Briefs for June 19-20, 2020

Today marks the 90th birthday of actress Gena Rowlands, who is the widow of John Cassavetes and starred in several of the movies he directed. I have to admit that some of these are movies I've tried to get through and find a bit difficult, such as Husbands. But Rowlands was also in Lonely Are the Brave, which I had forgotten, and I see she was in Light of Day, which I remember because of the Joan Jett title song, not actually having seen the movie.

Dame Vera Lynn died yesterday at the age of 103. She wasn't an actress but a singer, probably best known for her rendition of "We'll Meet Again" that went out to all the Brits serving in World War II. The song was rather memorably used in Dr. Strangelove:



Also dying this morning is Sir Ian Holm who earned a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for playing the trainer in Chariots of Fire and also had a really good starring turn in The Sweet Hereafter as an ambulance-chasing lawyer who tries to get a small town to sue after several students died in a school bus crash. Later in life, Holm played Bilbo Baggins in some of the installments of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series. Holm was 88.

I notice that the TCM Shop changed its appearance recently. I still don't understand why certain movies from the Warner Archive MOD scheme show up as on backorder some days and available on others, but it always wreaks havoc with deciding what movie to watch.