Rolling Obituary Thread: 2020

I'd willingly re-watch Angel Heart, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and Midnight Express, and will eventually get around to Mississippi Burning; I've seen enough YouTube clips of Gene Hackman's performance to know he rules in it.

Oh, there's even an ILE thread about it

Taking sides Alan Parker vs Peter Greenaway

i'd very much like to 'cancel' Mississippi Burning and its civil-rights crusading FBI agents

Didn't get the ballyhoo around The Commitments.

It's not a Big Film, but a Pleasant Diversion. Pleasant diversions are much too rare and always easy to like.

Has anyone seen Melody (1971), which Parker wrote and turned into a massive hit in Japan but flopped in the west?

Is that the film the Bee Gees did the soundtrack for? It's almost certainly been on Talking Pictures.

The Road to Wellville vs A Zed and Two Noughts - don't take sides!

I have indeed seen Melody. I was in my teens. I think it was... OK?

I've seen it within the last 10 years. It's incredibly sentimental, and IIRC it's one of those films with the message that love overcomes everything in the end - but it does have some really nice photography of the area inLambeth I live in. And again IIRC, it has a sunny optimistic early 70s bright sunshiny optimism and innocence that gives it a quaint feel.

Terry Cannon, who started the Pasadena Filmforum (later Los Angeles Filmforum) and the Baseball Reliquary.

https://www.facebook.com/LAFilmforum/posts/10158347042342211?__tn__=K-R

WILFORD BRIMLEY RIP

Damn diabeetus

Memorable Seinfeld bit that played off his image.

half the kids making "diabeetus" jokes today probably never saw the actual commercials, and just the Family Guy parody

As a fellow diabetic (whose dad died of it at 56), seeing him make it to 85 was pretty fucking inspirational.

for sure.

My good friend helped bury Malik B. yesterday— he's the caretaker of the burial ground where I used to dig graves.

Damn. But I suppose working such a role you really do see everyone one way or another.

John Carpenter salutes Wilford B:

Wilford Brimley was the real thing: a real cowboy, a great actor, a wonderful man. I'm going to miss you, Will. Rest in peace.

— John Carpenter (@TheHorrorMaster) August 2, 2020

"Watch Clark"

Former SDLP leader John Hume has died

‘I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people’.

Nobel Laureate and former SDLP Leader John Hume passed away last night. We all live in the Ireland he imagined - at peace and free to decide our own destiny.

Thank you, John. pic.twitter.com/0yO5KWaTv7

— Social Democratic and Labour Party (@SDLPlive) August 3, 2020

RIP.

Wilford Brimley one of those "was never a young person" great old character actors. He was 48 years old when THE THING was made. 48!

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/thething/images/d/dc/Blair_-_Profile.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150611223811

shaven Brimley! now i'm never watching The Thing, too scary

Yeah, I finally saw The Thing a couple of weeks ago and was wtf at this pod-actor that looked like that but sounded like Wilford Brimley.

From the Cocoon Wikipedia page:

Wilford Brimley was only 49 when he was cast as a senior citizen, and turned 50 during filming; he was at least 20 years younger than any of the actors playing the other elderly characters.

He was only two years older than Redford when he played the grizzled old coach in The Natural.

https://twitter.com/BrimleyLine

Shaven Brimley is a band name if I have EVER heard one.

inspired, but i wish The China Syndrome (a big hit) had had a longer shelf life, cuz he was 44 in that

xp

Joan Mari Torrealdai
Basque writer, journalist and sociologist but most importantly a critical factor in the preservation of Basque language, culture & identity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Mari_Torrealdai

RIP to a true warrior. His El libro negro del euskera - a black book on how the Basque language was under attack throughout the ages - is considered a classic and shaped a lot of the current Basque novelists and writers; at least the ones I know spoke of how important that work is for them. In 2003 (!) he was arrested and tortured after the violent closing down of his newspaper. After seven years he was acquitted and it was ruled there were no ETA-links as previously claimed, but the damage was done. For him and a lot of his peers of the time.

I think I might have asked this before, but do we have any Basque threads other than the jokey 'basque separatists' pictures one? I've only ever seen that and a very short music thread. I'd be interested in finding out/reading more about the culture/language/news etc. Thanks for posting this anyway, I hadn't heard of him before.

Most recent Basque discussions (mostly travel advice etc) has been in this thread (which is an unfortunately titled thread for it, I know). I'd be in full support of a standalone thread, aside from all the Spain ones. ¡Independenzia!

Ah, yes, I have that one bookmarked and may have posted occasionally too. My Basque knowledge is very scant so far, but I have connections via my partner and her family and have been keen to learn the language and more for a while now. I would gladly read and try to participate in a thread.

I've lived there for a short time. There's one ilxor who lives in Donostia permanently. I too want to learn the language and have many connections there. I'll start a thread tonight or tomorrow!

Great. Eskerrik asko!

His big song was “The Dutchman.” Part of the same folk scene as John Prine, Steve Goodman, etc.

Michael P. Smith, a star of Chicago’s folk scene and an award-winning composer who toured the United States and Canada for more than half a century, died Monday of colon cancer. He was 78. https://t.co/HrPTHH6OFf

— Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) August 4, 2020

RIP Pete Hamill. He was fantastic in Ken Burns’ Prohibition doc. Also wrote the worst liner notes of all-time, for Blood on the Tracks.

Hamill's A Drinking Life will always have a place on my bookshelf. It's all about my neighborhood in the 1940s and 50s (and more), a great read.

85! He was definitely ageing very well...

He stopped drinking in 1972

Great. Eskerrik asko!

get disappointed every time I remember this isn't a thread abuot the band.

every month of every year for over a decade

Vern Rumsey of Unwound, Long Hind Legs, much more.

Incredible person:

https://www.haaretz.com/amp/israel-news/rabbi-adin-steinsaltz-groundbreaking-talmud-translator-dies-at-83-1.9055017?

Bernard Stiegler, French philosopher noted for his theory of technology and commitment to left-wing politics, 68. RIP.

This one hurts. :(

Wayne Fontana.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/aug/07/wayne-fontana-game-of-love-dies

RIP.

Jan Savage, guitarist for The Seeds.

Oh no, RIP Jan, love the Seeds.