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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 11, 2019 13:49:35 GMT -5
RIP to Denise Nickerson, who played Violet Beauregard, in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Nickerson wasa child actor, with roles on Dark Shadows and the Brady Bunch, as well as the educational series The Electric Company. She continued acting through the 70s, before leaving it behind. She suffered a stroke last year and on July 8, ingested medication, while family was out of the house. She was rushed to the hospital, where she developed pneumonia and was on a respirator, from which she was removed, yesterday. She passed away later in the day, at age 62. Nickerson was fine young actress and was a delightful participant in interviews and commentary for the Willy Wonka dvd and at conventions and similar events. For a certain generation, she will always be our favorite blueberry.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 24, 2019 6:13:19 GMT -5
RIP Ken Selig an inker for Archie Comics at age 87. He lived on the route that I deliver everyday and was a nice guy. I'll miss him.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 24, 2019 13:11:37 GMT -5
R. I. P. Rutger Hauer. Surely best known for his role as Roy Batty in Blade Runner. I always felt that Hauer had the potential to be a much bigger star. I was never sure if he just wasn't offered the right roles or if he chose poorly.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 24, 2019 13:29:27 GMT -5
RIP to Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, at 75, from a short illness (he passed away on July 19). Hauer first made a sensation, in the Netherlands, starring in the medieval tv series Floris, portraying a knight. His success grew to films, under the direction of Paul Verhoeven (who directed Floris), with such films as Turkish Delight, Katie Tippel, Spetters, and the international smash A Soldier of Orange. he came to the US and played the terrorist Wulfgar, in Nighthawks, opposite Sylvester Stallone (greatly elevating the film IMO). he then became iconic as Roy Batty, in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, with his death speech, which was largely improvised. He teamed up again with Verhoeven for Flesh & Blood, a medieval drama, with Jennifer Jason Leigh. He starred in the fantasy favorite Ladyhawke, with Michele Pfeiffer and Matthew Broderick, as a knight who is cursed to be parted from his lover, she a hawk by day, he a wolf by night. He did a few lesser films, like the Blood of Heroes, then a remake of Wanted Dead or Alive, as the descendent of Steve McQueen's character, from the original tv series. He was ill-used in Hollywood, though the film, Blind Fury, a remake of Zatoichi, proved to be a surprise hit. he was better used on television, where he played Albert Speer, in Inside the Third Reich and the tv movie Escape from Sobibor, about the mass escape from the concentration camp, alongside Alan Arkin. Hauer played more supporting and character roles, as time went on, appearing in Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the original film), Batman Begins, Smallville, and the HBO alternate history/mystery Fatherland, based on the thriller by Robert Harris. Recent years saw him in the tv series True Blood. He had moments in Hollywood, but his Dutch films better show just how great an actor he was. He will be greatly missed.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jul 24, 2019 17:13:26 GMT -5
Art Neville of the Neville Brothers, and before that The Meters, has passed.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Jul 24, 2019 19:46:57 GMT -5
Really sad to hear about Rutger Hauer. Blade Runner is one of only two films that have ever moved me to tears, and Hauer's "tears in the rain" monologue is a major reason why that film affects me so much. That damn scene gets me every...single...time. He then became iconic as Roy Batty, in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, with his death speech, which was largely improvised. You hear that a lot, but it's not actually true. The monologue was written by the film's scriptwriter David Peoples, and all its major constituent parts (attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...C-beams glittering in the dark...the Tannhäuser Gate...all those moments will be gone...) were present in the film's shooting script. Hauer modified the speech and added the lines, "...like tears in rain" and "Time to die." But it was far from improvised. That's not to take away from Hauer's portrayal of Roy Batty because there's no doubt that his delivery and on-screen presence are what really make that scene so damn powerful.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 24, 2019 19:49:41 GMT -5
Also passing away was Chris Kraft, one of the driving forces of NASA, during the space race. He started with the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was involved in research. He was then part of the group when it was absorbed into NASA and one of the original engineers assigned to Project mercury. He planned flight operations and was one of the main architects of Mission Control. He served as Flight Director for all of the Mercury missions. He graduated to head of Mission Operations, by Gemini. Kraft wrote the rules that governed flight operations, making the Flight Director the final authority, even to the point of overriding the crew. This created some controversy when he butted heads with Wally Schirra, during Apollo 7 and when he vowed that Scott Carpenter would never fly in space again, after Mercury-Atlas 7, where Carpenter , due to a malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner expended too much fuel. carpenter had to re-enter manually and successfully splashed down; but, 250 miles from his target zone. Blame was placed on carpenter, saying he ignored requests to check his instruments. Carpenter was painted as panicking; but, heart telemetry proved otherwise. Kraft also generated controversy with his report on the Space Shuttle program, saying that it should be privatized under one contractor (Kraft had been a paid consultant for Rockwell) and that NASA was overly safety conscious, after Challenger. The report was widely attacked and was further criticized in the wake of Columbia. Kraft was recently involved in restoring the original Mission Control set-up to preserve it for historical presentation. He passed away two days after the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, the successful completion of the goal that he helped shape into a reality.
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Post by Farrar on Jul 24, 2019 19:50:10 GMT -5
Awww, Rutger Hauer -- great actor, beautiful person inside and out. RIP.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 24, 2019 21:22:05 GMT -5
Also passing away was Chris Kraft, one of the driving forces of NASA, during the space race. He started with the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was involved in research. He was then part of the group when it was absorbed into NASA and one of the original engineers assigned to Project mercury. He planned flight operations and was one of the main architects of Mission Control. He served as Flight Director for all of the Mercury missions. He graduated to head of Mission Operations, by Gemini. Kraft wrote the rules that governed flight operations, making the Flight Director the final authority, even to the point of overriding the crew. This created some controversy when he butted heads with Wally Schirra, during Apollo 7 and when he vowed that Scott Carpenter would never fly in space again, after Mercury-Atlas 7, where Carpenter , due to a malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner expended too much fuel. carpenter had to re-enter manually and successfully splashed down; but, 250 miles from his target zone. Blame was placed on carpenter, saying he ignored requests to check his instruments. Carpenter was painted as panicking; but, heart telemetry proved otherwise. Kraft also generated controversy with his report on the Space Shuttle program, saying that it should be privatized under one contractor (Kraft had been a paid consultant for Rockwell) and that NASA was overly safety conscious, after Challenger. The report was widely attacked and was further criticized in the wake of Columbia. Kraft was recently involved in restoring the original Mission Control set-up to preserve it for historical presentation. He passed away two days after the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, the successful completion of the goal that he helped shape into a reality. I vividly remember his presence during all of the television coverage of the Mercury and Gemini programs. Everyone knew his name and seemed to recognize his importance and pre-eminence among the scores of scientists and engineers behind those banks of computers in Mission Control. Sorry to read here about his later opinions. (Many engineers knew that the shuttle would be unsafe to launch because the temperature was too low and those O-rings would fail. But there was that State of the Union speech scheduled for that same evening that would give NASA a real PR jolt a successful Challenger mission would supply, and the word came down from NASA's higher-ups, after they'd conferred with Morton-Thiokol, the designers, to launch anyway. No engineers were consulted on that final decision. Why ask the people who'd know? Reagan's speech that night got a real jolt, all right. Apparently the design flaw had been known to them for almost 10 years.) I see in his obit that he was named for his dad, Christopher Columbus Kraft, who was born in 1892 around the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Western Hemisphere. How perfect...
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 24, 2019 23:06:03 GMT -5
Also passing away was Chris Kraft, one of the driving forces of NASA, during the space race. He started with the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was involved in research. He was then part of the group when it was absorbed into NASA and one of the original engineers assigned to Project mercury. He planned flight operations and was one of the main architects of Mission Control. He served as Flight Director for all of the Mercury missions. He graduated to head of Mission Operations, by Gemini. Kraft wrote the rules that governed flight operations, making the Flight Director the final authority, even to the point of overriding the crew. This created some controversy when he butted heads with Wally Schirra, during Apollo 7 and when he vowed that Scott Carpenter would never fly in space again, after Mercury-Atlas 7, where Carpenter , due to a malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner expended too much fuel. carpenter had to re-enter manually and successfully splashed down; but, 250 miles from his target zone. Blame was placed on carpenter, saying he ignored requests to check his instruments. Carpenter was painted as panicking; but, heart telemetry proved otherwise. Kraft also generated controversy with his report on the Space Shuttle program, saying that it should be privatized under one contractor (Kraft had been a paid consultant for Rockwell) and that NASA was overly safety conscious, after Challenger. The report was widely attacked and was further criticized in the wake of Columbia. Kraft was recently involved in restoring the original Mission Control set-up to preserve it for historical presentation. He passed away two days after the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, the successful completion of the goal that he helped shape into a reality. I vividly remember his presence during all of the television coverage of the Mercury and Gemini programs. Everyone knew his name and seemed to recognize his importance and pre-eminence among the scores of scientists and engineers behind those banks of computers in Mission Control. Sorry to read here about his later opinions. (Many engineers knew that the shuttle would be unsafe to launch because the temperature was too low and those O-rings would fail. But there was that State of the Union speech scheduled for that same evening that would give NASA a real PR jolt a successful Challenger mission would supply, and the word came down from NASA's higher-ups, after they'd conferred with Morton-Thiokol, the designers, to launch anyway. No engineers were consulted on that final decision. Why ask the people who'd know? Reagan's speech that night got a real jolt, all right. Apparently the design flaw had been known to them for almost 10 years.) I see in his obit that he was named for his dad, Christopher Columbus Kraft, who was born in 1892 around the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Western Hemisphere. How perfect... Well, I think it illustrated the problems at NASA, in the wake of the end of Apollo. They were an agency in search of a mission, funding and support. The days of shooting for the moon were over. Much like a young actor or writer who takes chances to get that big break, they became the establishment, who tried to hold on. The Shuttle program was mired in problems from early days, from designs, cost, competing agendas, and contractors. I have an uncle who worked for Rockwell, on the shuttle program, who says they knew about problems with the O-rings long before the first launch. Kraft was like many; he had his good points and his bad; but, when it comes to flight operations, he literally wrote the book. He was one of those components that helped mankind escape the planet, fulfilling ancient dreams. he was human, with human failings. Our astronauts weren't saints either. The mini-series From the Earth to the Moon devoted an episode to the wives and dramatized the toll of the program on marriages, noting that the only Apollo team still married to the same wives were the men of Apollo 8: Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders. All have been with their wives for over 50 years, with the Bormans coming up on 70!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2019 6:00:51 GMT -5
Also passing away was Chris Kraft, one of the driving forces of NASA, during the space race. He started with the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was involved in research. He was then part of the group when it was absorbed into NASA and one of the original engineers assigned to Project mercury. He planned flight operations and was one of the main architects of Mission Control. He served as Flight Director for all of the Mercury missions. He graduated to head of Mission Operations, by Gemini. Kraft wrote the rules that governed flight operations, making the Flight Director the final authority, even to the point of overriding the crew. This created some controversy when he butted heads with Wally Schirra, during Apollo 7 and when he vowed that Scott Carpenter would never fly in space again, after Mercury-Atlas 7, where Carpenter , due to a malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner expended too much fuel. carpenter had to re-enter manually and successfully splashed down; but, 250 miles from his target zone. Blame was placed on carpenter, saying he ignored requests to check his instruments. Carpenter was painted as panicking; but, heart telemetry proved otherwise. Kraft also generated controversy with his report on the Space Shuttle program, saying that it should be privatized under one contractor (Kraft had been a paid consultant for Rockwell) and that NASA was overly safety conscious, after Challenger. The report was widely attacked and was further criticized in the wake of Columbia. Kraft was recently involved in restoring the original Mission Control set-up to preserve it for historical presentation. He passed away two days after the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, the successful completion of the goal that he helped shape into a reality. My Dad knew him well and I met him a couple of times in the early 70's when my Dad invited him at his home to talk about things and I was told to leave the room when they talked "technical stuff" and all that. He was an amazing man and easy person to understand things. I really enjoyed meeting him and they exchanged Christmas Cards and all that. My Mom and Dad went to Houston many times together to see him and his wife Betty of whom that I never met. My Dad worked on the Space Program with Boeing from 1964 to 1980.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 31, 2019 13:21:47 GMT -5
Miami Dolphins hall-of-Fame linebacker Nick Buoniconti has passed away. An undersized 13th round draft pick he became a leader of the Dophins "No-Name Defense" and a member of the perfect season team.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 1, 2019 20:54:56 GMT -5
Pro wrestler Harley Race, 8 times NWA World Champion, when it meant something, passed away from lung cancer. Harley was one of the last Old School NWA World Champions, from when the business and the title was presented as legit. He got his start in the early 60s, working for Gust Karras, the Kansas and Missouri promoter. He worked in places like Nashville and Amarillo, before going to the AWA, in Minnesota, were he got his first real taste of stardom. he moved around the territories until starting his association with Kansas City, in the early 70s and was picked to be the new World Champion, in 1973, defeating Dory Funk Jr, who didn't want to drop it to Jack Brisco. The title reign helped cement him as a top draw in Kansas City and St Louis, with special trips to other NWA territories. He was tapped to retake the tile from Terry Funk (brother of Dory), when he was tired of the grind. He would hold it until 1981 (apart from a quick switch, in Japan, with Giant Baba, one in Georgia with Tommy Rich and Dusty Rhodes first win, in 1979). He would regain it in 1983, before dropping it to Ric Flair at the first Starcade, on Thanksgiving, in 1983. Race was a co-promoter for the Kansas City territory, which was lucrative, until the WWF expansion, in the mid-80s. His money losses forced him to continue wrestling and he even came to work for the WWF, in 1986. A bad auto wreck ended his in-ring career and he became a manager, in WCW, representing Lex Luger and Big Van Vader (Leon White). He eventually opened a school and independent promotion, World League Wrestling, helping to train future stars, including the late WWE star Trevor Murdoch. Race took part in NBC's Exposed! Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets, a special which showed behind the scenes elements of wrestling, during the height of the late 90s wrestling boom. harley appeared in a segment (with an black bar across his face, but with enough showing to be recognizable, not to mention talking about it in newspaper interviews) about the role of the "booker," or the guy who sets up the angles and storylines and who picks the winners and losers. The show was laughed at by fans, as it was filled with made up stuff, like supposed "stunt grannies," old lady wrestlers who would be shoved to the ground by heels, on the way to the ring (never known to occur in any territory) and things like the rings being miked to pick up the sound of the impacts on it (they didn't need to be, you could hear them in the arena, without a mic). Race was one of the last real legends, linking the 60s and 70s (and 80s) to modern pro wrestling. He was a champion when that was chosen by the conglomeration of promoters as the guy to represent them all over the country. That meant you were the best in the business and could draw money anywhere, with anyone and would make local stars look that much better, increasing the revenue for that territory (for which the champion got a cut of the gate). It meant touring all over the world, for promoters in the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean. Japan, New Zealand and other locales. It also meant you were the closest thing to a "real" wrestler, as the champion had to be able to defend himself in a fight outside the ring, if challenged, and protect the title in the ring, if a wrestler or promoter tried to go into business for himself. No one got cute with Harley Race.
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Post by chadwilliam on Aug 1, 2019 23:15:02 GMT -5
Russi Taylor passed away on July 26 and while hers wasn't a name I was familiar with even when it was connected with Minnie Mouse whom she's voiced since the 1980's, I found out this evening that she also voiced Martin Prince on The Simpsons. It's a strange feeling when the voice you associate with the character of a ten year old boy dies and even stranger to think that The Simpsons, in its thirtieth year or so, has outlived a number of its cast.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 4, 2019 20:09:26 GMT -5
We missed a major one, for comics, from June 30: Guillermo Mordillo, known mostly by his last name, Mordillo... He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, son of an electrician and a domestic worker. he grew up with a love of soccer and drawing and the latter made him world famous. He worked in animation, in the 1950s, producing adaptations of fairy tales and fables; but, it was his silent cartoons that captured the imagination of the world. he loved Chaplin and Buster Keaton, who taught him the power of pantomime comedy, while the Marx Brothers taught him surrealism. he combined these influences, plus many other cartoonists, into his work.
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