LMA Jack Nicholson -Jack is 89 !!!

The one and only Jack Nicholson is Today 89 !!!

my Blog series on him here 

Retired from acting in 2013 though his Last Film was How Do You Know (2010), where he played a supporting role.

Sae him last on the big screen in the special screening of The Shining in IMAX in Porto. Planning for a long time a screening of Chinatown, now it might be the best time ;)

Happy Birthday Jack !!! Stay Healthy !!!

We finally re-saw an obscure slapstick comedy that was infamous at the time of its release, The Fortune (1975), Jack's only film with his buddy, Warren Beatty. 

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

Iron Maiden -Burning Ambition (2026)

 hell yeah, and yes a film about the Maidens

thought first it was out today, but it's next month !!!

8.05.2026. watch your cinema screens !!!

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)

Di'Anno: Iron Maiden's Lost Singer (2026)

This just in, as y-day it was the 45th anniversary of the release of the KILLERS album (2.02.1981) !!!

The life and career of pioneering heavy metal frontman Paul Di'Anno, the powerhouse voice heard on Iron Maiden's early albums, will be celebrated in the forthcoming documentary, Di'Anno: Iron Maiden's Lost Singer, to be released by Cleopatra Entertainment this summer.

Hmm, the doc does not apperar on imdb at all... :(

I met Wes Orshoski (and his co-director Greg Olliver in Cannes 15 years ago !!! when they premiered LEMMY in the market, wanted to bring him to Brasov to Doc and Roll to present his film, which we did (show the film that is..)

In a strikingly raw and intimate film, director Wes Orshoski captures the late singer riding an emotional rollercoaster toward the end of his life. Featuring appearances by James Hetfield (Metallica), Gene Simmons (Kiss) Maiden's Steve Harris and members of Exodus, Slayer, Megadeth, Overkill and Sepultura, the film chronicles how two Iron Maiden fans encounter Di'Anno at the lowest point of his life and then set out to restore his health and relaunch his career.

Wheelchair-bound since the mid-2010s, Di’Anno’s health nosedived during the Covid-19 pandemic, when those two fans launched a crowdfunding campaign which ultimately led to him relocating to Croatia, where - through the help of those fans and doctors - he made a dramatic turnaround while running out of money, reuniting with his former Maiden bandmates, and falling in love. Eventually he makes a heroic and drama-filled return to the stage. All of this is captured in Di'Anno: Iron Maiden's Lost Singer, which Orshoski began shooting in 2017.  

“For years there wasn’t much to capture,” says Orshoski, whose credits include Lemmy, a study of Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister and The Damned: Don't You Wish That We Were Dead. “Paul was waiting for surgeries that doctors in the U.K. would not green-light. He was in an incredibly dark place. But once he got to Croatia, fans and doctors gave him the hope he was desperately searching for. It was beautiful to witness. I wanted to make a film that was unlike any rock doc you've ever seen. And in the end, I think we got there.” 

One of icons of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, London-born Di’Anno helped launch Iron Maiden around the world, appearing on two of the most foundational metal albums ever released: Iron Maiden’s 1980 self-titled debut and the celebrated follow-up, Killers, released in 1981. In one of the most epic sagas in metal history, Di’Anno left Maiden in 1981 and was replaced by Bruce Dickinson, leaving metal fans around the world to debate which line-up and which singer was/is better. It’s a debate that continues to this day, almost 50 years later. 

Orshoski finished work on the film (which was shot in England, Croatia, Brazil and the United States) shortly before Di’Anno’s death at 66 in October 2024. Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer has been screening at European film festivals and will be released worldwide on both streaming services and on Home Entertainment DVD and BLU RAY formats.

My obit on Di'Anno here: or:

https://aldmovieland.blogspot.com/2024/10/rip-paul-dianno.html

***

Trailer here:

oh, how we should reboot Doc and Roll ! Esp. now when Iron Maiden playes again Bucharest and Sunete is prepping another Special Edition mag, this time Up the Irons !!! ;)

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 

LMA Keef @82

Keith Richards / Keef is 82 !!! Amazing ! Noroc !!!

also the Stones have announced NO European tour in 2026.

They will have a new album out tho soon...

La multi ani to the original Pirate King !!!

thinking of Bobby Keys too !

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1166318042379539

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...

Warren Zevon in the RnR Hall of Fame

 Vera Cruz was dying,,,,

finally Warren is in the rocknroll hall of fame

thanx to David Lettermann 

and to Hank Moody ;)

I love my main man beyond all BS

they did a great concert in LA to remember him, all them friends were there

The Killers played Warren's hit, Lawyers, Guns and Money

RIP Jack De Johnette

Jack De Johnette was one of the greatests of Jazz. Brilliant drummer and pianist, played with Miles Davis (Bitches Brew and live LPs). He was 83. 

Played in Romania at Sala Radio in Bucharest in 2016 as a trio with Ravi Coltrane on sax and Bill Garrison on bass. That same year he played also Garana Jazz Festival in the same lineup.

obit in The Guardian here 

"I think playing with Miles, with Dave Holland, Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter was a very exciting period. We always couldn’t wait to get on the bandstand to see what kind of mischief we could get into.”