Sidney Lumet: Film Director, Dead at 86...

Sidney Lumet
(June 25, 1924 – April 9, 2011)





Sidney Lumet was an American film director, with over 50 films to his name, including 12 Angry Men (1957), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982), all of which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director. He was also nominated for best screenplay as co-writer of Prince Of The City (1981).

Lumet was one of the leading film directors of the second half of the 20th century. He was prolific, directing more than 40 movies, and versatile, dabbling in many different film genres. Lumet often shot his movies in his native New York.

In 2005, he received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement.

His films, nominated for more than 50 Oscars, typically were unsentimental and extremely well crafted, exploring intelligent and complicated themes.

His stepdaughter, Leslie Gimbel, said Lumet died of lymphoma at his home in Manhattan, the New York Times said.

RIP

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Blake Edwards: Film Director, Dead at 88...

Blake Edwards
(July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010)




Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.

Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures. He used his writing skills to begin producing and directing, with some of his best films including: Experiment in Terror, The Great Race, and the hugely successful Pink Panther film series with the British comedian Peter Sellers. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he was also renowned for his dramatic work, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses. His greatest successes, however, were his comedies, and most of his films were either musicals, melodramas, slapstick comedies, and thrillers.

In 2004, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen.

Edwards married his first wife actress Patricia Walker in 1953 and they divorced in 1967. Edwards' second marriage from 1969 until his death was to actress Julie Andrews.

Edwards died of complications of pneumonia at the Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. His wife and children were at his side.

RIP

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John Hughes, Film Director, Dead at 59...

John Hughes, Jr.
(February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009)




John Hughes was an American film director, producer and writer. He made some of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s, including National Lampoon's Vacation; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Weird Science; The Breakfast Club; Sixteen Candles; Pretty in Pink; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Uncle Buck; Home Alone and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Hughes, born in Lansing, Michigan, began his career as an ad copywriter in Chicago. During this time, he created what became the famous Edge "Credit Card Shaving Test" ad campaign.

His first attempt at comedy writing was selling jokes to well-established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers.

His first directorial effort, Sixteen Candles, won almost unanimous praise when it was released in 1984, due in no small part to its more realistic depiction of middle-class high school life. Hughes was responsible for a slew of films in the 1980s that defined what it meant to be an American teenager, from the music to the fashion to the social faux pas. Though he graduated to more adult fare with films like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and had his biggest hits with explicitly family-oriented material like “Home Alone".

In recent years, Hughes had stepped back from the movie business to spend more time with his family, as well as maintain a functioning farm in northern Illinois and support independent arts.

Hughes died suddenly of a heart attack, while walking in Manhattan, New York City, where he was visiting his family.

Hughes is survived by his wife of 39 years, Nancy; two sons and four grandchildren.

RIP

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