September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011

American actor Cliff Robertson died at the age of 88 on Saturday September 10 from natural causes.

To the younger generation (God…I sound like my Dad!) Cliff Robertson will be best remembered as Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, also seen in flashback in Spider-Man 2 and 3.

In my childhood, he was a very familiar face in the mid sixties and seventies. Many of the films that he appeared in probably won’t register with most people but he made a big impact with me. Maybe it was Robertson’s calming demeanour and intelligent delivery that made you believe in every character that he played. You also felt that you knew him like some favourite Uncle.

He played Mosquito pilot wing commander Roy Grant in the British war film 633 Squadron (64). At the time I didn’t think that it was at all strange for an American officer to fly with the RAF. But of course now I know how important it was for British films to feature popular American stars of the time to boost cinema audiences in the USA.

In a complete contrast Cliff Robertson won the best actor Academy Award in 1969 for the critically acclaimed Charly (68). In this emotional and heartbreaking story, Robertson plays Charly Gordon, a mentally retarded janitor who works in a bakery and although he struggles to read and write he is a happy go-lucky soul with a kind heart. He is given the opportunity to have a brain operation following recent successful experiments with mice. This results in Charly gaining a genius IQ and he falls in love with his teacher played by Claire Bloom. Unfortunately, all is not what it seems.
This type of role also secured an Oscar for Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (88) and a best actor nomination for Sean Penn in I Am Sam (2001) but lost out to Denzel Washington for Training Day (2001).

Following Charly he went back to helping us Brits to win the war, this time against the Japanese in Too Late The Hero (70) co-starring our very own Michael Caine and a plethora of British stalwarts such as Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen, Denholm Elliot and Ronald Fraser. Although the film was not a commercial hit, it’s worth a viewing to see Michael Caine on top form as cockney Private Tosh Hearne at loggerheads with Cliff Robertson’s  ‘Yank’ officer.

My all time favourite Cliff Robertson character is the dodgy CIA executive Higgins in Three Days of the Condor (75). An intelligent conspiracy thriller with Robert Redford at his best as an innocent CIA book researcher (code name Condor) on the run from a cold and calculated hit man (Max von Sydow). Why does someone want Condor dead? What do they think he knows? Can he trust Higgins to bring him in safely? I thoroughly recommend that you watch the DVD.

Cliff Robertson was born in California so you would naturally assume that he would follow an acting career. However, at College he studied English Literature and wanted to be a playwright. He also spent time as a Merchant Marine and ironically he was later to play a certain Captain John F Kennedy in PT-109 (63). He found a job in the theatre working backstage but was eventually drawn to acting and he realised that he had a talent for it. After a spell in TV roles he landed a part in the sexual drama Picnic (55) starring William Holden and Kim Novak. I say sexual drama but these days a daytime soap would be more racy.

Unfortunately his life wasn’t without scandal. In 1977 Cliff Robertson did something that upset many of the big studios in Hollywood and Robertson didn’t work for quite a few years. A sex scandal? Drug abuse? No he exposed the head of Columbia studios David Begelman as a fraudster who forged Robertson’s signature on a $10,000 cheque which only came to light when the IRS came after the actor for non payment of tax. Despite Begelman being suspended and eventually convicted for fraud, the innocent Robertson came off far worse and was targeted with death threats which resulted in FBI protection.

His career never really recovered and he made a few duds in the 1980’s notably Class (83), Star 80 (83) as Hugh Hefner and Brainstorm (83) in which Natalie Wood died during the making of the film. He also went back to TV by agreeing to play Dr Michael Ranson in the American TV soap Falcon Crest (83-84).

This brings us full circle to 2002 and Sam Raimis Spiderman. Remember, “With great power comes great responsibility” and Cliff Robertson always gave 100%.

Sad news comes to us this morning that comedy legend Leslie Nielsen has passed away from complications from pneumonia, that arose while he was fighting a staph affection. He was 84 years old.

Nielsen will likely be best remembered for his appearances in spoof TV and films, including Airplane!, Police Squad and The Naked Gun series. However his CV stretches all the way back to the 1950′s and includes plenty of dramatic roles, including Forbidden Planet, The Poseidon Adventure and Creepshow.

Undoubtedly the quality of his later work fell away a little, with the likes of Stan Helsing, Scary Movie 4 and Superhero Movie representing something of a fall from grace when compared the high water mark of The Naked Gun and Airplane! But nothing can diminish the impact, the goodwill, the comedy force of those earlier appearances, with favourite quotes/lines already permeating the Internet across Twitter and other sites.

Nielsen had a genuine warmth and a steadfast commitment to not take himself too seriously that always came across in interviews (often held in the company of his hand-held fart-noise device). Anyone familiar with his work will be sad to hear that he has passed and will remember with a fond smile his many laugh out loud hilarious performances. For me, the exchange I always come back to is this one, from Airplane! between Nielsen’s concerned Doctor and the pilot, played by Lorne Green:-

Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land?
Captain Oveur: I can’t tell.
Rumack: You can tell me. I’m a doctor.
Captain Oveur: No. I mean I’m just not sure.
Rumack: Well, can’t you take a guess?
Captain Oveur: Well, not for another two hours.
Rumack: You can’t take a guess for another two hours?

Comedy gold, folks and all delivered with the straightest of straight faces.

Leslie Nielsen is survived by his fourth wife, Barbaree Nielsen and his two children from his second marriage, Thea and Maura. Rest in peace, Lt Drebin.

Please feel free to comment below with your favourite lines from his films.

Dino De Laurentiis, acclaimed producer of many films including the Hannibal Lecter franchise, sadly passed away on Wednesday, surrounded by his family at his Beverley Hills home. He was 91 years old.

Earlier in his career, De Laurentiis worked with some of Italy’s most famous directors, including Federico Fellini and Roberto Rossellini, however in the 1970′s he made the move to Hollywood, going on to work on films as well-known and eclectic as Dune, Flash Gordon, Conan the Barbarian, Serpico, Death Wish, Breakdown, The Bounty, King Kong (1976) and U-571.

It was perhaps for Manhunter, Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising that he became best known and he was awarded the Irving Thalberg Award at the Oscars in 2001, to go with his Best Foreign Language Film Oscar from 1957 for La Strada.

Brett Ratner, who directed Red Dragon, said on Twitter that De Laurentiis “was a mentor and friend…I will miss him”. De Laurentiis is survived by his wife Martha and their two children as well as four children from his first marriage to Silvana Mangano, who passed away in 1989. RIP Mr De Laurentiis.

Having only celebrated his 88th birthday on Monday, director Arthur Penn sadly passed away on Tuesday, his daughter Molly reported.

Penn will be best known for his ground-breaking work on Bonnie & Clyde, which at the time was a massive departure from the tone and style of Hollywood’s output, yet still earned him a thoroughly deserved Oscar nomintion for Best Director (he earned BAFTA, Golden Globe and DGA nominations that year as well).

The film, along with Easy Rider and The Graduate marked the dawn of New Hollywood, as independently-minded films, often with a strongly counter-cultural message began to find a voice and an audience. In one sense it is a shame that Bonnie & Clyde so overshadowed his career. It is an almost peerless film to be remembered for, drawing on many of the traits of the French New Wave and adopting a desaturated palate long before the cast of Saving Private Ryan braved the shores of Normandy, but it is far from being Penn’s sole noteworthy achievement.

He was Oscar-nominated five years earlier in 1963 for directing The Miracle Worker and Anne Bancroft earned an Oscar for that film for Best Actress in a Lead Role. After Bonnie & Clyde, Penn continued to put out sterling work in the Seventies (Little Big Man, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks), working with Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman in the process. As the New Hollywood bubble burst in the wake of Heaven’s Gate and the rise and rise of blockbusters, Penn struggled to continue to find work. He worked occasionally in the 80′s and 90′s but never to the same acclaim as his work attracted in the 60′s and 70′s, however he was given an honorary award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007.

Penn always defended the unprecedented on-screen violence of Bonnie & Clyde, including the blood-soaked finale as the two anti-heroes are gunned down by just about every law-enforcement official in the US. Penn rightly maintained (in an interview with Martin Scorsese) that the violence was realistic and no different from the shocking footage making its way onto US TV screens from the Vietnam war. You can catch a review of Bonnie & Clyde here as part of our “IMDb 250″ project.

Penn was a great director, who will be fondly remembered and sorely missed.

Although she was well into her 80′s when she appeared in Titanic, Gloria Stuart had to be aged through make-up in order to make her look believable as a survivor of the tragic sinking. Stuart had in fact long since retired from acting in feature films, having last appeared on the big screen in 1946′s She Wrote The Book. After that, she took a several decade long break, before continuing to keep herself busy through a string of TV appearances in the seventies and eighties, but it was not until Cameron decided to make Titanic that she was able to be coaxed back onto the silver screen.

Stuart’s acting career goes all the way back to the dawn of talkies and encompasses some very well regarded and well known work (The Invisible Man, It Could Happen To You, Poor Little Rich Girl). In fact after Titanic she continued to work both in television and film, racking up appearances in The Million Dollar Hotel, Murder She Wrote and General Hospital, her last on screen appearance being in 2004 at the age of 94.

To say that Stuart showed exceptional longevity is a gross understatement, given a career that spanned over seventy years. She was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her role in Titanic and shared a Screen Actors Guild Best Supporting Actress award with Kim Basinger (for LA Confidential). She was in fact (at 87) the oldest ever Oscar nominee as well as being a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.

Five years ago, Gloria Stuart was diagnosed with cancer and she finally passed away on 26th September, having celebrated her 100th birthday earlier this year on Independence Day. She is survived by her daughter from her marriage to her second husband, who passed away in 1978.

It is of course always sad to lose someone of great and unusual talent, but to lose them in their prime, with so much still ahead of them is especially tragic.

News comes today from The LA Times of the death of Sally Menke, who was an acclaimed and gifted editor, having worked with Quentin Tarantino on every one of his films, from Reservoir Dogs all the way up to and including Inglourious Basterds, for which she was rightly nominated for an Academy Award. As distinctive an ear for dialogue as Tarantino undoubtedly has, his films are just as marked for their audacious, unconventional narratives and editing and Menke’s contribution to Tarantino’s films cannot therefore be overstated.

Menke was not shackled to Tarantino by any means. She edited films as diverse as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, All The Pretty Horses, Mulholland Falls and Heaven and Earth, working alongside such directors as Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Stone and Lee Tamahori. Alongside her Oscar nomination for Inglourious Basterds, she was also nominated for Pulp Fiction, picking up BAFTA noms along the way for Basterds, Fiction and Kill Bill:Volume 1.

Menke had been hiking in Griffith Park and was found at the bottom of a ravine in Beachwood Canyon, the searing temperatures in LA for the past few days being speculated upon as a contributing factor to her sad death.  She was a genuinely and exceptionally gifted young editor, gone far to soon at the age of 56.

This news came first from The Los Angeles Times where you can find more info.

It’s being reported tonight that director Satoshi Kon has passed away at the age of 47. Official confirmation is expected to follow but various sources are confirming the sad news.

In his short life he wrote, animated and directed some of the most magical, thought provoking and emotionally engaging anime films, which thankfully made their way across the world.

As a staff director at the prolific Madhouse Studio he created works such as Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, the TV series Paranoia Agent, the sublime Tokyo Godfathers and my personal favourite, Paprika.

To be honest there’s nothing more to say other than this is really terrible news. I was late to the Satoshi Kon show, seeing an early trailer for Paprika and falling in love with what I saw, I then devoured every second of his work I could get my hands on.

Like the very best art his work seemed to blend universal truths with his own wonderful and unique qualities; his work contained countless moments which in another film would have been perfunctory or throwaway but instead were infused with a breathtaking beauty and a sense of understated awe.

Magic, memory, dreams, touchstones of the past and powerful visions of the future were all intrinsic to his works, but the soul of his films were crowded with characters who felt the tragedy and beauty of the world keenly, and Kon’s ability to render these on screen was almost without compare.

The only thing left to say is: see his films. If you were a fan then you’ll need to, and if you’ve not heard of him or seen his work then you’re in for a really wonderful time.

In an interview from DVDVisionJapan conducted at Dreamworks Satoshi Kon said of his film, Millennium Actress,

I think that the most important theme to me was “time.” For instance, I am giving my interview here at DreamWorks. While I’m having a conversation with you, I also think about Japan, and the places I had been a long time ago. In other words, I have thoughts and images of far-distance while physically I am here at this moment. I could be thinking about a long time ago or what I shall do tomorrow, or in the near future.  So, there are past, present and future tenses in one world.

They all exist in one’s life or one’s world. That kind of thing is irrelevant to others, but it is ‘ultimate truth’ for that person. I don’t want to make a message evident in my film, nor I don’t want to make a message-oriented film…It’s kind of difficult to put in words what I wanted for my audience.

At any rate, I wanted to express my attitude toward filmmaking or any strong desires on my part through this film. So, my message to the audience would be that we all should be honest to our true desire or will, and that we should be positive toward life.

Here’s a collection of clips which, while divorced from their original context as they are, provide a glimpse of the wonders Kon created.

Kon was working on a new film called The Dreaming Machine, a few images of which you can see below, and I truly hope that the film will be released and serve as a tribute to a master animator and director.

Thanks to Twitch for these images.

Sad news to end the long weekend on, it has been announced that actress Lynn Redgrave has died at the age of 67.

Part of the Redgrave acting dynasty it is her roles in Georgy Girl and Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters which will be thought of as her most shining moments, and with good reason. Though not as venerated as her sister Vanessa her body of work is a fine example of a character actress finding a number of iconic roles on stage and screen.

Making mostly TV appearances in recent years, she has been remembered warmly today as a vital part of the Redgrave family, whose illustrious heritage, and superficially controversial nature, often overshadowed the individual members, but Lynn Redgrave carved out a fine career for herself.

She lost her long battle with breast cancer yesterday, and her family released this statement,

Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven-year journey with breast cancer…She lived, loved and worked harder than ever before. The endless memories she created as a mother, grandmother, writer, actor and friend will sustain us for the rest of our lives. Our entire family asks for privacy through this difficult time.

Her death follows that of her brother Corin Redgrave a month ago, and last year her niece, Natasha Richardson, suffered a fatal skiing accident last year.

Sad news to end the week on tonight. The actor and director Lionel Jeffries has died at the age of 83.

He’ll be a familiar face to those of us who watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang endlessly, his role as the eccentric and irrepressible Grandpa Potts was a huge part of the buoyancy and charm of the film and he contributes hugely to its timeless appeal.

Jeffries was also well known as a director, bringing the children’s classic The Railway Children to the screen in 1970, he also wrote the screenplay and it is perhaps the most enduring of his films.

I didn’t realise this until tonight but he was also behind the camera of the 1978 adaptation of Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, which is a strange and, at times, haunting film yet full of joy in its mix of live action and animation. Both films are worth a watch, I’d have no hesitation in recommending them. Another surprise was the revelation that he made his screen debut, though uncredited, as Bald RADA student in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright.

Another of his roles which will always raise a smile for me was his turn in the 1964 Victorian sci-fi The First Men in the Moon, but in a career spanning 50 years he will always be associated as the dotty head of the Potts family.

You can read the BBC’s report here, and enjoy one of his finest scenes below.

Sad news today that Joseph Wiseman who played the first James Bond villain opposite Sean Connery in Dr. No has died ages 91. Wiseman played the character Dr. Julius No in the 1962 film.

The LA Times have reported that Wiseman’s health had recently been deteriorating and that he died at his home in Manhattan. His last TV role was in an episode of Law And Order in 1996 with his last performance on stage in the 2001 production of Judgment At Nuremberg.

I think I’ve seen Dr. No more times than any other Bond and along with Connery, Ursula Andress coming out of the water and a ‘dragon’, Wiseman’s performance was excellent and paved the way for 20 other Bond villains over the next 50 years!

Our thoughts go out to his family and friends. RIP Mr. Wiseman.