I missed out on a lot of news and opportunities to post lately but I just have trouble finding the motivation most of the time. For some reason death is always a motivating factor to do stuff. The death of a family member to a heart attack makes us want to improve our health, until we remember how much we really like bacon wrapped around things and deep fried pastries. Friends passing on without reaching their dreams makes us want to go back to school, start a business (or at the very least, hit on the new widow). Or in the case of this blog I get motivated to write when someone I admired for years loses their battle with disease, time or tasty Mr Gunbarrel. I've had plenty of chances this year. The great Paul Newman added his name this week, an actor who was easy to admire and talented beyond reason.

Newman entered my consciousness as a kid in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". He was an actor I always liked but never truly respected until he starred with Tom Cruise in Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money". There, playing "Fast" Eddie Felson, a character he originated in "The Hustler", Newman was at home. Felson was a career triumph that earned him an Oscar and along with Newman's "Nobody's Fool" is one of my all-time favorite films. If you want to know more trivia about him, plenty of people have written obituaries. If you really want to know more about who he was as an actor, watch his films.

Recommended:

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - 1958

The Hustler - 1961

Cool Hand Luke - 1967

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 1969

The Sting - 1973

Slap Shot - 1977

Fort Apache the Bronx - 1981

The Verdict - 1982

Harry and Son - 1984

The Color of Money - 1986

Fat Man and Little Boy - 1989

Nobody's Fool - 1994

Twilight - 1998

Road to Perdition - 2002

Cars - 2006

There were plenty of others so far this year, three I mentioned before.

George Carlin, an awe-inspiring figure in stand-up comedy circles and hero to doubters of faith like me. I posted a quick note about him after his death, followed by a 9 paragraph eulogy that this blog service accidentaly erased. (Grrrrrr)

Roy Scheider and Stan Winston, two men from similar backgrounds who found a life in genre pictures (one as an actor and one behind the scenes) and a special place in the life of tiny movie geek me.

...and one I didn't

Heath Ledger. You can say The Dark Knight is overrated (you are wrong). You can say it never would have made so much money without the circus of his death (you may be right). You can say his death was his own fault (no excuses made for him here). You can say all that and more but no-one will convince me that the character of the Joker was ever played better or likely ever will be. Jonathan and Christopher Nolan wrote a character that few could flesh out in such a believably enthralling maniac. His Joker is part cult leader, part "agent of chaos" and impossible not to watch. That he was able to create a persona so unlike anything we had ever seen from him (or even imagined he was capable of) is a credit to his talent and makes one wonder what else we might have seen.

Lastly, the death of my company name is detailed a bit below. The three of you that read this blog will be relieved to know it won't affect anything here. I'll still go on, posting every three months or so, don't worry.

Atomic Monkey Films

Four years ago I started this little thing called Atomic Monkey Films with a video I made for my family about our trip to Alaska. While editing the vacation footage together I started to joke with a friend about what my "big Hollywood production company" name should be. The name was picked because it sounded funny and was quirky enough to almost resemble a real business. When I was registering this domain I found that, as often happens in a country of 300 million, a business with an almost identical name existed. I considered changing the name but couldn't fathom anyone would care much considering our distance apart and the fact that we sold completely unrelated products to equally unrelated customers.

You can probably guess that I'm writing this because someone decided to care. Legal council for said company has informed me that I am the little fish and I can give up the name and the site to the big fish or wind up gasping for air on the dock. I'd prefer to fight, but just don't have the means and I'm sure they are counting on that. So at the end of this year the site will be theirs and AMF will be called something else. It's not something I look forward to. Most customers are more familiar with the name of our DVD series than our company name, but I've become attached to it. My family and friends talk about it and the title page is still used when I make videos for them.

It's a bummer to lose a bit more innocence every day but that is the world we live in. Some just make it their profession to take it from you.

Randall - owner of "?"