Wish 143

A teenage boy is suffering with terminal cancer – not to mention adolescent growing pains – when he is approached by a wish-giving charity (if you don’t know you’re dying already you do when that happens to you…).  As a horny teenager who hasn’t yet lost you know what, then you can guess what his wish is. Wish 143 is an Oscar nominated short film directed and co-produced by Ian Barnes. If you’re a Downton Abbey fan, look out for a familiar face.

Batkid

It’s hard enough to imagine fighting cancer when you are an adult, let alone a two year old but that is just what Miles had to do. Now 5, Miles had beaten Leukemia and no gets the opportunity to show the San Francisco community just how strong a fighter he is. The Make-A-Wish foundation granted his wish to become Batman for the day (well, Batkid at least which I think is even cooler). This video courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Race for Life Ladies Destroy a Car – A Violent but Veracious Visual Metaphor

I think you will love this. If you live outside of dear old Blighty then you may not know that Cancer Research UK's Race for Life is the largest women-only fundraising event in the United Kingdom.  Since Race for Life began in 1994, 6 million participants across the UK have raised over £493 million for the charity.  That is quite something but the participants plan to raise much, much more until cancer is consigned to history.

Until then a visual metaphor will have to make do – and so a car is cancer’s stand in here. To show they mean business a gang of women take various implements to the car and proceed to have great fun smashing the thing to bits - by the end the car is completely destroyed (of that there is no doubt!).

Anything which starts with this car represents cancer: over the next two minutes we will take it down is good for my money. This is Race for Life's answer to the Harlem Shake: the video is quite simply full of enormous joie de vivre and the ladies certainly go at the car with considerable gusto.  This year’s participants in Race for Life are being encouraged to use this video as a warm up for the race by following a dance routine to this promo.  Connection by the incomparable and much missed Elastica is the soundtrack and the video is directed by David Wilson through the Mother London agency.

Cancer - We're coming to get you!

Elisabeth Sladen Dies Aged 63

Some very sad news. One of the best loved actors on children’s TV, Elisabeth Sladen, has died at the age of 63 after a cancer related illness. She is fondly remembered by millions for her role as Sarah Jane Smith in the long running science fiction show, Doctor Who and for the same role in four series of the highly successful spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Russell T Davies, who created The Sarah Jane Adventures, has said: "I absolutely loved Lis. She was funny and cheeky and clever and just simply wonderful. The universe was lucky to have Sarah Jane Smith, the world was lucky to have Lis."

I couldn’t agree more.  The role of an assistant in Doctor Who, back in 1973 when Sladen first became Sarah Jane had traditionally involved little more than looking pretty, asking questions so the Doctor could explain the science in a way the audience could understand and screaming.

Although Sladen did all of the above with aplomb she brought something new to the role of the Doctor’s assistant.  She had an independent and inquiring mind, a tendency to not take the Doctor seriously and to gently rib him and a sense of adventure.  In other words something for an actor to get their teeth in, which is exactly what Sladen did. 

Some of my fondest TV memories from the seventies are of watching Sladen as Smith in a number of escapades.  She was put in to suspended animation, swapped for a robot version, threatened by Daleks, almost trampled by a giant robot and so much more as well. She was by far my favorite assistant in the old show and it was great to see her making a comeback in its newest incarnation.

She later gained success recreating the role in the Sarah Jane Adventures which has been a truly excellent slice of science fiction fun for the young teenage market.  It was also watched and thoroughly enjoyed by plenty of adults in to the bargain- including this one.

So, hats off to Lis Sladen.  A little video tribute at the top of this post, to Abba's Day Before You Came - a melancholy track which suits my mood at the moment very well.

Thank you, Lis Sladen, from both the child and the man in me.


Image Credit WIkimedia

Pete Postlethwaite Has Died at 64 after Battle with Cancer

Pete Postlethwaite, the British actor, died yesterday aged 64. He was known for a huge variety of roles on stage, television and cinema, but success (in terms of global fame) came late in life for him. For years he made appearances in small parts on British television, such as the police action drama The Professionals but his natural and original acting home was the theatre where he was a stalwart for the Liverpool Everyman Theatre as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company.

An unashamed smoker, he died peacefully in his sleep in a hospital in the English county of Shropshire after a lengthy battle with cancer. This is near Bishop's Castle where he and his wife Jackie (a former producer at the BBC) have had their home for many years.  They have two children.

On his last television interview Postlethwaite praised the staff at the hospital for their wonderful support through his illness.

Postlethwaite was born in Warrington, Cheshire and originally trained as a teacher.  He taught drama at a college in Manchester before training as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic School.  Like many young character actors in the 1970s he started his career at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre.  Among his contemporaries there were Anthony Sher, Jonathan Pryce, Bill Nighy and Julie Walters (with whom Postlethwaite had a relationship in the late 1970s).  He went on to appear in many productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

His first screen success was in the film Distant Voices, Still Lives which was released in 1988. Here he played the part of the father of a family shown during the Second World War in the 1940s and its aftermath in the 1950s.  He played a terrible monster, an alcoholic who abused his daughters in this film - one of the standout performance in the cinema of the 1980s.

He then became known to a global audience for his role in In the Name of the Father, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

Again in this film he played the role of the father, Giuseppe Conlon, Giuseppe comes to London to help his son only for the police to arrest him, and others, under suspicion of supplying the IRA with nitroglycerine.

For many young people he will always be remembered in the role of Friar Lawrence, the well intentioned monk in Romeo and Juliet whose advice leads to the death of the star-crossed lovers.  The 1996 movie, directed by Baz Lurhman and starring Leonardo DiCaprio has been used by teachers of English literature ever since to draw people in to the world of Shakespeare.  Postlethwaite's portrayal of the Friar as confessor, confidante and tragic aide in the events, was one of the stand out performances in the movie.

The iron fist hidden amongst a bunch of magnolias (as it were) was most apparent in his role of the lawyer named Kobayashi in 1995's American neo-noir The Usual Suspects.  Here he was a truly frightening figure.

He became known to much younger audiences for his role as Roland Tembo, a big-game hunter from England. Although sometimes violent, he adheres to his own strict moral code. Steven Spielberg praised the English actor, saying he was the best actor in the world.  When Postlethwaite heard this comment he responded: I'm sure what Spielberg actually said was, 'The thing about Pete is that he thinks he's the best actor in the world.

Offscreen he was somehwhat of a shy and unassuming man who prided himself in the fact that he had never been out of work as an actor in a career which spanned over forty years.  Latterly he was looked up to by many actors, young and old alike, for his superb skill as an actor who could walk on stage and with little more than a shrug, entirely inhabit his role.

His two most recent films, both released in 2010, were Inception and The Town, an action film directed by and starring Ben Affleck.

Here is a short montage of some of the roles Pete Postlethwaite has played over the years.



Pete Postlethwaite - RIP.

Image Credit Wikimedia

Dennis Hopper, Iconic American Film Actor Dies After Long Battle with Cancer

Dennis Hopper, one of the more remarkable movies stars of the past few decades, died today of pancreatic cancer.  Never one to be pigeon holded, Hopper appeared in many roles which other actors probably would not have touched.  He was also well known for a life style which would have felled many other men!

His last major film role was with Sir Ben Kingsley in Elegy.  Appropriately enough, perhaps.

Here is our own short tribute to Dennis Hopper. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times narrates a look at the career of Dennis Hopper.