criterionforum.org

Damn, at this rate I won't be surprised to hear of another one before midnight.

Statistically lots of people are going to die before midnight.

knives wrote:Disney legend Tyrus Wong at 106.

NYT obituary

John Berger.

Derek Parfit, philosopher

George Kosana (Sheriff McClelland in Night of the Living Dead, who said ""They're dead. They're all messed up.")

antnield wrote:John Berger.

A huge loss. Not just an excellent novelist and Marxist art critic (WAYS OF SEEING is essential), but a great collaborator with Alain Tanner on his finest films.

beamish13 wrote:

antnield wrote:John Berger.

A huge loss. Not just an excellent novelist and Marxist art critic (WAYS OF SEEING is essential), but a great collaborator with Alain Tanner on his finest films.

Very much seconded on John Berger. Ways of Seeing is a fantastic series on art criticism (and critical thinking in general).

I must confess I did not take to Berger like either of you two, Kenneth Clark was more my type. Have you two seen The Seasons in Quincy?

Tilikum, the killer whale featured in the documentary Blackfish.

Ricardo Piglia, Argentinian author: Burnt Money was made into film.

Tommy Allsup. Played lead guitar for some of Buddy Holly's later recordings (most notably "It's So Easy" where he turns in a fine solo), he also backed Holly on his last tour and "lost" a fateful coin toss that kept him off that plane.

Teresa Ann Savoy, English actress best known for appearing in three notorious Italian films: Salon Kitty, Private Vices Public Virtues and of course Caligula.

Sadly, I can't say I'm surprised at this news - when I recorded my piece for Mondo Macabro's recent release of Private Vices Public Virtues I heard she was in a very bad way.

I'm sorry to hear that. She is a little peripheral in Caligula (playing the much mourned sister in an incestuous relationship with Malcolm McDowell's Caligula before Helen Mirren takes over for the second half!), but she's really the central character of the raunchy mash up of The Damned and Cabaret, Salon Kitty (NSFW), no matter how much that film digresses off into other eye-opening shenanigans! She's the core though, moving from enthusiastic National Socialist into co-owner of a potential brothel franchise by the climax (suggesting the fine line between capitalism and fascism! Especially in how they both exploit the body politic!)

(I remember being particularly glad to see that Private Vices, Public Virtues featured her too, and during the same period of her career as well. It was great to see that film returned to view)

Lord Snowdon (Antony Armstrong-Jones), photographer and former husband of Princess Margaret.

IMDB doesn't record it, but under the name "Tony Snowdon" he also directed two episodes of the 1975 BBC series Explorers, which I remember from the time - the episodes on Burke and Wills and Mary Kelly. In fact this series, which won a British Academy Award, seems to have dropped off the radar entirely. It doesn't appear to have entries on either IMDB on Wikipedia.

Grand Wazoo wrote:William Peter Blatty, thus far only confirmed via Friedkin's twitter

I'll jump in before Mark Kermode does a bigger tribute to it (although I'll do it through sharing one of his video blogs on the film! Partly because the film's trailer appears to be Content Warning locked on YouTube!) but The Ninth Configuration is an amazing piece of work. Like Catch-22 but more off-kilter, funnier and even more harrowing. Better, and more religiously introspective, than The Exorcist but understandably more esoteric and weird than that bed-bouncing blockbuster.

colinr0380 wrote:

Grand Wazoo wrote:William Peter Blatty, thus far only confirmed via Friedkin's twitter

I'll jump in before Mark Kermode does a bigger tribute to it (although I'll do it through sharing one of his video blogs on the film! Partly because the film's trailer appears to be Content Warning locked on YouTube!) but The Ninth Configuration is an amazing piece of work. Like Catch-22 but more off-kilter, funnier and even more harrowing. Better, and more religiously introspective, than The Exorcist but understandably more esoteric and weird than that bed-bouncing blockbuster.

I agree. Steve de Jarnatt, director of Cherry 2000 and Miracle Mile, reminisced on social media that Blatty personally acted as a street corner barker for The Ninth Configuration outside of the UCLA-adjacent cinema that was exhibiting it.
He was a fantastic novelist, and his work as a screenwriter on the second film in the Pink Panther franchise, A Shot in the Dark is remarkable.