Luise Rainer, the first Hollywood star to win back-to-back acting Oscars, has died of pneumonia at the age of 104, Variety reports.
Rainer won her first Academy Award in 1936 for playing the wife of Florenz Ziegfeld in the film The Great Ziegfeld. The next year, she'd hold another shiny statue for playing the lead in The Good Earth. The only other actors to win Oscars in consecutive years are Spencer Tracy (1938, 1939), Katharine Hepburn (1968, 1969), Jason Robards (1976, 1977), and Tom Hanks (1993, 1994).
Following her Oscar wins, Rainer only starred in one more Hollywood film, Hostages. She appeared in various television movies and series in the 1940s and 1950s before walking away from her acting career altogether.
Rainer is survived by her daughter, Francsca Knittel-Bowyer.
VIRTUAL FOREST is the mystic variation of Above the Tree, Marco Bernacchia’ solo project whose releases have been put out by labels as Brigadisco, Bloody Sound Fucktory e Locomotiv Records. In the words of the artist, this new work is nothing but the dreamlike phase of the main act, a new dimension where the tape is the vision.
The path here is characterized by the procedure of the American Indians to devote their own lives to a new state of conscience, a vision often achieved through starvation and sleep deprivation which culminates in one trance state where real and unreal melt and define a symbolic message.
Once decoded, the entire existence of the visionary will be lead according to this vision which often predicts the end as it shows the way.
VIRTUAL FOREST is Above the Tree’s nom de guerre that holds the symbolic representations collected through the sound, the establishing dream of his research.
Two long tracks within Unconscious Cognition is the Processing of Perception, where River to Back Side slowly introduces a tribal-flavoured initiation ritual, an ongoing mantra culminating in one climax of percussion, baritone drones and loops of vocals. The B side sounds like the perfect soundtrack to the awakening of the day after. The transition has happened, the boy is now a grown-up and the dark drones that cloak Spiritual Communications seem to reflect the new thoughts that already invade his mind.
Out January 8 on aquamarine blue tape cassette limited to 100 copies.
Joseph Sargent, director of “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” and winner of four Emmys and four DGA Awards, died Monday at his home in Malibu of complications from heart disease. He was 89.
Sargent worked until he was 84. His credits included “Something The Lord Made,” “Warm Springs” “MacArthur,” “The Incident,” “Playing For Time,” “Miss Rose White” “Miss Evers’ Boys” and “Love Is Never Silent.”
He and his wife Carolyn helped co-found Deaf Theatre West as also founded the Free Arts Clinic For Abused Children. He won a Genesis Award for “The Last Elephant.”
Sargent worked during his last decade as the senior filmmaker-in-residence for the directing program at the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles and as the first professor of a masters program in film directing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, where Sargent and his wife Carolyn have resided for 40 years.
“When it comes to directing Movies for Television, Joe’s dominance and craftsmanship was legendary — for the past 50 years,” said Directors Guild of America president Paris Barclay.
“With eight DGA Awards nominations in Movies for Television, more than any other director in this category, Joe embodied directorial excellence on the small screen.” Barclay said. “He was unafraid of taking risks, believing in his heart that television audiences demanded the highest quality stories – whether chronicling uncomfortable historic events like the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study in ‘Miss Evers’ Boys,’ or compelling personal stories about inspiring individuals like heart surgery pioneers Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas in ‘Something the Lord Made.’ His biographies demonstrated an exactitude for period accuracy while simultaneously infusing historical figures with true-to-life spirit and passion. Joe once said that he was ‘drawn to projects possessing ‘edge’ — material that can make some comment or contribution to the condition of man,’ and it is this ‘edge’ that is his enduring directorial legacy.”
He was born Giusseppe Daneiele Sorgente in Jersey City, New Jersey. He served as a teenage GI volunteer in Western Europe in World War II; after the war, he began studying as an actor studying at the Actors’ Studio.
He gained experience in episodic TV, first as an actor and finally getting directory opportunities in “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” “Lassie,” “The Fugitive,” “Star Trek” and “The Man From Uncle. He won his first Emmy directing the pilot episode of “Kojak,” a film entitled “The Marcus-Nelson Murders.”
Sargent is survived by his widow Carolyn Nelson Sargent, two daughters, Lia Sargent and Athena Sargent Sergneri (from a prior marriage to Mary Carver), and by nieces Charlotte and Emma Nelson.
Source:Variety
Warner Bros. has unveiled the very first The Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie image from director Guy Ritchie’s adaptation of the popular 1960s TV series. Steven Soderbergh was initially attached to helm the film for WB before Ritchie came on, after which Tom Cruise came onboard to star alongside Armie Hammer (The Social Network) before leaving to focus on Mission: Impossible 5, with the Man of Steel himself Henry Cavill subsequently filling the vacant role. This finished iteration of the film takes place in the early 60s at the height of the Cold War, as Cavill’s CIA agent Napoleon Solo is forced to team up with Hammer’s KGB agent Illya Kuryakin to stop a mysterious criminal organization.
The film also stars Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, and Jared Harris, with Ritchie having penned the screenplay alongside his Sherlock Holmes collaborator Lionel Wigram. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. opens in theaters August 14, 2015.
Oscar winner Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind”) directs the action adventure “In the Heart of the Sea,” starring Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker and Cillian Murphy, based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s best-selling book about the dramatic true journey of the Essex.
In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance. The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. But that told only half the story. “In the Heart of the Sea” reveals the encounter’s harrowing aftermath, as the ship’s surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive. Braving storms, starvation, panic and despair, the men will call into question their deepest beliefs, from the value of their lives to the morality of their trade, as their captain searches for direction on the open sea and his first mate still seeks to bring the great whale down.
“In the Heart of the Sea” stars Chris Hemsworth (“The Avengers,” “Rush”) as the vessel’s veteran first mate Owen Chase; Benjamin Walker (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) as its inexperienced Captain, George Pollard; Cillian Murphy (“The Dark Knight Rises”) as second mate Matthew Joy; and Ben Whishaw (“Skyfall”) as novelist Herman Melville, whose inquiries into the event 30 years later helped bring the story to light.
