Renowned actress Natasha Richardson passed away this afternoon in Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Last Monday, she suffered a head injury in a skiing accident that took place at Quebec’s Mont Tremblant ski resort. She is survived by her husband Liam Neeson and their two children Michael and Daniel. After learning about the accident, Neeson left the set in Toronto filming Atom Egoyan’s Chloe (also starring Julianne Moore) to be with his wife. She was hospitalized Tuesday in Montreal’s Sacré-Coeur hospital and was flown privately to New York. Natasha was also joined in the hospital by her children, her sister Joely and their mother, Vanessa Redgrave. Her father, Tony Richardson died in 1991.

Natasha Richardson was a generous and talented woman from England. Trained at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, Richardson performed in a number of films, but was more committed to the stage. After starring in Gothic (1986) as Mary Shelly, director Paul Schrader cast her first major role in Patty Hearst (1988) as the title character who in 1974 was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and joined her captors’ cause. Richardson earned The London Evening Standard Award for Best Actress of 1990 for her performances in Volker Schlöndorff’s A Handmaid’s Tale and Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers.

In 1994, she met and later married Liam Neeson on the set of Nell, starring Jodie Foster and directed by Michael Apted (The Up Documentaries). She was also awarded Best Actress at the 1994 Karlovy Vary Festival for her work in John Irvin’s Widow’s Peak.

I initially saw Richardson in The Parent Trap (1998, a remake of the 1961 original) playing Elizabeth James, the lovely mother to the twin sisters. The movie is a blur, but I did remember that she made quite an impression. In that same year, she won Broadway’s 1998 Tony Award as Best Actress (Musical) for a revival of Cabaret.

The most recent films starring Richardson were Ethan Hawke’s Chelsea Walls (2001), David Mackenzie’s Asylum (2005), James Ivory’s The White Countess (2005) and Lajos Koltai’s Evening (2007). Her last film was Nick Moore’s Wild Child (2008). This December she was set to play Miss Julie on Broadway for The Roundabout Theatre. The production directed by David Leveaux is also starring Phillip Seymore Hoffman. I’m sorry for the loss Natasha Richardson has left in her family and her audience.

Jean from August Strindberg’s Miss Julie:

“Do you know how people in high life look from the under world? No … of course you don’t. They look like hawks and eagles whose backs one seldom sees, for they soar up above.”

Comedian. Teacher. Bullshit-detector.

The Irish-American who tried the FCC by delivering the Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Radio or Television on broadcast radio is gone. At 71 years of age, George Carlin, one of the very best and radical stand-ups, died of a heart failure on Sunday the 22nd in Santa Monica, California.

“Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Radio or Television”

Carlin was extremely influential. I am reminded of Lewis Black, one of his descendants who decreed that “there is no such thing as bad language” because we need those words to convey all the shit we go through. Through his comedy, Carlin channeled important issues like women’s rights, race, religion, and sports.

Another of Carlin’s obsessions is how the English Language is used and abused. Here’s a taste:

“The phrase sour grapes does not refer to jealousy or envy. Nor is it related to being a sore loser. It deals with the rationalization of failure to attain a desired end. In the original fable by Aesop, The Fox and the Grapes, when the fox realizes he cannot leap high enough to reach the grapes, he rationalizes that even if he had gotten them, they would probably have been sour anyway. Rationalization, that’s all sour grapes means. It doesn’t mean deal with jealousy or sore losing. Yeah, I know you say, ‘Well many people are using it that way, so the meaning is changing.’ And I say, ‘Well many people are really fuckin’ stupid too, shall we just adopt all their standards?’”

Carlin did a handful of supporting roles in such films as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1990), and John Lasseter and Joe Ranft’s Cars (2006). He was a favorite of Kevin Smith in Dogma (1999), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), and Jersey Girl (2004). For me, I will beam with joy whenever I recall Carlin as Cardinal Ignatius Glick when introducing Catholicism Wow’s Buddy Christ – “He was a booster!”

Here’s a short Bob Kurtz animation Drawing on the Mind narrated by the man of the dour.

Carlin as an artist not only tackled the controversial, but more importantly he did it with grace and gauze-required wit. He was a man after my own heart: “Most people are not particularly good at anything.” Like Oedipus, George Carlin was a really great motherfucker and he will be missed.

Stan Winston, a giant in old school special effects, has passed away. He is survived by Karen, his wife of 37 years, and his two children. Without his perseverance, imagination and the comradeship he had with those at Stan Winston Studios we wouldn’t have our Terminators, our “Stay Away From Her, You Bitch” Aliens, our Pumpkinheads, our Scissorhands, our Small Soldiers, and our Jurassic Park dinosaurs as we see them today. He won four well-deserved Academy Awards.

Winston on The Terminator

Winston on Aliens

Winston on Terminator 2: Judgment Day

At a time when practically all visual wizardry can be accomplished with a computer, Winston’s work makes a compelling argument for the you-see-what-you-see handcrafted effects that are taken for granted. For granted because those seemingly breathing creatures on the screen made us focus on the real gem: the story.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog actually hauled a 360-ton boat up a muddy 40-degree slope in the Amazon jungle when filming Fitzcarraldo (1982) because visual effects wouldn’t be able to express such a feat as completely. I think Stan Winston would’ve appreciated that.

Before his death he supervising the special effects for Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins to be released next year. The last completed film Winston conjured with his magic touch was the brilliant Iron Man (2008). With his passing, the world just got less awesome.

This evening it was announced that Hollywood maverick Sydney Pollack died from cancer at his home in Pacific Palisades. At 73, he is survived by his wife of 50 years, Claire Griswold, and daughters, Rachel and Rebecca. Steven, Pollock’s son, died 1993 in an airplane crash. Pollock served on the boards of KCET, public broadcasting of Los Angeles, and the Motion Picture Television Fund. He was also a founding member of the Sundance Institute and the Chairman Emeritus of the American Cinematheque.

Working around the camera as a film director, producer, and actor over the past 30 years, he has earned 46 Academy Award nominations. He was the Chief Executive Officer of Mirage Enterprises which also produced his films. His directorial resume includes Tootsie (1982), a comedy where Dustin Hoffman disguises as a woman to get acting gigs, Out of Africa (1985 – winning the Best Director and Best Picture Academy Awards) a romantic drama with Meryl Streep opposite Robert Redford, Sabrina (1995), a remake of the 1954 rom-com staring Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford, and Greg Kinnear, and the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005) about the fanciful architect’s working method.

As an actor, he has delivered thoughtful performances usually playing very knowing and cynical men who wield great power. He shined in films like his own Tootsie, Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives (1992), Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Roger Michell’s Changing Lanes (2002) and Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton. Many of them he had produced. He also played Warren Feldman in the HBO series The Sopranos.

Sydney Pollock in “Tootsie”

Pollock died in the middle of his production The Reader, directed by Stephen Daldry, which is based on the excellent Bernhard Schlink novel (read by me) about a young man (David Kross, Adam and Eva, 2003) who discovers his past lover (Kate Winslet, Little Children, 2006), a thirtyish woman when he was 15 years old, is linked with Nazi crimes during the Holocaust.

Pollock once reflected about his work by saying, “I don’t value a film I’ve enjoyed making. If it’s good, it’s damned hard work.”

Amen.