 routinely showed.)

[flyonthewall2983]

Jimi Jamison, lead singer of Survivor who didn't sing on "Eye Of The Tiger" but the slightly-less remembered but just as good "Burning Heart" from Rocky IV.

[pet42]

Gottfried John, known e.g. as bad guy in GoldenEye and from a lot of Fassbinder movies.

[MichaelB]

Gottfried John, known e.g. as bad guy in GoldenEye and from a lot of Fassbinder movies.

Not to mention both Quay Brothers features.

[colinr0380]

And Julius Caesar in the live action version of Asterix and Obelix Take On Caesar!

[antnield]

Andrew V. McLaglen.

[domino harvey]

Wow, I had no idea he was still alive

[Perkins Cobb]

Thought I posted this yesterday, but I guess not: Patrick Lung Kong, who was present at a retrospective of his work in NYC, like, two weeks ago. The films are criminally under-available; Museum of the Moving Image was stuck with Digibetas for most of them.

[antnield]

Donatas Banionis, best known for playing the lead in Tarkovsky's Solaris.

[LQ]

Joan Rivers

[bearcuborg]

Her only directorial movie (Rabbit Test) isn't very good, but it does have several jokes at nearly everyone's expense that are very funny.

I loved her, and her fashion review of any awards show was always entertaining. I'll miss her.

[domino harvey]

Rivers (and her daughter, for that matter) will always have a part in my heart for all those ultra-catty Awards pre-shows from E! Her comments in the wrap-up specials were always the worst/the best

[Drucker]

My wife loves(d) Fashion Police, which was honestly my first exposure to her. Now that I know more about her, I think she's pretty great and obviously an important icon. That said, her jokes on FP were terrible and always had the exact same delivery, which always annoyed me. Still, it's sad to see a Hollywood legend from that generation gone.

[oh yeah]

Donatas Banionis, best known for playing the lead in Tarkovsky's Solaris.

Never saw him in anything else, but he did a marvelous job in portraying the grief of Kris Kelvin... as much as people may downplay the importance of the human element in Tarkovsky, I've always found Solaris (maybe my favorite of his films) a deeply emotional and perhaps even humanist film, which leaves me quite shaken for some time after viewing.

[Feego]

It will be interesting to see if the Academy includes Rivers in their In Memoriam next year. She didn't have a very significant film career (mostly small roles, voice work and cameos -- including a rare non-comedic role in Frank Perry's The Swimmer), but for many years she has been an integral part of the Oscar experience.

[Highway 61]

My wife loves(d) Fashion Police, which was honestly my first exposure to her. Now that I know more about her, I think she's pretty great and obviously an important icon. That said, her jokes on FP were terrible and always had the exact same delivery, which always annoyed me. Still, it's sad to see a Hollywood legend from that generation gone.

Respectfully disagree. Rivers was as irreverent and as sharp as ever. She single-handedly elevated a show that was pure trash. And in a weird way the blend of TMZ superficiality and irreverent, profane comedy made for a show that was incredibly effective at bringing people together—at least in my family. FP was a show that helped me bond with my mother, as corny as that sounds.

Regardless, between FP, the bio-documentary, and a series of great Stern interviews, she had a solid late-career resurgence, and I'm glad that she got to enjoy that before she died.

[domino harvey]

Plus she pissed off self-righteous Tumblr idiots who claim to be for social justice but mostly seem to just be on constant stakeout for things to express indulgent outrage over, so for that alone she deserves our praise

EDIT: And here's some tweeting celebs with a good sense of humor about themselves with praise for Rivers