Obituaries

It is sad that when the news broke on the Beeb's website he was "Potter actor Griffiths". A fine actor in what he did. The the last thing I saw him in was Venus, a brilliant foil and companion to the two in the shape of O'Toole and Phillips.

RIP.

Indeed a very sad loss, at only 65 too, he was a delight in so many TV and Film roles.

RIP Mr Griffiths.

RIP Roger Ebert

Given the state he's been in for the last few years it was only a matter of time. I've enjoyed reading his reviews since I was 12 years old. I didn't always agree with him, but I respected him deeply as someone who loved movies like I do and, agree with him or not, I was usually able to see where he was coming from. Armond White could learn a lot from him.

Only two days ago was the 40th anniversary of his career as a film critic. I only agreed with his reviews maybe half the time, but on that good half I think he summed things up nicely.

Python wrote:

Only two days ago was the 40th anniversary of his career as a film critic.

I don't think that's true...I've seen a review he wrote for YOLT upon it's release in 1967, and DAF in 1971, both of which are more than 40 years old.

RIP indeed.

Drax wrote:

Python wrote:

Only two days ago was the 40th anniversary of his career as a film critic.

I don't think that's true...I've seen a review he wrote for YOLT upon it's release in 1967, and DAF in 1971, both of which are more than 40 years old.

Err, I meant 46th anniversary. Speaking of YOLT, thought his review on that film was spot on.

One of the best things about Ebert was that, unlike a lot of critics today, his writing as always accessible and never stodgy.

I might not have agreed with most of his reviews but the man had one powerful voice. RIP.

I too have enjoyed reading his reviews. RIP.

Found this article about his final moment before passed.

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20688468,00.html?xid=rss-fullcontent

Says he smiled and then passed away. When my Nonno passed away back in February, he'd been suffering for so long - right up until his last breath, which he struggled with. About 30 minutes before, he recognised my brother and smiled, but that was it. Roger Ebert was able to smile at his family before he passed away, and at least his family knew at that moment, he was suffering.

x

As many will say "I didn't always agree with him" (who cares about that?), but I liked him. More than being a critic, he seemed like a genuinely, sincerely decent man. That's what I really liked about him. He was honest.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

More than being a critic, he seemed like a genuinely, sincerely decent man.

This.

Lots of good columns floating around remembering Ebert but I think The Onion's is best:

Quote :

CHICAGO—Calling the overall human experience “poignant,” “thought-provoking,” and a “complete tour de force,” film critic Roger Ebert praised existence Thursday as “an audacious and thrilling triumph.” “While not without its flaws, life, from birth to death, is a masterwork, and an uplifting journey that both touches the heart and challenges the mind,” said Ebert, adding that while the totality of all humankind is sometimes “a mess in places,” it strives to be a magnum opus and, according to Ebert, largely succeeds at this goal. “At times brutally sad, yet surprisingly funny, and always completely honest, I wholeheartedly recommend existence. If you haven’t experienced it yet, then what are you waiting for? It is not to be missed.” Ebert later said that while human existence’s running time was “a little on the long side,” it could have gone on much, much longer and he would have been perfectly happy.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/roger-ebert-hails-human-existence-as-a-triumph,31945/

Harmsway wrote:

The White Tuxedo wrote:

More than being a critic, he seemed like a genuinely, sincerely decent man.

This.

Agreed. I've only just found out about Ebert's passing by reading this thread. Whenever I saw a film, new or old, I always sought out Ebert's review of it. The film may or may not have been worth seeing but Ebert's review was always worth reading.

I always tended to read Ebert's reviews on movies, often than not agreeing depending on the film. Better than most and better than those to come.

Sara Montiel.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130408/spanish-actress-and-hollywood-icon-sara-montiel-dies-at-85

From VERA CRUZ. One-time Mrs. Anthony Mann.

Thanks, Tux. I missed this news. Only saw Montiel in Vera Cruz, but she was very capable in that.

I was surprised to see it mentioned on Yahoo!, which I only keep as my homepage for email purposes.

It was only mentioned somewhere on the side.

Quote :

Mork and Mindy star Jonathan Winters dies at 87


Winters (bottom) played Robin Williams' on-screen son, Mearth
US comedian and actor Jonathan Winters - best known for his role in sitcom Mork and Mindy - has died aged 87.

A pioneer of improvisational stand-up comedy, he influenced a generation of comedians including Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and Steve Martin.

On the big screen, he appeared in films such as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Loved One.

But it was his role as Williams's on-screen son in Mork and Mindy that brought him international fame.

The 1981-82 show saw him play Mearth, the off-spring of an alien race that ages backwards, who - having hatched from a giant egg - was the size of an adult but had the mind of a child.

Williams paid tribute to the actor saying: "First he was my idol, then he was my mentor and amazing friend. I'll miss him huge. He was my Comedy Buddha."

Other comics also took to Twitter to pay their respects including Carrey who said Winters was "the worthy custodian of a sparkling and childish comedic genius".

Steve Carell said he was "wildly funny" while Kathy Griffin said "there was no-one like him".

Dick Van Dyke added: "The first time I saw Jonathan Winters perform, I thought I might as well quit the business. Because I could never be as brilliant."

Robin Williams said Winters had been his 'mentor and amazing friend'
Born in Dayton, Ohio, Winters joined the Marines aged 17 and served two years in the South Pacific.

In the early 1950s, after stints as a radio disc jockey and TV host in his home state, he moved to New York where he became a nightclub comic doing impressions of John Wayne and Cary Grant, as well as creating new characters of his own.

He also made regular appearances on The Tonight Show with hosts Jack Paar and then Johnny Carson, The Andy Williams Show and his own TV variety shows - The Jonathan Winters Show and The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters - in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In later years, his voice talents were used on many cartoons and animated films. He played three characters in the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle movie in 2000 and he provided the voice of Papa Smurf in the 2011 Smurfs film - a role he reprised for its sequel due for release this July.

Winters won a best supporting actor Emmy for playing Randy Quaid's father in the sitcom Davis Rules in 1991. He was nominated again in 2003 as outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for an appearance on Life With Bonnie.

He also won two Grammys - one for his work on The Little Prince album in 1975 another for his Crank Calls comedy album in 1996.

He also won the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for humour in 1999, a year after Richard Pryor.

Winters' friend, Joe Petro, said the actor died at his California home of natural causes surrounded by friends and family. He is survived by two children.

one of the greats.

Robin Williams on Winters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/arts/television/robin-williams-recalls-the-lessons-of-jonathan-winters.html?_r=1&

Ber-er-limey.

She was a good girl, liable to her fits of emotion. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes...Mr Wint.

Bloody legend and before...before his Mork turn.

Quote :

Ray Harryhausen, visual effects master, dies aged 92


Visual effects master Ray Harryhausen, whose stop-motion wizardry graced such films as Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, has died aged 92.

The American made his models by hand and painstakingly shot them frame by frame to create some of the best-known animated sequences in cinema.

His death in London was confirmed to the BBC by a family representative.

"Harryhausen's genius was in being able to bring his models alive," said an official statement from his foundation.

"Whether they were prehistoric dinosaurs or mythological creatures, in Ray's hands they were no longer puppets but became instead characters in their own right."

Born in Los Angeles in June 1920, Raymond Frederick Harryhausen had a passion for dinosaurs as a child that led him to make his own versions of prehistoric creatures.

Films like 1925's The Lost World and the 1933 version of King Kong stoked that passion and prompted him to seek out a meeting with Willis O'Brien, a pioneer in the field of model animation.

Ray Harryhausen with a model of Clash of the Titans' Medusa
During World War II Harryhausen joined director Frank Capra's film unit, which made the Why We Fight series to back the US war effort.

After the war, he made stop-motion versions of fairy tales that prompted his idol, O'Brien, to hire him to help create the ape in Mighty Joe Young - an achievement that won an Academy Award.

Harryhausen went on to make some of the fantasy genre's best-known movies, among them One Million Years B.C. and a series of films based on the adventures of Sinbad the sailor.

He is perhaps best remembered for animating the seven skeletons who come to life in Jason and the Argonauts, a sequence which took him three months to film, and for the Medusa who turned men to stone in Titans.

Harryhausen inspired a generation of film directors, from Steven Spielberg and James Cameron to Peter Jackson of the Lord of the Rings fame.

Spielberg said Harryhausen's "inspiration goes with us forever" while Cameron said Hollywood science fiction film-makers had been "standing on the shoulders of a giant".

Meanwhile, Star Wars creator George Lucas, paid tribute by saying: "The art of his earlier films, which most of us grew up on, inspired us so much."

Harryhausen inspired a generation of film directors
In 1992 Harryhausen was given a special Oscar to honour his work with special effects in the days before computer-generated imagery.

Harryhausen lived in the UK for several decades with his wife Diana and often appeared at fantasy conventions.

The veteran animator donated his complete collection - about 20,000 objects - to the National Media Museum in Bradford in 2010.

He died at London's Hammersmith Hospital, having received treatment for about a week.

Peter Lord of Aardman Animations was quick to pay tribute, describing Harryhausen as "a one-man industry and a one-man genre" on Twitter.

And Nick Park, Aardman's Oscar-winning creator of Wallace and Gromit, called him the "king of stop-motion animation".

"I loved every single frame of Ray Harryhausen's work," tweeted Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright. "He was the man who made me believe in monsters."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22441567