Obituaries

Michael Cacoyannis (1922-2011)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jul/25/michael-cacoyannis-obituary

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/27/idUS210892968920110727

Quote :

Polly Platt, a producer, Oscar-nominated production designer, writer -- and ex-wife of Peter Bogdanovich -- died Wednesday morning in Brooklyn, NY., according to published reports. She was 72 and had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8682347/Bubba-Smith.html

RIP, Hightower.

I saw that yesterday. :( RIP. He was also in the delightful STROKER ACE.

Noticed this today, I know we have a few Hammer horror fans here.

Quote :

Jimmy Sangster, Writer for British Horror Films, Dies at 83

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS, New York Times
Published: August 21, 2011

Jimmy Sangster, a prolific screenwriter best known for his classic 1950s horror movies that dipped into the cinematic delights of gore and sex and helped define the British company Hammer Films, died on Friday. He was 83.

Among Mr. Sangster’s biggest hits were the Gothic horror films “The Curse of Frankenstein” (1957), “Dracula” (1958), and “The Mummy” (1959).

Mr. Sangster was a production manager at Hammer when he was drafted to write his first feature-length picture. That film, “X The Unknown,” (1956) featured a radioactive blob from the center of the earth, a clever exploitation of contemporary fears of all things nuclear. He recalled in an interview that he was paid 200 pounds for the script.

Those early films, generally shot in rapid succession on tight budgets, were not immediate critical darlings. According to news reports, reviews called several of Sangster’s movies sadistic, nauseating and wholly unimaginative. But they were popular with audiences and are cult classics today.

“They basically reinvented the genre,” said Simon Oakes, the president of Hammer. Those movies, he explained, took horror out of the land of lumpy monsters and brought to it a physicality, sexuality and vivid style. "Dracula,” one of the first British horror films to be shot in color, helped establish the actor Christopher Lee, who played “the terrifying lover who died — yet lived” (in the words of one of its tag lines), as a sex symbol.

In interviews, Mr. Sangster, who had an easy, self-effacing humor, recalled his psychological thrillers, not the Gothics, as his own favorite pictures. Those included “The Scream of Fear,” (1961) which Mr. Oakes said the present-day Hammer Films is in the process of remaking, and “Paranoiac,” a 1963 film The New York Times called an “economical little chiller,” and something “tantalizingly close to a bulls-eye.”

Asked by the website Hammer Graveyard what led him to the horror genre, he replied, “I wrote horror movies because it was my job,” adding, “So, when anyone asks me what were the influences that prompted me to be a ‘horror film’ writer, I tell them it was Wages!”

James Henry Kinmel Sangster was born on Dec. 2, 1927, in North Wales. He starting working in films at 16, made his way up from gopher to screenwriter, and even directed a handful of movies including “The Horror of Frankenstein.”

Mr. Sangster’s survivors include his wife, the actress Mary Peach, and a son, Mark James Sangster.

In the 1970s, when horror movie fans spun toward Hollywood films like “The Exorcist” (1973), Mr. Sangster began writing for American television, both TV movies and series, including “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Ironside” and “Kolchak: The Night Stalker,” which he continued to do for more than two decades.

He also wrote an autobiography called “Do You Want It Good or Tuesday?” (published in the United States in 2009) as well as several novels, mostly mysteries and crime stories, featuring the occasional gun runner, or, in the case of “Touchfeather,” (Norton, 1968), a woman The New York Times described as an “undercover sex-pot.” But it was those early successes with a lusty vampire and Gothic terrors that made his reputation.

“All of a sudden I’m a cult figure,” Mr. Sangster said to The Daily Telegraph in 1996. “But it’s all due to about five movies: a couple of Frankensteins, a couple of Draculas, and a mummy."

RIP.

x

I don't often look at screenwriting manuals/guides, but I might have to take a peek at Sangster's.

Hasn't got a good rating on Amazon. Only one review though I might add.

x

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/movies/george-kuchar-underground-filmmaker-dies-at-69.html

Mr. Brown wrote:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/27/idUS210892968920110727

Quote :

Polly Platt, a producer, Oscar-nominated production designer, writer -- and ex-wife of Peter Bogdanovich -- died Wednesday morning in Brooklyn, NY., according to published reports. She was 72 and had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

She was the production designer on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. I've got a book where she talks about learning more on that Welles outing than in the whole rest of her career, where he was having her build foreground miniatures out of stuff like burnt styrofoam.

Totally off topic and maybe inappropriate, but I think this looks like Bogdanovich.



If he got electricuted and lost the ascot.

If he had started acting in MTV videos instead of doing the shrink shtick on SOPRANOS, he WOULD have looked like this. "she blinded me with key lights!"

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/09/character-actress-frances-bay-dies-at-92.html

I was watching her in BLUE VELVET last night. Strange.

Rest in peace.

The robins have come. RIP.

Charles Napier.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15200509

We reach.

r.i.p. to one of those actors who always cropped up in things be it Star Trek or Rambo.

RIP to one of the toughest sons of bitches out there. :(

RIP Diane Cilento.

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/australian-actress-diane-cilento-dies-aged-78/story-e6frfmvr-1226161175518

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/australian-actress-diane-cilento-dies-aged-78/story-e6frfmvr-1226161175518

In addition to being Connery's first wife she was also a Bond girl of sorts. She doubled Mie Hama on the swimming scenes in YOLT. I mainly remember her portraying the Contessina de Medici opposite Charlton Heston in The Agony and The Ecstasy(1965).

And THE WICKER MAN.

Shame about Napier. The tough guys of Hollywood are now dwindling.

x

You, me, and Eastwood.

We're God's lonely men...

George Baker

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15225021

RIP Sir Hilary, et al.