Passages

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Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: Passages

#7326 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Jul 31, 2018 8:12 am

Craig Wallace wrote:
Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:55 pm
Bernard Hepton
Looks like The Guardian used Anton Rodgers' image from The Organization for the second photo in the obituary instead of Hepton's - for a moment there I thought the claim "...as an actor, he could transform himself without makeup..." indicated a true ability to shapeshift!

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djproject
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Re: Passages

#7327 Post by djproject » Tue Jul 31, 2018 2:42 pm

Sam Mehran, songwriter/producer (best known for Test Icicles and Outer Limitz)

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mfunk9786
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Re: Passages

#7328 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Aug 02, 2018 9:42 pm


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thirtyframesasecond
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:48 pm

Re: Passages

#7329 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Sun Aug 05, 2018 5:37 am

Barry Chuckle. A 73yo children's entertainer, who with brother Paul, had a very, very long running show on the BBC. Hard to explain it really as it would never be commissioned now. Two old guys doing end of the pier, slapstick type humour.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45074955

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Aunt Peg
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:30 am

Re: Passages

#7330 Post by Aunt Peg » Sun Aug 05, 2018 6:24 am

Moshé Mizrahi director of Madame Rosa (well overdue for an English friendly Blu Ray release) has passed away:

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

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domino harvey
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Passages

#7331 Post by domino harvey » Mon Aug 06, 2018 1:42 am


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MichaelB
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Re: Passages

#7332 Post by MichaelB » Mon Aug 06, 2018 5:16 am

Piotr Szulkin, by some distance Poland's most important sci-fi filmmaker.

Sadly, the likes of Golem (1979), War of the Worlds: Next Century (1981), O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization (1985), Ga, ga. Glory to the Heroes (1986) and his last film King Ubu (2003) are virtually unknown outside Poland (although an English-friendly DVD box set of the first four was released there a few years ago), which says more about distributor timidity and the challenges of pigeonholing his iconoclastic work than it does about its own intrinsic merit.

I wrote these capsule reviews a decade or so ago:
War of the Worlds: Next Century (Wojna światów – następne stulecie, d. Piotr Szulkin, 1981)

The sly opening dedication to H.G.Wells and Orson Welles works on at least two levels: as an acknowledgement of the men who respectively wrote and adapted the original ‘The War of the Worlds’, and as a warning not to take anything in the film at face value. Sure enough, in addition to constructing a memorably sour Orwellian vision of a near-future Poland after a visit by Martians (it’s unlikely the references to invasion and occupation would have been lost on its original audience), Szulkin also examines how the media are complicit in both its presentation and in behind-the-scenes string-pulling, and his view of the population-lulling effect of “reality television” (which is even called that at one point) is worryingly prescient. Fittingly, the protagonist Iron Idem (Roman Wilhelmi) is a television anchorman who first realises that something might be awry is when he’s given an entirely new script to read mere seconds before he goes on air.

O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilisation (O-Bi, O-Ba. Koniec cywilizacji, d. Piotr Szulkin, 1985)

While the previous film was set in a just about recognisable near future, here civilisation has collapsed completely, with a gaggle of survivors of an unspecified catastrophe waiting for their own Godot in the form of a mysterious Ark that will take them to a far better place. Government apparatchik Soft (Jerzy Stuhr) knows that it’s all a propagandist lie concocted to stave off absolute despair – but is startled to find his normally sane colleagues taking it seriously. Szulkin’s film certainly doesn’t lack ideas, and his realisation of a crumbling civilisation is highly convincing (especially given a clearly limited budget), but this did less for me than the other two: the satirical elements of the others are muted in favour of a setting and narrative that’s a little too familiar to Western eyes.

Ga-ga: Glory to the Heroes (Ga, Ga – Chwała bohaterom, d. Piotr Szulkin, 1986)

The third Szulkin dystopia seems to begin where its predecessors left off, as its unnamed protagonist (Daniel Olbrychski) is blasted from a prison ship onto a supposedly uncharted planet. Instead, he finds a conveniently Polish-speaking world full of people who worship him as a hero and offer him all manner of blandishments, including sexual ones. But he is rightly sceptical: he’s actually being groomed to play the leading role in a hi-tech variant of the crucifixions on Mount Golgotha. This is much closer to blackly comic farce than its predecessors, laced with generous splashings of gore in set-pieces reminiscent of the early work of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Olbrychski plays it admirably straight, while a grotesque Jerzy Stuhr has a whale of a time as a sinister cultural attaché.

King Ubu (Ubu król, d. Piotr Szulkin, 2003)

I haven’t read Alfred Jarry’s play since my teens, so can’t recall too many specifics, but Szulkin’s adaptation certainly catches its blend of the childishly scatological and the politically pointed. The play was also set in Poland, so it’s entirely fitting that its themes have been grafted onto a present-day Poland in imminent danger of complete collapse as its various institutions struggle to retain their authority in the face of Ubu’s arbitrary cruelty. The caricature is often extremely broad, and performances are borderline demented, but that’s true to Jarry too. This wouldn’t be my first recommendation for someone new to Szulkin, but it’s good to see him back to making features after a break of over a decade.

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Feego
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:30 pm
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Re: Passages

#7333 Post by Feego » Mon Aug 06, 2018 9:25 am

My introduction to Charlotte Rae was in the garish children's TV movie The Worst Witch, where she has a dual role as both a good witch (basically Mrs. Garrett with a British accent) and her evil, pink-haired sister.

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lacritfan
Life is one big kevyip
Joined: Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:39 pm
Location: Los Angeles

Re: Passages

#7334 Post by lacritfan » Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:12 am


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mfunk9786
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Re: Passages

#7335 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Aug 06, 2018 12:23 pm


AisleSeat
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 6:16 pm
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Re: Passages

#7336 Post by AisleSeat » Tue Aug 07, 2018 12:31 pm

Masahiko Tsugawa.

Masahiko Tsugawa, who appeared in Crazed Fruit as well as the films of Juzo Itami, among others, has passed away at age 78 due to heart failure. As his death has yet to be reported in English media, the above link to the Sankei Shimbum, in Japanese, will suffice for now.

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bearcuborg
Joined: Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:30 am
Location: Philadelphia via Chicago

Re: Passages

#7337 Post by bearcuborg » Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:46 pm


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L.A.
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 7:33 am
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Re: Passages

#7338 Post by L.A. » Wed Aug 08, 2018 1:04 pm


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Dylan
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:28 pm

Re: Passages

#7339 Post by Dylan » Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:15 pm

Cinematographer Richard H. Cline, who did brilliant work on The Fury, Body Heat, and others.

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Passages

#7340 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:54 pm

It is interesting that Kline worked on both The Boston Strangler and The Andromeda Strain, which both have sequences in which the action splits apart into multiple frames, which seemed to be a technique that was briefly in vogue from the mid 60s into the mid 70s.

It is also interesting to note that post-Andromeda Strain Kline was also the cinematographer on the rather overlooked adaptation of a Michael Critchton novel, 1974's The Terminal Man

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domino harvey
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Re: Passages

#7341 Post by domino harvey » Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:08 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:54 pm
It is interesting that Kline worked on both The Boston Strangler and The Andromeda Strain, which both have sequences in which the action splits apart into multiple frames, which seemed to be a technique that was briefly in vogue from the mid 60s into the mid 70s.
It's because of Expo 67, which is hard to recreate or imagine now but the YouTube clip I linked shows enough to get the idea and how influential it was

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colinr0380
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Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Passages

#7342 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:34 pm

That's amazing! It almost seems as if this kind of technique was in opposition to Cinerama, in the sense that Cinerama was trying to make a seamless all-encompassing experience, whilst this technique of highlighting aspects of a frame within boxes celebrates that lack of matching between frames (which makes the moments when the frames do present a unified image more powerful too) in order to allow it to use juxtaposition instead of editing to provide a shot and countershot reaction. Here you do not have to cut away but show both participants inside their own frame simultaneously. I especially like the use of 'above' and 'below' boxes in that video as Heaven and Earth, with life taking place on the parnorama of screens in the middle!

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Aunt Peg
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:30 am

Re: Passages

#7343 Post by Aunt Peg » Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:49 am

Actor Richard Dix has passed away.

mteller
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:23 pm

Re: Passages

#7344 Post by mteller » Fri Aug 10, 2018 11:09 am

Aunt Peg wrote:
Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:49 am
Actor Richard Dix has passed away.
Yes, 70 years ago.

His son Robert died 2 days ago.

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Passages

#7345 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:57 pm


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antnield
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:59 pm
Location: Cheltenham, England

Re: Passages

#7346 Post by antnield » Mon Aug 13, 2018 3:40 am


flyonthewall2983
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Re: Passages

#7347 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Aug 13, 2018 12:48 pm


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dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: Passages

#7348 Post by dwk » Tue Aug 14, 2018 11:54 am


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dadaistnun
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 8:31 am

Re: Passages

#7349 Post by dadaistnun » Wed Aug 15, 2018 11:13 am

Publisher John Calder
“Among the many great writers he championed were Samuel Beckett, Heinrich Böll, Wolfgang Borchert, William Burroughs, Marguerite Duras, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Sadegh Hedayat, Aidan Higgins, Henry Miller, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, Hubert Selby, Jr, and Claude Simon… In short, John Calder was the right publisher at the right time who introduced international post-war literature music and theatre to a country not always sure it wanted to make those discoveries, but when you look at his list 50 to 60 years later you realise just how far ahead of his time he was."

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Feego
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:30 pm
Location: Texas

Re: Passages

#7350 Post by Feego » Wed Aug 15, 2018 2:54 pm

Morgana King, jazz singer and actress who played Mama Corleone

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