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Post by Avril on Aug 16, 2010 3:10:36 GMT -5
I meant I'm 30 years younger. Youth is currency when you're approaching or departing the infamous hill we will all go over...! ;D
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Post by PigsnieLite on Sept 30, 2010 9:52:57 GMT -5
Tony Curtis dead at 85. Never really cared for his stuff (I thought he wuz ridiculoo in SPARTACUS) but I announce it! RIP, Mr Curtis. Have a drink wid Marilyn.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Sept 30, 2010 20:13:41 GMT -5
PS. BBC headline has quotes around the words Fine Actor, as if it were a delusion. hahahah! Tributes for 'fine actor' Curtis
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Post by Avril on Oct 11, 2010 21:43:52 GMT -5
RIP La Stupenda The voice of a century dead at 83 Bryce Hallett and Ellie Harvey October 12, 2010 The Sydney Morning Herald
Dame Joan Sutherland passes away after a long illness.
SHE was a transcendental performer who had a magic quality that held audiences captive right around the world. Her influence extended well beyond the opera world and reached into popular culture.
And now, at the age of 83, the opera legend Joan Sutherland has died, finally succumbing to a long illness.
Her family said she had died peacefully in the early hours of yesterday morning after suffering a long illness. It is believed she was in Switzerland.
Together with her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge, she had one son, Adam, who was born in 1956.
Adam's wife, Helen, said last night her mother-in-law would leave a significant legacy.
''She's a very important person all over the world, but for us this is our family and we're just trying to come to terms with this,'' she said. ''She's had a long life and [gave] a lot of pleasure to a lot of people.''
Sutherland and Bonynge - a power-couple of Australian classical music - retired to the resort town of Les Avents, near Montreux in Switzerland, and she has made few public appearances in recent years.
Lyndon Terracini, the artistic director of Opera Australia, said not only was Sutherland the greatest operatic singer Australia has produced but also one of its most generous and supportive ambassadors of the art form.
''I got to sing with Joan at a number of operas at the Sydney Opera House when I was in my 20s and she was always an interested, open and generous colleague. She was not all protective of her turf.
''When she retired from the stage, she was already a legend and no operatic singer including Melba, in my view, has had that impact, not only in her own art form but to the general public.''
She sang in an estimated 265 performances of 23 different roles with the Australia Opera, but it was Norma that was her seminal work.
The American mezzo-soprano opera singer Marilyn Horne was watching in the wings when she performed Norma at the Opera House.
She always knew Sutherland had one of the great voices in the world but she was reminded why she was so legendary: ''She had one of the most formidable vocal techniques of all time: she was able to get through one of the most demanding roles in all opera using mind over matter and giving us all a lesson in superb technical singing.''
It was a performance revered not only by Horne but also by Kiri Te Kanawa, who would be equally inspired and become one of Sutherland's friends.
Friends and colleagues last night could not speak more highly of her.
''I think she was undoubtedly one of the most unique voices that one is ever likely to have heard and certainly one of the greatest voices in the history of opera,'' said a former artistic director of Australian Opera, Moffat Oxenbould.
''She had an extraordinary professional ethic … She was a very loyal friend, she was somebody who loved being part of a company … she rehearsed when it was necessary all day, all night, she knew the name of everybody with whom she worked. She was just Joan,'' he said.
The president of The Joan Sutherland Society of Sydney, Doug Cremer, said: ''All I can say is that she was the most unassuming, genuine and generous person I've ever met.''
Although loved by most Australians, she did attract the occasional controversy.
In 1994 she addressed a lunch of 250 staunchly conservative Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy in Sydney, telling them she still called Britain home, missed her British passport and was not pleased to be interviewed by a ''Chinese or Indian'' to get an Australian passport.
Sutherland was nicknamed La Stupenda by an audience at Venice's famous La Fenice opera house in 1960 after a performance of Alcina.
Montserrat Caballé´ described the Australian's voice as being like ''heaven'' and Luciano Pavarotti once called Sutherland the ''voice of the century''.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Oct 12, 2010 1:48:11 GMT -5
Toodle loo, Dame Joan.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Oct 15, 2010 19:11:44 GMT -5
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Post by Avril on Nov 1, 2010 22:33:37 GMT -5
I guess this actor might have been a celebrity in the Philippines. Bizarre story, but I wonder that it doesn't happen more often. There's a video here. www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/actor-shot-dead-while-filming-movie-20101102-17axy.htmlActor shot dead while filming movie Daile Pepper November 2, 2010 - 10:56AM
A village watchman in the central Philippines allegedly mistook an actor playing a masked gunman in a British film for a real assassin and fatally shot him, police said.
Watchman Eddie Cuizon tried to accost Filipino actor Kirk Abella late on Saturday, then shot him as the actor was directed to speed away on a motorcycle with a masked driver, said police chief Alexis Relado of central Cebu city's Parian district.
Cuizon, 52, told police he was sleeping and was woken up by a concerned citizen who reported the presence of armed men in his community.
He told police he saw two masked men on a motorcycle and approached them but they sped away and he stumbled as he tried to stop them, injuring his knee.
Cuizon fired at Abella when the actor pulled out a gun, which turned out to be made of plastic, Relado said.
Many street killings in the Philippines, including those of political activists and journalists, have been perpetrated by motorcycle-riding gunmen.
Abella, 32, was one of the actors in the movie Going Somewhere, being shot by British theatre and film director Alan Lyddiard in Cebu, Relado said.
Lyddiard's website says the movie is about a fictional documentary filmmaker's travails in Cebu, where he plans to make a movie about the first circumnavigation of the world by Ferdinand Magellan, whose voyage to the Philippines led to its colonisation by Spain. Magellan was killed by a native chief on Mactan island near Cebu in 1521.
Lyddiard and members of his crew, including a Filipino woman who had arranged for police assistance with traffic and crowd control in Parian, could not be reached for comment.
Cuizon will be charged with homicide and for violation of a gun ban, Relado said.
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Post by dragrat on Nov 2, 2010 5:56:17 GMT -5
I know of a movie, "The Crow" where the lead actor was shot in a scene.
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Post by sunfrog on Nov 2, 2010 8:18:12 GMT -5
Why is he being charged with murder? That doesn't make sense.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Nov 2, 2010 14:46:24 GMT -5
It shoild be Manslaughter. Shouldnt it?
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Post by Avril on Nov 2, 2010 16:01:10 GMT -5
I know of a movie, "The Crow" where the lead actor was shot in a scene. That was Brandon Lee, son of the legendary martial artist Bruce Lee, himself thought to be cursed by the 'Dragon' that he took as his nickname. Here's some eye-candy for you, Ratty. (And note the remarkable resemblance to Heath Ledger, the late sometime naughty cowboy.) And here's his scrumptious dad who died bizarrely of an aspirin.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Nov 2, 2010 16:04:15 GMT -5
Whut is a Dragon Curse?
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Post by Avril on Nov 2, 2010 16:05:31 GMT -5
It shoild be Manslaughter. Shouldnt it? I believe 'manslaughter' is an inadvertent fatal force or action, whereas this chap took aim with the intention to kill. Freddie would no doubt know the exact definitions and demarcations.
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Post by Avril on Nov 2, 2010 16:09:34 GMT -5
The curse of the dragon was part of the myth of Bruce Lee's rise to stratospheric stardom. I remember reading it in his biography. It was an ancient curse on him and his family. Nothing ordinary about Bruce or his son, you see.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Nov 2, 2010 16:13:16 GMT -5
Oh. SO .. who cursed his Family? A Lee must haf done something really bad. Like slept wid a Royal concubine or something.
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