Diane Ladd, Oscar-nominated actor of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, dies aged 89

The death of the three-time Oscar nominee, whose starred in films including Chinatown, was announced by her daughter Laura Dern Oscar-nominated actor Diane Ladd has died at the age of 89. The actor, whose credits included Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Chinatown and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, died at her home in Ojai, California. The news was announced in a statement shared by her daughter, Oscar-winning actor Laura Dern. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/xpuL81l via IFTTT

From Airplane! to The Naked Gun, Jim Abrahams was a pioneer of spoof comedy

The writer and director, who died this week, helped to define what big screen spoofs would look like in the decades after

Very few people can honestly claim to have changed the direction of comedy, but Jim Abrahams – who died this week – is one of them. Thanks to the procession of spoof movies he made, both alone and with his fellow writer-directors David and Jerry Zucker, Abrahams helped to carve out a brand new genre of comedy, equal parts straight-faced and scattergun.

The most enduring Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (ZAZ) film remains Airplane! After leveraging the show they honed at University of Wisconsin–Madison into the entertaining if directionless sketch film The Kentucky Fried Movie, the trio came across the 1957 aviation thriller Zero Hour! on television. They were so taken by the silly plot and wooden acting that they decided to parody the whole thing, by hewing so closely to the original that they ended up buying the rights to avoid a lawsuit.

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