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Australian actor Paul Blackwell, aged 64.

Buttery Jeb wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:55 pm Andre Previn

Even back in the 1970s, when Previn still seemed quite young and the BBC poster-boy for classical orchestral music, I remember being amazed to discover that he'd been a wunderkind in the MGM music department as far back as the 1940s. He worked in various cinematic (and musical) genres including of course several of the best 1950s MGM musicals such as Silk Stockings and the Donen/Kelly It's Always Fair Weather.

Previn's LSO recordings of the 1970s still enjoy a high reputation (partly thanks to the great EMI engineers Bishop & Parker) and it's a pity that in the UK he now seems to be mainly remembered for his sketches with the comedy team Morecambe & Wise, whose "national treasure" status has baffled me for half-a-century.

And his "best picture of all time" Ferguson TV ads, of course.

Previn's jazz albums are worth your time as well, his West Side Story album is a favourite of mine and can be conveniently (and cheaply) found on on this collection.

But I have found that the only time many friends know who I'm talking about is when I say "I am playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order" - and indeed a still of Eric Morecambe and Andre Previn from that sketch is on the front page of The Times today.

It's a very similar situation to that which the late Bruno Ganz was faced with: whether he liked it or not, sheer weight of numbers dictated that 99% of people would regard him as the guy from the Downfall meme rather than one of the greatest German-speaking actors of the last century.

(Indeed, for me, Downfall was worth taking seriously from the moment that Ganz's participation was announced, as I couldn't imagine an actor of that calibre taking on a role as politically/cuturally loaded as that - at least in Germany - without a fundamental respect for the quality of the script and the integrity of his collaborators.)

French producing legend Mag Bodard, at the age of 103.

She'd deserve a place among the immortals merely for getting The Umbrellas of Cherbourg off the ground when everyone else thought that it was a hopelessly uncommercial folly, but she also produced major work by Agnès Varda, Robert Bresson, Maurice Pialat and many others.

Cameron Swift wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 1:46 pm Keith Flint, lead singer of The Prodigy from an apparent suicide aged 49

That is very upsetting news. Of course his front and centre presence on the Firestarter track and video is his major work (and it was interesting to find out that he started out as a dancer hired to amp the crowd up, a bit like a more aggressive Bez from the Happy Mondays, before he started writing some tracks as well), but aside from that I was not following The Prodigy too closely until the last two albums, which I really like. In some ways I bracket 2015's The Day Is My Enemy with Mad Max: Fury Road (it might just be because the album was the perfect accompaniment to driving around the open world in the Mad Max video game) as kind of post-apocalyptic punk. Nasty, Rebel Radio and Invisible Sun stand out amongst the tracks featuring his vocals.

And then 2018's No Tourists (released just last November) feels like an incredibly angry album from beginning to end, although a lot of the cathartic rebel yell nature of songs such as the title track, Champions of London and Give Me A Signal are inevitably going to have a different feel to them now.

I think my favourite Prodigy anecdote has to be when Charlotte Coleman, who appears in Four Weddings and a Funeral (NSFW: Language!) did a late night ITV show in the late 90s where she picked some of her favourite music tracks and chose Firestarter, saying something along the lines of "I used to really annoy Hugh Grant by playing this over and over at full volume in the makeup trailer!"

Wow, that’s great stuff colinr0380, thanks for taking the time to post all of that...

I just learned that Vinny Vella passed away. Always a welcome site in any mob movie, particularly Casino.

bearcuborg wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 4:37 pm I just learned that Vinny Vella passed away. Always a welcome site in any mob movie, particularly Casino.

Vinny was also in Coffee and Cigarettes, which is actually my favorite of Jim Jarmusch's multi-story films.

Luke Perry!

Wow. That’s way too soon. I remember really loving his brief appearance in Oz. And then his Simpsons cameo...he never seemed to take himself too seriously. He definitely had a lot to offer as an actor...

Had he finished shooting his scenes for the new Tarantino film?

The movie wrapped in early November

Well, knowing what Quentin is capable of, he will most likely go out on a high note. Sheesh, a friend just texted me his Howard Stern appearance at the MTV Movie Awards, the guy definitely got it...

bearcuborg wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 6:20 pm Wow. That’s way too soon. I remember really loving his brief appearance in Oz. And then his Simpsons cameo...he never seemed to take himself too seriously. He definitely had a lot to offer as an actor...

His disgraced televangelist in Oz and his Simpsons guest star role were the performances that immediately came to my mind as well.

My only familiarity with Perry's work is his role as the boyfriend in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, but that was such a prominent part of my childhood that it hurts the just the same. He was appropriately laid back and unafraid to look goofy, which made him immensely appealing to me.