Interesting, overlooked, and significant obituaries from around the world, as they happen, emphasizing the positive achievements of those who have died. Member, Society of Professional Obituary Writers.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Petro Vlahos
Special-effects wizard; primary developer of blue- and green-screen technology -- via the New York Times.
Stephane Hessel
Writer and activist -- via the New York Times. He was the son of two of the participants in the three-way love affair that became the novel and film "Jules et Jim." He was a hero of the French Resistance, a concentration camp survivor, and may be best remembered as the author of "Time for Outrage!"
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter -- via the New York Times. Most recognized as a collaborator with filmmakers Ismail Merchant and James Ivory -- 22 films in all, including such excellent productions as "Room with a View," "Heat and Dust," "Shakespeare-Wallah," "The Remains of the Day," and "Howard's End."
Cal Whipple aka Addison Beecher Colvin Whipple
Writer and editor -- via the New York Times. he may be best remembered for fighting for the right for Life magazine to publish the George Strock photo of dead American soldiers in 1943.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Roger Ebert
Film critic -- via the New York Times.
Our friend has died. He was an oxymoron -- a popular critic. A Pulitzer Prize-winner who started covering film during one if its most important periods -- the rise of the American New Wave, and who continued until yesterday. He loved Boulder, and contributed to its Conference on World Affairs for decades. I was fortunate enough to have interviewed him once, in 2003 -- a copy of that interview is posted below.
After that chat, we continued to interact, primarily by digital means as his ability to speak was lost. He was kind enough to promote my work as well! Why? No reason; I guess he liked my stuff and he was a nice guy.
Read what he says about writing and about critical writing in particular. His plain and straightforward style, combined with knowledge and experience, the fearlessness to speak his truth, and his underlying compassion and desire to share and discuss the art form he loved will always inspire me. Thank you, Roger!
Colorado
Daily: What is it about the Conference that has brought you back year after
year?
Our friend has died. He was an oxymoron -- a popular critic. A Pulitzer Prize-winner who started covering film during one if its most important periods -- the rise of the American New Wave, and who continued until yesterday. He loved Boulder, and contributed to its Conference on World Affairs for decades. I was fortunate enough to have interviewed him once, in 2003 -- a copy of that interview is posted below.
After that chat, we continued to interact, primarily by digital means as his ability to speak was lost. He was kind enough to promote my work as well! Why? No reason; I guess he liked my stuff and he was a nice guy.
Read what he says about writing and about critical writing in particular. His plain and straightforward style, combined with knowledge and experience, the fearlessness to speak his truth, and his underlying compassion and desire to share and discuss the art form he loved will always inspire me. Thank you, Roger!
Roger Ebert’s life at the movies is full of sound
& fury
By BRAD WEISMANN Colorado Daily
Entertainment Editor
(4/3/03)
Roger Ebert is
arguably the most influential film critic in America . The Pulitzer-Prize winning
film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times is a nationally syndicated film
commentator, and the author of a continuing series of film reference works and
collections of cinematic criticism and evaluation, including last year’s “The
Great Movies.” In addition, his quarter-century-long presence as co-host of the
popular “Sneak Previews/At the Movies” movie review television program imbedded
his image indelibly in the popular consciousness.
This week, Ebert returns to the CU-Boulder
campus for his 34th consecutive year as a participant in the annual Conference
on World Affairs. He took the time to talk to the Daily about film, his
writing, the Conference itself - and the cheeseburgers at Tom’s.
Roger Ebert: Well, it’s kind of like an
annual milestone in my annual journey through life. I came as a very very young
man, I was in my twenties, and I just find it to be unique among anything I’ve
ever encountered in that you gather these assorted people from all over the
world and put them on panels with each other, oftentimes moving them loose from
their specialties so that they have to think on their feet about things. This
is not where you listen to a bunch of experts giving the same speeches they
give every time they go to a conference. Because it’s not academically or professionally
oriented, the people have to use actual spoken English in order to communicate,
so you can tell pretty quickly whether they know what they’re talking about.
Particularly in this time, when most academic writing is written in a code
determined primarily to deflect comprehension, it’s really refreshing that this
conference is held in spoken, vernacular English. And apart form that, I always
find out something I didn’t know. It was at Boulder
that I was first confronted with feminism, gay liberation, the Internet - I
actually surfed the Web for the first time in Boulder . It wasn’t even the Web then ...
every year, there’s something new in our society and the Conference invariably
will be right on top of it.
CD: Why are you attracted to doing an Ozu
(film) this year?
RE: Well, I think he’s one of the three
greatest directors who ever lived.
CD: Who would you accord the other two
positions to?
RE: I’m not going to reveal that - I may
reveal that at Macky. I love Ozu. Sooner or later, everyone who loves films
gets to Ozu. He is a person who deals with deceptively small topics, usually
having to do with domestic situations - parents and children, husbands and
wives, three generations, sometimes. Frequently his films and even the titles
of the films seem similar. You have “early Autumn” and “Late Autumn,” “Late
Spring” and “Early Spring.” Yet the control that he has over his camera, over
the placement of his camera, his attention to the people that his films are
about, is so perfect that it’s like a cleansing of cobwebs compared to the busy
styles of modern films.
CD: Does his seemingly static style,
that’s so antithetical to what people have been trained to see, serve that
purpose?
RE: What he does is he demonstrates
something that I’ve long believed, which is that action films are more boring.
Because, you see, if you’re cutting all the time, it doesn’t make the film go
more quickly, it just exhausts your mind more quickly. A film is usually more
absorbing if you really are drawn into the characters and into their situation
- and if the scene is working, there’s also no need for a cut. Frequently,
movies with a great many cuts in them have got to build up some kind of tension
in the editing room to conceal the fact that nothing is really happening on the
screen... Donald Ritchie, who is the leading Western scholar on Japanese film
... was told by the Japanese that Ozu would not travel because he was “too
Japanese,” and no one who wasn’t Japanese could understand it - and of course
Ozu is the most universal of directors. His (Ozu’s) “Tokyo Story” is one of the
few films that I’ve shown to my film classes that invariably makes people cry.
So we went through (“Floating Weeds”) a shot at a time, and I was simply amazed
by how well it works with this approach. You know, there are some films that
are resistant to shot-at-a-time - the approach just doesn’t work for them. But
because Ozu has so much intelligence and thought that goes into his camera
strategy, there’s a lot to be found and a lot to be talked about. This spring
is kind of an Ozu spring for me, because later in the month ... I’ve got my own
Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival at the University of Illinois, and we’re
going to show one of Ozu’s silent films there, called “I Was Born, But...”. It’s
going to be a performance with a benshi...
CD: The on-stage narrator? (Used in the
days of Japanese silent film, these professional “explainers” outlined the plot
and provided insight for viewers - ed.)
RE: You know what a benshi is, you’re
well-informed. We’re bringing a benshi in from Tokyo ... so I’m going to get a lot of Ozu in
during April.
CD: Considering the sheer volume of work
that you’ve seen in your career, how do you come to any given film with a
freshened set of sensibilities?
RE: Well, my sensibilities aren’t
necessarily fresh, they may be seasoned. I just go in, sit down ,and the movie
starts. I hope I know more about movies now than when I started...
CD: Would you still advocate filmgoing as
a communal experience, as opposed to an increasing move to ... viewing in
isolation?
RE: Yeah, I would. Light your celluloid in
a big room with a lot of strangers is the best way to see a movie. The better
the picture and the better the sound at home, the better off you are ... that’s
better than looking at the movie on some little TV set with a crummy VHS tape.
But going to a theater is the best way to see a movie.
CD: Do you feel like you were spoiled in
the period of the late ‘60s and the ‘70s, the independent age (of American
cinema)?
RE: Yeah, I feel kind of that way. The
studios are now are interested primarily in “product.” That ‘s what they call
it. There was a very revealing comment by a studio executive during the last
month in connection with the Oscar race for Best Director. He was explaining
why he wasn’t going to vote for Scorsese, and he said, “Scorsese really hasn’t
contributed. He ‘s not interested in making money for anyone.” That’s almost
like an emblematic statement. It shows that this man at least, to him the
financial success of a movie is totally indicative of its artistic success.
CD: After having done it, and presumably,
at least early on in your career, kind of having to see everything that comes
down the pike, do you try to exercise a bit more control over what you watch?
RE: I go to just about everything. Last
year I reviewed 272 movies... I like to do the big, commercial pictures, and I
also like to do the independent films and the foreign films. That’s kind of my
mission, because I bring out a book every year called the Movie Yearbook, which
wouldn’t really function if it didn’t more or less have every movie of interest
in it.
CD: The schedule is just crazy all that
(Conference) week-
RE: Yeah, but I always find time to get a
cheeseburger at Tom’s Tavern ... a bunch of us always go up to the Red Lion, I
always makes my rounds of the used book stores in town. I’ve spent about nine
months in Boulder ,
one week at a time.
CD: I very much appreciate your most
recent book, “The Great Movies”...
RE: I intended it as kind of an entry
point. I became aware that a lot of younger filmgoers just had no idea at all
of film history. They’d all seen “Casablanca ,”
and the next-oldest was probably “Star Wars,” and I started the “Great Movies”
series ... really to kind of open up other titles and other directors and other
countries to people. Hopefully, they see one of those movies, they can
investigate it further and find out more about that director, and so forth.
CD: Do you have any instructions for those
who are starting their careers as film critics?
RE: Write in the first person - not only
stylistically, but emotionally. You really have to be writing not just from the
first person, but also - it’s gotta be you. There is no such thing as objective
truth in criticism. There’s no right or wrong, there’s only how you feel and
why and how you can justify it or explain it.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Milo O'Shea
Great character actor -- via the Telegraph. A classic "Irish type" who could do much more than play priests, barmen, and other sons of the sod. Among his best work: Bloom in "Ulysses," the Friar in Zefferelli's "Romeo and Juliet," "Theatre of Blood," "Barbarella," and turns in America TV ("Cheers," "West Wing") and Tony-worthy stage work.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Deke Richards aka Dennis Lussier
Songwriter and music producer; wrote "Love Child," "ABC," "I Want You Back," and "The Love You Save" -- via the New York Times.
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