criterionforum.org

Bruce Sinofsky.

Alan Howard was in The VIPs as mentioned, as was Louis Jourdan, along with Rod Taylor who passed last month. I guess Maggie Smith should be on her best behaviour.

David Rodriguez

Leonard Nimoy

Antares wrote:Leonard Nimoy

He gets his own thread.

This came as a sad surprise: the Russian singer-songwriter Origa back on 17th January at the age of 44. She performed the lyrics to anime films such as the song from the film Princess Arete, but is perhaps best known for the opening sequences of the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series - Inner Universe, which was the title song for the first series, and Rise, which was the title song for the second series (or "2nd Gig") and then the opening and closing numbers to the 2006 film that followed them, Ghost In The Shell: Solid State Society (player and date of rebirth).

Dick Bakalyan.

Orrin Keepnews, legendary jazz producer and writer, co-founder of Riverside and Milestone Records. Anagramatically immortalized in Bill Evans' 'Re: Person I Knew'.

His name appears on so many classic albums.

Daniel Von Bargen, another infamous "that guy"-- you might know him as Kreuger on Seinfeld, the villain in Lord of Illusions, the Faculty, and many others

Along with James Rebhorn I remember him popping up in everything (at least it seemed that way) in the 90's and I always thought he was great in anything he was in. He also played that hard edged thing he had going for him to great comic effect in Seinfeld and Malcolm in the Middle. Looking up his filmography I was sad to see he hadn't done anything since 2009, though I'm guessing by choice.

I had thought he passed away after his suicide attempt in 2012. I didn't realize he survived. He'd previously had a leg amputated due to diabetes; don't know if he chose to stop acting or he stopped getting hired. Sad; I especially loved him as Mr. Kruger on Seinfeld. "I'm not too worried about it" & "K-uger" have become frequent parts of my lexicon.

Harve Bennett.

Criterion's Facebook just posted that Albert Maysles passed away last night.

He was incredibly kind and generous. Very sad.

Dean Hess, the guy Rock Hudson played in Sirk's Battle Hymn.

Sam Simon

Fantastic piece on Simon and his final years from Vanity Fair in October that serves as an incredibly valuable extended obituary and tribute

The Maron interview he did in 2013 was also fantastic. His resigned sense of humor about his inevitable death, as well as the skeptics of his philanthropy, had a strange, joyful power to it.

If what Simpsons obsessives say is true—that the show's golden age is effectively Simon's creation—then I have to say that he brought a hell of a lot of happiness into my life. I hope he knew how cherished his life and work were.

I always got the impression from everything I've read that it was Simon who was responsible for holding the show to a very high standard, trying to elevate it from an adaptation of Groening's more mundane comic strip, sort of homespun sensibility (coupled with Brooks' somewhat more complex love of more sentimental and sincere storytelling) into something that had a satirical edge and brought out a third dimension and a 'world' beyond the main characters of the show. He's also responsible for insisting that the cast read their lines in the same room as one another (which is something that's noticeably flawed about the show once this was abandoned in order to keep the main cast aboard later on). Episodes like "Black Widower" and "Homer at the Bat" only happened because Simon pushed for them, and Groening in particular was always frustrated with the idea of doing high concept stuff like that and getting away from core, gag-filled family stories. Simon later credited Groening for the "positivity" of the show. It sounds like it really did rely upon just the right balancing act, and Simon was the one thinking the farthest outside the box.

Comics great Yoshihiro Tatsumi

https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/blog/ ... ro-tatsumi" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.paulgravett.com/site/pg_blog ... rch_7_2015" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Odd that no mainstream English sources have picked up on this yet.

mfunk9786 wrote:Sam Simon

He co-wrote many of the final episodes of what is probably my favorite sitcom of all time Taxi, including the one about Alex and his dying dog.

mfunk9786 wrote:I always got the impression from everything I've read that it was Simon who was responsible for holding the show to a very high standard, trying to elevate it from an adaptation of Groening's more mundane comic strip, sort of homespun sensibility (coupled with Brooks' somewhat more complex love of more sentimental and sincere storytelling) into something that had a satirical edge...

No idea what you're talking about here... The Simpsons is not an "adaptation" of anything, least of all Groening's Life In Hell strips. Nor was that strip mundane or less edgy than the show, dealing as it did with subjects (homosexuality, suicide, etc.) twenty years or more before the show ever did (if it did at all).

However, if Simon was in any way responsible for "Lisa's Substitute" then he has my thanks for the only good television episode of the last 25 years.