Entertainment

Gerry Anderson, the creator of hit TV shows including Thunderbirds, Stingray and Joe 90, has died at the age of 83.

He also created Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and his puppet superheroes fired the imaginations of millions of young viewers in the 1960s and ’70s.

Thunderbirds, a science-fiction fantasy about a daring rescue squad, ran from 1965 and was his most famous show.

Anderson had suffered from Alzheimer’s since 2010 and the disease had worsened in recent months, his son Jamie said.

Jamie Anderson announced the news on his website, saying his father died peacefully in his sleep at noon on Wednesday — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The American actor Charles Durning, who has died aged 89, first grabbed audience attention as the crooked Lieutenant Snyder in The Sting (1973). He makes an explosive appearance, tearing down an alley after the slick grifter played by Robert Redford, and repeatedly lurches out of the shadows throughout the rest of the film. Durning had only a handful of scenes, and over the next 40 years would seldom be granted more screen time in 200-odd film and TV roles. Nevertheless, his jowly face, with its boxer’s nose and sly eyes, grew increasingly familiar, and his name in the opening titles usually promised good things ahead. His heavyset frame meant he was often cast as tough guys, but he later assumed more jovial roles, portraying Father Christmas several times.

His first Oscar nomination came for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), an ebullient musical about the southern hospitality offered at a brothel called the Chicken Ranch. Durning plays the slippery Texan governor who must decide whether to close down the establishment. His evasive nature is captured in a magical song-and-dance routine: I love to dance a little sidestep, he sings. Now they see me, now they don’t… — via redwolf.newsvine.com

In the past twelve months, The Middleman had gotten used to the feeling of utter, unadulterated and — frankly — de-goshdarn-lightful pride at the progress of his young apprentice. Without fail, the art student who had come under his tutelage a snarky, vinegar-veined quipper had turned into a reliable — if sometimes idiosyncratic – Middleman-to-be. Today was no exception — even if its events were causing him to suck air in a mad canter toward The Middlemobile, where — at the beck and call of a signal from his Middlewatch — the trunk would soon pop open to grant him access to the seldom-used-but-always-at-the-ready Middlejetpack.

The Middleman disliked the Middlejetpack: an archaic contraption harkening back to the days when former Middleman Guy Goddard — his sexual promiscuity as overt as his appetite for vehicular carnage in exotic locales — rode the thing in a green smoking jacket with a Beretta in one hand and a highball of Fleming’s Commander Jamaica Rum in the other…but desperate times called for desperate measures, and flingety-flangety-foom, this time was more desperate than a Portland vegan at a Texas barbecue.

— via themiddleblog

George Takei reads from Fifty Shades of Grey. Oh Myyy, indeed. Share the joy and spread him like a virus. Then pick up a copy of his new book; Oh Myyy! (There Goes The Internet)

The University of Chicago Admissions department received a package Wednesday that initially wasn’t given a second thought until they gave it a closer look.

On the surface, the package addressed to Dr Henry Walton Jones, Jr seemed innocuous enough until a student mail worker asked who Dr Jones was. That’s when they realised the package was addressed to none other than Indiana Jones.

Further inspection of the packages contents revealed they contained a detailed replica of Dr. Abner Ravenwood’s journal from Raiders of the Lost Ark, photos of Marion Ravenwood and replica money, most of it made by hand. Rosenwald Hall, which houses U of C’s Admission’s Department, also used to be home to the university’s geography and geology departments — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling‘s music video for Episode 1: Arrival is a shot-for-shot remake of the opening sequence of the ’60s cult spy-fi TV show The Prisoner. The video was produced & directed by Theodore Cormey of Lost Jockey Productions and took nearly 2 years of planning and 11 days of shooting to accomplish.

Side-by-side comparison of original and this remake and comparison photos, video & behind-the-scenes stills

What may be this year’s most interesting bit of Hitchcockiana — certainly it’s the least expected — is available for viewing at www.filmpreservation.org, the website of the National Film Preservation Foundation.

It’s a 1924 English silent film, The White Shadow, which was long thought lost. More accurately, it’s the film’s three first reels, lasting a little more than 40 minutes (the remainder of the film remains missing). The footage was found last year at the New Zealand Film Archive in canisters marked (Twin Sisters) with Betty Compson. Compson is the film’s star. Some inspired sleuthing by the NFPF’s Leslie Anne Lewis revealed the film to be The White Shadow.

What made this a big deal is that The White Shadow is as close to being a Hitchcock film as a movie can get without actually qualifying. The director was Graham Cutts, a leading English filmmaker of the ’20s. With that name, he should have been an editor. Instead, it was Hitchcock who edited it. He also wrote the script, based on a novel by the English dramatist Michael Morton, and was assistant director and art director — via redwolf.newsvine.com