The first thing I remember seeing him in was Closet Land. It's been at least 20 years since I saw it, and thinking about his character still gives me chills.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101597/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_53
Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
131–140 of 189 posts
Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#132First my mother, then David Bowie, now Alan Rickman. What is it about 69 that makes people die of cancer?
My condolences. If it helps, she's in good company now.
Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#133I once watched a streak of Alan Rickman movies, and can certainly recommend some of the less popular ones.
Closet Land - HN should love this one: a dystopian science fiction film approaching censorship, surveillance, and torture. It's a single setting with only 2 actors, and sometimes feels like a very intense play.
Truly Madly Deeply - An oddly appropriate film about accepting death, where he plays a tired ghost who come back to haunt his significant other, which I found bittersweet but overall heart-warming.
Rasputin (1996) - I actually watched this during a Rasputin streak, and think that his performance is possibly the best Rasputin on film - he breathes a lot of humanity and realness into the character (compare with, say, the great but completely monstrous version with Christopher Lee). Other aspects of the film are uneven, but it's still very much worth it.
I also remember being excited to learn that he was directing a movie recently (A Little Chaos). Haven't seen it, but the reviews are convincing - it's sad that he leaves us while he was still very much in a creative period.
Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prepare to be downvoted you clod. HN is about hacking and obituaries.
David Bowie was sort of justifiable as a tech person, but this is just weird. HN has never been a general news site.
If you look up the term "dies" in HN Search, you can find obituaries for all kinds of people submitted to HN in the past, from Gabriel García Márquez to Roger Ebert to Kim Jong Il.
Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Harry Potter is a poorly written kids fantasy, how does that relate to programming?
While we're straying from hackery... I'm curious to hear your recommendations for well written kids' fantasy.
Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Charles de Lint, Katherine Paterson, Madeleine L'Engle, Lloyd Alexander, Ursula Le Guin
A lot of the more recently written books my kids read now are formulaic crap, but at least they're reading books.
Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#136"By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest
My favourite bit of that movie (Rickman plays Sir Alexander Dane, a proud thespian whose once illustrious career has been destroyed by Galaxy Quest typecasting him into this humiliating role): Jason Nesmith: You WILL go out there. Sir Alexander Dane: I won't and nothing you say will make me. Jason Nesmith: The Show Must Go On. Sir Alexander Dane: ...Damn you.
Another good scene between the two:
(Jason is fighting the rock monster)
Jason: Alexander, you're supposed to be my adviser, advise me!
Alexander: Well, you're just going to have to figure out what it wants. What is its motivation?
Jason: It's a rock monster, it doesn't *have* any motivation!
Alexander: Well, there's your problem, Jason, you were never serious about the craft!Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#137Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#138Sad news, however how is this related to Hackery?
From the guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." I'm a hacker. I found this interesting (and sad).
HN has gone downhill since they let all the squibs and muggles in.
Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#139Re: Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard Actor, Dies Aged 69
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, everyone who has ever lived has also died.
Well there are still >7 billion people that don't fit your categorization, which means only 93% of people who have lived have died. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-li...
The article seems to say that the estimate of all who have lived is about 106 billion, so the number of currently-alive is estimated at about 6% of those who have ever lived.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote "Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living." I wondered if that ratio needed updating. It does, but not, it seems, in the direction I expected.