Tag: death

Best movie deaths

Bad Taste
Nope - you're in at number 2...

[second attempt at this article due to the new version of Google Chrome being **** and crashing]

I was driving home the other night and this topic was being discussed on the radio. It got me thinking – what are my favourite on-screen deaths? The ones below are pretty much off the top of my head and beware as there may be spoilers. Well, usually someone dying is pretty much a highlight of some films!

Feel free to add your own in the comments (on the original blog post or on facebook if you can’t figure out how to use the real internet). I also found a rather useful website at www.greatestmoviedeaths.com if you need some inspiration.

The Town

A current film and an excellent death scene for Jim. His final confrontation with the cops is complete suicide, but done with remarkably little gore. Instead, his corpse lies slumped with two tiny bullet holes dribbling blood.

Bad Taste

Peter Jackson‘s finest moment as both actor and director. Kevin plummets through the ceiling wielding a chainsaw, enters the head alien’s head and (eventually) exits through his arse, covered in guts.

Predator

Several great deaths, but the best for me is Dillon’s as his detached arm continues to fire a seriously wicked machine gun while he’s repeatedly shot.

Gremlins

Not even shown in the film, but a classic bit of cine-lore nonetheless. Kate tells the story of how her father went missing one Christmas and eventually turned up – halfway down the chimney dressed as Santa, arms full of presents and with a broken neck.

Final Destination

So many to choose from within the franchise, but the best is still “girl hit by bus” in the first one, purely for shock value. The first time you see it, you don’t know whether to jump, shriek or laugh.

Blade

One of the coolest “superhero” films ever made, and craps all over that Twilight nonsense as far as vampire flicks go. The opening sequence is a pure delight and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched it. Pick of the bunch in where Blade releases the glave, it swooshes round the tiled area and he catches it… then a handful of vampires collapse, their heads neatly severed.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Today’s first

Today I carried my first coffin.

Today I said a final goodbye to the first of my two grandmothers.

There was a great turnout for the funeral. Lovely to see so many members of the family who I so rarely encounter. As my gran requested, there was nothing overboard or ostentatious. Just a nice church service, a few words from a minister and a pleasant late lunch for the 60-or-so who turned up.

I overheard my little cousin asking her mum, “Is that granny gone now?”

Yes, Louise. She is. And the world’s that little bit less bright as a result.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

RIP Granny Annie 1922 – 2010

After a very brief and sudden illness, one of my grans passed on this morning.

It’s been a while since I posted anything actually personal on this blog, but I feel this justifies a few words. I only wish I had a decent photo to go with it. Unfortunately all the pics I have of her are actual old-fashioned ones on paper, stored in a drawer a few miles away and I don’t have access to a scanner anyway.

Instead I’ll have to paint you a picture with words. She was 88, which is a great innings by any standard. The thing is, I don’t really remember her looking any different in all the years I knew her. She was just my gran. The little old lady with the white hair who fussed over me and kept buying me sweets. My kind of woman.

If I had to pick one character trait of my gran that stood out more than any other, it was that she always went out of her way to make other people’s lives easier. She was always there to help and hated being a burden on anyone else. Right up to the end she was fussing over us when we visited her in hospital as we were going to far too much trouble on her account.

One thing I remember her telling me only a couple of years ago is how her cooking wasn’t up to that of my other gran. She could “only” manage to rustle up a ham roll on the afternoon I visited.

Let me tell you something – and I bet all of you who know/knew your grannies will agree – a ham sandwich put together by a little old lady who means the world to you is more tasty and nourishing than any 5-course meal slaved over by some self-important TV chef.

I have loads of memories of my gran and I’m really happy to say that I managed to see her quite a bit over the last few months once I returned to the UK. Something I’d not have managed had I stayed down in England or continued travelling abroad.

Right up until the end I don’t think she appreciated how special she was to all of us. The thought simply wouldn’t have occurred to her. She was just… herself.

And that’s why I loved her and why I’ll miss her.

As the actress said to the bishop

Humphrey Lyttelton and producer Jon Naismith during a 2005 recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue at the Edinburgh Fringe

Humphrey Lyttelton died earlier this week. For those too young (i.e. who don’t listen to “old people’s radio”) or too non-British to know who he was, he’s most famous for presenting a Radio 4 show called I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. It’s one of those quiz shows with celebs in it, and some daft questions. Along the lines of TV’s Have I Got News For You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, and – to some extent – Who’s Line Is It Anyway?

It was/is (I don’t know when it’ll pick up again) a remarkably funny show if you get a chance to listen to it. The link above is to the official page with lots of samples to download and enjoy. I confess I didn’t listen to it regularly, but if it happened to be on when I was in the car it was a great half-hour chuckle. And you’ve not lived (or stretched your imagination) until you’ve played a strenuous game of Mornington Crescent against an expert.

Lyttelton was most famous for his constant use of double-entendres. I had a “complaint” in my comments the other day that I use naughty words on here and therefore I have no appreciation of the English language or the wondrous variety of nuances within it. Let alone how to be smutty without appearing to be so.

Codswallop, frankly. I could have learned from this man how to talk fluently about porn without actually using a sweary. Finbarr Saunders from Viz could, in fairness, be a more knobbly-kneed, big-nosed version of Lyttelton. Between the two of them they could translate the entire letters page of Forum magazine into something you could hand to an 8 year-old and they’d never guess what you were on about.

This article on the BBC News site is a great summation of the show and Lyttelton himself. Definitely worth a read.