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| Originally Posted by moovyphreak Damn! I cannot imagine what it’s like to lose both of your parents in less than 2 years |
Now they should stick the Reeves kid in an escape pod and blast him into outer space. Just to make it more thematically satisfying.
Filmmaker Gordon Parks Dies at 93 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 7, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) – Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood’s first major black director with ‘‘The Learning Tree’’ and the hit ‘‘Shaft,’’ died Tuesday, a family member said. He was 93.
Parks, who also wrote fiction and was an accomplished composer, died in New York, his nephew, Charles Parks, said in a telephone interview from Lawrence, Kan.
‘‘Nothing came easy,’’ Parks wrote in his autobiography. ‘‘I was just born with a need to explore every tool shop of my mind, and with long searching and hard work. I became devoted to my restlessness.’’
He covered everything from fashion to politics to sports during his 20 years at Life, from 1948 to 1968.
But as a photographer, he was perhaps best known for his gritty photo essays on the grinding effects of poverty in the United States and abroad and on the spirit of the civil rights movement.
‘‘Those special problems spawned by poverty and crime touched me more, and I dug into them with more enthusiasm,’’ he said. ‘‘Working at them again revealed the superiority of the camera to explore the dilemmas they posed.’’
In 1961, his photographs in Life of a poor, ailing Brazilian boy named Flavio da Silva brought donations that saved the boy and purchased a new home for him and his family.
‘‘The Learning Tree’’ was Parks’ first film, in 1969. It was based on his 1963 autobiographical novel of the same name, in which the young hero grapples with fear and racism as well as first love and schoolboy triumphs. Parks wrote the score as well directed.
In 1989, ‘‘The Learning Tree’’ was among the first 25 American movies to be placed on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The registry is intended to highlight films of particular cultural, historical or aesthetic importance.
The detective drama ‘‘Shaft,’’ which came out in 1971 and starred Richard Roundtree, was a major hit and spawned a series of black-oriented films. Parks himself directed a sequel, ‘‘Shaft’s Big Score,’’ in 1972.
He also published books of poetry and wrote musical compositions including ‘‘Martin,’’ a ballet about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
93 years old? Damn, I can dig that!
HBO made a great documentary about Parks in 2000 titled Half Past Autumn that aired during Black History Month.
If you’d like to read more about it, click here.
Parks was one of the most accomplished men of the century. He was a truly great man. In addition to “Half Past Autumn” (both the doc and the brilliant exhibition catalog book that was published with the “Half Past Autumn” touring exhibit), check out “Voices in the Mirror” and “A Choice of Weapons,” a pair of autobiographies that are just as great as “Learning Tree.”
Another must-read is the essay Parks wrote for LIFE magazine on the occasion of the death of his friend Malcolm X, an amazing article.
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| LENOX, Massachusetts (AP) – Maureen Stapleton, the Oscar-winning character actress whose subtle vulnerability and down-to-earth toughness earned her dramatic and comedic roles on stage, screen, and television, died Monday. She was 80. Stapleton, a longtime smoker who had been living in Lenox, died from chronic pulmonary disease, said her son, Daniel Allentuck. Stapleton, whose unremarkable, matronly appearance belied her star personality and talent, won an Academy Award in 1981 for her supporting role as anarchist-writer Emma Goldman in Warren Beatty’s “Reds,” about a left-wing American journalist who journeys to Russia to cover the Bolshevik Revolution. To prepare for the role, Stapleton said she tried reading Goldman’s autobiography, but soon chucked it out of boredom. “There are many roads to good acting,” Stapleton, known for her straightforwardness, said in her 1995 autobiography, “Hell of a Life.” “I’ve been asked repeatedly what the ‘key’ to acting is, and as far as I’m concerned, the main thing is to keep the audience awake.” Stapleton was nominated several times for a supporting actress Oscar, including for her first film role in 1958’s “Lonelyhearts”; “Airport” in 1970; and Woody Allen’s “Interiors” in 1978. Her other film credits include the 1963 musical “Bye Bye Birdie” opposite Ann-Margret and Dick Van Dyke, “Johnny Dangerously,” “Cocoon,” “The Money Pit” and “Addicted to Love.” In television, she earned an Emmy for “Among the Paths to Eden” in 1967. She was nominated for “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” in 1975; “The Gathering” in 1977; and “Miss Rose White” in 1992. Brought up in a strict Irish Catholic family with an alcoholic father, Stapleton left home in Troy, New York, right after high school. With $100 to her name, she came to New York and began studying at the Herbert Berghof Acting School and later at the Actors Studio, which turned out the likes of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Julia Roberts. Stapleton soon made her Broadway debut in Burgess Meredith’s 1946 production of “The Playboy of the Western World.” At age 24, she became a success as Serafina Delle Rose in Tennessee Williams’ Broadway hit “The Rose Tattoo,” and won a Tony Award. She appeared in numerous other stage productions, including Lillian Hellman’s “Toys in the Attic” and Neil Simon’s “The Gingerbread Lady,” for which she won her second Tony in 1971. She starred opposite Laurence Olivier in Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Stapleton’s friendship with Williams was well-known and he wrote three plays for her, but she never appeared in any of them. Along the way, she led a chaotic personal life, which her autobiography candidly described as including two failed marriages, numerous affairs, years of alcohol abuse and erratic parenting for her two children. She often said auditioning was hard for her, but that it was just a part of acting, a job “that pays.” "When I was first in New York there was a girl who wanted to play ‘St. Joan’ to the point where it was scary. … I thought ‘Don’t ever want anything that bad,’ " she recalled. “Just take what you get and like it while you do it, and forget it.” Cast throughout her career in supporting roles, Stapleton was content not playing a lead character, Allentuck said. “I don’t think she ever had unrealistic aspirations about her career,” he said. Beside Allentuck, Stapleton is survived by a daughter, Katharine Bambery, of Lenox and a brother, Jack Stapleton, of Troy, New York. |
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movi....stapleton.ap/
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| Honky-tonk star Buck Owens, who sold more than 16 million albums and popularized country entertainment on television as host of “Hee Haw,” died on Saturday at age 76. Owens, who helped spread the twangy “Bakersfield sound” as an antidote to Nashville’s slick country music, died of heart failure at his home, said his keyboard player Jim Shaw. The night before, he had performed his usual twice-weekly concert at his entertainment complex, Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace. “He was one of the true innovators,” Shaw said. “He did it his own way, an outside gunslinger type who used his own band and made music in Hollywood rather than Nashville. That free spirit made him important to a lot of people.” Owens honed his craft in the rowdy bars of Bakersfield, a gritty oil and farming town about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. He played it loud and kept it simple, performing tunes that were more escapist than the hard-life tales of his Bakersfield colleague Merle Haggard. Owens scored his first top-10 hit in 1960 with “Under Your Spell Again.” Between 1963 and 1967, at a time when mainstream country music was flirting with complex arrangements, Owens enjoyed 15 No. 1 hits, including “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail,” “My Heart Skips a Beat” and “Together Again.” “In Nashville, they were producing things with softer, more syrupy sounds,” Owens told biographer Nicholas Dawidoff in the book "In the Country of Country. “I’m one of those turn-on-the-damn-thing-and-here-we-go folks.” |
I was just watching “The N Word” and it focused primarily on Richard Pryor when he was just getting started and I forgot for a minute he had died. What was his last best movie, I haven’t watched any of his films in a long time and doubt I ever saw that many. need to check some out. I just remember see no evil hear no evil and his stand up comedy
So long Gene Pitney,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4878926.stm
I really thought he was older than 65.
Just heard the news.
Tiger’s father did a lot for his career and Earl’s legacy will live through one of the greatest golfers to come in our time.
He will be missed. Is his Mother Yoko Ono still alive?
Sad news. I hope he had at least one crack at Tiger’s wife before he passed.
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| Originally Posted by Master Chuin He will be missed. Is his Mother Yoko Ono still alive? |
BURN!
Poor Earl for I knew you but a short moment. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Oh wait this isn’t about that dude with the Karma list?? My bad.
I didn’t know Jason Thompson was a golf fan.
Golf bores me to tears. That doesn’t mean I’m happy that a famous golfer’s father died. Honestly, I just don’t really care that much. It all seems so faraway, so disconnected. I know what it’s like to lose a father, but I don’t know what it’s like to be a professional golfer. So in one way I can relate, but I’m not really upset by this news.
I did like that golf movie with Kevin Costner and Don Johnson, though; and I was pretty sad when those two people were tied to the anchor of their own boat and subsequently drowned, but this news really hasn’t affected me yet.
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| Originally Posted by almostsexy I didn’t know Jason Thompson was a golf fan. |
I leave it on almost every Sunday when football season is off and when there’s not a decent baseball game on TV. I’ve kept up with it more and more as the years have passed and I was pretty surprised at how quickly I picked up on how much I liked watching this on TV.
The concept is worse than NASCAR in many ways, but I just can’t help it.
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Why do they have to be dead?
Mess with the bull, you get the horns.
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| BURBANK, Calif. - Paul Gleason, who played the go-to bad guy in “Trading Places” and the angry high school principal in “The Breakfast Club,” has died. He was 67. Gleason died at a local hospital Saturday of mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer linked to asbestos, said his wife, Susan Gleason. |
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Johnson were unavailable for comment.
He was 67? Wow!
R.I.P.