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Apparently the director Guiliano Carnimeo died on 10th September. He's probably better known under the pseudonym of Anthony Ascott, and directed a number of spaghetti westerns in the early 1970s (alternating between starring Gianni Garko and George Hilton and often featuring the character of Sartana). There was always a more comic tone to his westerns (his early credits include co-directing a Franco & Ciccio one!) and later in his career he went onto Edwige Fenech sex comedies (NSFW), and comic partnership match ups of bumbling crooks "Butch and Tony".

Though in the middle of all that comes perhaps his best known film, the giallo The Case of the Bloody Iris (NSFW!), starring Edwige Fenech and George Hilton again. It cannot really compete with the best of that subgenre of the Agento or Bava giallos with its barely related murders revolving around the tenants of a particular apartment, but certainly worth a watch with a main plot that I think we can all relate to involving something about trying to liberate yourself from your potentially murderous ex-boyfriend's flower-based sex cult! (With this and Short Night of the Glass Dolls already covering the 'threatening orgy-cult' genre so well, it is difficult not to think of these films whenever I see Eyes Wide Shut!)

It's all very much of its time, but since that time is the early 70s that's not such a bad thing!

The Turkish actor Tarik Akan. He played e.g. in Yol.

C. Martin Croker, the voice of Zorak and Moltar on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

V.F. Perkins
Old news but apparently not reported on here. We hadn’t been in touch for the last 20 years, but I knew Victor quite well for a decade or so from 1979, initially as a student at Warwick University, and often think of him when I view particular films. La ronde, he said, is “a film about cumming and going” and he likened Mitchum’s search underneath his old home in The Lusty Men to “re-entering the womb”. He was very opinionated, detesting virtually all British cinema (even “Britishness” itself) and, at the time I knew him, he thought Badlands was the only great film made after the early 1960s. He could not understand my enthusiasm for David Lean yet, after university, he encouraged me to write about his work (when Lean’s reputation was at its nadir), providing contacts that led to my first paid film criticism.

As a writer, his output is relatively small in quantity, due partly I believe to his perfectionism. A local arts cinema programmer told me that Victor would labour so long on his short pieces that he’d push his copy through her home letterbox at midnight. Similarly, in lectures, he’d sometimes lose his train of thought while searching for le mot juste, the perfect way of expressing his argument. He disliked vague critical terms: "It's been said that 'conflict' is central to William Wellman's films... but if there ain't no conflict, where's the drama?"

Yet he wasn’t at all coldly academic in his approach. He was almost in tears when telling us about the time he’d recently spent with the dying Nicholas Ray and he engaged in a very direct emotional way with many movies, going somewhat against the critical tide back then of pouring scorn on "sentimental" films. He could also be amusingly self-deprecating, as when relating how he finally secured an interview with Hitchcock, only to find his tape-recorder wasn’t working. And I remember him literally falling out of his seat with laughter during a theatrical screening of a Looney Tune.

Curtis Hanson discussion moved here

The Narrator Returns wrote:Edward Albee

This still hurts. Nichols, Wexler, and now Albee, all in two years.

In the past decade I've shifted from being a theatre geek to a cinephile, in part because of the dearth of political/emotionally challenging theatre in Portland (I was spoiled by my years in DC & NY). Albee was a giant in American drama, and one of few writers cutting to the marrow. I used to be able to watch the film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and know when there were cuts or changes from the play. I've been fortunate enough to see productions of The Play About the Baby, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? and Tiny Alice (an amazing, epic, ecstatic mess), and while I'll probably never fulfill my dream of staging Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in a living room with an audience of 2-4 people, Albee will always stand as one of my favorite playwrights and curmudgeons.

Bill Nunn.

Spike Lee just posted this on Facebook:

My Dear Friend, My Dear Morehouse Brother- Da Great Actor Bill Nunn As Most Of You Know Him As Radio Raheem Passed Away This Morning In His Hometown Of Pittsburgh. Long Live Bill NUNN. RADIO RAHEEM Is Now RESTING IN POWER. RADIO RAHEEM WILL ALWAYS BE FIGHTING DA POWERS DAT BE. MAY GOD WATCH OVER BILL NUNN.

RIP the Duh Duh Man

That's a damn shame. Do the Right Thing was a soul penetrating experience for me when I was younger.

His cameo in The Last Seduction is hilarious.

I wouldn't list it first on his resume, but his role as Pip on Denis Leary's hysterically mean spirited cop show The Job is well worth checking out.

This is shockingly awful.

This joke had a completely different meaning in 1992:

Damn, Simpsons coincidentally made an Arnold Palmer (drink) joke tonight.

I feel like CBS Sunday Morning just did a spot light on him earlier this summer for their feature on the "art in design" episode. Palmer seemed as cool as he always seemed to me. He was probably in the process of designing several golf courses around the world.

Herschell Gordon Lewis

Dang, I thought he'd make it to 100.

Shimon Peres

Can anyone actually confirm the family ties between Shimon Peres and Lauren Bacall? I remember reading in one of Bacall's biographies (since lost my copy of this book) that they were related but I've read conflicting accounts from online sources about their exact closeness- some sources saying second cousins, some saying more distant, some even saying first cousins which does not appear to be substantiated.

They were fairly distant though did meet on a few occasions.

Sir Neville Marriner