Last weekend we lost two great stars, actor/comedian Bernie Mac (1957-2008) and Oscar-winning songwriter/actor Isaac Hayes (1942-2008), who both appear in the upcoming Soul Men (pictured above), out this November. For more on their respective deaths, see Erik's and William's posts.

Actor and playwright George Furth (1932-2008) died August 11 in Santa Monica, California. I'll always remember him best as the anti-Cannonballer spoilsport Arthur J. Foyt in The Cannonball Run. He also appears memorably in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Blazing Saddles and Shampoo. (AP)

Where would the montage sequence be without Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"? And what about the movie that borrowed the title, Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Robert Hazard (1948-2008), who wrote the tune, died August 5 in Boston. (Variety)

"Love means never having to say you're sorry." This famous line came to us partly by way of Howard G. Minsky (1914-2008) who received an Oscar nomination for producing Love Story. He died August 10 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Variety)

Bernie Brillstein (1931-2008), formerly half of production team Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, executive produced Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, The Blues Brothers, Spies Like Us, The Cable Guy, Bulletproof, Happy Gilmore, Summer Rental, Dragnet, Up the Academy, Neighbors, Doctor Detroit, Continental Divide, The Celluloid Closet, What Planet Are You From? and Run Ronnie Run and produced The Replacement Killers and Jiminy Glick in Lalawood. He died of chronic pulmonary disease August 7, in New York City. (NY Times)

Oscar-nominated record producer Jerry Wexler (1917-2008), who was portrayed by Richard Schiff in the movie Ray, died of congenital heart disease August 15, in Sarasota, Florida. He also worked on soundtracks for The Wiz, The Cotton Club and Pretty Baby (for which he received the Academy Award nom) and co-wrote the Aretha Franklin tune "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman". (AP)

For me, it started with the deaths of comedic greats like Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason. Death had become real and tangible, making the world and showbusiness finite. Since then, the numbers have gradually increased. We're slowly walking into the period where memorials and tributes aren't relegated to actors before our time, but to the names and faces that shaped our views of entertainment -- the people who we have spent so much time with on the big screen, and within the comfort of our own homes.

But we're not just losing people to age. 2008 has been a heavy year for Hollywood, losing both rising stars and big names with long careers. Considering the fact that we just lost two more, I wanted to take a moment and look back at this year's shockers. Some of these men were young, some of these men were older, but all of them have left this earth too soon.

According to the Associated Press, 65-year-old singer-songwriter Isaac Hayes has passed away after being found unresponsive in his Memphis, TN home.

An indelible influence on the world of music, a pop culture icon besides for his work as Chef on "South Park" and in its full-length feature, Hayes will be most fondly remembered in the world of film for his award-winning theme to Shaft and his role as 'The Duke' in Escape from New York.

Hayes showed up in his fair share of other movies, apparently including a cameo as himself in the upcoming comedy Soul Men, starring Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac -- this after making an appearance on "The Bernie Mac Show" in 2005 and an uncredited cameo in the 2000 version of Shaft, starring Jackson.

Hopefully, one day, space will actually be the final frontier for James Doohan, the actor who played "Scotty" in the Star Trek series. Three years after his death from Alzheimer's disease, all of his ashes have still not reached their intended destination. Back in December 2006, some of Doohan's remains were to be rocketed into space, but the launch was delayed, and new plans were made for the actor's ashes, along with more than 200 other people's remains. According to Doohan's Wikipedia page, the ashes' first mission went as planned, as they were blasted into space for four minutes in April 2007 and then were parachuted back to Earth. This past Saturday, they were all set to again be shot into space and to remain there this time, but the launch failed.

Now BBC News reports that following the failure of the mission, Doohan's ashes have gone missing. It's unclear what the details of the disappearance are, but it's fair to assume that much of the rocket's contents went missing during the botched launch, which took place from the island of Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. In that case, it would seem the ashes will not actually be recovered. One of Doohan's sons wrote a message posted on BoingBoing, in which he stated that he'd like to "finish saying goodbye," and that "every launch attempt is like reliving his funeral." Apparently, according to the NY Times, another launch will happen in the future and that any unrecovered ashes will be replaced with backup ashes.

By: Kim Voynar (original publish date: January 22, 2008)

(With the Cine-staff off on a late-July mini-vacation, we thought it'd be fun to bring you some of our favorite pieces from months past. This would probably rank among our LEAST favorite stories of all time, but it certainly was a memorable one.)


Cinematical's staff would like to take a moment to share our thoughts on Heath Ledger, who passed away today after an apparent overdose.


Although Heath Ledger's best known film to date is Brokeback Mountain, my favorite of his films was Candy, in which he starred opposite fellow Australian Abbie Cornish. His performance in Candy, as an artist and heroin addict in a mutually destructive relationship with Cornish's nice middle-class girl, was so riveting and raw, and it's one of those fest films that I've thought about often since I saw it. Like most everyone who's here working Sundance, I was deeply shocked by the news of his tragic death today. He touched us through his films, and we are saddened by the loss of his life, and the films he would have made in the future. His family, especially his young daughter Matilda, will be in our thoughts and prayers.

-Kim Voynar

My original feeling about Heath Ledger -- after films like The Patriot, A Knight's Tale, and 10 Things I Hate About You -- was that he was yet another handsome and likable matinee idol ... but not much more than that. But over the last several years, I was proven wrong ... several times. My favorite performance of his was the lead role in the underrated Casanova -- and I'll be giving that film a second spin as soon as I get home from Sundance. He was a very fine actor who clearly took a lot of pride in his work, and I believe that the movie world has just lost a good soul. My heart goes out to his friends, his family, his fans, and also to the departed Heath Ledger; (If his death is ruled a suicide) I'm deeply sorry that he was so unhappy. (Regardless of the reason for the actor's death, it's a stunning tragedy.)

-Scott Weinberg

Following the success of the Sex and the City movie, I was really, really hopeful (noted in passing here) for a Golden Girls movie featuring the four stars of the ever-popular TV series. Unfortunately, my dream can no longer be fulfilled, because one of the ladies has passed on. Early this morning, at her home in Los Angeles, Estelle Getty (aka "Sophia") died, three days shy of turning 85.

Though the cause of death was not specified, Getty had been suffering from Lewy Body Dementia since at least 2000, when she stopped making public appearances. She was not even able to appear in a Golden Girls reunion that aired on Lifetime in 2003. Obviously, she wouldn't have been able to star in a theatrical film, either.

Getty was best known for her role on The Golden Girls, but movie fans will forever remember her also as the titular matriarch teamed up with Sylvester Stallone in the dreadful action comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. She also appears in Stuart Little, Mask and, in a pre-famous minor role, Tootsie. My favorite, though, is her feisty department store owner in Mannequin. Or, maybe her appearance in the surreal clip above, which comes from her awesome 1993 workout video.

In the last twenty-four hours alone, countless news articles have compared the late Heath Ledger to James Dean. Of course it helps that the two actors -- whose careers lie fifty years apart -- bear physical resemblances to each other. The real reason for the frequency of the comparison, however, revolves around the possibility that Ledger, like Dean, might end up with a posthumous Oscar nomination.

Other than Dean, whose death in a 1955 car accident was preceded by two nominations back-to-back, six actors have landed the distinction -- but only one, Peter Finch, actually won (for Network in 1976). However, Ledger is now perceived an actor who possessed a potential he never quite realized, while Dean was already an icon by the time of his death (and he still didn't win the prize). If Ledger gets nominated for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, the award will also acknowledge the great career that never was. Dean surely would have followed Giant with other wonderful performances, but his brief filmography also allowed the actor to reach a level of prestige that Ledger would have needed a few more movies to attain. So does this comparison really hold up?

The media certainly seems to think so. "Like Dean, he could endure as a mythic figure of talent silenced before his time," writes the AP. "People are aflutter over seeing the final performance of a new James Dean," reports The Huffington Post. " One quality that Ledger and Dean did share is rapid growth," notes the Baltimore Sun.

• Evelyn Keyes (1916-2008) - Actress - Played Scarlett O'Hara's little sister, Suellen, in Gone With the Wind. She also co-starred in The Seven Year Itch, The Jolson Story, in which she also sings, Mrs. Mike, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Union Pacific, Before I Hang, A Thousand and One Nights, The Prowler, Johnny O'Clock, Enchantment and A Return to Salem's Lot and made a cameo appearance in the 1956 version of Around the World in Eighty Days, produced by her then-boyfriend Michael Todd. Her husbands included Artie Shaw, John Huston and Charles Vidor, who directed her in The Desperadoes, The Lady in Question and Ladies in Retirement. She died of uterine cancer July 4, in Montecito, California. (Variety)

• Henry Beckman (1921-2008) - Actor - Appears in The Brood, Niagara, The Wrong Man, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Marnie, Sweet Charity, Silver Streak, I Love You to Death, Death Hunt and Kiss Me, Stupid. He died June 17 in Barcelona. (Variety)
• James "Jimbo" Breen (1955-2008) - Greensman, Carpenter, Actor - Worked on M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable and The Village, appears in Lady in the Water and can be heard in The Happening. He also worked on Beloved, In Her Shoes, Two Bits and Annapolis. He died of cancer July 3, in Pennsylvania. (Philly.com)

Even the weirder artists of the twentieth century have been attracted to the allure of Hollywood filmmaking, and Salvador Dali was no exception. In the fall of 1941, the surrealist painter hosted a masquerade party at Pebble Beach during one of his regular visits to the town. Called "Surrealism Night in An Enchanted Forest," the fundraising event, intended to assist European refugee artists, brought out a number of stars, including Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. It was here, the story goes, that Dali became attached to a major studio production called Moontide. The great German emigre Fritz Lang was hired to direct the movie, and asked Dali to create a three-minute nightmare sequence for the film. Unfortunately, after the incident at Pearl Harbor later that year, Twentieth Century Fox deemed the project too bleak. Lang was replaced, and Dali's nightmare sequence went with him.

Although inspired by the movies, Dali didn't always have the easiest time making them. He would get another chance to inject his hallucinatory vision into American cinema with the hypnosis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, but it's his unrealized projects that truly indicate the scope of the painter's ambition. So many ideas, such little time. Dali: Painting and Film, a breathtakingly unique exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, surveys Dali's completed cinematic works in addition to tidbits from the ones that never came to fruition. Marvelously structured to show how his paintings were intentionally cinematic, the exhibit contains all the obvious highlights from Dali's movie career alongside lesser-known productions. The importance in film history of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel remain uncontested; two large screens in separate rooms showing Un Chien Andalou (where the opening eye splicing retains its original gross-out impact) and L'Age D'Or attest to that. Fewer visitors, however, might know about Dali's collaboration with the Marx Brothers on a deliriously strange movie that sounded too good to be true.

This may not have gotten its own post were I not blogging here. But for better or worse I am, and so you get to read about Don S. Davis, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 65.

Davis is one of the many versatile, unheralded character actors to have moved through Hollywood in relative anonymity. I wouldn't say he was a phenomenal talent, though he was certainly very good, but it so happens that he played two pivotal roles on two television shows that, more than any other works of art, shaped my taste in movies and stories when I was a young teenager.

As Captain William Scully, Agent Scully's father, Davis was the heart of what may have been The X-Files' finest hour (as any self-respecting X-Files fan knows, the Season 1 episode in which he appeared was called "Beyond the Sea"). And as Major Briggs on Twin Peaks, he carried one of that show's creepiest, most memorable plotlines. Whenever he would appear, I knew I was in for another amazing Lynchian what-the-hell moment.

• William Vince (1963-2008) - Producer - Oscar-nominated for producing Capote. He also produced Saved!, Just Friends, Ripley Under Ground, The Final Cut, The Snow Walker, The 4th Floor, Air Bud, Air Bud: Golden Receiver, Malicious and the upcoming films Push, The Stanford Prison Experiment and Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which stars Heath Ledger. He died of sarcoma June 21, in Vancouver. (CBC)

• John Barnes (1920-2008) - Film Historian - Co-founder of the Barnes Museum of Cinematography, which was in St. Ives, Cornwall, England (it closed in 1986) and author of multiple texts, including the five-volume "The Beginnings of Cinema in England, 1894-1901." He died June 1. (Guardian)
• Robert L. Bendick (c.1917-2008) - Director, Producer - Co-produced the Oscar-nominated documentary This is Cinerama and co-directed a follow-up, Cinerama Holiday. He died June 22. (Entertainment Insiders)
• Rodric Beckham (1914-2008) - Former U.S. Army-Air Corp. Staff Sergeant who spent much of World War II in a German POW camp. He appears in Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 along with other WWII POW survivors. He died June 21. (Entertainment Insiders)
• Howard Brandy (1929-2008) - Publicist, Producer - Handled PR for A Hard Days Night, Help! and Privilege and was a publicist for the Police Academy movies, The Karate Kid, Part III, Young Frankenstein, The Last Emperor, The Pope of Greenwich Village, The Last Seduction, Things Are Tough All Over, Runaway Train, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and Gorky Park. He also handled the Academy Awards campaigns for All About My Mother, Sexy Beast and Sweet and Lowdown and produced the 1970s exploitation films Blood from the Mummy's Tomb and The Take. He was apparently the inspiration for the cartoon character Dudley Do-Right, who received his own movie starring Brendan Fraser in 1999. He died June 21 in Los Angeles. (Variety)

I'm sure everyone expected The Dark Knight to close with a Heath Ledger "in memoriam" after the fade to black. So it will. Warner Bros. has released the text of the dedication that will accompany the film, and it reads:


Wickliffe (the IMDb has him as "Comway" but other sources, as well as the dedication, say "Conway") is the Maori special-effects technician who was killed in a stunt car accident last September. He was on a camera truck following the Batmobile around a racetrack when the truck spun out of control and crashed into a tree.
It's very classy of Chris Nolan & Co., I think, to tribute Wickliffe in the same line as the far more famous and publicly-mourned Ledger. Their whole handling of Ledger's death has been on the money; they haven't shied away from showcasing his performance in the marketing, but nor have they given the slightest indication that they're attempting to exploit its profile. The result: going to see the movie doesn't feel the least bit skeevy or off, at least for me.

I am a bit concerned about the possible posthumous Oscar campaign though, especially after Peter Travers semi-officially got it off the ground last week. Since Ledger almost certainly wouldn't have had a shot at it for this role were he still alive, I'm afraid the notion of the "posthumous Oscar" would overwhelm his actual performance, which looks fantastic.

• Dody Goodman (1915-2008) - Comedienne, Actress - Played "Blanche", the principal's secretary in Grease and Grease 2 and Tom Hanks' absent-minded secretary in Splash and Splash, Too (in which Hanks was replaced by Todd Waring). She also appears in Silent Movie, Max Dugan Returns, Private Resort, Cool as Ice, Frozen Assets and Bedtime Story, and she had a recurring role in the Alvin and the Chipmunk cartoons, including the 1987 feature, The Chipmunk Adventure, providing her voice to the character of Miss Miller, adopted mother of the Chipettes. She died June 22 in Englewood, New Jersey. (AP)
  
• Sidney J. Bartholomew Jr. (c.1954-2008) - Production Designer, Writer, Director - Won an Emmy for his work on TV's Pee-Wee's Playhouse before collaborating on most of the Farrelly brothers' films, including There's Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber, Kingpin, Shallow Hal, Me, Myself and Irene, Stuck on You, The Heartbreak Kid, Say It Isn't So (produced by the Farrellys) and Osmosis Jones, in which he appears. He also co-wrote and directed the 2003 soccer comedy Just 4 Kicks, which starred Tom Arnold. He died June 15 in Los Angeles. (Variety)
• George Carlin (1937-2008) - Comedian, Actor - Appears in Dogma, Outrageous Fortune, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Jersey Girl, The Prince of Tides, Car Wash, Scary Movie 3, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, With Six You Get Egg Roll and the documentaries The Aristrocrats, F*ck, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and The N Word. He also voiced characters in Cars, Happily N'Ever After and Tarzan II. For info on his death, read William's full post.
• Cyd Charisse (1921-2008) - Actress, Dancer - Starred in Singin' in the Rain, Brigadoon, Party Girl, Ziegfeld Follies, The Band Wagon, It's Always Fair Weather, Two Weeks in Another Town, The Silencers and Silk Stockings. For info on her death, read my full post.

Not four years ago, my father took me to see George Carlin perform his stand-up routine live as a belated birthday gift, and what a pleasure it was to see one of my favorite comedians display his considerable - and considerably crude - talents within spitting distance of my impressionable young psyche.

Even if that weren't the case, it would still be extremely sad to see Carlin go, as Reuters unfortunately reports. He appears to have passed away just last night of heart failure, at the age of 71.

Carlin had nearly thirty film and TV credits to his name, and while his most recent role happened to be in Happily N'Ever After of all things, he'll surely be more fondly remembered for his roles in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Dogma, and for his numerous Emmy-nominated stand-up specials and Grammy-winning comedy albums.

Of perhaps the slightest comfort and tribute was the fact that the news of his passing had me uttering aloud one of his "Seven Dirty Words", a routine which brought him to Washington, D.C. in order to tangle with the U.S. Supreme Court back in 1978... and yet, earlier this week, the Kennedy Center offered him reason to return to the nation's capital three decades after the fact, when they were to honor him this November with their annual Mark Twain Prize for lifetime achievement in comedy.

Our thoughts go out to his loved ones. He will undoubtedly be deeply missed.

I'm not the most knowledgeable man when it comes to dance, but I'm at least a little familiar with Cyd Charisse. As everyone should be. Next to Ginger Rogers, she was possibly the most iconic female dancer in film history. Even those of us cinephiles who skip out on most dance musicals have at least seen her famous number from Singin' in the Rain (above). A few years ago, when Moviefone counted down the Top 10 Best Dance Scenes, it was #2 (just behind Dirty Dancing).

Charisse has died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 86, and she's hopefully joining old partners Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly for some of the best dance scenes ever seen up in heaven. With the former, she was paired up in The Band Wagon, Ziegfeld Follies and Silk Stockings (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination), and with the latter, she danced in Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather, Invitation to Dance and, of course, in Singin' in the Rain.