Blacklisted for Good This Time

(Props to Kirsti)

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Cool Jules
(Additional accolades for Kirsti)

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Never Again on Sunday
(Bonus bon mot from Kirsti)

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R.I.P.-fifi
(Kirsti strikes again)

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He Who Must Die (Because I've Got Five Bucks Riding on It)
(Another one from Kirsti, who apparently has been looking forward to this day for some time)
Commie director Jules Dassin has died at the age of 96. A successful director of noir films including Brute Force, The Naked City and Night and the City, considered his masterpiece, the godless Bolshevik’s Communist Party membership was revealed to the House Un-American Activities Committee by true patriots Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle and he couldn’t direct traffic. Like most people who hate America, he ended up in France, where he overcame his inability to understand French by including a 30-minute robbery scene without music or dialogue in Rififi, for which he won a best director award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. Soon thereafter, he wrote and directed “Never on Sunday,” and with Joe McCarthy having been slandered by Edward R. Murrow, Dassin scored two Oscar nominations. The lifelong troublemaker was also accused later of trying to overthrow the Greek government, apparently figuring it was a little easier to knock off. He also badgered the British government about returning the Elgin Marbles, sculptures looted from the Parthenon 200 years ago.

After 5 years of waiting, Greg finally scores on Dassin, and his Team Quincy moves into 13th, but more importantly Mrs. Greg cherry picks and the death of Jules crowns her Geri(atrics) and the Pacemakers as our new leader with 3 hits.

Dith Prone

(Props to Joe)
Dith Pran, press agent for the Khmer Rouge, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 64. The New York Times photojournalist had worked with reporter Sydney Schanberg to document the rise of the Cambodian Communists, and had saved the lives of several reporters when they were captured by soldiers. When the Rouge came to power, Schanberg was forced from the country, while Pran became a prisoner. Two million Cambodians – a third of the population – were killed in the 4 year reign, including Pran’s brother, who was fed to an alligator. Schanberg wrote Pran’s story in the Times, winning a Pulitzer, which he accepted on behalf of Pran and later in a book that was the basis for the film The Killing Fields. Pran used his fame to press for the rights of his fellow Cambodians.

Kiss of Death

(An epitaphany shared with Monty)

Or
Maker's Widmark
Richard Widmark, poster boy for compassionate elder care, has died at the age of 93. Widmark debuted in 1947’s Kiss of Death as Tommy Udo, a sociopath who shoved the mother of a man he thought had ratted him out down a flight of stairs in a wheelchair, all the while giggling maniacally. Udo is still remembered as one of the most frightening characters in film history and Widmark earned Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination. The role cemented Widmark as a heavy in a serious of noir films before he became the cranky, craggy reluctant hero as a doctor in Panic in the Streets, Major General Thalius Slater – a man at war with killer bees in The Swarm, Jim Bowie in John Wayne’s The Alamo, prosecuting attorney Col. Tad Lawson in Judgment at Nuremberg, and an Army captain in Cheyenne Autumn, John Ford’s apology for three decades of cinematic Indian killings. In another Ford movie, Widmark starred opposite Jimmy Stewart. Both actors were hard of hearing, and needed the hair-making help of the make-up department. Ford, a notorious prick, would position himself too far for the actors to hear him, and when they threw up their hands in exasperation, Ford announced that after 40 years in movie-making, he was reduced to directing 2 deaf toupees. Other roles included evil hospital head Dr. Harris in Coma, nuclear war inciting naval officer Eric Finlander in The Bedford Incident, racist creep Ray Biddle in No Way Out, and for a while, Sandy Koufax’s father in law.

While not quite a swarm, there were 3 of us to predict this one: Monty’s Dead? No, Acting, takes 5th, while Nancy and my Better Late Than Never move into a 14th place tie. Of special note, that is Nancy’s first hit since November 2006, though she did take 2007 off, meaning that the cheese standing alone is Joy, nose pressed to the glass since March 6, 2007.

2008: A Confined Space Odyssey

(Props to Mark)

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Adulthood's End

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Report from Six Feet Under Planet Three
(More kudos for Mark)

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A Death Odyssey
(Stolen from the Derby Dead Pool, where I’m now in 136th)
Arthur C. Clarke, who threw tons of shit at the wall and was hailed as a genius when some of it stuck, has died at the age of 90 from injuries sustained when he stepped on broken glass in his bedroom left behind by a younger version of himself. It is unknown if he left a will, or any explanation about what the hell was going on at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He is credited with advancing (not inventing) the idea of the geostationary telecommunications satellite in 1945 and the space elevator. For the record, he also expected us to have trained monkey servants, to have made extraterrestrial contact, to have invented murderous computers, and to be driving cold fusion-powered cars by now. He was the first Chancellor of the International Space University, serving from 1989 to 2004, and also served as Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002. Allegedly both of those are real places.

Two of us shared Clarke’s prescience and expected his passing and split our first hit in more than a month: Marlene notches her first hit for her Not so Good to be King squad and my Dead Calm cluster joins her in 9th.

A Corpse For All Seasons

Or
No More Sir Thomas
Paul Scofield, one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of our time, bard none, has died at the age of 86. In the lineage of great British actors, he was the link from Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud to Hugh Grant and Orlando Bloom. In his distinguished career, he acted with some of the giants of the 20th century: Olivia De Haviland, Katherine Hepburn, Daniel Day Lewis, and George Gaynes, Police Academy’s Commandant Lassard. Scofield won both the Best Actor Tony in 1962 and the Best Actor Oscar in 1968 as Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, and became the 6th man to win acting’s Triple Crown with the Best Actor Emmy for Male of the Species. Scofield trod the stage as Henry V, Othello, Hamlet and King Lear, in a performance considered the greatest in any Shakespeare play in a poll of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also created the role of Salieri in the stage production of Amadeus. More recently, he played Mark Van Doren, father of disgraced game show boy Charles Van Doren in 21, scoring a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, the ghost in Franco Zefferelli’s Hamlet and Judge Thomas Danforth in The Crucible.

Ern’s Closing Soon at a Theater Near You stages a rally with the solo hit and moves into 8th place.

March 19 marked the 4th double hit day of the 2007-08 GHI.

The English Ex-Patient

(Thanks, Mark)

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The Unanimated Mr. Minghella
(More Mark)

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Cold Mountain, Cold Body
(Additional Attention for Mark)
Anthony Minghella, whose The English Patient won 9 Oscars, including one for him as Best Director, and yielded a phenomenally boring Oscar night, has died at the age of 54 from complications from surgery. He also helped that squinty little twit Renee Zellweger join Marisa Tomei and Mira Sorvino in the WTF Oscar wing for Cold Mountain. He also scored Jude Law two Oscar nominations for Cold Mountain and The Talented Mr. Ripley, much to Sean Penn’s delight.

Kinch the Bucket

(Kudos to Craig)

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Laid Kinchloe
(A shared epitaphany with Mark)

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Nothing But a Dead Man
(More praise for Mark)
Ivan Dixon, communications officer at Stalag 13 on Hogan’s Heroes, has died at the age of kidney failure 76. Making his debut as Sidney Poitier’s stunt double in The Defiant Ones, Dixon had a number of Broadway credits, as well as films including A Raisin in the Sun, Nothing But a Man and Car Wash. He also played a doctor and guerrilla leader in the 1987 TV-movie Amerika about the bloodless invasion of the United States, who sings the Star Spangled Banner, a decade after it had been banned. Ignoring the questionable wisdom of depicting Nazis as those wacky German neighbors, Hogan’s Heroes was rare in having a regularly featured black character, not to mention one who was smarter than most of his white counterparts. He was also one of the first blacks to make a career directing in television, with hundreds of episodes of such shows as The Waltons, The Rockford Files and Magnum, P.I., earning a place in the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

No Dice

(Accolades for Monty)

Or
Don't move out of your parents' basement....it'll save on burial costs.
(Whoop Whoop for Phil)

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His Coffin Will be 20-Sided
(Honorifics for Craig)

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Rolling Snake Eyes on Invincibility
(Cap tip to Joe)

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Rolled a 1 on the save
(Give it up for Greg)

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-10 hp... (Really, the possibilities are endless. Well, perhaps not endless, but at least 4d6+INT mod.
(Greg keeps rolling)

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Looks Like we’re Going to Need a New Vice Presidential Action Ranger
(Congrats to Craig)

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He should have used that death blocking charm
(We get the point, Monty)
If you didn’t get most of these, pat yourself on the back, as you probably left your parent’s basement at an appropriate age. Gary Gygax, who co-created a generation of dice-rolling, orc-loving shut-ins with the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons, starting the role-playing phenomenon, has died at the age of 69. Started in 1974, D&D’s mythical characters, multi-sided dice and unrepentant love for actuarial tables started a craze and inspired video games, books, movies, a cartoon, and according to Patricia Pulling, several suicides.

A Dark Day at the Double Deuce

(Props for Phil)
Jeff Healey, the blind Canadian lap guitarist who achieved a bit of infamy as being part of the house band at the Double Deuce in Road House, has died of lung cancer at the age of 41. Given Patrick Swayze’s recent diagnosis, who knew that movie was filmed downwind of atomic bomb testing grounds?