Ronald Neame, who produced and co-wrote acclaimed British films such as “Great Expectations,” saw Hollywood success as director of “The Poseidon Adventure” and was nominated for three Oscars, has died at age 99.
He died in a Los Angeles hospital Wednesday about six weeks after being injured in a fall.
Neame began his career of more than 60 years In 1929 when he worked as a cameraman for Alfred Hitchcock on the first British sound film, 1929’s “Blackmail.”
He was nominated for Oscars with director David Lean as co-writer of 1945’s “Brief Encounter” and 1946’s “Great Expectations.”
He went on to direct the acclaimed 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and the critically panned 1972 box office hit “The Poseidon Adventure.”
Carlos Monsivais, renowned Mexican journalist, critic and political activist Carlos Monsivais died Saturday at age 72 of a respiratory illness in a Mexico City hospital.
Monsivais’ best-known works include the books “Dias de Guardar” and “Escenas de pudor y liviandad” and his long-running newspaper column “Por Mi Madre Bohemios,” in which he explored everything from the often-strange language of politicians to the most recent soap opera phenomena.
Examining his own country like a pop anthropologist, Monsivais chronicled Mexico’s historic upheavals, social trends, and literature for over 50 years. He was also known as a tireless activist for leftist causes.
“I think he is one of the great minds of Mexico, and an intellectual of the left,” said writer Elena Poniatowska, who was friends with Monsivais since about 1957. “He knew about everything, politics, poetry, art.”
Monsivais was part of a generation of Mexican writers — Poniatowska and Carlos Fuentes among them — who came of age in the 1950s and ‘60s.
He was one of the best analysts of Mexican movies, especially those from the country’s “golden age” of film that ran from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Monsivais won the National Prize for Journalism in 1977, the Jorge Cuesta Prize in 1986, the Mazatlan Prize in 1989 and the Villaurrutia Prize in 1996.
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