Jump to content
 
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...

CelluloidKid

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    9,693

  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

 Content Type 

Posts posted by CelluloidKid

    'Hogan's Heroes' Actor Ivan Dixon Dies

    in Hot Topics

    Posted

    Ivan Dixon, an actor, director and producer best known for his role as Kinchloe on the 1960s television series "Hogan's Heroes," has died. He was 76.

     

    Dixon died Sunday at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte after a hemorrhage and of complications from kidney failure, said his daughter, Doris Nomathande Dixon of Charlotte.

     

    Actor Sidney Poitier said the two men became friends after Dixon was his stunt double in the 1958 movie "The Defiant Ones."

     

    "As an actor, you had to be careful," Poitier said in a statement. "He was quite likely to walk off with the scene."

     

    Dixon began his acting career on Broadway in plays including "The Cave Dwellers" and "A Raisin in the Sun." On film, he appeared in "Something of Value," "A Raisin in the Sun," "A Patch of Blue," "Nothing But a Man" and the cult favorite "Car Wash."

     

    But he was probably best known for the role of U.S. Staff Sgt. James Kinchloe on "Hogan's Heroes," a satire set in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Kinchloe, in charge of electronic communications, could mimic German officers on the radio or phone.

     

    While her father was most proud of work in plays such as "A Raisin in the Sun" and for films such as "Nothing But a Man," he had no mixed feelings about being recognized for the role of Kinchloe, his daughter said.

     

    "It was a pivotal role as well, because there were not as many blacks in TV series at that time," Nomathande Dixon said. "He did have some personal issues with that role, but it also launched him into directing."

     

    Dixon also earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the CBS Playhouse special "The Final War of Olly Winter."

     

    In addition to acting on television, he also directed hundreds of episodic shows, including "The Waltons," "The Rockford Files," "Magnum, P.I." and "In the Heat of the Night."

     

    Born April 6, 1931, in New York City, Dixon graduated in 1954 from North Carolina Central University in Durham.

     

    His honors include four NAACP Image Awards, the National Black Theatre Award and the Paul Robeson Pioneer Award from the Black American Cinema Society. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild of America and the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

     

    In addition to his daughter, survivors include his wife of 53 years, Berlie Dixon of Charlotte, and a son, Alan Kimara Dixon of Oakland, Calif. Two sons, Ivan Nathaniel Dixon IV and N'Gai Christopher Dixon, died previously.

     

    At Dixon's request, the family said, no memorial or funeral is planned.

    'Dune' Remake On the Way -- Third Time's the Charm?

    in Science Fiction

    Posted

    This is all over the net...from Cinematical to Movieweb!!

     

    Now this shall be a hotly debated remake. Variety has just announced that Peter Berg will be directing the latest version of Dune for Paramount (as previously rumored). It will be produced by Kevin Misher, who has spent the last year trying obtain rights from Frank Herbert's estate.

     

    Dune has been made twice already -- most famously by David Lynch, less so by the Sci-Fi Channel. This time, they are looking for writers who can adapt the definitive version for movie audiences. However, just a glance through any "geek" forum shows fans are already worried that the studio's belief that "its theme of finite ecological resources [is] particularly timely" is already missing the point.

     

    The Lynch version is a film that people either love or despise. Most critics despised it upon release, but it has a fairly large fan following. (I know one guy who considers loving it a dating criteria.) Well, except me -- it's been so long since I have seen it that I fall into neither camp, especially since I watched it at 2am through very bleary eyes. I must remedy that so I can discuss this properly. So I'm not entirely convinced a remake is a bad idea -- after Lord of the Rings, no book is considered impossible, and it would please many Herbert fans to see a more loyal adaptation. Then again, there are so many sci-fi books I would love to see tackled that I'm disappointed to see them simply pick up Dune again. Perhaps it is the beginning of a trend.

    Arthur C Clarke dies at 90

    in Hot Topics

    Posted

    WOW...Very fascinating info on Arthur C. Clarke I didn't know!!

     

    RIP among the stars!

     

    COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) ? Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday, an aide said. He was 90.

     

    Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome for years, died at 1:30 a.m. in his adopted home of Sri Lanka after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

     

    The 1968 story "2001: A Space Odyssey" ? written simultaneously as a novel and screenplay with director Stanley Kubrick ? was a frightening prophesy of artificial intelligence run amok.

     

    One year after it made Clarke a household name in fiction, the scientist entered the homes of millions of Americans alongside Walter Cronkite anchoring television coverage of the Apollo mission to the moon.

     

    Clarke also was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

     

    His non-fiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

     

    But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.

     

    "Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these, I would like to be remembered as a writer."

     

    From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year. He published his best-selling "3001: The Final Odyssey" when he was 79.

     

    A statement from Clarke's office said that Clarke had recently reviewed the final manuscript of his latest novel. "The Last Theorem," co-written with Frederik Pohl, will be published later this year, the statement said.

     

    Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956; "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.

     

    When Clarke and Kubrick got together to develop a movie about space, they used as basic ideas several of Clarke's shorter pieces, including "The Sentinel," written in 1948, and "Encounter in the Dawn." As work progressed on the screenplay, Clarke also wrote a novel of the story. He followed it up with "2010," "2061," and "3001: The Final Odyssey."

     

    In 1989, two decades after the Apollo 11 moon landings, Clarke wrote: "2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined."

     

    Planetary scientist Torrence Johnson said Clarke was a major influence on many in the field.

     

    Johnson, who has been exploring the solar system through the Voyager, Galileo and Cassini missions in his 35 years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, recalled a meeting of planetary scientists and rocket engineers, where talk turned to the author.

     

    "All of us around the table said we read Arthur C. Clarke," Johnson said. "That was the thing that got us there."

     

    Clarke won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979; the Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Convention in 1974 and 1980, and in 1986 became Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 1989.

     

    Born in Minehead, western England, on Dec. 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Arthur Charles Clark became addicted to science fiction after buying his first copies of the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories" at Woolworth's. He read English writers H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon and began writing for his school magazine in his teens.

     

    Clarke went to work as a clerk in Her Majesty's Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.

     

    It was not until after the World War II that Clarke received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from King's College in London.

     

    In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was put in charge of a new radar blind-landing system.

     

    But it was an RAF memo he wrote in 1945 about the future of communications that led him to fame. It was about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications ? an idea whose time had decidedly not come.

     

    Clarke later sent it to a publication called Wireless World, which almost rejected it as too far-fetched.

     

    Clarke married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children.

     

    He moved to the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka in 1956 after embarking on a study of the Great Barrier Reef.

     

    Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, discovered that scuba-diving approximated the feeling of weightlessness that astronauts experience in space. He remained a diving enthusiast, running his own scuba venture into old age.

     

    "I'm perfectly operational underwater," he once said.

     

    Clarke was linked by his computer with friends and fans around the world, spending each morning answering e-mails and browsing the Internet.

     

    At a 90th birthday party thrown for Clarke in December, the author said he had three wishes: for Sri Lanka's raging civil war to end, for the world to embrace cleaner sources of energy and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings to be discovered.

     

    In an interview with The Associated Press, Clarke once said he did not regret having never followed his novels into space, adding that he had arranged to have DNA from strands of his hair sent into orbit.

     

    "One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time," he said. "Move over, Stephen King."

    Upcoming Releases

    in Classic Film DVD Reviews

    Posted

    New TO DVD 2008!!

     

    Carve Her Name With Pride (1958)

    Release Date: May 13, 2008

    Starring: Virginia McKenna, Paul Scofield, Jack Warner.

     

    Day of the Outlaw (1959)

    Release Date: May 13, 2008

    Starring: Robert Ryan, Burl Ives, Tina Louise, Alan Marshal.

     

    Death of a Cyclist (1955)

    Release Date: April 22, 2008

    Starring: Alberto Closas, Lucia Bose, Manuel Alexandre.

     

    Deep In My Heart (1954)

    Release Date: April 8, 2008

    Starring: Jose Ferrer, Merle Oberon, Helen Traubel, Doe Avedon, Walter Pidgeon.

     

    Easy Living (1937)

    Release Date: April 22, 2008

    Starring: Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Ray Milland.

     

    The Fall Of The Roman Empire (Deluxe Edition) (1964)

    Release Date: April 29, 2008

    Sophia Loren, Stephen Boyd, Alec Guinness, James Mason, Christopher Plummer, Anthony Quayle, John Ireland, Omar Sharif, Mel Ferrer.

     

    Marriage on the Rocks (1965)

    Release Date: May 13, 2008

    Starring: Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr, Dean Martin, Cesar Romero, Nancy Sinatra.

     

    The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition (Ocean's 11 / Robin and the 7 Hoods / 4 for Texas / Sergeant's 3) (1960)

    Release Date: May 13, 2008

    Starring: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson, Akim Tamiroff, Buddy Lester, Cesar Romero, Clem Harvey, Joey Bishop.

    Upcoming Releases

    in Classic Film DVD Reviews

    Posted

    Classicflix.com

     

    Man of a THousand Faces in June 2008!

     

    Ten years to the month Image Entertainment released Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), Universal** will come out with the long awaited re-release. Scarcity has kept the collector price at about $100 for the 1998 release, but the upcoming June 24th release will retail for $19.98. It will be available at Classicflix.com for only $14.99. No additional specs at this time.

    Upcoming Releases

    in Classic Film DVD Reviews

    Posted

    City Slickers: Collectors Edition Rides Back to DVD on June 3rd, 2008!

     

    Jack Palance won the Oscar in 1992 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role!

     

    Now you can hit the dusty trail with some unlikely cattle drivers on DVD this June. City Slickers is coming back to DVD in a new collectors edition on June 3. The film stars Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby.

     

    Mitch is a middle aged big-city radio ads salesman. He and his friends Ed and Phil are having mid-life crisis. They decide the best birthday gift is to go on a two week holiday in the wild west driving cattle from New Mexico to Colorado. There they meet cowboy Curly who not only teaches them how to become real cowboys, but also one or two other things about life in the open air of the west.

     

    Special Features

    - Audio Commentary from director Ron Underwood and stars Billy Crystal and Daniel Stern

    - Back in The Saddle: City Slickers Revisited featurette

    - Bringing in the Script: Writing City Slickers featurette

    - A Star is Born: An Ode to Norman featurette

    - The Real City Slickers featurette

    - 2 Deleted Scenes: Releasing the Herd and A New Job

© 2022 Turner Classic Movies Inc. All Rights Reserved Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Cookie Settings
×
×
  • Create New...