RIP

Robert Culp (1930-2010)

Robert Culp, American actor, died last week outside his home after falling. He was 79.

He is best remembered for partnering Bill Cosy in I Spy as a pair of American undercover spies. Cosby played a world class tennis player and Culp was his coach.

None of the reports that I read about his death mentioned one of his best, but little seen, movies, Turk 182. In that movie Culp plays the role of Mayor Tyler, the Mayor of New York, who is the subject of Timothy Hutton’s attempts to embarrass him politically through the use of graffiti. If you can get the movie anywhere, it’s worth a look. It also helped promote the popularity of graffiti, which is not an approving  recommendation, only an observation.

The following is a scene from Get Smart (I loved that show) in which he plays the waiter…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuDd3Qit2qc

 The Bill (1983-2010)

“You’re axed, me lad.”

It was announced last week that The Bill has been cut by ITV, after 27 years on the air. Once the top rating show in Britain, its viewers had fallen from a healthy 7m to 3.5m. Attempts to revive the show with faster action and a later timeslot didn’t work, although in Australia the show still rates well and episodes will be seen until September.

Unlike most cop shows, The Bill showed ordinary situations and scenery, often dingy Council estates and depressed areas, in a realistic manner. Also unlike other cop shows, instead of focusing on one particular group of police, it showed the activities of all the police during one shift.

The following is a montage of pics from the show, plus the various opening themes..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2HF3NfH_NU&feature=related

Btw, the term The Bill  is a shortening of The Old Bill, a slang term referring to the police.  The exact origin of that term is unknown but the website for the UK metropolitan Police gives 13 possible derivations:

http://www.met.police.uk/history/oldbill.htm

 

 

RIP: Walter Frederick Morrison (1920-2010)

Occasionally an ordinary person living an ordinary life does something ordinary which ends up benefitting everybody, thereby making the world a little better, a little happier.  So it was with Walter Morrison, who died a few days ago aged 90.

Walter who?

You won't find Walt's name amongst the great scientists, politicians, adventurers or philosophers, but he has brought smiles and laughter to millions, children and adults alike.  Walt was the inventor of the Frisbee.

From Wikipedia:

Walter Fredrick "Fred" Morrison (January 23, 1920 – February 9, 2010) was an American inventor and entrepreneur, best known as the inventor of the Frisbee.

RIP: Paul Newman (1925-2008)

(Originally posted 28.09.2008)

In memory of Paul Newman, who died yesterday of cancer, aged 83:

Luke in the film Cool Hand Luke is a young man sent to a Southern prison farm for a minor offence. He refuses to conform and keeps escaping, winning him the respect of the other prisoners. He sings Plastic Jesus when he receives word that his mother has died.

The scene can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYqwYrbwHeM

I don't care if it rains or freezes
As long as I've got my Plastic Jesus
Glued to the dashboard of my car,
Comes in colours pink and pleasant
Glows in the dark ‘cos it’s iridescent,
Take Him with you when you're travelling far

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I ain’t scary
'Cause I've got my Virgin Mary
Assurin’ me that I won't go to Hell

RIP: The Dancing Man

A colleague sent me an email that Frank McAlary had died. I believe that my colleague sent that message because McAlary had, in his day, been a well known and highly respected QC.

He also had another claim to fame, that of being the person most likely to be the Dancing Man, the man filmed by Movietone News dancing in Sydney’s George Street on 15 August 1945 to celebrate the end of WW2.

Although there have been other contenders to the title, various persons (including at least one barrister and one judge) have sworn that they were with McAlary at the time of the display of happy footwork. Forensic analysis for the TV show Where Are They Now? further supported McAlary as the likely candidate.

Mr Chester Porter, QC, said: "Blind Freddy could see it's Frank McAlary. We were together in third-year Law School in 1945. VP Day opened as an ordinary working day but was suddenly declared a public holiday. Frank was an exuberant character and was dancing around. He'd had nothing to drink. A cameraman said, 'Sonny, that's pretty good. Would you mind doing it again so we could film it?'. He did."

The clip can be viewed at the website of the National Film & Sound Archive at:

http://aso.gov.au/titles/newsreels/movietone-special-peace/clip2/

Miep Gies

I recently published a quote from Adolf Hitler, not because I admire him but because his comment was of interest to his outlook and because his comment still has a relevance today. The quote was

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.”

In saying that, I am not putting myself above the people referred to, I am as slack as the next man, or woman, when it comes to government action.

What came as a shock was that just after emailing the quote, I heard on the morning news that the person who had befriended Anne Frank, who had smuggled her food and discovered her diary, which was later given to Anne’s father, had died that day. How weird is it that just after posting a Hitler quote you hear that news?

The story of that woman, Miep Gies, follows. It has been taken from the Daily Mail and is reprinted unaltered, with the photos that accompanied the article. It is lengthy but well worth the read.

Claymation

There was a story in the paper yesterday that Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, had died. He was aged 88. For the youngsters, Gumby was a green clay figure that featured in 233 episodes on US (and Oz) television over 35 years from 1955. Clokey reportedly named Gumby after the sticky mud he used to play with as a child, known in Michigan as "gumbo".

Gumby episodes were produced using the laborious process known as claymation. This involves clay or plasticine figures being moved slightly and photographed each time an alteration is made. After thousands of movements and shots, the images are played one after and another to form a continuous moving feature. This was the process used to make the Australian Harvie Krumpet, which won the Oscar for best animated short film in 2003.

In a world now dominated by CGI and computer special effects, it probably seems unbelievable that people made movies using such stop motion techniques. Prior to CGI, special effects in movies were frequently carried out using stop-motion with models. When you see monsters and dinosaurs fighting in various movies or King Kong swiping at planes in the original 1933 movie, you are watching painstaking stop motion photography using models moved a tiny bit each time and photographed.

I therefore commend to you a marvellous Christmas claymation short video I came across on YouTube. It is apparently from a show called Will Winton’s Christmas Celebration and features the Paris Bellharmonic Orchestra.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5m9_LXNOYM

I loved it, but watch to the end. Also at the end is a joke using the line “His face rings a bell”.