Tag Archives: Motocross

Died Suddenly [Jan. 2021)

1/1/21

•Christine Dacera 23 ruptured aortic aneurysm [flight attendant] 🇵🇭

•Sun Qiaolu 25 heart attack [actress] 🇨🇳

1/2/21

•Rob Flockhart 64 heart attack [hockey player] 🇨🇦

•Guadalupe Grande 55 [poet] 🇪🇸

•Mike Reece 42 ruptured brain aneurysm [politician] 🇺🇸

•Yuri Saukh 69 [soccer player] 🇷🇺

1/3/21

•Cornelis Feoh 57 [politician] 🇮🇩

•Shyamji Kanojia 65 [cricket player] 🇮🇳

•Anil Panachooran 51 cardiac arrest [lyricist] 🇮🇳

1/4/21

•Ronnie Burgess 57 cardiac arrest [NFL player] 🇺🇸

•Jonas Neubauer 39 cardiac arrhythmia [Tetris player] 🇺🇸

1/5/21

•Emilia De Biasi 62 [politician] 🇮🇹

•Tyberii Korponai 62 [soccer player] 🇺🇦

•Telly Tjanggulung 47 [politician] 🇮🇩

•Vennelakanti 63 cardiac arrest [lyricist] 🇮🇳

•Pungky Purnomo Wibobo 52 heart attack [economist] 🇮🇩

1/6/21

•Mircea Bolba 59 [soccer player] 🇷🇴

•Thanasis Papazoglou 67 [soccer player] 🇬🇷

•Kate Payne 63 [nurse] 🇺🇸

•Iulian Șerban 35 [canoeist] 🇷🇴

1/7/21

•Alex Apolinário 24 cardiac arrest [soccer player] 🇧🇷 ⭐️

•Elanga Buala 56 [runner] 🇵🇬

•Deezer D 55 heart attack [rapper] 🇺🇸

•Ronnie Ellenblum 68 heart failure [geographer] 🇮🇱

•Grant Gondrezick 57 [NBA player] 🇺🇸

•Thomas Gumpert 68 [actor] 🇩🇪

•Vladimir Kiselyov 64 [Olympic champion shot putter] 🇺🇦

•Tom LaBonge 67 cardiac arrest [politician] 🇺🇸

•Lonnie Perrin 68 [NFL player] 🇺🇸

•Adebayo Salami 69 [politician] 🇳🇬

•Brian Sicknick 42 [U.S. Cap. Pol.] 🇺🇸

•Solange 69 [psychic] 🇮🇹

1/8/21

•Steve Hendrickson 54 [NFL player] 🇺🇸

•Peter W. Huber 68 [lawyer] 🇺🇸

•Barbara Köhler 61 [poet] 🇩🇪

•Deborah Rhode 68 [legal scholar] 🇺🇸

1/9/21

•Anton Cancélas 65 [voice actor] 🇪🇸

•Mohamud Mohammed Hassan 24 [security guard] 🇬🇧

•Howard Liebengood suicide [U.S. Cap. Pol.] 🇺🇸

•Todd Stadtman 59 [musician] 🇺🇸

•Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 🇮🇩 [62 deaths] (Boeing 737-500)

1/10/21

•Christopher Maboulou 30 heart attack [soccer player] 🇫🇷 ⭐️

•Wayne Radford 64 [NBA player] 🇺🇸

•Benita Raphan 58 [filmmaker] 🇺🇸

•Julie Strain 58 dementia [actress] 🇺🇸

1/11/21

•Sheldon Adelson 87 [casino owner] 🇺🇸

•Éric Babin 61 [politician] 🇳🇨

•Lloyd Cowan 58 [hurdler] 🇬🇧

•David Khakhaleishvili 49 [judoka] 🇬🇪

•Bogdan Macovei 67 [handball manager] 🇷🇴

•Mario Masuku 69 [politician] 🇸🇿

•Lindiwe Ndlovu 44 [actress] 🇿🇦

•Kurt Oddekalv 63 drowning [environmentalist] 🇳🇴

1/12/21

•Carlos Joseph 40 ruptured brain aneurysm [NFL player] 🇺🇸 ⭐️

•Tim Lester 52 COVID-19 [NFL player] 🇺🇸

•Keith Valigura 63 [politician] 🇺🇸

1/13/21

•Duke Bootee 69 heart failure [rapper] 🇺🇸

•Nicky Booth 40 [boxer] 🇬🇧

•Bryan Monroe 55 heart attack [CNN journalist] 🇺🇸

•Sinikka Nopola 67 [writer] 🇫🇮

•Øyvind Sandberg 67 [film director] 🇳🇴

1/14/21

•José Luis Caballero 65 [Olympic soccer player] 🇲🇽

•Storm Constantine 64 [author] 🇬🇧

•Sheikh Ali Jaber 44 [cleric] 🇮🇩

•Aleksandr Nikitin 59 [soccer player] 🇷🇺

•Leonidas Pelekanikis 58 COVID-19 [Olympic sailor] 🇬🇷

•David Roth 68 [magician] 🇺🇸

•Jane Sinclair 64 [priest] 🇬🇧

1/15/21

•Tyrone Crawley 62 [boxer] 🇺🇸

•Mark Langham 60 [priest] 🇬🇧

•Benjamin de Rothschild 57 heart attack [banker] 🇫🇷

•Jeffrey L. Smith 35 suicide [U.S. Cap. Pol.] 🇺🇸

1/16/21

•Sharon Begley 64 [science journalist] 🇺🇸

•Choi Jeongrye 65 [poet] 🇰🇷

•György Handel 61 COVID-19 [soccer player] 🇭🇺

•Sergi Mingote 49 [mountain climber] 🇪🇸

•Carlo Nayaradou 63 [author] 🇫🇷

•Meghrig Parikian 53 [bishop] 🇨🇦

•Sergei Rodin 39 [soccer player] 🇷🇺

•Arturo Tizón 36 [motorcycle racer] 🇪🇸

•Paul Varelans 51 COVID-19 [UFC fighter] 🇺🇸

1/17/21

•Joevana Charles 66 [politician] 🇸🇨

•Joan Eloi Vila 61 [guitarist] 🇪🇸

1/18/21

•Carlos Burga 68 COVID-19 [Olympic boxer] 🇵🇪

•Tony Ingle 68 COVID-19 [basketball coach] 🇺🇸

•Ákos Kriza 55 [health economist & politician] 🇭🇺

•Henryk Ostrowski 60 [politician] 🇵🇱

•David Richardson 65 heart failure [TV writer] 🇺🇸

•John Russell 66 [guitarist] 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

•K.V. Vijayadas 61 cerebral hemorrhage [politician] 🇮🇳

1/19/21

•Danial Jahić 41 COVID-19 [Olympic long-jumper] 🇷🇸

•Toleafoa Ken Vaafusuaga Poutoa 53 [politician] 🇼🇸

1/20/21

•David Brewster 56 heart attack [politician] 🇬🇧

•Mira Furlan 65 West Nile virus [actress] 🇺🇸

•John Jeffers 52 [soccer player] 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

•Rabi Mishra 64 cardiac arrest [actor] 🇮🇳

•Lonnie Nielsen 67 [golfer] 🇺🇸

•Ted Thompson 68 dysautonomia [NFL player] 🇺🇸

•Martha Jachi Umbulla 65 [politician] 🇹🇿

1/21/21

•Howard Carson 63 [NFL player] 🇺🇸

•Mauricio Herdocia Sacasa 63 [jurist] 🇳🇮

•Jerry Kiernan 67 [Olympic long-distance runner] 🇮🇪

•Johnny Rogan 67 [journalist] 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

•Hank Aaron 86 [vaccinated baseball player] 🇺🇸

•Hughroy Currie 61 [boxer] 🇬🇧

•Marius van Heerden 46 COVID-19 [Olympic middle-distance runner] 🇿🇦

•Tony Jones 54 [NFL player] 🇺🇸

•Meherzia Labidi Maïza 57 [politician] 🇹🇳

1/23/21

•Andrew Brooks 51 heart attack [medical researcher] 🇺🇸

•Robert Rowland 54 drowned [politician] 🇬🇧

•Song Yoo-jung 26 [actress] 🇰🇷

•Tom Stevens 64 [musician] 🇺🇸

1/24/21

•Nikolay Chebotko 38 [Olympic cross-country skier] 🇰🇿

•Bootsie Neal 68 [politician] 🇺🇸

•2021 Palmas FR plane crash [6 deaths]

1/25/21

•Ihwan Datu Adam 56 [politician] 🇮🇩

•Mike Bell 63 heart attack [motorcycle racer] 🇺🇸

•David Bright 64 COVID-19 [soccer coach] 🇧🇼

•Jaoid Chiguer 35 heart attack [Olympic boxer] 🇫🇷 ⭐️

•Iron 29 [rapper] 🇰🇷

•Masada Iosefa 32 [rugby player] 🇼🇸

•David Katzenstein 69 COVID-19 [virologist] 🇺🇸

1/26/21

•Berit Oskal Eira 69 [politician] 🇳🇴

•Ron Johnson 64 COVID-19 [baseball player] 🇺🇸

•Cara O’Sullivan 59 [singer] 🇮🇪

•Sekou Smith 48 COVID-19 [sportswriter] 🇺🇸

•Ansif Ashraf 37 COVID-19 [magazine editor] 🇮🇳

•José Cruz 68 COVID-19 [soccer player] 🇭🇳

•Guy Immanuel Alain Gauze 68 [politician] 🇨🇮

•Goddess Bunny 61 COVID-19 [drag queen] 🇺🇸

•Saini Lemamea 56 [rugby player] 🇼🇸

•Wendel Meldrum 66 [actress] 🇨🇦

•Mehrdad Minavand 45 COVID-19 [soccer player] 🇮🇷

•Tim Owhefere 57 [politician] 🇳🇬

1/28/21

•Adrián Campos 60 [Formula One driver] 🇪🇸

•Cédric Demangeot 46 [poet] 🇫🇷

•Shaibal Gupta 67 [social scientist] 🇮🇳

•Sibongile Khumalo 63 [singer] 🇿🇦

•Singing Sandra 64 [singer] 🇹🇹

•Heidi Weisel 59 [fashion designer] 🇺🇸

1/29/21

•Emilia Asim-Ita 33 [entrepreneur] 🇳🇬

•Christian Daigle 42 [ice hockey agent] 🇨🇦

•Didier Pasgrimaud 54 [Olympic cyclist] 🇫🇷

1/30/21

•Double K 43 [rapper] 🇺🇸

•Abbas Khan 66 COVID-19 [squash player] 🇵🇰

•Edward Stourton, 27th Baron Mowbray 67 [peer] 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

•Pantelei Sandulache 64 [politician] 🇲🇩

•Sophie 34 [singer] 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

•Marc Wilmore 57 COVID-19 [comedian] 🇺🇸

1/31/21

•Mihail Popescu 60 [Olympic ice hockey player] 🇷🇺

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Perličky na dně [1966)

I’ve never been much a fan of the omnibus film (or anthology film) genre.

Several directors.

One product.

But this one serves a very interesting purpose.

So far, we have only considered the work of Jiří Menzel (among Czech directors).

So now we will get to branch out a bit.

A sampler of sorts.

Funny enough, Menzel leads this whole thing off.

Start with your best speaker, they say.

Menzel’s contribution is fairly good.

It is closer in spirit to Capricious Summer than it is to the masterpiece Closely Watched Trains

Which is to say, it is largely “meh”.

But a true auteur is still engaging even when he or she is meh, and Menzel is interesting…even when he’s boring (as in Rozmarné léto).

If we want to know where the Belgian juggernaut Aaltra comes from, then we should look no further than Menzel’s short contribution on motorcycle racing.

As with all the stories in this omnibus, the author (in the literary sense) is Bohumil Hrabal.

We get our first bit of the “aging” theme in this installment.

The old man with his stories of Smetana and Dvořák.

The weird harpsichord music courtesy of Jan Klusák (or perhaps Jiří Šust).

It’s baroque, but just slightly off.  Anachronistic.  Neobaroque.  Like Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (and just as rococonutty).

But the “aging” theme really comes to the fore in the next section which is directed by Jan Němec.  Němec sadly passed away but four months ago.

In this scene we meet two old men in a hospital.  It is a very touching piece of cinema.

They try to keep each other’s spirits up.

We also start to sense another theme in Hrabal’s writing:  lies.

Lies notwithstanding, Němec’s segment is perhaps the most poignant thing about this film.

In the middle we get a splash of color (the rest of the film being in black and white) courtesy of the radical Evald Schorm.

What makes Schorm’s segment so beautifully jarring is the music (extremely reminiscent of Olivier Messiaen):  organ dissonance ostensibly courtesy of the aforementioned Klusák and/or Šust.

We are presented with outsider art in its purest form.  A painter who paints every wall in his house.  It is certainly reminiscent of the one-of-a-kind Henry Darger.

Incidentally, the scene is deliciously dark humor directed at not only the bureaucracy of the Czechoslovak state but also at the legitimacy of the insurance industry.

Věra Chytilová contributes a dark-yet-dreamy vignette suffused with desperation throughout.  Her use of slow-motion photography captures some very special emotions and is reminiscent of Jean Vigo’s use of the same in Zéro de conduite.

Finally, we encounter gypsies for the first time thanks to the loving depiction of Jaromil Jireš.

A Czech boy does his best Jean-Paul Belmondo before the cracked mirror near the lobby cards.

Dana Valtová might be the most convincing actress in this entire feature.  Her role of the dark-skinned gypsy (who remains nameless) is quite astonishing.

And so we learn a bit more about the Czech people thanks to this defining mosaic from the Czech New Wave:  Pearls of the Deep.

And little by little we learn a new culture.

 

-PD

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Aaltra [2004)

Everything happens for a goddamned reason.  I wanted to type.  So I did.

It leaves me uneasy.  It’s the start of a faux writer.

But it fits this film.  If ever a film was accursed (like the archetypal poète maudit), then it is this immortal piece of cinema.

Long ago…in a messy room not so far away…I took a gamble on this Belgian film.  Because it was Belgian.

Belgium.

What is Belgium?  It’s not France.  It’s not Netherlands.  For the world of art, it exists as a sort of other Switzerland.

(At least that’s how I had it in my mind.)

I think of the great César Franck.  The great Symphony in D minor.

And I think of René Magritte.  [particularly L’Assassin menacé]

And so I jumped into this film as blindly as anyone.

What I could not have predicted was the sheer perfection which followed upon rolling tape.

There is strictly zero plot outlined on Wikipedia for this film.

Thus, you needs must only remember two names:  Gustave de Kervern and Benoît Delépine.

These two directors blessed the world with a film equal to any of the nouvelle vague triumphs (not least because they chose to shoot in grainy black and white).

These two writers concocted a story which only Louis-Ferdinand Céline could have dreamt up.

And finally, these two actors (the same two gentlemen) schooled thespians the world over on how drama should be approached in the 21st century.

We must trust the images.

There are two handicapped spaces for rent, but a veteran from the Belgian Congo pushes them aside.

“Bwana, bwana”…like he’s in his Popemobile.

When you have lost the function of your legs, a bottle of rum is not begrudged.

The tide is high.  Now that we’ve fallen asleep.

Two heads bobbing in the water.  Wheelchairs in wet sand.

But it is sad as anything.  Two grown men.  A level of breakdown sobbing which is painful to watch.

Why me?

I can’t believe this.

The gags in this sob story (juxtaposition intended) modulate ad nauseam like Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny” sung in Finnish.

Ah, Finland…

From Belgium to Finland.

Beware of pity (warned Stephan Zweig).

Maybe it’s best just to suck on the tailpipe of your Motocross dreams in Brazil.

Two crippled chaps on their way home.  Ambulance blues.  Drivers stop at a pub to shoot the shit (out in the agricultural boonies).  Two extra pints grasped at intervals by disembodied, transient hands.

Have you ever been cold and hungry?

Think about it (Jerry Lee implores).  Next time you see a beggar.  They may have the most unbelievable backstory imaginable.

Because people are nice and charitable (on average) for a maximum of about 10 minutes (if at all).  Usually nothing.

Must be a drug addict.  Doesn’t really need that wheelchair.  Probably got it at Homeless-Props-Are-Us.

When you’ve just been fired and you come home to find your wife fucking another man.  And he doesn’t even stop.

When you live in a barn and cook your miserable meals on a hotplate.

I’ve slept on that cot.  That’s why this film might be unbearable (and absolutely necessary).

Did I mention that this is a comedy?

Two blokes paralyzed and the doctor a paragon of efficiency (drumming for reflexes as they lay ridiculously side-by-side on parallel provincial hospital beds).

Meet me in my office in 30 minutes or you’re fired.

Nothing is more awkward.  Crammed in the same room to convalesce.  Enemies whose childish fight has left them forever outcasts.

Adding insult…(mugged…no money…no IDs…no passports)…to injury.

Bloody jawdropping genius.

-PD

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