Amph Hollywood Death Watch

The loss of a great talent...who knows what he would have went on to after Spartacus? He certainly made the role his own.

An even bigger loss to his family, my thoughts go out to them.

 

Whitfield was only 39 years old? And the irony, he was famous for looking so incredibly fit and healthy. I guess when it's your time to go...

He could have had a lengthy career. And by all accounts, very well-liked by all of his co-workers.

 

John Calley, 1930-2011

 

Calley was a much beloved executive in a town where most executives are regarded the incarnation of evil.

He produced some successful films outside of his executive stints, including The Da Vinci Code and the Birdcage.

It was Calley, as the head of Warner Brothers in the early 70s, who essentially gave Clint Eastwood and Stanley Kubrick lifetime contracts with that studio, along with endless artistic and financial support.

 

John Wesley Downey pm'd me re Steve Jobs, and I think he has a point:

"After I watched this news video about Steve Jobs, I thought you might want to consider a death watch notice for him.

People in the forum will certainly have a lot to say about him. Yes, I know he wasn't a creator or a performer of entertainment,
but when it looked as though music piracy was going destroy to music on the net, he came up with i-tunes which has had a huge
impact and changed how people bought music - legally. And of course his purchase of Pixar from George Lucas and it's subsequent success has had a big impact on people who have enjoyed those movies. Just food for thought. I didn't know Jobs sat on the Board of Directors of Walt Disney Corporation, but when they bought Pixar, that was part of the deal."

Well said.

 

It is mindboggling that the same man who made a movie like The Incredibles possible also figured out how to create a marketplace, and market, for disposable software applications sold for a few dollars a pop.

The first computer I owned was a Macintosh SE 30 with dual floppy drives. One drive for applications, the other for storing documents. It came with an application called Hypercard that now seems like a magical precursor to the internet. A friend of mine who was a programmer was involved in a startup company that let people network their Hypercard stacks through dialup modems. Naturally, it went under, but those were the days.

 

You know, I'm not an Apple guy at all. I think I've never been in an Apple store and I don't own either an iPod or an iPad. But even for me, hearing this new was monumental.

When it comes to someone who had become more than a legend . . . he was an icon; probably the biggest icon that I'll co-exist with.

 

Normally, I look at obituaries and public outpourings of grief and I find that there's a tendency to overstate importance the person's contributions. With Steve Jobs, I think that I see more understatement. Not just from the more devout users of competing platforms, but even from people who acknowledge what he did.

He's on the same tier as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and John Rockefeller.

He wasn't an innovator or inventor himself. But damn, he choose the right innovators and inventors to back more often than not. Always making something easier to use, making it more stylish, making it smaller, making it more convenient, giving it better battery life, etc. Apple under Steve Jobs found ways to be the best at given segments of markets, forcing everyone else to play catch-up. He was also a damn good CEO; when he first came back to Apple, I remember people talking about how it wouldn't change anything, and how Apple was basically doomed as a company. People were talking about Microsoft buying it, or Dell, or Sony, etc. If you could go back in time to tell people that in under two decades, Steve Jobs would turn Apple into the most valuable company on the planet, people would have thought that you were crazy.

 

Truly an incredible man; I've owned nothing but Macs (two laptops and an Imac) for three years now. They're great products, and so is my Iphone and Ipod.

Apple and Steve Jobs came back onto the electronics market with a combination of stylistic sense and fierce intolerance of "good enough" that still isn't really equalled; they're starting to reach the limits (IMO) of what OSX can do with the current software release, but even the relatively imperfect Lion has (albeit adopted from the Iphone) very interesting and useful ideas, specifically Launchpad and Mission Control (which exists in a rather primitive sense with the Multitasking bar on the Iphone.) The first release has had a fair share of strange errors for me, but it functions and will only get better. This is in sharp contrast with probably the worst Windows release of recent years, Vista, which was terrible to begin with and never got much better.

I'm not sure if the heavy automation pointed towards simplicity of use was specifically Steve's idea on the Mac and Iphone platforms, but just the level of stuff it simply does for you is a strong point in it's favor, IMO; the typical computer user doesn't think tinkering with system settings is fun. Which brings us to the most important device Apple has introduced lately: The Ipad. I personally have about zero use for one (I'm one of the people who LIKES tinkering with their electronics, and the Ipad doesn't let you really do that), but Jobs was entirely correct in making it as simple as possible. Most people don't power-use, or even play 'real' video games, on their home computers; computers are predominantly consumption devices, and the combination of fairly serious hardware, a good, tested operating system, and a relatively hazard-free approach to programs and games obviously appeals to alot of people. This obviously isn't exclusive to the Ipad..but I'd say it's probably the best of the current group of tablets from a consumption perspective; Itunes & the App Store really don't have serious competition, and won't for at least awhile unless Amazon seriously picks up it's game.

Finally- Steve was one of a very few innovative important people left to us; his passing is a loss to us all, and I only hope Apple carries on the way he would want them to.

 

There are still some cynical people who believe one person can't make a difference. That's nonsense.
Steve Jobs proved that one person can make all the difference in the world.

 

Charles Napier

And:

Diane Cilento

 

Napier's screen death in Silence of the Lambs is one for the ages.

 

[image=http://trialx.com/curetalk/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2011/04/gcelebrities/Charles_Napier-3.jpg]

Stiff man putting my mind in jail
And the judge banged the gavel and said "No Bail"
Gonna lick his hand and waaaaaaaag my tail

(from Charles Napier's greatest hits)


RIP, Charles... you will be missed.

 

George Baker (1931-2011)

Film career that spanned 60 years, from roles in films such as The Dam Busters, The Spy Who Loved Me and The 39 Steps, plus also notably TV series including The Prisoner, Minder and arguably his most well-known role: Inspector Wexford in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. He also played Tiberius in I, Claudius.

(interestingly, the article also states he was strongly considered by Ian Fleming as being the ideal James Bond but he couldn't accept due to his pre-existing contract)

 

I only remember him in "I, Claudius"; where it appears that he was cast against type, because he was great as Tiberius, the man with *no* charisma.

 

Ken Russell, 1927-2011

 

The only movie I ever liked of his was Tommy, and I'm not sure if it was because of him or my young
love affair with the source material, though Russell's flamboyant style did make a contribution.

Some of his films, like the Devils, are virtually unwatchable. At least for me.

A real iconoclast. You definitely know a Ken Russell film when you see it.

Ann Margret talks about working with Ken Russell

 

[image=http://s3.broadway.com/article-photos/large/1.157634.jpg]

Controversial... brilliant... gone.

 

Patrice O'Neal, aged 41

 

He was a funny guy, and went too soon.

 

It's a Wonderful Life.

 

I saw "The Big Clock" not too long ago & was surprised to see Harry Morgan as a villain. He played a lackey and was surprisingly menacing, in no time I forgot of him as Col. Potter.