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Eddie Watkins, original drummer with POLVO. A father, had a successful business, recently remarried. Chucked himself off the top of a hotel yesterday, apparently, completely unexpected according to friends: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/polvo-drum ... tkins-rip/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Terry Plumeri, a composer, conductor, and jazz bassist, was found murdered at his home in Florida earlier this month. I've scarcely even heard of any of the films he scored—most of them look like the kind of B-thrillers that seemingly existed solely to fill space at Blockbuster in the 90s—but when I used to be more actively engaged in film music fandom I remember he always had a few dedicated advocates on the basis of some very lyrical neo-romantic classical works.

No obits yet, but I'm afraid I have it on unimpeachable authority that John Krish has died at the age of 92.

He was a filmmaker who never achieved the profile that his talents deserved, mainly because his feature films were considerably less interesting than his documentaries and public information films.

But the latter were often astonishing, whether 'The Elephant Will Never Forget' (1953), 'I Think They Call Him John' (1964) and some of the most terrifying of all 1970s public information films - he was popularly known as "Dr Death" because of the body counts that he typically ran up in the course of persuading the nation not to play with fireworks or matches or on railway lines (the legendary British Transport Film opus 'The Finishing Line' is one of his).

I have particularly fond memories of hosting a lengthy Q&A with him about six or seven years ago when he was already in his late eighties, but still sharp as a tack - it was one of those glorious interviews where he clearly didn't care who he offended any more, and he let rip across entire swathes of British documentary history.

He also told me that he didn't feel properly elderly until he'd passed his 85th birthday, and he certainly gave the impression that he still had many decades left. At least he lived long enough to see his reputation given a massive boost thanks to the BFI's postwar documentary project, of which Krish was arguably the biggest personal obituary - and I'll always remember him accepting the Evening Standard Award for Best Documentary for films made half a century earlier with "This is so much better than an obituary".

Australian television producer Reg Grundy. He had one excursion onto the big screen with Abba: The Movie, but I suspect the obituaries will concentrate on the TV shows he and his company created, such as Sons and Daughters, Prisoner [Cell Block H] and Neighbours.

Classic TV stalwart William Schallert. He played the dad/uncle on The Patty Duke Show, but chances are if you grew up in the 60s or watched Nick at Nite in the 90s, you saw this guy in EVERYTHING.

He's one of the great TV dads on the Patty Duke Show, but you're right, he was everywhere in the fifties and sixties, first as a bit player in films and then TV shows-- one of the original "That Guy"s!

It was fun to see him do a riff on his TV dad persona in the Joe Dante segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, where as it turns out --

Spoiler

he's not really the dad after all, just another kidnapped adult like Kathleen Quinlan's character.

I've seen Matinee so many times but I only just realized after seeing Joe Dante's tweet that he was the dentist in Mant!

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Isao Tomita

Failed to see Isao Tomita here in Linz in 1984 when he played his "Mind of the Universe" concert for the ARS Electronika festival in a glass pyramid high above the Danube river and I can't forgive myself till today for not attending.

The great, underrated German director Niklaus Schilling.

Tommaso wrote:The great, underrated German director Niklaus Schilling.

Without meaning to be too pedantic, he was a Swiss director who made most of his films in Germany.

Gene Gutowski.

Lasse Mårtenson. And especially here.

Madeleine LeBeau, the last surviving cast member of Casablanca. She was also in 8 1/2.

This name probably won't mean much to those outside of the southwestern Mexican-American community, but Tejano and sometime Country singer Emilio Navaira has died.