Law’s AP obit quoted a Los Angeles Times interview from 1966 in which the actor stated, “I’ve had more kicks out of playing far-out things. It’s like putting on a funny face and going out in front of people and going, ‘yaaaaaa.’”

You certainly gave us our fair share of kicks, thanks John.

In commemoration of Law’s passing, we present a series of memorable film trailers featuring the fun-loving star, as well as an illuminating interview regarding his experiences in Skidoo.

Enjoy.

Trailer for The Swinging Lust World of John Phillip Law:

Trailer for Death Rides a Horse:

Trailer for Danger: Diabolik:

Trailer for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad:

Trailer for Barbarella:

Skidoo Interview:

If none of their individual names ring a bell, trust me that you are more than likely exceedingly familiar with their contributions to not just movies, but to a vast swath of American popular culture. These artists comprised the group known as Walt’s Nine Old Men, the group of animators who worked closely with Walt Disney for decades and were responsible for the legendary output from the studio. Ollie Johnston, the last surviving member of Walt’s Nine Old Men, passed away this week at the age of 96.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp, and so many more indelible films still impact animation today. While Walt himself understandably became the person most people associated with these beloved works, the fact is that his in-house staff of animators deserved as much recognition as the head of the company. Their influence extends far beyond simply their own output for the studio. Working with them on the lot in the early 1980s were two young men, future filmmakers who paid respect to these masters while showcasing how animation can continue to grow as an art form. Both Tim Burton and John Lasseter were at Disney at the same time, absorbing lessons that would serve them well as they each went on to create a body of work just as beloved by some as the work of Walt’s Nine Old Men. That Lasseter, the man behind Pixar, now makes practically all of the creative decisions regarding Disney’s theatrical films indicates yet again the breadth and scope of their influence to this day.

James B. Stewart’s excellent non-fiction book Disney War tells of how Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg feuded over which of them should be considered Walt Disney’s true heir as the head of the company, but anyone who reads that superbly researched work will understand how the real legacy will always lie with those who put their talent, knowledge, and craft into the work itself. Les Clark, Marc Davis, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman, and Frank Thomas are now gone, but as long as movies can be shown, their work will never be forgotten.

Steel-jawed, hard bodied, terse in speech, Charlton Heston was an American man’s man, an epic unto himself. While he played modern men, he was at his best when portraying larger-than-life figures from world history, preferably with his shirt off. He was born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1924 and originally trained in the classics in Northwestern University’s drama program, gaining early experience playing the lead in a 1941 filmed school production of Peer Gynt. He also performed on the radio, and then went on to serve in the Air Force for three years during WWII. Afterwards, he went to work as a model in New York, where he met his wife, fellow model Lydia Clarke, to whom he remained married until his death. Later the two operated a theater in Asheville, North Carolina where Heston honed his acting skills. He made his Broadway debut in Katharine Cornell’s 1947 production of Antony and Cleopatra and subsequently went on to be a staple of the highly-regarded New York-based Studio One live television anthology where he played such classic characters as Heathcliff, Julius Caesar and Petruchio. The show made Heston a star.

He made his Hollywood film debut in William Dieterle’s film noir Dark City playing opposite Lizabeth Scott. Even though she was more established in Hollywood, it was Heston who received top billing. He went on to appear as a white man raised in Indian culture in The Savage (1952) and then as a snob who snubs a country girl in King Vidor’s Ruby Gentry (1952). His big break came when Cecil B. DeMille cast him as the bitter circus manager Brad Braden in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952).

In subsequent films, Heston began developing his persona of an unflinching hero with a piercing blue-eyed stare and unbending, self-righteous Middle American ethics. Heston’s heroes could be violent and cruel, but only when absolutely necessary. He began a long stint of playing historical characters with his portrayal of Buffalo Bill in Pony Express and then Andrew Jackson in The President’s Lady (both 1953). Heston’s star burned at its brightest when DeMille cast him as the stern Moses in the lavish epic The Ten Commandments (1956). From there, Heston went on to headline numerous spectaculars which provided him the opportunity to play everyone from John the Baptist to Michelangelo to El Cid to General “Chinese” Gordon. In 1959, Heston won an Academy Award for the title role in William Wyler’s Ben Hur. By the mid-1960s, the reign of the epic film passed and Heston began appearing in westerns (Will Penny) and epic war dramas (Midway). He also did sci-fi films, the most famous of which was the acclaimed opus Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man (1970) and the cult favorite Soylent Green (1973). The ’70s brought Heston into a new kind of epic, the disaster film, and he appeared in three, notably Airport 1975. From the late ’80s though the ’90s, Heston has returned to television, appearing in series, miniseries and made-for TV movies. He also appeared in such films as Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) and 1998’s Armageddon (as the narrator).

Outside of his film work, Heston served six terms as the president of the Screen Actors Guild and also chaired the American Film Institute. Active in such charities as The Will Rogers Institute, he was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1977 Oscar ceremony. Known as a conservative Republican and proud member of the National Rifle Association, Heston worked closely with his long-time colleague and friend, President Ronald Reagan as the leader of the president’s task force on arts and the humanities. He made two of his final film appearances in the disastrous Warren Beatty-Diane Keaton sex farce Town and Country (2001) (in a parodistic role, as a shotgun wielding arsonist who burns Beatty’s cabin to the ground!) and as himself in Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling For Columbine (2002) (in which he stormed out of an interview after Moore pummeled him with gun-related questions). Heston died in the spring of 2008 at age 84; although the cause of death was officially undisclosed, he had revealed several years prior that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

It would be easy to dismiss the career of Dassin – as have many – given the vacillating quality of his cinematic output and the lack of any obvious recurrent personal stamp. He was a journeyman craftsperson at heart, however, and as such, considerably adroit. This is the context in which his work begins to take on meaning and definition; to try to extend him beyond the confines of that framework represents a distortion. As one watches Rififi, for example (Dassin’s best-known and most popular outing) one feels repeatedly struck by the skill of the narrative construction and the documentary-like heist observation; one feels that one is witnessing the work of a master watchmaker who has fit every gear snugly and securely into place, and one can feel Dassin turning those gears. The same can be said for the director’s early MGM short The Tell-Tale Heart. To be certain, there are distinct pleasures and excitements to be had from this workmanlike approach to cinema. Yet it proved extremely vulnerable to to the circumstances in which his films were made.

As a result, if the director took on routine programmer assignments from MGM or Universal, the work invariably emerged as mediocre. Yet the other extreme also proved ineffectual: after he set up his own banner, Melinafilm, with wife Melina Mercouri, Dassin seemed almost too free to pursue his own proclivities and to lapse into self-indulgent pretension and political obscurity. The most impressive Dassin films were those that took a middle ground - the ones that offered him an opportunity to work with creative and incisive producers, in America and Europe, who set forth general guidelines but nonetheless gave the director some creative room to breathe and an opportunity to flex his filmmaking muscles. Rififi epitomizes this notion, as does The Tell-Tale Heart - the latter made within the confines of MGM but reportedly subject to precious little studio control.

The career of Dassin, as a whole, also seemed guided to an almost absurd degree by the wiles of fate, circumstance, and the era at hand. Seldom has a director existed whose career has taken so many odd or unpredictable turns, tied inextricably to the period in question - and tied to a director’s eccentric impulses. Consider, for example, the way in which he began his professional ascent, prompted by a bizarre, spur-of-the-moment instinct. He developed a taste for theater while touring Europe, from a most unlikely source: a Yiddish version of King Lear performed on stage by a Muscovite dwarf (!). That inspired this Jewish-born native of Middletown, Connecticut to end a lengthy period of European sojourning, return to the Big Apple and learn the entire Yiddish language in a remarkably short time, simply to provide himself with entrée into the then-prevalent Yiddish theatrical troupes that filled the off-Broadway stages of Manhattan. The plan worked, and (thanks to the climate of the day) Dassin found it virtually impossible to separate art from politics for the next several years – witness his enlistment in the socialist ensemble Artef Players, his involvement as a lead actor in the family-oriented, Marxist musical comedy Revolt of the Beavers, in 1937, and his tentative membership in the Communist Party – an association that formally ended two years later. That enlistment would cast a pall over the director’s flexibility and mobility for a lengthy period of time, but with a delayed effect, of course; back in late 1930s America, Socialism and Communism were not merely accepted but encouraged. The country - and Dassin’s career - would witness an act change with the arrival of McCarthy.

If raw talent ushered Dassin into a position writing radio plays for diva Kate Smith, and then magnetized representatives of RKO studios (who hired the fledgling as a directorial apprentice to such giants as Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin), no one has quite explained or accounted for what prompted RKO to fire him, or what kick-started the rumor at MGM that Dassin was studio-head Louis B. Mayer’s nephew. Taking this as a cue, Dassin did nothing to dispel the myth and (correctly perceiving it as a ladder up) in fact accepted a related offer to helm three shorts: a documentary piece about the artist Pablo Casals, a documentary piece about concert pianist Artur Rubinstein, and the aforementioned adaptation of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, which swept up a plethora of awards and virtually made Dassin’s reputation as a director via sheer directorial bravura and visual invention.

The next several years reflected on the mediocrity of routine studio moviemaking, as Dassin trekked from one MGM-backed journeyman project to another – from the fantasy of The Canterville Ghost to the whimsy of A Letter for Evie; only when Dassin rebelled by hearkening over to Universal and pooling his talents with those of visionary producer Mark Hellinger did masterpieces begin to emerge – the prison drama Brute Force (scripted by a young Richard Brooks) and the neorealist-influenced noir Naked City. Hellinger’s death during the production of City – combined with Dassin’s recurrent struggles to equal the high-points of that work for some time afterward – suggested that he worked best in collaborative relationships with others who could equal his talent and vision. Hence the creation the still-influential noir Night and the City (1950) – a thriller that sports Richard Widmark’s most iconic performance as loser grifter Harry Fabian.*

Dassin’s life, of course, turned a dark and ugly corner given the crippling interference of HUAC in his career during the mid-1950s (thanks to Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle), and thereafter, he could understandably never quite shake his preference for Europe – a feeling shared by Joseph Losey and others who survived the same indignities. All told, Dassin did encounter mixed success on the European continent, but comparatively greater freedom at the hands of enterprising producers, there, who both gave the director room to move and inspired him creatively. Dassin’s masterpiece, the 1955 Rififi (produced by Rene G. Vuattoux and adapted from a novel by Auguste le Breton) came about in exactly this manner and its influence cannot be overstated; the progenitor of the entire heist movie subgenre, it inspired thousands of lesser imitators for decades to come. Its now familiar story tells of a group of jewel thieves who embark upon an ingenious robbery and then watch the residual effects gradually cause everything to unravel. Dassin also gave himself a supporting role in that production, adopting the pseudonym Perlo Vita.

An immediate follow-up, the intriguing but long-forgotten political drama He Who Must Die, seemed almost entirely borne out of Dassin’s off and on-camera relationship with the luminous Mercouri, whom he promptly married. An adaptation of a novel by Last Temptation of Christ scribe Nikos Kazantzakis, filmed on the island of Crete, it weaves the tale of Turkish oppression of a 1920s Greek village, with a narrative that bears distinct and unmissable parallels to the Passion Play in Catholicism. Critics responded favorably to it, as they did to a follow-up, the romantic comedy smash Never on Sunday. In that low-budget outing, Dassin essayes a lead as Homer Thrace, an American drawn to Greece, where he unwisely attempts to play Svengali to a nubile prostitute (Mercouri). Audiences flocked to it and turned it into one of the seminal hits of that year; it earned favorable critical notices as well.

Unfortunately, at this point, when it seemed that Dassin’s fortunes could not possibly improve, such is exactly what happened: despite the 1964 international success of Topkapi - an all-star satirical variant on Rififi about a motley bunch of jewel thieves who attempt to lift a treasure from a palace in Istanbul, which evinced a deft directorial hand – the director quickly sank into a series of pretentious, shallow and empty disappointments (often accompanied by his muse Mercouri), that are almost unworthy of mention. These included the unconvincing Greco-tragic contemporization Phaedra (1963), the shallow melodrama 10:30pm Summer (1966, adapted from a Marguerite Duras novel); and Uptight (1968), an urban drama (sans Mercouri) about African American liberation. One bright and shining exception occurred in 1970, when Dassin and Mercouri teamed up for a gentle drama entitled Promesse de l’aube – an adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel of the same name. In later years, Dassin’s onscreen interests seemed in constant danger of being completely devoured by his self-indulgent political fixations, a tendency that led him blindly into “niche” territory and opened him up to the grave danger of time-sensitive cinematic material on more than a few occasions. Certainly, the string of disappointments that he issued between 1971-1980 (which ended, as indicated, with Circle of Two - a treacly and cliched May-December romance starring Richard Burton and Tatum O’Neal) more than accounts for the 30 years of cinematic inactivity that followed.

In retrospect, Dassin’s career seems more of a reflection on both the pitfalls and potential triumphs of moviemaking as a collective activity, than it does as an indicator of the director’s talent (or lack thereof). When given material with widespread appeal, and the room to flex his creative muscles, he generally proved himself a competent, dedicated and capable craftsperson. On the other hand, when he fell into the gears of a large studio system intent on forcing him to crank out vehicles and routine genre pieces (as MGM did in the early years) – or fell prey to the whims of European producers bound and tied to imposing commercial restrictions on forthcoming projects (as with his 1958 Where the Hot Wind Blows) the results could be unequivocally disastrous. It scarcely strikes one as surprising, then, that Dassin’s legacy is confined to a mere handful of films. Despite the lackluster outings scattered in-between and around such efforts, Dassin should receive greater attention and evaluation for what he did well than the many efforts that turned out poorly. That the same individual could be responsible for Night and the City, Brute Force, Rififi, Topkapi and Never on Sunday (while working within the American and European studio systems much of the time) is no mean accomplishment. Most journeyman directors who spend much of their careers under the studio thumb only dream of gracing such heights; Dassin’s only real liability is that he never quite managed to make the crossover necessary to establish his own personal voice as a moviemaker.

* - Let it be said, however – with no small degree of irony – that this film resoundingly flopped in 1950 and took years to amass its current following as a “rediscovered” classic.

His career in features lasted less than two decades, and while he never became the household name that some of his contemporaries were, Minghella showed a sense of ambition in his work, and a keen eye for actors. He directed six Academy Award-nominated performances, which is all the more impressive when you realize he only directed six feature films. He gave Jude Law what still stands as his best part in Ripley, a film so full of great performances that one can return to it time and again and appreciate some subtly that had slipped by before. Iris, and The Quiet American, two of the films he produced, each feature Oscar-nominated performances, with Jim Broadbent taking home the Best Supporting Actor trophy for his work in Iris. He enjoyed the challenge of adapting great novels for the screen, and his facility with performers – he said in one interview, rightly, that Cate Blanchett “can do anything” – allowed him to never lose the human stories at the center of his most epic pieces.

Minghella will be remembered as a man who created the kind of ambitious fare Hollywood loves to reward, but he was far from a high-class hack fishing for awards and adulation. What will be missed is his unique combination of taste and showmanship, as there are few people in the business that can match his unusual combination of talents.

As a result, three Hollywood favorites – Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law, respectively – will be stepping up to fill in the blanks. Producers insist that no aspect of Ledger’s performance will be modified through digital technology.

“Each of the parts played by Johnny, Colin and Jude is representative of the many aspects of the character that Heath was playing”, says director Terry Gilliam, who continued filming with the support of Ledger’s family.

While unique, this is not the first time an actor has been called upon to fill the shoes of another; in the 1994 goth favorite The Crow, doubles and a variety of special effects were required to complete the film after the death of Brandon Lee.

He worked with some of the brightest in the business, including John Frankenheimer (52 Pick-Up, The Fourth War), William Friedkin (The French Connection, Sorcerer), Jonathan Demme (The Last Embrace), John Schlesinger (Marathon Man), Alan Pakula (Klute), Robert Wise (Star!), Francis Ford Coppola (The Rainmaker) and Steven Spielberg (Jaws). His most highly regarded work came with 1979’s All That Jazz, where he channeled choreographer and director Bob Fosse in a show-stopping performance that garnered him one of his two Oscar nominations. His most recent work included lending his voice to the animated Chicago 10, though his final tribute will no doubt be his involvement in The Shark Is Still Working – an unreleased Jaws documentary that he provided narration and interviews for. All Movie pays our respect to Scheider’s family and hope that one of his many wonderful roles will be revisited very soon by his film fans out there.

Most recently Alvin was featured in the Blade Runner Collector’s and Ultimate DVD editions, both of which dedicated a feature to the iconic ad art of the groundbreaking film. Click through the jump to see what made Alvin one of the most highly regarded draftsmen in the business.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
For more examples of Alvin’s art, feel free to visit this fan site, filled with alternate designs as well as artwork never carried over for home entertainment releases.
 
 
 

In a move that few actors have the intestinal fortitude to attempt, Ledger got off the superstar career path and took a series of roles that challenged both himself and his audience. Starting with his brief but penetrating portrayal of a depressed police officer in Monster’s Ball, the young Australian actor made a clean break from the pages of Tiger Beat to the pages of Film Comment. His powerfully quiet work in Monster’s Ball was an affecting portrait of depression, one that gained power as the film devolved into screaming histrionics. He spent a few years on a pair of sweeping epics, Ned Kelly and The Four Feathers, but he gained a whole new measure of respect with his Oscar-nominated turn as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain. He was emotionally closed off, yet still communicated an internal pain felt by decades of not allowing himself to love and be loved in the way he desired. Ennis will be the role most associated with Ledger, and it is the kind of work that ambitious young actors should revisit again and again to understand what can be achieved if you have talent, ambition, script sense, and trust in your collaborators. He proved it is possible to get off the fame treadmill and become a respected actor.

This ability to change gears so substantially, to reinvent his creative self with such startling success, made Ledger an obvious choice to be one of the many actors who portrayed Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There. He goes deep down the post-modern rabbit hole, playing an actor who plays Dylan in a movie within the movie, but his embodiment of a celebrity in a dying marriage lacks any affect or grandiosity. He cuts through the layers of post-modernism, and strikes right at the heart.

Ledger had great comic timing. He was more than credible as a romantic lead. But what people will miss most about him is that he was a method actor without the mannerisms. He had that rare ability to communicate a character’s inner life without any fuss or ostentation. His celebrity, something he never could fully evade because of his penchant for dating famous actresses, never got in the way of his characters. Turns out the leading man had character actor chops. It seems so very unfair to be writing about him in the past tense.

The actor Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon in an apartment building at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, according to the New York City police. Mr. Ledger was 28.

At 3:31 p.m., a masseuse arrived at Apartment 5A in the building for an appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said. The masseuse was let in to the home by a housekeeper, who then knocked on the door of Mr. Ledger’s bedroom. When no one answered, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger unconscious. They shook him, but he did not respond. They immediately called the authorities. The police said they did not suspect foul play and said they found pills near body.