Thoughts ranging from Christopher Plummer to Amy Whinehouse...

I watched "Beginners" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1532503/) last night, and its truly a wonderful film.

I laughed, I cried, fell in love a bit with Mélanie Laurent. But most of all I thought about how much I love watching Christopher Plummer. It's strange, but from all the remaining old masters of the craft , Plummer seemed to be the least talked about.

People always remember Connery, Caine, Derek Jacobi, John Hurt, but almost never Plummer. But, one every couple of years I see him in a film I say 'god dammit he still got it!'.

For example, recently I watched "The Last Station" in which he was magnificent, and just before that as the only redeeming aspect of "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" (please don't tell me Heath Ledger, yeah you miss him, but whatever... he was crap in this one).

Anyhow, I convinced my roommate today to watch one of my favorite films of all time: John Huston's "The Man Who Would Be King", which starred not one by the all three of my holy triad: Plummer (in a minor role as Kipling), Sean Connery and Michael Caine. If you somehow managed to miss this 1975 film, do yourself a favor and rent/stream it the first time you can spare 2 hours. It's magnificent. Connery and Caine are just incredible, and I would wager some money that their "Danny" and "Peachy" characters were the basis of quite a few buddy-adventure narratives (the first that comes to mind is Lucius Vorinus and Titus Pullo from "Rome"). I watched this film so many times, that the theme music of the film (the hymn of "The Minstel Boy") was so ingrained in my head that I would find myself humming it constantly as a child. As an adult I can only hope that I was a bad hummer, for what would my teachers think of me, humming this English Christian hymn in a Jewish post-British colonialist land. Perhaps my grandfather from my mom side would approve, actually. He was a British officer, perhaps he hummed it himself during his service in that Second World War?

In any event, today I open facebook to learn that Amy Winehouse is no more. I'm not gonna say it's not sad, obviously every death is very sad to people around that person (somewhere in England, I imagine Noel Fielding is shedding unicorn-shaped tears), but to put her on the same list as Morrisson and Hendrix, is a tad ridiculous. I'm not gonna go into the Why of it, it's a silly proposition from the get go. Sad yes, in a general sense.

I said it numerous times to people around me who still have patience to listen to some of the words that come out of my mouth: There are only 3 "celebrities" that I probably be extremely sad when they pass on: Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer. Three and Three only.

So, yes, go watch "Beginners" (If you don't like old people, Ewan McGregor is outstanding in it as well) and check out "The Man Who Would Be King" which is as good a watch today then it was when I was 8 years old.