Acclaimed Director David Lynch Dies at Age 78...

DAVID LYNCH
(January 20, 1946 - January 15, 2025)

David Keith Lynch was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. He received acclaim for his films, which are often distinguished by their surrealist, dreamlike qualities. 

In a career spanning more than fifty years, he was awarded numerous accolades, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and an Honorary Academy Award in 2019. Often described as a "visionary", Lynch was considered one of the most important filmmakers of his era.

 

David Lynch directed several of the most acclaimed films ever made: Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Dune, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, and Mulholland Drive.

So you want to be an Anime Director?

Day in the Life of a Japanese Anime Director

A day in the life of a Japanese Anime Director in Tokyo Japan working in an Anime Production Studio. This is the typical work day in Japan of an anime director from morning his morning routine, daily work activities, all the way to nighttime. The Japanese work culture in an animation production studio is unique on it's own as it requires 200 people to make one episode alone. This average work day in Japan at an anime studio highlights the passion each worker has for their job and how they all work together to create a Japanese anime series. Shu, the anime director, is currently directing an anime called, MAYONAKA PUNCH, meaning Midnight Punch. Working directly for the P.A. works animation studio and the Kadokawa publishing company. On his 2nd series he worked at this studio for about 10 years now. So Shu works as a freelancer, which is rather typical in Japan’s anime industry as they make up almost 70% of its workers. For Shu, this means his work location changes depending on his client projects. Currently, his primary studio though is in Kodaira which allows him to bike to work, but this morning he needs to head directly to the voice recording studio first. Today, the team is recording one episode which is 24 minutes long with the Seiyu voice actors. It takes about 4-5 hours on average but if there’s an issue, it’ll take as long as it needs until they can get it right. That is how this anime director's day starts, but then will move onto more tasks throught the day.

Anime English Title: MAYONAKA PUNCH Synopsis: Meet Masaki, the now former member of a popular NewTuber group. After getting fired unexpectedly via a livestream, she joins forces with a partner with superhuman abilities. Together, they aim to create sensational content and hit 1 million subscribers.

Actor and Director, Carl Weathers, has died at 76...

CARL WEATHERS
(January 14, 1948 – February 1, 2024)

Carl Weathers was an American actor, director, and football linebacker. His roles included boxer Apollo Creed in the first four Rocky films (1976–1985), and he had a recurring role as Greef Karga in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian (2019–2023), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

 

Weathers began working as an extra while still playing football. He had his first significant roles in two blaxploitation films directed by his longtime friend Arthur Marks: Bucktown (1975) and Friday Foster (1975). Weathers also appeared in an early 1975 episode of the sitcom Good Times titled "The Nude", portraying an angry husband who suspected his wife of cheating on him with J.J. He also guest-starred in a 1975 episode of Kung Fu titled "The Brothers Caine", and in an episode of Cannon titled "The Hero". In 1976, he appeared as a loan shark in an episode of the crime-drama Starsky & Hutch, and in the Barnaby Jones episode "The Bounty Hunter" as escaped convict Jack Hopper.

While auditioning for the role of Apollo Creed alongside Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, Weathers criticized Stallone's acting, which led to him getting the role. He reprised the role of Apollo Creed in the next three Rocky films: Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982), and Rocky IV (1985).

Weathers briefly appears as an Army MP in one of the three released versions of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (originally released in 1977). In 1978, Weathers portrayed Vince Sullivan in a TV movie, Not This Time. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Weathers starred in a number of action films for the small and big screen, including Force 10 from Navarone (1978), Predator (1987), Action Jackson (1988), and Hurricane Smith (1992). As a member of the cast of Predator, Weathers worked with future California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and future Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura. Many years later he appeared in a spoof segment on Saturday Night Live, announcing that he was running for political office and urging viewers to vote for him on the basis that "he was the black guy in Predator".

He also appeared in Michael Jackson's "Liberian Girl" music video and co-starred in the 1996 Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore, as Chubbs, a golf legend teaching Happy how to play golf. He reprised the role nearly four years later in the Sandler comedy Little Nicky. Filming a fall stunt in Happy Gilmore, Weathers fractured two vertebrae and his osteophytes grew out and connected and self-fused badly. He says he was in excruciating pain for three to four years.

Another notable television role was Sgt. Adam Beaudreaux on the cop show Street Justice. Afterwards, during the final two seasons of In the Heat of the Night (1992–1994), his character, Hampton Forbes, replaced Bill Gillespie as the chief of police. He also played MACV-SOG Colonel Brewster in the CBS series Tour of Duty.

In 2004, Weathers received a career revival as a comedic actor beginning with appearances in three episodes of the comedy series Arrested Development as a cheapskate caricature of himself, who serves as Tobias Fünke's acting coach. He was then cast in the comedies The Sasquatch Gang and The Comebacks. Weathers had a guest role in two episodes of The Shield as the former training officer of main character Vic Mackey.

Weathers provided the voice for Colonel Samuel Garrett in the Pandemic Studios video game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. In 2005, he was a narrator on Conquest! The Price of Victory — Witness the Journey of the Trojans!, an 18-part television show about USC athletics. Weathers is a principal of Red Tight Media, a film and video production company that specializes in tactical training films made for the United States armed forces. He also appeared in one episode of ER as the father of an injured boxer during their 2008 finale season.

For the sixth film in the Rocky series, Rocky Balboa (2006), Stallone asked Weathers, Mr. T, and Dolph Lundgren for permission to use footage from their appearances in the earlier Rocky films. Mr. T and Lundgren agreed, but Weathers wanted an actual part in the movie, even though his character had died in Rocky IV. Stallone refused, and Weathers decided not to allow Stallone to use his image for flashbacks from the previous films. They instead used footage of a fighter who looks similar to Weathers. Weathers and Stallone patched up their differences and Weathers agreed to allow footage of him from previous films to be used throughout Creed (2015).

Weathers portrayed the father of Michael Strahan and Daryl "Chill" Mitchell's characters on the short-lived 2009 Fox sitcom Brothers. Weathers acted as Brian "Gebo" Fitzgerald in advertising for Old Spice's sponsorship of NASCAR driver Tony Stewart. He also appeared in an ongoing series of web-only advertisements for Credit Union of Washington, dispensing flowers and the advice that "change is beautiful" to puzzled-looking bystanders. He also starred in a series of commercials for Bud Light, in which he introduced plays from the "Bud Light Playbook." At the conclusion of each commercial, Weathers could be seen bursting through the Bud Light Playbook and shouting "Here we go!"

In 2019, Weathers appeared as Greef Karga in several episodes of the first season of the Star Wars series, The Mandalorian. He returned for the second season and also directed the episode "Chapter 12: The Siege". He returned for season 3 and directed the episode "Chapter 20: The Foundling". His performance earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor.

Jules Bass Dies at Age 87

JULES BASS
(September 16, 1935 – October 25, 2022)

Producer, Director, and Composer of

Iconic Holiday TV Specials, Dies at 87

Jules Bass, who helped make Rudolph the most famous reindeer of all and bring Frosty to life during a prolific animation career that shaped the holiday TV viewing traditions of generations of youngsters, died Oct. 25 at a senior living facility in Rye, N.Y. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight A family member, Jennifer Ruff, confirmed the death but did not cite a cause. Mr. Bass was half of the production duo Rankin/Bass, an animation juggernaut he formed with a partner, Arthur Rankin Jr., in 1960. Over the next several decades, collaborating with animators and puppet-makers in Japan, Rankin/Bass produced a raft of movies that became staples of American childhood. Few people have come of age since the 1960s without watching and re-watching the stop-motion puppetry of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which first aired on NBC in 1964, or the traditionally animated “Frosty the Snowman,” which debuted in 1969. The story of Rudolph’s luminescent nose, his rejection by the more ordinary members of his herd and his heroic service to Santa one foggy Christmas Eve was based on a popular song written by Johnny Marks and recorded by Gene Autry in 1949. (Marks, Rankin’s neighbor, had borrowed the idea for the song from a children’s book by Robert L. The Rankin/Bass television version featured Burl Ives singing the title song and other Marks numbers that entered the modern Christmas canon, among them “Silver and Gold” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” Writer Romeo Muller expanded upon the story of Rudolph to introduce Hermey, the elf who yearns to be a dentist, and the Island of Misfit Toys. The result, rendered in the halting stop-motion animation style that Rankin/Bass called Animagic, was an instant phenomenon — a classic in the category of the later TV movies “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965) and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (1966). Such was the nostalgia their production evoked that when original Rudolph and Santa puppets were placed for auction in 2020, the wood, felt and wire relics were expected to fetch between $150,000 and $250,000, according to the New York Times. Rankin/Bass found a niche adapting Christmas songs to the screen and applied the formula again with success in “Frosty the Snowman.” In their TV version, Jackie Vernon voices Frosty with Jimmy Durante singing an indelible version of the title song by Walter “Jack” Rollins and Steve Nelson. Working with composer Maury Laws, Mr. Bass helped write the music for Rankin/Bass productions including 1970′s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” with narration by Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney as the voice of Kris Kringle, and 1974′s “The Year Without a Santa Claus,” in which Rooney reprised his role as Santa. 

“The Year Without a Santa Claus” gave viewers the Heat Miser and the Snow Miser, with their memorable musical motif. “Maury usually wrote the music and Jules would write the lyrics, which would typically move the plot along, but this wasn’t always the case,” Rick Goldschmidt, a scholar of the productions of Rankin/Bass, wrote on his blog. He cited the example of the song “One Star in the Night,” from the 1968 TV movie “The Little Drummer Boy,” for which Mr. Bass wrote the music. According to Goldschmidt, Rankin was the chief executive and primary director of Rankin/Bass productions, often working with animators in Japan while Mr. Bass oversaw voice actors and musicians in New York. The Rankin/Bass output was not limited to Christmas specials. The team also produced the feature-length stop-motion film “Mad Monster Party” (1967), the TV series “The Smokey Bear Show” (1969) and the Easter special “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” (1971), featuring the voices of Danny Kaye and Vincent Price. They received a Peabody Award for their animated TV movie “The Hobbit” (1977), based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel, and critical acclaim for the full-length animated movie “The Last Unicorn” (1982), with voice work by Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury and Alan Arkin. Writing in the Times, movie critic Janet Maslin described “The Last Unicorn” as “an unusual children’s film in many respects, the chief one being that it is unusually good.” “Children, except perhaps for very small ones, ought to be intrigued by it; adults won’t be bored,” she observed. “And no one of any age will be immune to the sentiment of the film’s final moments, which really are unexpectedly touching and memorable.” Later Rankin/Bass collaborations included the 1980s TV series “ThunderCats” and the 1987 TV movie “The Wind in the Willows.”

▶ Watch The Animagic World of Rankin/Bass

Superman Director Richard Donner Passes At 91

RICHARD DONNER
(April 24, 1930 – July 5, 2021)
The Director of 'Superman' Dies at Age 91

Richard Donner was an American director and producer of film and television, and occasional comic-book writer. After directing the horror film The Omen (1976), he directed the superhero film Superman (1978), starring Christopher Reeve.

Donner later went on to direct movies such as The Goonies (1985) and Scrooged (1988), while reinvigorating the buddy film genre with the Lethal Weapon film series. He and his wife, producer Lauren, owned the production company The Donners' Company (formerly Donner/Shuler Donner Productions), best known for producing the Free Willy and X-Men franchises. In 2000, he received the President's Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. Film historian Michael Barson writes that Donner was "one of Hollywood's most reliable makers of action blockbusters". 

▶ Watch the Tribute Video

Ghibli Co-Founder Isao Takahata Dies at age 82

Isao Takahata

(October 29, 1935 - April 5, 2018)

Director of Grave of the Fireflies and Princess Kaguya

Co-Founder of Studio Ghibli

[Source: AnimeNewsNetwork) Anime director and Studio-Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata passed away in a Tokyo hospital on Thursday. He was 82. 

 

The Japanese websites Sanspo and NTV News 24 reported the news, and both cited unnamed related parties who said that Takahata had been in declining health since last summer. 

Takahata joined Toei Douga (now Toei Animation) in 1959 after graduating from the University of Tokyo. He had a long career directing such classics as Little Norse Prince Valiant (Taiyō no Ōji - Hols no Daibōken), Alps no Shōjo Heidi, Anne of Green Gables, and Panda! Go, Panda! before he co-founded Studio Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki. He went on to create the feature films Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, and My Neighbors the Yamadas. 

Takahata's final film as director was The Tale of Princess Kaguya, which debuted in 2013. Takahata told entertainment news website Variety in 2016, "I have several projects that I still have in mind that I am currently working on to get closer to realizing. Whether those will be finalized as films is something that no one, myself included, can know."