Brooke Nevin b. 1982 (Animorphs, Charmed, Smallville, Supernatural, The 4400)
Heather Donahue b. 1974 (The Blair Witch Project)
Dina Meyer b. 1968 (Johnny Mnemonic, DragonHeart, Starship Troopers, Star Trek: Nemesis, Saw III & IV, Piranha 3D)
David S. Goyer b. 1965 (writer, Man of Steel, The Dark Knight Rises, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Blade, Blade II, The Puppet Masters, Dark City, Demonic Toys)
Ralph Fiennes b. 1962 (Harry Potter, Clash of the Titans, Strange Days)
Hugh Quarshie b. 1954 (Highlander, The Tomorrow People, Star Wars: Episode I, Doctor Who)
Graham Beckel b. 1949 (Battlestar Galactica, Heroes)
Peggie Castle b. 1927 died 11 August 1973 (Beginning of the End)
Another shortish list today, all movies and TV, all but Peggie Castle still alive. For my money, there are two iconic roles on the list. We could be looking up Heather Donohue's nostrils from her last shot in The Blair Witch Project or we could be looking at a guy with nearly no nostrils, Lord Voldemort. Whatever you might think of Harry Potter as a series, I would argue that He Who Must Not Be Named is the best Big Bad in genre films since Darth Vader.
Many happy returns of the day to all the living on the list and a sad reminder of Peggie Castle, a lovely actress who died much too young.
Movies released
Night at the Museum released, 2006
Predictor: Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950
Prediction: It's April 2005, and William Stendhal's vision of a house built to the specifics in Edgar Allan Poe's story The Fall of the House of Usher is finished. All copies of the book itself had been destroyed in The Great Fire of 1975.
Reality: There is no good reason this story had to be set on Mars, but it is, so it's included in The Martian Chronicles, a book that is much more a collection of short stories than it is an actual novel. Each of the chapters has a specific month and year as though the story were actually going someplace, but only a few chapters at the beginning and a few at the end make any reference to stories told previously. This story was published before Fahrenheit 451, so we see the early seeds of Bradbury's idea that another great book burning was coming.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
Another weekly visit to the wonders to be found in The OMNI Future Almanac.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
Poor Dina Meyer, a good looking lady with a resume of some of the biggest stinkers in your genre films of the last 20 years. Of course The Beginning of the End was a stinker in its day, even as a kid I thought it was bad.
ReplyDeletegood work ethic though. Maybe she's going for "oh, THAT girl" status.
DeleteI saw Inside Llewyn Davis this weekend, a reminder that show business is one hell of a rough way to make a living.
DeleteFor so many women, beauty is just a way to get a foot in the door. After that, it's a crap shoot. Work hard, catch the lucky breaks and you can have a career like Lucy Lawless. Never quite get the one big role and you can be like poor Lana Clarkson, working as a hostess at the Hard Rock Cafe and shot dead by a disturbed individual she had just met that night named Phil Spector.
I'm a cheerful bastid, ain't ?
One of my good friends is an audio engineer/ sound mixer/ roadie, and he's worked with any Milwaukee band who was anything; Femmes, BoDeans, Die Kreuzen. Excellent ear for mixing, often we see national acts that have crappier board mixers. He was courted by the Melvins at one point, trying to steal him from DK.
DeleteHe never made much of a living at it, though, and has slept on my couch more than once.
Now he's doing quite well, doing much easier work for QVC presentations. He laughs about how much he gets paid for such easy work.