Tags :: RIP

Christopher Plummer, the cross, and the swastika ARTICLE

Christopher Plummer, the cross, and the swastika

“That damn movie follows me around like an albatross,” Christopher Plummer once fumed about the one film for which — despite a prolific, varied, successful career in film, television, and theater — he would always be best known.

 Franco Zeffirelli’s complicated, Catholic life: What does it mean for his art? ARTICLE

Franco Zeffirelli’s complicated, Catholic life: What does it mean for his art?

For Catholics and other Christians, the contradiction between Zeffirelli’s faith and the themes of his religious films on the one hand and his openly homosexual lifestyle on the other raise perennial questions about the mysterious relationship of art and the artist.

 Alan Rickman, Brian Bedford, and their Robin Hood movies ARTICLE

Alan Rickman, Brian Bedford, and their Robin Hood movies

This week the world lost three English performers who were all film actors … Bedford’s best-known film role was in Disney’s animated Robin Hood, in which he voiced the legendary outlaw. Rickman, who died the next day, had played the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner. David Bowie, alas, never made a Robin Hood movie.

 The extraordinary career of Christopher Lee ARTICLE

The extraordinary career of Christopher Lee

Sir Christopher Lee, who died on June 7 at the age of 93, had an extraordinary career and an extraordinary life. To speak only of his film work, while it’s impossible to sum up his incredibly prolific and varied output — IMDb.com credits him with more than 280 acting roles over a nearly 70-year career — Lee’s lean, towering build (he stood five inches over six feet) and sonorous baritone voice were well suited to playing villains and monsters.

 Robin Williams RIP ARTICLE

Robin Williams RIP

In the flood of commentary and sorrow surrounding the death of Robin Williams, apparently by suicide, so many are struggling over what to say about a man who seemed never to be at a loss for words.

 How I Believe in Roger Ebert ARTICLE

How I Believe in Roger Ebert

Just over a month before his death on Easter Thursday, Roger Ebert wrote a blog post titled “How I Am a Roman Catholic” — a follow-up of sorts to a 2009 post called “How I Believe in God.”