It Is Accomplished

Please be aware that Stale Popcorn has changed URLs. It's the same ol' blog just a different address. OMG don't be such a bitch about it!

As a parting gift here is a track from the new Sugababes album Change. It's called "Surprise" and it's amazing. See you on the other side.

RIP Ice the Cat

My brother and his fiance's cat, Ice, died today. Odd how most people feel more connected to pets than they do to most human beings, huh?

:(

RIP Michelangelo Antonioni

I don't have anything to say about the news that I read at the hot blog that another famous iconoclastic European director, Michelangelo Antonioni, has died at the age of 94.

I haven't seen any of Antonioni's film, through no fault of my own - they're only now actually being released on DVD down here (I was amazed to see L'Avventura in the 'Coming Soon' section of my DVD service recently). But I have Bergman films to see first!

The Europeans are dropping like flies. What famous Euro director will die next to join Bergman and Antonioni in a game of 'death comes in threes' on the rocky beach from The Seventh Seal? What respected Euro actor will join Ulrich Muhe and Michel Serrault in the same position? Because death always comes in threes.

RIP Ingmar Bergman

This one is a loss! This is just like Robert Altman last year, no doubt. Reports are coming in that Bergman has died in his home country of Sweden. This news is so fresh that the story at NineMSN is incredibly brief and IMDb doesn't have anything up yet.

It's sad that we've lost another legend of cinema in the form of Bergman. I haven't seen more than half of his work, but the films I have seen are mostly great (I'm not a fan of his early Sawdust and Tinsel) - films like Persona, Fanny and Alexander, Dreams... the list goes on. You just know Woody Allen is going to be mourning, too. Shame that, unlike Altman, Bergman never even got an honourary Academy Award despite being nominated for nine, his most recent of which were duel nominations for writing and directing the epic Fanny and Alexander.

His most recent film was Saraband, which was a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, a film I liked but not like some of the others - and I haven't even seen The Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers or Wild Strawberries - they're all on my DVD queue, but are hanging around the #40 mark so I may have to push them up a bit higher do you think?

This is a sad loss for cinema, but he won't be forgotten at all.

RIP Ulrich Mühe

I didn't expect that at all! I read on IMDb that German actor Ulrich Mühe has died. For my knowledge, the only performance of his I have seen was his amazing turn in this year's (deserving) Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film The Lives of Others (for which he will surely be in the running for an UMA Award no doubt). He was only 54 and passed due to stomach cancer.

From CNN

He was a veteran of German theatre and had roles in more than thirty domestic and foreign films, but will be remembered internationally for playing Gerd Wiesler, the bald Stasi officer in the film that won a best foreign language Oscar in February

...

Muehe earned best actor at the German Film Prize and European Film Awards for the role in "Das Leben der Anderen", a German box-office hit directed by Florian Heckel von Donnersmarck.

It has been nearly 18 years since the Berlin Wall fell, but the film was credited as being the first to offer both an honest and compelling depiction of Stasi oppression.

"It took a few years before anyone found a clever way to bring into focus a system that kept 17 million people locked up and under suppression," Muehe told Reuters after collecting his best actor "Lola" last year in Berlin.

You know how people show up in the In Memorium packages at awards shows and you're all "Oh my god! I didn't know!" well, now I will know, but it will still be a jarring shock. As I said, I barely even knew him or his work, but it just makes you sit up and go "Whoa". Ja has some more words about Mühe at MNPP.

RIP Brad McGann

Damn! I didn't expect that. Brad McGann died this week from cancer. He is most well-known to me and most people as the director of the amazing New Zealand film In My Father's Den - one of the very best NZ films I believe. I've written about it before. I praised it's stars, but I didn't mention that McGann was a very worthy sixth or seventh place in my Best Director charts that year for Den. That's sad. Much worse than the death of someone getting on in years who had plenty of success. At least we'll always have In My Father's Den, I suppose. The incredibly successful and well-made film should immediately jump to the top of your DVD queues.

RIP The OC

So, me and my two besties, for the last three and a half years, have gotten together on Tuesday nights to watch The OC. It was a way to make sure we saw each other at least one night a week when we were busy with school, or work or whatever. So, we loved The OC for, like, the first two seasons. Then the third was kinda shitty but we still watched it cause we had to and then the fourth season descended into lunacy at times, but was also an improvement over season 3. Anyway. Tonight was the finale. Aww, sad. It's the end of an era!

The finale was good. Had all that a good finale should have, really. There were a few minor quibbles, but that'll happen every time (unless you're Six Feet Under, in which case your finale is perfect and just... perfect). So, I bid adieu (er, I think that's spelt right. Right?) to The OC forever. Seasons one and two will live forever ("Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap in the second season finale = one of the best song cues). The show received a lot of flak for some reason (when even older critics said it was good some people dismissed it purely because it wasn't aiming to be the greatest show of all time and just gave teenagers what they wanted. SHOCKHORROR). Anyway. It's been great (sort of).

Holla From the Other Side: Robert Altman

One of the world's most talented film directors, Robert Altman, has died at the age of 81. I have unfortunately not seen anywhere near enough of Altman's work, but I almost always like the ones I have been able to see. He was nominated for six Academy Awards (five for Best Director, one for Best Picture), the most received by a director without a single win. At this year's ceremony was awarded with a Lifetime Achievement award (watch Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin hilarious introduce him below). His most recent film was the charming A Prairie Home Companion that featured one of his famous ensemble casts including Meryl, Lily, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen, Lindsay Lohan, Woody Harrelson, John C Reilley and Tommy Lee Jones. It's nice to know I saw his last film in the cinema. It's also sort of ironic that his final film involves the curtain coming down on an illustrious career (in this case the Prairie Home Companion radio show), which the director of sorts doesn't wish to make a big fuss about. But, it's still sad that's gone, but he's got one helluva resume that he's left behind. So, yeah, check out the Meryl/Lily Oscar bit below as well as a scene (one of my favourites) from A Prairie Home Companion

So many deaths

Today alone both Belinda Emmett and Jack Palance died. Emmett was 32 and suffered both breast and bone cancer - ultimately dying from the latter, while Palance died at age 87 from natural causes.

Belinda Emmett at au.Yahoo
and at nineMSN

Jack Palance at IMDb

The former is ultimately much sadder though. She was lovely. She was first diagnosed in 1998 (at age 24) then when all that was gone they discovered it had spread to her bones. Such a shame. She was one of those people that others just liked because they were a good person. Oh well, such is life.

RIP - Jamie Lee Curtis' Acting Career

After a career that has been filled with some really great films, it appears that Jamie Lee Curtis has decided to quit acting. She first appeared on screen in the seminal horror flick Halloween and quickly became the generation's "Scream Queen" by starring in Halloween 2, Prom Night, The Fog, Terror Train and Roadgames.

She's given three Oscar nomination-worthy performances in her career all in three different decades and all in three completely different movies. First in 1988 with A Fish Called Wanda. She then won the Golden Globe and received a Screen Actor's Guild nomination for her work in 1994's True Lies appearing alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger (who can forget that stripping scene?) and lastly just 3 years ago in the out-of-the-blue awesomeness that was the Disney remake of Freaky Friday. Unfortunately for Curtis, her career never became HUGE due to her tendancy to star in, let's be honest, shit films. Just in the last 6 years alone she's had Virus, Drowning Mona and Christmas with the Kranks. A look over her IMDb filmography shows a whole lot of movies you've probably never even heard of.

But, alas, Jamie has decided to call it quits. Hopefully there will be a role in the future that she just really wants and she will return to us. Until then, so long Jamie Lee Curtis. It's been a pleasure.



**btw, why didn't Jamie ever work on one of her husband's films. She is married to Christopher Guests and she would seem like a natural fit into something like For Your Consideration**