Global RIP thread

[unit731]

Gotta love those Commies wherever they still are.

[kamui]

Interesting too that the French tolerated a monarchy in Cambodia given their own treatment of the aristocracy.

 

The king seems to have been absolutely brillant playing to all sides and winning for decades. But then he made two major mistakes, first supporting the Khmer rouge and after their end by weakening the position of his son Prince Ranariddh as the co-leader of the country, which gave the other co-leader Hun Sen the opportunity to take over the government completely.

 

I guess he will go into history as a brillant king who brought independence and prosperity to the country, but finally failed his country completely by initially supporting one of the most terrible regimes in the history of mankind.

 

PS: I guess the palace in the center of PP survived because Sihanouk was put under house arrest there. It seems the the Khmer Rouge didn't dare to touch him.

[Wallenda]

An absolute chameleon, he could change sides and change his principles with ease. I am surprised that people forget his support of the Khmer Rouge.

 

My understanding was that he gave his passive blessing to the Ho Chi Minh trail and thereby invited the Vietnam war into Cambodia. Nixon and Kissinger (plus maybe Johnson, McNamara) take main blame for Cambodia's invovlement in the war (fair enough) while he got off almost totally blameless. My reading of his roles in Cambodian events makes me think he went out of his way to seek out trouble.

[Wallenda]

The guy with the biggest gun won the day, and he's still there - let's hope his exit sees a smooth transition of power.

 

Are you talking about Hun Sen here? It's likely to be awhile before he exits. Judging by the reports of the offspring of the current rulers, I expect the next generation will be even worse. They make the Chalerm kids look like boyscouts. OK maybe that exaggerates it a bit, but they're about the same, and I'd be surprised if Hun Sen didn't pull strings to get his own to stay in power. Just the kind of guy he is, obviously.

[Wallenda]

Gotta love those Commies wherever they still are.

 

If you mean the former Khmer Rouge, the current leadership is well represented by them, up to and including the prime minister Hun Sen. True though, you cant' see them, they stay in their villas, get driven around in limousines with dark glass now.

[gobbledonk]

Are you talking about Hun Sen here? It's likely to be awhile before he exits. Judging by the reports of the offspring of the current rulers, I expect the next generation will be even worse. They make the Chalerm kids look like boyscouts. OK maybe that exaggerates it a bit, but they're about the same, and I'd be surprised if Hun Sen didn't pull strings to get his own to stay in power. Just the kind of guy he is, obviously.

 

As appalling as that seems, at least it implies that any transition of power will be peaceful. The Cambodian people may be no better off with the new 'boss', but that has to be better than another civil war. I guess time will tell.

[The_Munchmaster]

Sylvia Kristel, star of Emmanuelle, dies

 

Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, who starred in the 1974 erotic French film Emmanuelle, has died aged 60.

 

The convent-educated actress was arguably the first star of adult cinema

 

"She died during the night during her sleep," her agent, Marieke Verharen, told the AFP news agency.

 

The actress, who had cancer, was admitted to hospital in July after suffering a stroke.

 

Emmanuelle, which told the story of a sexually promiscuous housewife, spawned numerous sequels and played in a cinema on the Champs-Elysees for 11 years.

 

Released in 1974, the soft-focus French film was one of the first erotic movies to be shown in mainstream cinemas.

 

Kristel herself attributed its success to the changing censorship laws of the era.

 

"In a lot of countries the light went on, and that contributed very much to the success," she said.

 

In the UK, however, the film was eventually given the restricted X-rating, having suffered heavy cuts. The unedited version did not appear in the country until 2007.

 

Kristel went on to star in several Emmanuelle sequels, as well as more mainstream films - many of which, like Lady Chatterley's Lover and Mata Hari, played on her reputation as an erotic film star.

 

The actress caused a sensation at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival

 

Born in Utrecht, Holland, in 1952, Kristel grew up with her younger sister Marianne in Room 21 of The Commerce Hotel, which her parents owned.

 

Convent-educated, she fled her strict Calvinist upbringing for Amsterdam as a teenager, where she worked as a secretary and a waitress before becoming a model.

 

Aged 21, she won two beauty competitions - Miss TV Holland and Miss TV Europe - and, shortly afterwards, was encouraged to pursue acting by her boyfriend, Dutch author Hugo Claus.

 

She had already appeared nude in the film Because of the Cats, when she stumbled into the audition for Emmanuelle, having been sent to a casting call for a soap powder commercial next door.

 

Speaking to The Evening Standard in 1994, she said she had no problem convincing director Just Jaeckin of her suitability for the part.

 

"He asked me to take my dress off," she said. "Luckily it was an easy dress to take off.

 

"It had spaghetti straps which I just slipped over my shoulders and it just fell off. I carried on talking and smoking in the nude. I was not inhibited at all. I'd done nude modelling and he thought I was very graceful."

 

Set in Thailand, the film was based on the erotic novel by Emmanuelle Arsan. It told the story of a bored wife, who had followed her diplomat husband to Asia, and filled her time with romantic trysts.

 

On release, Emmanuelle inevitably caused controversy. It was banned in Paris, where it was supposed to have its premiere, for six months. But it also made Kristel a star.

 

She spent seven years in Hollywood, appearing in such films as The Concorde: Airport '79, and Private Lessons.

 

But the actress, whose parents were both alcoholics, soon found herself addicted to drink and drugs.

 

The actress had no regrets about being associated with Emmanuelle. "It's hard to find a better character," she said in 2001 "I sometimes needed a shot before doing certain scenes," she said. "It definitely comforted me and gave me courage. But then it turned out that I almost couldn't start a day without a drink."

 

By this time she had left Claus, with whom she had a son, for British actor Ian McShane. Their relationship was volatile. In her autobiography, she described it as "awful - he was witty and charming but we were too much alike".

 

Further relationships followed. She wed American millionaire Alan Turner, who ended their marriage after five months, telling Kristel he had made a terrible mistake.

 

Her second husband, would-be director Philippe Blot, persuaded her to bankroll his films. They were disastrously received.

 

Kristel said she left the marriage with $400 to her name.

 

"If I'd known then what I know now, I probably wouldn't have gone ahead with any of the relationships I was involved in, with the exception of Hugo," she told the Daily Mail in 1993.

 

She stopped appearing nude on screen in the 1980s because her son, Arthur, was being "teased at school", but returned to the Emmanuelle series in 1994, in a direct-to-video sequel where she appeared, fully-clothed, reminiscing about the exploits of her younger alter-ego.

 

After leaving America, she retreated to the South of France to paint, specialising in female portraits and pictures of roses. She was diagnosed with both throat and lung cancer in the early 2000s and fought the disease over the last decade.

 

Her agent declined to say whether Kristel died at home or at hospital, but said her her funeral would be private.

[Flashermac]

Oh, my ... I liked her.

 

I remember the big flap in LOS when Emmanuelle came out. They we saw it and wondered what the fuss was all about. It was very soft core, today would seem tame in comparison to mainline movies. (In Hollywood these days, oral sex isn't considered sex. Blame it on Stiff Willy, maybe. Actresses are required to blow the leading man on screen, if the script calls for it!)

 

"Convent-educated, she fled her strict Calvinist upbringing ..." Calvinists have convents?

 

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiXeyHSbM_4

[Flashermac]

First black Olympic decathlon champion dead at 78

 

 

Milt Campbell, the first black athlete to win the Olympic decathlon, died Friday of prostate cancer at age 78 at his home northwest of Atlanta.

 

Linda Rusch, who had spent the past 13 years with Campbell, announced his passing on Saturday.

 

Campbell was a high school senior when he took a silver medal in the decathlon at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, losing out to fellow American Bob Mathias.

 

Campbell won Olympic decathlon gold in 1956 at the Melbourne Olympics and later played professional American football.

 

He remains the only athlete to have been enshrined in the US Track and Field Hall of Fame and US Swimming Hall of Fame.

 

My link

[Flashermac]

Clive Dunn, Dad's Army actor, dies aged 92

 

 

 

Actor Clive Dunn, best known for his role as Lance Corporal Jones in Dad's Army, has died aged 92.

 

He died in Portugal on Tuesday from complications following an operation.

 

Dunn - whose famous catchphrases included "Don't panic, don't panic" and "They don't like it up 'em" - became a recording star in 1971 when his record, Grandad, reached number one.

 

Frank Williams, who played the Vicar on Dad's Army, said he was always "great fun" to be around.

 

"Of course he was so much younger than the part he played," he told BBC Radio Four. "It's very difficult to think of him as an old man really.

 

Dunn's autobiography, Permission to Speak, was titled after one of Jonesy's catchphrases

 

"But he was a wonderful person to work with - great sense of humour, always fun, a great joy really."

 

Born in London in January 1920, Dunn studied at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.

 

He made his first forays into acting in the 1930s, appearing alongside Will Hay in Boys Will Be Boys in 1935 and Good Morning Boys in 1937.

 

His acting career was interrupted by World War II, during which he spent four years as a German prisoner.

 

The actor would later say that Dad's Army, which ran from 1968 to 1977, was his revenge on his former captors.

 

The much-loved show featured the exploits of a Home Guard platoon formed to protect the seaside village of Walmington-on-Sea from possible German attack during World War II.

 

Co-star Ian Lavender, who played Private Pike, said: "You never left Clive's presence from working without a smile on your face, and so inevitably working always was fun - not necessarily hysterical, but just fun.

 

"A word Clive used a lot was nice, 'I've had a very nice time thank you', 'did you have a nice time?'. And he wanted everybody else to have a nice time as well."

 

As well as Dad's Army, Dunn also appeared in such TV shows as Bootsie and Snudge, My Old Man and Grandad.

 

His last screen credit came playing the Shakespearean clown Verges in a 1984 TV version of Much Ado About Nothing.

 

He spent his last three decades in Portugal, where he occupied himself as an artist painting portraits, landscapes and seascapes until his sight failed.

 

Dunn, who was awarded an OBE in 1975, spent much of his acting life playing characters older than himself.

 

Even at 19 he played a doddery old man in a production of JM Barrie's play Mary Rose.

 

Comedian Roy Hudd starred with him in pantomime Cinderella in Bournemouth, in which Dunn played the Baron.

 

"We had a marvellous time, he was in a world of his own Clive, he was so eccentric," remembered Hudd.

 

"He never really, really knew his lines terribly well, but what he said not even knowing his lines was funny. Funnier probably than the lines we ever gave him to say."

 

Dunn was also a regular on Michael Bentine's madcap sketch show It's a Square World.

 

"It was one of the things Clive was so brilliant at," added Hudd.

 

"He played all sorts of characters and strange things. I remember him playing a bird in a tree and he was brilliant because he spoke like a bird, he moved like a bird. He was a terrifically offbeat actor, when you got Clive you got value for money."

 

Dunn's agent, Peter Charlesworth, said he would be "sorely missed" and that his death was "a real loss to the acting profession".

 

Dunn's final interview appeared in the most recent issue of The Oldie magazine, which made him its cover star.

 

Writer Paul Bailey travelled to Dunn's cottage in Portugal in early September in order to speak to him.

 

He told BBC News the 92-year old was "almost completely blind and hard of hearing" but still loved "a good joke and a glass of wine".

 

"I asked him a fairly silly question: 'What is it like to be 92?'" he said. "He replied, 'The same as it was to be 91'."

 

Mr Bailey said Dunn was "very stoic" when talking about his time as a PoW during the war. "He joked about it in a very English, self-deprecating way."

 

Speaking to the actor in his artist's studio, Mr Bailey said Dunn's great sadness was that his failing eyesight meant he could no longer indulge in his passion for painting.

 

Broadcaster Stephen Fry has also paid tribute, saying he was "saddened to hear of the death of Clive Dunn, the immortal Corporal Jones from Dad's Army".

 

Referring to Dunn's hit song Grandad, Father Ted writer Graham Linehan tweeted: "I love that he recorded this, then lived another 41 years."

 

"I had assumed that because he looked 85 at 40 that Clive Dunn was immortal," remarked comedian David Baddiel on his Twitter feed.

 

Tony Pritchard of the Dad's Army Appreciation Society said Dunn had attended various conventions organised with the society and was "immensely popular" with its members.

 

"I met him many times over the years," he told BBC Radio Gloucestershire. "He was just a nice chap. He always had a joke to tell and was full of humour."

 

Dunn is survived by his wife Priscilla Morgan and their two daughters, Jessica and Polly.

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk...t-arts-20239694