Kathy Shaidle is away this Boxing Day, facing, as many of you know, an absolutely wretched holiday season. We love to publish her film columns, because she is one of the best writers around on popular culture. If you're missing Kathy, you can drop her a note directly via the email address listed here. We would rather she were here this Saturday and we know you would too.
In lieu of Kathy's weekly movie date, Mark presents an audio collage of those in the motion picture business who left us in 2020 - a year in which not only famous film stars but movies and moviegoing died. In this hour-plus of remembrance, Steyn salutes not just screen legends but boom operators, vocal coaches and cinematic footwear designers, many of them taken by ChiCom-19. We touch on a lot of movie history along the way - Star Wars and Snow White, James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, Jaws and E T, Fellini and Antonioni, Spartacus and The Graduate - with moviemakers from America, Britain, Belgium, Italy, Japan...and one Hollywood retirement home.
Click above to listen. It's not intended to be comprehensive, so please don't complain if Mark left out a favorite director or actor: It's simply a sample of those whose passing struck him and about whom he has something to say.
If you're one of that small brave band who prefer Steyn in visual formats, well, he'll be on telly throughout the coming week.
If you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, then feel free to hit the comments. Do please be respectful to fellow commenters, and stay on topic.
What is The Mark Steyn Club? Well, it's an Audio Book of the Month Club. It's also a discussion group of lively people around the world on the great questions of our time. It's a video poetry and live music club. We don't (yet) have a clubhouse, but we do have a newsletter and other benefits. And, if you've got some kith or kin who might like the sound of all that and more, we have a special Gift Membership. More details here.
Comment on this item (members only)
Submission of reader comments is restricted to Mark Steyn Club members only. If you are not yet a member, please click here to join. If you are already a member, please log in here:
Member Login
10 Member Comments
When I heard the Knight Rider clip about going after the criminals who are above the law, it occurred to me that someone should reboot the series except this time have it set in Washington DC.
Regarding Diana Rig [R.I.P.]...
She starred in limited British Series The Mrs Bradley Mysteries [5 episodes only] in 1998 and did a bang-up job. [Footnote: Her sidekick was Neil Dudgeon - later the second Detective Barnaby.]
Well Done, Mark, and a Happy New Year to You and Yours.
Honor Blackman had such good posture.
Normally my listening to the show is conducted via headphone, but yesterday I forgot that SWMBO was close by.
She told me later that she had enjoyed a very good good professional relationship with the Japanese Sherlock Holmes actress, apparently a lovely lady whose suicide came as a great shock. Apparently the Japanese media did not reveal that she hanged herself.
What's this stuff and nonsense about not (yet) having a clubhouse? When I turn the crank on my old Amstrad of a morning, I am instantly transported to the deep recesses of a tufted leather wingback chair, a beaker of amber liquid tucked in my hand, within four book-lined walls (holding titles of Tales of Our Times past, passing, and to come) that rise to a ceiling lost in cigar smoke. Are others not? Is this a perk for First Weekend Founding Members alone? And what delights beguile those who signed up on Day One? The mind reels.
No clubhouse? Go on, pull the other one. It's got bells on.
Not bad for a stand-in, even if the reason for the stand-in is rotten. My deepest gratitude and affection for the both of youse, the Steed and Peel of the MSC.
I would love to see a scene recreated from the Avengers with Steyn and Shaidle in full Steed and Peale duds.
Those two wits could actually pull it off brilliantly!
All in all, "La Dolce Vita" is an odd film for which to be the shoe specialist. I recall the scene where Marcello Mastroianni and his amore del giorno (or della notte) impose themselves on the home of a beneficiary of Italy's post-War economic miracle and tiptoe along the duckboards to her bedroom. Doesn't Anita Ekberg also splash around in the Trevi Fountain? At the end, there is the enigmatic moment, with Mastroianni looking across a narrow creek at the seaside, maybe realising that he is stranded on the side where madness resides. He should just take off his expensive, Milanese shoes and wade over to the sane world.
I wish it were so easy for everyone.
I met Diana Rigg at Edinburgh Airport in 1983.
Absolutely, stunningly, captivatingly, beautifully, beguilingly mesmerizing.
In her full-length fur coat.
OHMSS was my first and is my favorite Bond flick.
If the tele wasn't such a woke graveyard of intersectionality hokum, I would be watching a Mark Steyn production in prime time. If Trump doesn't pull a Presidency out of his hat, and he isn't arrested by the wokestapo, he might create a Trump News Network (TNN) that could feature your magnificent productions. Thanks for a great trip down memory lane.