Sigh... not going to blog about murdered French cartoonists... Just going to briefly note my sadness to learn that
Robert Stone has died, at age 77. I didn't actually like the last two novels of his I read (
Damascus Gate and
Bay of Souls), but
Dog Soldiers is my go-to if anyone asks me my favourite novel; a tale of corruption and confusion in 1960's America, it features a sentence that I often tell people is my favourite in English literature (but I'm not really serious, since the sentence is "Dieter farted loudly and without embarrassment"). It was made into a film that doesn't quite do justice to the book,
Who'll Stop the Rain. One of the few non-journalism-related celebrity encounters I'm glad to have had is running into Michael Moriarty and telling him how much I admired his interpretation of Converse in that film.
A Hall of Mirrors is great, too - filmed as the rather awful
WUSA - and I actually have quite a bit of fondness for Stone's 1992 novel
Outerbridge Reach, and some of his short stories. I actually once wrote Stone some fan mail, but I have no idea if he ever received it.
Besides Stone, I'm also saddened by the passing of
Francesco Rosi, at age 92. I want to see
Christ Stopped at Eboli and
The Mattei Affair... I loved his bullfighting movie
The Moment of Truth and his anti-war WWI movie
Many Wars Ago, and I liked
Salvatore Giuliano - more of an interesting film than an entertaining one. I have
Hands Over the City at home but haven't done it yet.
And of course we should note the passing of Rod Taylor (
The Birds, Zabriskie Point). I liked him in both those movies and was kind of really happy to see him turn up as Winston Churchill in one of these overrated recent Tarantino films...
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