RIP Vincent Pastore

Pussy is no more...Vincent Pastore played most famously Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero on the HBO drama series The Sopranos, for which he got a Screen Actors Guild Award. 

He was also in Scorsese's Goodfellas and the HBO film Gotti. He was 80...

RIP Chuck Russell

 Chuck Russell, the cult director of The Blob, A nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Mask and Ahnuld's Eraser, or if you will The Rock's The Scopion King is gone at 74. 

He worked his way up in the LA film industry, from assistant directing and production managing independent films while writing screenplays (Dreamscape). Russell made his directorial debut in 1987 with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, which relaunched the franchise. 

Sleeping Dogs (1977)

Sleeping Dogs is Sam Neill's 1st leading part and the first New Zeeland film (!), even though it was directed by an Australian, Roger Donaldson. Both went to Hollywood and had great careers-Donaldson still works. These might be reasons why this film is known today, and it shalll  get even more attention because it's maybe more relevant today than it was 39  years ago. It was a huge hit in new Zeeland ehen it came out,  thier first film shot on 35 mm. Donaldson also produced and edited, and Ian Mune who plays Bullen also co-wrote it. It's based on the book, Smith's Dream by Karl Stead, a dystopian thriller that mixes 1984 with a sort of First Blood like man on the run.

The finale improves the film much, it has a slow development, weird pace, sheer brutality and violence, constructed not like a regular action drama, with that weird style of all Australian New Wave films.

Sam Neill is great a Smith, a cluless man that just wants to be left alone and it's mistaken for a guerilla leader. 

Warren Oates shows up for a brief subplot, playing the American soldier, it his classic Warren Oates way. 

 3 1/2 out of 5, 7 out of 10 !

RIP Sam Neill

New Zeelander hero (but born in Northen Ireland)  Sam Neill has gome away at 78.

Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park series for most, but great in Possession (1981), his 1st major European part, his 1st American important part in 1990's The Hunt for the Red October. That came after his intense performance in  Oz director's Phillip Noyce's excellent triangle thriller, Dead Calm (1989). 

He could've been James Bond but he skipped it...

One of his carrers best: John Trent in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1994). 

Also great villain for another John Carpenter flick, Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992).

Great villainy also in Event Horizon, The Piano. 

TV best: season 2 of Peaky Blinders.

Also great parts in Oz and NZ films as  Taika Waikiki's Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) and The Hunter (2011). 

 "I owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Donaldson, Gilliam Armstrong, Graham Baker and Phillip Noyce for casting Sam Neill in the roles in which he was so brilliant that brought him to my attention and led to his playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. Sam was exceptionally collaborative. It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children. I adored making all the Jurassic movies with him. Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world."

-Steven Spielberg-

Sam Neill had his own vineyard and wine, Two Paddocks. 

https://www.twopaddocks.com/

His last interview in The Guardian here.

And in the Australian Guardian, a top of his best 20 roles, Top 3 mentioned also here. 

RIP Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi is gone. They say she died of a broken heart...at 56.

She was the author of the great graphic novel Persepolis, about her childhood in Iran, filled with bleak humor, which also criticised the regime and made a plea for women there (and anywhere).  That was made in a feature animated film in black and white (like the novel), co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud.  Persepolis was ipart of Cannes Competition in 2007, it won ex-aqueo the Grand Prix and later on she was nominted for an Oscar, actually the first woman director to be nominated in the animated feature category.

She continued directing with Poulet aux prunes, The Voices, Radioactive and Paradis Paris. 

statement:

“Marjane Satrapi died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,” members of her family said in a statement sent to Afp. Ripa, a Swedish producer, actor, and screenwriter, died on April 8, 2025. A series of posts on Satrapi’s Instagram page in the weeks before her death spelled out the message: “For I Lost the love of my life.”

Hollywood Reporter obit here. 

RIP Mario Adorf

Mario Adorf, the Swiss cult actor that died on April 8th 2026 was 95. His father was an Italian surgeon, his mother a German nurse.

He acted in over 200 films, played grand theatre, wrote bestsellers. La Piovra's Acidduzzu (for the Romanians), spaghetti westerns (Gli Specialisti/The Specialists), giallos  (L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo), polizioteschi (Milano Calibro 9), but also Alfred Matzerath in Die Blechtrommel for the arthouse and posterity. Winner of the Leopard Career Award in 2016.

Cultiest movie: Deadlock (1970)

met him briefly in Cannes in 2013 after the screening of Billy Wilder's Fedora. 

https://aldmovieland.blogspot.com/2013/05/c66-mario.html

RIP Chuck Norris

 ...Missing in Action....

Chuck Norris became legendary through the jokes about him, that he is invincible and imortal. He was Not. But gone now at 86, he was an inspiration to many, especially in the 80's Romania.

A Force of One, a man who knew Good Guys Wore Black and An Eye for an Eye he was a Lone Wolf Mc Quade -the inspiration for the later series Walker, Texas Ranger.

I first saw him in the cinema in Breaker ! Breaker !, translated as Orasul fantoma -Ghost town (1977), which I tremember cleartly they had a print in Black and white. Re-saw that on video later on.  The battle with the broken bottle stayed vividly in my mind. He had no moustache at the time. Then on video fisrt films I saw was The Way of the Dragon, his first part in the 1972 Bruce Lee film (also directed by Lee), where he battles Lee in the Colosseum. The Colosseum would never be the same again. Oh, yes, for a bit, in Double Team where JCVD, a huge Norris and Lee fan, battles Mickey Rourke again in the Rome Arena. 

He was a Karate champion and he became Steve Mc Queen's instructor and McQueen adviced him to go into acting. 

Here's some Chuck Norris jokes:

Chuck Norris didn't die, God called him for backup!

Chuck actually died about 15 years ago. Death was too afraid to tell him

Chuck Norris went to Heaven to Judge God for his sins

RIP to the man who can put out a fire with a gallon of gasoline

The man who can beat the sun in a staring contest

The man whose diary is called the Guinness Book of World Records

RIP Phil Campbell

Phil Campbell was Motorhead's last guitarist, on a series of greats (Larry Wallis, Wurzel, "Fast" Eddie Clarke), survived by only Brian Robertson (70 now).

Official Motorhead announcement:

He was Motörhead's guitarist for 31 years (the longest serving member aside from Lemmy) having joined in 1984. After Lemmy’s passing, he was blessed to form Phil Campbell and The Bastard Sons with his sons Todd, Dane and Tyla, which recorded and toured together for years.

Phil was a wonderful guitarist, writer, performer, and musician who had Motörhead in his veins. He always led with his gift of guitar, and carried a great sense of humour, but most of all, Phil led with his heart. You could not be around him without a chuckle or twenty, because quite simply, Phil loved life and lived it with great joy.

There will be plenty of time for us to share stories -tales of Campbell glory- and some damn good jokes together; for now, please send love and positive energy to Gaynor and the boys while affording them time, space, and privacy.

Much love and RIP Phil. The world has just lost an enormous beam of light, and we are devastated.

Saw Phil on all the dates with Motorhead I got to see and with his band, Phil Campbell and The Bastard Sons in 2018 at Qunatic club in Bucharest. Last year they opened for Guns 'n Roses on the National Arena in Buch. They played Suceava in 2024 and REF too in 2023.

Phil Cambell was just 64 !!!

Remembering George Harrison

 George Harrison would've been 83 today....Living in the Material World...

When he died George was only 58....He became my hero in highschool with his hit album Cloud Nine (1987). I love most his stuff with The Travelling Willburys...

Now only Jeff Lynne and His Bobness still around here....

RIP Tom Noonan

Tom Noonan, most famously known as  Francis Dollarhyde/ The Toothfairy in Michael Mann's Manhunter, the first Hannibal Lecter (spelled Lektor) film in 1986, is gone at 74. I re saw the film last year...It's the best Lecter / Thomas Harris film for me still. And Noonan is pretty scary. 

Great character actor , he was also iFrankenstein's monster in The Monster Squad, the baddie in Robocop 2. He returned for Michael Mann in Heat. 

In his youth, Noonan was a guitarist and a composer and a theatre actor. He directed 2  indie feature films, a play and some shorts.

Terribly sad about Tom Noonan passing. In casting Manhunter I auditioned about 10-15 actors in New York when Tom walked in the door and said, “I don’t want to talk. I just want to read.” He read and it was magical. We worked closely. I based Dollarhyde less on the novel’s character and more on a convicted killer whom I met and with whom I corresponded who was doing life in Vacaville. I took Tom into that world and he made it his own. It was an automatic to cast Tom in a wheelchair as Kelso in Heat. He did so much more fine work, but it was as the battered child become a killer adult - both alive in the same bottle - that projected the range and deep soul of this so acute and committed artist. Rest in peace, Tom.

(Michael Mann)

RIP Robert Duvall

 ...when in Rome...just landed and in the taxi I hear the news, celelbrissimo attore Robert Duvall, etc..surely I get it. Gone. I mean he was 95, lived a great and long life and his films are immortal.

But why everytime I go somewhere this kind of news get heavier and harder?

Last year was just tough and brutal: Gene Hackman in Barcelona (also at 95, also in February), Brian Wilson when we were at night in the middle of nowhere in Ireland, Michael Madsen when I was to see Iron Maiden in Belfort, Remo Girone in Tramonti, Rob Reiner in Porto...Just when Ozzy left I was in Brasov...

Duvall was one of the Greatest, like Hackman. As as kid I knew him first by name, my father showed me, he was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor of the '70's. Opposed to Hackman he was the quintesential Character Actor. Capital A. 

He was in over 100 films and television series.

He got an Academy Award (for the forgotten Tender Mercies-1983), a BAFTA Award, four Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

His film debut was as Boo Radley in the book adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). 

His shot at Movie Mythology came with Consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather and more for Coppola, a bit part in The Conversation-uncredited-where I saw him last-last year, as a Gene Hackman homage series of films), lt. Kilgore "love Napalm in the morning" in Apocalypse Now. He refused to reprise his part in The Hodfather III doe to a salary quarrel. 

Loved his parts in Lucas' debut THX 1138, Jesse James in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, the gangster in The Outfit, based on the Donald E. Westlake  book, the German colonel in The Eagle has Landed, the baddie in Sam Peckinpah's Killer Elite, a TV producer in Sidney Lumet's Network, Dr. Watson in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the cop in True Confessions, another cop in Dennis Hopper's Colors, then later on Tony Scott's Days of Thunder, written by Robert Towne, Joel Schumacher's Falling Down, Kevin Costner's Open Range. Also Sling Blade, Get Low, the part of the Old man in the adpatation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, The Judge in 2014, last bit in 2022 Scott Cooper's Netflix flick The Pale Blue Eye.

He directed five films films, most notably The Apostle in 1997 and in 2002 in Argentina, Assassination Tango. I gotta catch-up with that last one, never saw it.

He lived in his ranch in Virginia, surrounded by his family. Never will be gone, just left this stage and sets...

"Somebody once said that the best life in the world is the life of a second leading man. You travel, you get a per diem, and you’ve probably got a better part anyway. And you don’t have the weight of the entire movie on your shoulders.” 

Robert "Bob" Duvall (1931-2026)

RIP Bob Weir

One of the greats and Only Ones, Bobby / Bob Weir, the legendary guitarist of Grateful Dead and later on Dead & Company, Kingfish, etc, is gone at  78 (on Jan. 10th 2026). 

He survived Jerry Garcia (dead at 53 in 1995!!!) for another 31 years !!!

He was still playing last year.

Obit in Rolling Stone

Dead & Company - 08/03/25, Recorded live at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, CA

RIP Brigitte Bardot

 Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot, aka B.B. , once the most famous French incons, died at age 91. She was one of the most beautiful women on screen, bringin g a certain modern quality to feminity in the 60's. 

She was married four times, most famously to Roger Vadim and Gunther Sachs. Also a singer, involved with Serge Gainsbourg (Bonnie & Clyde).

Films: Vadim's  Et Dieu... créa la femme, Louis Malle's Viva Maria, Henri Clousot's La Vérité, Godard's Le Mépris. Last film in 1973. She became a Grand Animal Activist, and that was her main activity and her legacy. 

Obit in The Guradian here.

And here's the great  Tom Zé, with his song BB (1973). 

RIP Chris Rea

Sad news before Xmas...

Chris Rea is no longer Driving Home for Christmas...

The English blues player and singer was 74. 

Rea recorded 25 studio albums, two of which topped the UK Albums Chart, The Road to Hell in 1989 and its follow-up, Auberge, in 1991.

He did the music for La Passione in 1996, film he wrote and produced about racing cars and Ferrari, Rea being a racing driver himself.

He also had the lead in the pythonesque black comedy Parting Shots (1998, directed by Michael Winner), next to Ben Kingsley, Oliver Reed and John Cleese. The film can been on youtube, here.

He had an Italian father and Irish mother - his family were in the ice cream business. 

Chris Rea had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at age 33, a lot of other health issues folllowing it, but he lived and played, album after album, gig after gig, until a stroke in 2016...

He played Bucharest's Sala Palatului, on February 6th 2010 -my memories and review here.

His last album was a compilation, The Christmas Album, released on October 17, 2025....

Obit on BBC here 

RIP Marty DiBergi

 took a while to process, and but it's not processed yet..:(

Mr. Marty DiBergi who just a had a comeback with Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues had left the showbiz...Dec. 14th 2025. He was 78. More about Rob Reiner in another later post...

The End Continues 

Remembering John Lennon

 8 Dec. 1980-IMAGINE what he could ve done in these stolen 45 years......John Lennon...WHY ?

RIP Artan

 Chiar nu-mi vine sa cred...drum bun Artan...Adrian Pleșca-om de Timpuri Noi si mereu Partizan...

o sa revin si am sa scriu mai multe depre intilnirile mele cu el...

next day: am apucat acum pe Sunete, asa cum se vede mai jos, si acolo ne-am intilnit Corespuzator...

imi place sa cred ca Adrian Artan a plecat in Concendiu...

https://sunetelive.ro/artan-4ever/

                                          13 martie 2016 cu Vlad si Artan, Sunete si..David Bowie...

                                                                        *****

"Perfect", in recital special la Cerbul de aur (!) in 1996, show regizat de Radu Muntean. 

si un interviu frumos, linistit, de unde aflati si de unde vine numele de Artan la min. 26.

RIP Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard was one of the greatest playwrights of the last century, screenwiter and script doctor and author of the play Rosenkrantz and Guilderstern are Dead (1966). In 1990 he directed also a film based on his play, the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival as well as the Fantasporto Directors' Week Award. He co-wrote Brazil with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He won the Oscar (and Golden Globe) for a lesser film,  Shakespeare in Love, in 1998. His forte were the adpatations. 

RIP Udo Kier

Udo Kier died on November 23d in Palm Springs. He was 83. One of the greatest actors. Ever. Only through his mad glaze, blue piercing eyes, he dominated every screen and stole every scene he was in.

Takes me some time and pain to write about him. I knew him, met in different occasions 4 times over the years. Interviewed him with Andrei on the set of One Point O in Bucharest in 2003. We spent hours in a derelict block of flats, now demolished, in a smoked flat, under the lights, into the night. Uberhot, hot early summer night in Bucharest (8th of may as the picture says). Udo came for a film and stayed for one more, got a part in Andy Garcia's Modigliani. His hair was dyed blonde for the part. We got Polaroids with him, each, this is Andrei's here. 

Then he was invited in Cluj at TIFF in 2006 and we hang out with him, even to a second hand shop where he bought a glorious long leather coat. This is another pic from Andrei, from one night to never forget, in the Diesel club, in the cellar VIP room (ha, another place that does not exist anymore...)

Then year passed, I had Udo's US address and mail, we sent him a script of a film still not done today. Didn't pass us to his agent or anything. I don't have the same mail address so that got lost.

In 2015 I was a guest of Grossmann film Festival, and spent more time with Udo, also there. We even went to see an art exhibition together. 

Found another pic from Grossmann 2015, with my buddies, director Kritstjan Milic (Zivi i mrtvi) and Kapelmeister of the fest, Marko Mehtsun. 

And last time I saw him in Cannes, on Rue des Antibes, in 2019, as he was there with the cast of  Kleber Mendonça Filho's Bacurau, great film. We met on the street and had a chat.  The last part of Udo is in Filho's new film, The Secret Agent.  A beautiful heartfelt goodbye...

On the screen I saw him last in Hunters, season two where he played obviously on of his recurring characters, Adolf Hitler. Update: I just saw My Neighbor Adolf and liked it, Udo is at his best. 

Goodbye Udo, it was a pleasure and an honor to meet you...

RIP Lee Tamahori

Lee Tamahori , rose to the film industry in New Zeeland, from photohrapher, to boom and sound, to tv director, gritty cult fame with Once Were Warriors in 1994...

They called him to Hollywood where he became the director of the worst James Bond in history, Die Another Day (2002).

Mullholand Falls, his neo-noir was a flop but it's worth rewatching. 

Lee Tamahori (1950 - 2025)