So’s Bill Clinton. Just sayin’. 
(Hillary’s 68, Sanders is 74).
Keep the political jabs out of this thread.
Thanks.
Obadiah Slope. Yeah, he made quite an impression in that; I still remembered him long afterwards, then when he showed up in Die Hard it was all “Yay! Obadiah Slope!”
The list of Alan Rickman lines and scenes I love is too long to mention.
“Alas, your Mr. Takagi didn’t see it that way. So, he won’t be joining us for the rest of… his life.”
Very few celebrity deaths bother me - I mean, it’s unfortunate David Bowie died but I don’t feel anything about it. This one does, probably the first one to bother me since Adam Yauch. Rickman was a wonderful actor who always, always put 100% into his work, was loved by anyone he worked with, and delivered the goods in a lot of fantastic movies in a wide variety of genres. He made it big in Hollywood in his 40s because he just kept working hard. It seems very unfair he died as young as he did.
I can cite a thousand great scenes but a good illustration of his skill is the scene in “Galaxy Quest,” a silly throwaway comedy in which he had every right to just mail it in but instead did a fantastic job, in which the old gang is opening a Best Buy-type store. They all have prepared lines and it finally falls to Rickman/Alexander to say the last line, and he just can’t bring himself to. Sigourney Weaver elbows him and he manages to groan out “By Grabthar’s Hammer… what a savings.”
In six words he just completely nails it. He sounds like he is honestly considering whether he wants to say the line or pull out a gun and shoot his own head off. It’s so wonderfully delivered.
Incidentally, I have to disagree that Bruce Willis was ill served by acting alongside Alan Rickman in “Die Hard.” Bruce Willis was goddamned fantastic in “Die Hard” and one of the reasons the movie worked as well as it did was the wonderfulness of both Hans Gruber and John McClane. If either character had been less interesting the movie wouldn’t have worked. “Die Hard” is memorable and was immensely influential in large part because those characters were different from the ones we’d seen before. Prior to “Die Hard” the typical screen action hero was an invincible supersoldier, played by someone like Arnold or Chuck Norris. Bruce Willis’s John McClane was indisputably not invincible; he gets hurt a lot, is usually at a disadvantage, and is frightened and disoriented by what happens to him. Similarly, Hans Gruber is not a mustache-twirling maniac like the guy in “Commando” or a racial stereotype; he is quite something different, a cold, intelligent villain, played by an unusually gifted actor, with a mundane goal he intends to achieve with ruthless treachery. (One article notes that, perhaos unintentionally, there is a beautiful irony in that much of Hans Gruber’s scenes involved him acting as if he were something other than what he really is - pretending to be a terrorist, pretending to be Bill Clay, pretending to care about the people he demands the release of, etc.) Those two guys absolutely made the movie.
It was AFTER “Die Hard” that top notch actors started being cast as action villains, or so it seems to me. The Hans Gruber role kind of made the villain a good place for a really terrific actor to be.
Wait a minute, Alan Rickman has died? That’s it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas!
“And how long have you been in love with Karl, our enigmatic chief designer?”
Shit. I need to go back and emend my answer in the thread about which death would affect me most. 
Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter films) posted a very nice tribute to Rickman on Facebook. She never really got to know him during the making of the movies, because he was always Snape and she was always scared of him. But some years later, they were seated next to each other at some charity dinner. To her great surprise, he remembered her, called her by name, and they had a very nice conversation in which she confessed her worries about being a young actor trying to manage her career, and he gave her all sorts of advice about keeping grounded in what can be a very harsh business.
I can’t really do it justice in a few words, of course, but if you can find it on Facebook, it’s worth reading, and highlights what a genuinely kind and generous man he was.
One of my wife’s favorites, although I’ve never seen it. So we thought we would watch it last night, and it turns out that it’s unavailable for streaming from any source; and the DVD is for sale on Amazon for $500.
Anybody have any idea what happened? Is it tied up in some sort of legal dispute?
Great as Rickman was in Die Hard, I don’t think you can really say he started a trend of good actors as villains. There were plenty in the Bond films (Donald Pleasence, Curd Jurgens, Michael Lonsdale), Steven Berkoff in Beverly Hills Cop (and a Bond villain), and probably lots more.
Rickman didn’t start it, he just did it better than most.
Yes, I’ve always loved his deadpan delivery of that line. A great performance in a very funny movie.
Dunno. It was never a big movie to start with, and has not really become a cult favorite since 1990.
I guess I am lucky I have on VHS taped at super slow speed off the TV/pay per view. I think I need to dig it out and watch it again.
I mentioned in an earlier thread that Rickman would’ve been great in Peter Cushing’s role if they needed to do a STAR WARS remake. (And, so long as we’re speaking of movies where Harrison Ford got to run-and-gun his way through mooks but is ultimately up against a well-spoken and deceptive planner who cheerfully brings disheartening facts to an enemy’s attention, Paul Freeman was pretty solid in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.)
I’ve never been too wild about Bruce Willis, and it’s due in part to him killing Rickman in Die Hard. I’ve often watched the movie and then quit just before that scene. 
See post 21.
I just heard some positive news about Tim Curry.
For those who don’t know Curry had a very serious stroke in 2012 and has never fully recovered. He’s only done voice roles since then. But he’s agreed to appear in the upcoming Rocky Horror Show remake (as the Criminologist). Regardless of how you feel about the idea of this remake, it’s a good sign that Curry is doing better.
Oh, so I’m not the only one that does that?
He would’ve been great in anything.
“Die Hard,” to go back to that again, is a great example of why casting is so much harder than you might think. If you asked anyone in 1988 “Hey, we’re putting together a big time action movie where a due fights a team of evil bad guys in a skyscraper with lots of explosions and shootouts, who should e the hero and who should be the bad guy?”
-
Absolutely no one would have said Bruce Willis should be the hero, because absolutely no one thought of him as an action star. It was an absurd choice, one they did only because Arnold et al. turned it down. Many thought it was a terrible decision.
-
No one outside of theatre knew who the hell Alan Rickman was. And if I’d told you who he was you would have said “Some British guy who does Shakespeare? What? He was in some play with a French name? No! Get me Michael Ironside!” Because, you know, Michael Ironside’s bad ass, right? Get a bad ass!
Then Rickman goes on screen and he does Hans Gruber one thousand times better than Michael Ironside could have and boom.
Alan Rickman had one of the sexiest voices I’ve ever heard. My favorite line is from “Truly, Madly, Deeply” where Juliet Stevenson asks what he’s doing and his reply is, “I’m warming my lips.” Mmmm.
Rest in peace, Mr. Rickman. You will be long remembered & missed.
Oh no! I hadn’t heard that news about Curry’s health. I hope it continues to improve, I really do.
I heard a really funny interview with him, on the radio in Michigan in the late 1980’s. He was in Lansing I think it was, part of a roadshow revival of 42nd Street, and was being interviewed about his role. He said that ever since he’d done Rocky Horror, no matter what other play, movie or musical he was in, the first thing he would be questioned about was Rocky Horror. I felt sorry for him then, but he seemed to find it hilarious.
Bumped.
Sam Rockwell says we might have had a Galaxy Quest sequel but for Rickman’s untimely passing: Alan Rickman's Death Stopped the 'Galaxy Quest' Sequel That Would Be Filming Now | Moviefone