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Posted: **Mon May 03, 2021 8:59 pm**

MichaelB wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 8:48 pm Belgian cinematographer Willy Kurant, whose filmography includes work for Godard (Masculin Féminin), Alain Robbe-Grillet (Trans-Europe Express), Jerzy Skolimowski (Le Départ), Orson Welles (the abandoned The Deep and The Immortal Story) and Maurice Pialat (Under Satan's Sun, which won him a César).

You are excluding the immortal Pootie Tang from this list of his most notable achievements.

It is interesting that Pialat fired him from A Nos Amours, and presumably none of his work is in the final film, and yet they were able to work together again.
I hope he was able to see the Munich Filmmuseum's workprint of The Deep and give insights into how it would have been colour timed.

Posted: **Tue May 04, 2021 6:57 am**

Kurant was also the cinematographer for the 1970s horror (and classic MST3K riffed film) The Incredible Melting Man, as well as 1995's 'what if racism, but opposite?' film White Man's Burden with John Travolta and Harry Belafonte. As well as the most disturbing tale of cliques and female infighting with The Baby-sitter's Club!

He also was a co-cinematographer on quite a few important documentaries as well: Far From Vietnam, but also the Leonard Schrader-scripted mondo movie The Killing of America (NSFW) and Chris Marker's A Grin Without A Cat.

And he appears to have ended his career with a couple of Philippe Garrel films: A Burning Hot Summer and Jealousy

I am quite interested to see a couple of other films that he was the cinematographer on: 1970's Cannabis (aka French Intrigue, aka The Mafia Wants Blood) which stars Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin; and 1980s Running Scared, which features Judge Reinhold's first film role!

Posted: **Tue May 04, 2021 7:18 am**

Never Cursed wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 8:54 pm Hermine Karagheuz, of Rivette fame

It was very interesting to see her get a late role in Bertrand Bonello's Nocturama, which just by virtue of her presence sort of feels intended to make the viewer reflect on this latest generation of rather aimless young terrorist/extreme shopping fanatics through a Rivette-ian lens.

Posted: **Tue May 04, 2021 4:06 pm**

It was very interesting to see her get a late role in Bertrand Bonello's Nocturama, which just by virtue of her presence sort of feels intended to make the viewer reflect on this latest generation of rather aimless young terrorist/extreme shopping fanatics through a Rivette-ian lens.

Indeed, I assumed that was the intention too (and I couldn't help but think of the Samaritaine department store being like the house that everyone retreats to at the end of Out 1, viewed through that lens). I guess Nocturama was her first film for about 20 years, and her last. Karagheuz has such a small filmography, and mostly Rivette, though she does have a memorable part in Michele Rosier's hugely underappreciated feminist masterpiece "Mon Coeur Est Rouge".

Posted: **Fri May 07, 2021 12:22 am**

Frank McRae. I haven't seen it since elementary school, but I had a soft spot for this movie.

EDIT: A very interesting review on it, I'll have to revisit it again.

Posted: **Fri May 07, 2021 6:16 am**

That's very sad news and *batteries not included was a childhood favourite as well. It is sad to think that we have lost a number of the younger actors from that film already, with Elizabeth Peña passing back in 2014.

(I often bracket it in with the Cocoon films, mostly just due to the presence of Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, and in the way that it has that same kind of 'elderly people on the edge of senility have somehow been able to recapture the sense of childlike wonder that the younger characters are missing from their lives' that eventually encompasses the younger people too. It also comes directly in between Cocoon and Cocoon: The Return as well)

He also played the stereotypical shouty police chief twice in the same year, in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 and Last Action Hero!

He was also the police chief in that notorious failed 1990 TV series Poochinski, which was the post-Tuner & Hooch/K-9 show where Peter Boyle gets killed in the line of duty in the pilot and gets his soul transfered into a wisecracking bulldog!

Posted: **Fri May 07, 2021 3:20 pm**

colinr0380 wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 6:16 am That's very sad news and *batteries not included was a childhood favourite as well. It is sad to think that we have lost a number of the younger actors from that film already, with Elizabeth Peña passing back in 2014.

Michael Carmine too - he had the role of Carlos. (That review I linked to makes several insightful points about his character - I had forgotten some of those details as well as his rejected attempt at conciliation.) His NY Times obituary says he died in 1989 from a heart attack, but according to imdb, he died of AIDS soon after his last film, Longtime Companion, was completed. In that film he played someone dying of AIDS, and his imdb entry notes, "as was not unusual at the time, his official obituary did not mention that his heart failure was due to the effects of AIDS."

Posted: **Fri May 07, 2021 6:44 pm**

Yes, he plays a surprisingly well-rounded out 'bad guy' character: hired to run the tenants out of the building he becomes more and more ambivalent about his role in the proceedings (getting an interesting face off scene in the restaurant against the 'saintly fool' Jessica Tandy character where she almost turns him to the path of goodness); instead of just being the lecherous thug trying to attack the single young woman in the building he ends up seeming more broken by her refusals than she does by his come-ons; and whilst it has been a while since I last saw the film, doesn't he end up both carrying out the arson attack that destroys the building but then also heroically saves some of the tenants he has put into danger? One of the best aspects of that film is that even whilst using him as the plot motivator it can still have a measure of ambivalence going on within the main antagonist about the things they are doing, even if they still end up doing the 'bad thing' anyway (which only amplifies the sense of tragedy surrounding them). Which may also be because the film is saving its real scorn for the callous property developers rather than those lower on the totem pole who they get to carry out their plans whilst they get to keep their hands clean.

Posted: **Fri May 07, 2021 8:03 pm**

colinr0380 wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 6:44 pm Yes, he plays a surprisingly well-rounded out 'bad guy' character: hired to run the tenants out of the building he becomes more and more ambivalent about his role in the proceedings (getting an interesting face off scene in the restaurant against the 'saintly fool' Jessica Tandy character where she almost turns him to the path of goodness); instead of just being the lecherous thug trying to attack the single young woman in the building he ends up seeming more broken by her refusals than she does by his come-ons; and whilst it has been a while since I last saw the film, doesn't he end up both carrying out the arson attack that destroys the building but then also heroically saves some of the tenants he has put into danger? One of the best aspects of that film is that even whilst using him as the plot motivator it can still have a measure of ambivalence going on within the main antagonist about the things they are doing, even if they still end up doing the 'bad thing' anyway (which only amplifies the sense of tragedy surrounding them). Which may also be because the film is saving its real scorn for the callous property developers rather than those lower on the totem pole who they get to carry out their plans whilst they get to keep their hands clean.

According to that review I linked to:

Spoiler

...someone else is hired to carry out the arson, and when Carlos sees the building on fire, he rushes in to save people. It's pointed out that he's the only human in the film who risks his own life trying to do a good deed.

I should see the film again just in case I misinterpret what's being said in Sheehan's review (i.e. make sure I have the plot points correct so that I don't misinterpret the conclusion), but it's pointed out that the poor (mainly represented by Carlos) is not a welcome presence by the middle-class, and the tenants wishing to stay are essentially the middle-class representatives of the film. It's also pointed out that when the developers (i.e. the upper-class) exploit Carlos, the film depicts a relationship where they're mentoring/teaching him, albeit for their own benefit, but it's a major reason why he falls in with them against the tenants/middle class - they developers have done more for him than the community representing the middle class. It says a lot that the class dynamics at work here have not only continued unabated but are now much more apparent and troubling in light of Trumpism, with Trump himself being the most famous example of a cruel, manipulative and immoral real estate developer (and like the film, rooted in 1980s NYC).

Posted: **Fri May 07, 2021 8:41 pm**

That's a great reading of the character, and interesting in the way that it allows for the audience to not simply have to completely side with the lovably beatifically eccentric roster of characters living in the building but get a perspective from someone who looks at even their diminished circumstances with a little bit of envy for not having even that small sense of community to belong to.

The only more recent film that I can think of that shows that same kind of developer-underclass inter-relationship is that brief scene between Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo's characters in Land of the Dead!

Posted: **Sat May 08, 2021 1:53 am**

Lloyd Price, the R&B singer and songwriter who released several important records in the 1950s that helped lay the foundation for rock 'n' roll. His two best ones may very well be "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (which Elvis Presley later covered, also a great record) and his version of "Stagger Lee," a legendary folk song mythologizing a real life crime - it's been re-interpreted countless times, but Price had the greatest success with it, taking it to the top of the pop and R&B charts in 1959.

Posted: **Sat May 08, 2021 2:30 pm**

Tawny Kitaen

Posted: **Sat May 08, 2021 3:44 pm**

Lloyd Price was a legend. Also quite an entrepreneur. Was one of the promoters of the Rumble in the Jungle and the related concert. Price appears in the When We Were Kings documentary film.
i like some of his early frantic R&B such as Where You At, which preceded his move to RCA and a more refined pop sound (Personality and songs about getting married). Price also owned companies that built middle-income housing around the NY area. Even had a Lawdy Miss Clawdy brand of southern food. he also wrote the classic ballad Just Because.

I've been trying to track down more recordings by his brother Leo Price. One terrific old Leo Price R&B song, Hey Now Baby, uses the cha-cha beat as a basis for its proto-Rock, before rock was fully established. I think i only have a handful of Leo Price tunes.

Posted: **Sat May 08, 2021 7:09 pm**

Fiery Angel wrote: Sat May 08, 2021 2:30 pm Tawny Kitaen

Perhaps most famous for playing the title role in Just Jaeckin's last feature film, 1984's heady mix of S&M and Indiana Jones styled adventuring, Gwendoline (NSFW) (aka The Perils of Gwendoline In the Land of the Yik-Yak), which was the same year she appeared as the impending spouse in the Tom Hanks film Bachelor Party.

I still have not seen the other big role she had, in 1986's Witchboard.

Posted: **Sat May 08, 2021 7:55 pm**

I'd say she's more famous for this.

Posted: **Sat May 08, 2021 10:46 pm**

It's like she is doing the Death Proof stunt decades ahead of time!

Posted: **Tue May 11, 2021 12:42 pm**

Kevin Jackson, a prolific writer and critic who could seemingly turn his hand to just about any subject, but his specifically on-topic output includes Schrader on Schrader, his Humphrey Jennings biography, his BFI monograph (and subsequent Arrow commentary) on WIthnail & I, plus innumerable shorter pieces, a selection of which is curated in the anthology Carnal to the Point of Scandal (reviewed here). He died shockingly suddenly from a pulmonary embolism yesterday, and must have been active on Facebook almost up to that very point, given that the news would have taken a few hours to go public.

Posted: **Tue May 11, 2021 3:02 pm**

IMAX co-founder Graeme Ferguson

Posted: **Tue May 11, 2021 4:26 pm**

Dancer Jacques d’Amboise (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Carousel)

Posted: **Tue May 11, 2021 8:28 pm**

MichaelB wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 12:42 pm Kevin Jackson, a prolific writer and critic who could seemingly turn his hand to just about any subject, but his specifically on-topic output includes Schrader on Schrader, his Humphrey Jennings biography, his BFI monograph (and subsequent Arrow commentary) on WIthnail & I, plus innumerable shorter pieces, a selection of which is curated in the anthology Carnal to the Point of Scandal (reviewed here). He died shockingly suddenly from a pulmonary embolism yesterday, and must have been active on Facebook almost up to that very point, given that the news would have taken a few hours to go public.

That is a sad loss. I enjoyed Schrader on Schrader a lot - despite my mixed reacton to his films - but his Jennings work was key for me. He also was involved in The Man Who Listened to Britain, still fortunately available on youtube.

Posted: **Tue May 11, 2021 9:22 pm**

The man, the legend...Norman Lloyd, age 106.

Seeing him talk about working with Welles and the Works Progress Administration's theatre projects at the L.A. County Museum of Art's screening of Too Much Johnson was unbelievable. My god, he had so much control over a stage.

Posted: **Tue May 11, 2021 9:25 pm**

Dang. That’s one I thought was immortal.

Posted: **Tue May 11, 2021 10:35 pm**

He outlived literally everyone and seemed lucid and cognizant to the very end. Some people have all the luck, but we all have a hard stop eventually

Posted: **Thu May 13, 2021 5:03 pm**

My favorite Norman Lloyd story is how he attended two different World Series games ~90 years apart.

Posted: **Fri May 14, 2021 4:31 pm**

Neil Connery, Sean's brother.

Known for his role in OK Connery, a.k.a Operation Kid Brother, which I suppose is mostly notable for
the appearance of several people to have appeared in the actual Bond movies (Bernard Lee, Lois
Maxwell, Daniela Bianchi, etc.), plus a score by Ennio Morricone. Check out the MST3K episode for it.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/tvands ... ames-bond/

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