IT is now 2:45 PM on December 29th 2016 ... We've lost so many wonderful people this year .. Great and very talented people, but most of all good people and human beings as we all are, yet they were known and loved by millions of adoring fans.
We lost the Great One MUHAMMAD ALI, PRINCE, the uber talented DAVID BOWIE, Leon Russell, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, and the great GEORGE MICHAEL on Christmas Day. It is the end of December and we've lost three much loved stars this week in George Michael, Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds the very next day, "Please let it End" and let's move on to 2017 .. And God Bless them all who've passed, We Miss You All.
sean_ono_lennonI'm absolutely speechless with the news of Debbie passing just a day after her daughter. I knew how close they were, and because of Carrie I have so many wonderful memories of Debbie in her house next to Carrie's. They were so absolutely close it seems clear that Debbie wanted to be with her daughter. Carrie and Debbie's relationship was a template for mine and my mother's. I'm so stunned. Now we must double our efforts to send love to Billie, and to Todd. I don't know what to say right now, I'm truly in shock. I'm just...this is too much. Debbie was indeed a timeless legend and so much of Carrie's effortless grace on screen came from Debbie's mentoring. Debbie taught me many things. I literally have no energy left in my body I feel completely drained of all blood, I feel utterly deflated. I can't imagine how Billie feels please concentrate your energies on helping her through this tornado of tragedies. I can't imagine losing two such pillars in such a short time. I love you Billie. And I love you Carrie and Debbie always. Thank you for what was an endless fountain of kindness and generosity from both of you. (Debbie we had just watched one of the debates w Carrie at your house and I'll never forget you telling Carrie and I to shut up because you were so passionately against Trump and wanted to hear the television but Carrie and I were joking around a bit loudly. I miss you so much!)
Carrie Fisher, who rose to fame as Princess Leia in the "Star Wars" films and later endured drug addiction before going on to tell her story as a best-selling author, died on Tuesday aged 60, her family said.
Fisher, a mental health advocate who spoke about her own struggles with bipolar disorder and cocaine addiction, had suffered a heart attack on Friday as she flew into Los Angeles.
The daughter of actor Debbie Reynolds and the late singer Eddie Fisher had been returning from England where she was shooting the third season of the British sitcom "Catastrophe."
"Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter," Reynolds said on Facebook. "I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop."
Fisher's friend and former Star Wars' co-star Mark Hamill, who played Leia's brother Luke Skywalker, said in a tweet: "No words. #Devastated"
Fisher was met by paramedics and rushed to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center after suffering the heart attack during the flight on Friday.
She made headlines last month when she disclosed that she had a three-month love affair with her "Star Wars" co-star Harrison Ford 40 years ago.
Fisher revealed the secret to People magazine while promoting her new memoir, "The Princess Diarist," just before it went on sale. The book is based on Fisher's diaries from her time working on the first "Star Wars" movie.
Harrison said in a statement Fisher was funny, emotionally fearless and one-of-a-kind. "She lived her life, bravely...We will all miss her."
Fisher said the affair started and ended in 1976 during production on the blockbuster sci-fi adventure in which she first appeared as the intrepid Princess Leia. Ford played the maverick space pilot Han Solo.
"It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend," Fisher told People. She was 19 and Ford was 33 at the time.
Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher
"How could you ask such a shining specimen of a man to be satisfied with the likes of me? I was so inexperienced, but I trusted something about him. He was kind," she wrote of Ford in the memoir, the latest of several books Fisher authored.
Fisher reprised the role in two "Star Wars" sequels. She gained sex symbol status in 1983's "Return of the Jedi" when her Leia character wore a metallic gold bikini while enslaved by the diabolical Jabba the Hutt.
She returned last year in Disney's (DIS.N) reboot of the "Star Wars" franchise, "The Force Awakens," appearing as the more matronly General Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance movement fighting the evil First Order.
Filming was completed in July on Fisher's next appearance as Leia in "Star Wars: Episode VIII," which is set to reach theaters in December 2017.
Fisher's Princess Leia makes a surprise appearance at the end of "Rogue One," the latest blockbuster, which opened this month, in the "Star Wars" series.
Shortly after news of her death was made public, her dog Gary, who has his own Twitter account, said goodbye: "Saddest tweets to tweet. Mommy is gone. I love you @carrieffisher."
She is survived by her mother, Reynolds, her daughter, Billie Lourd, and her brother Todd Fisher.
There’s a moment in George Michael’s music video for “Freedom! ’90” where director David Fincher’s camera zooms in on a leather jacket hanging in a closet. It’s the piece Michael sported proudly three years earlier in the music video for “Faith” — the item that helped Michael reinvent himself from the squeaky-clean teen idol in Wham! into a bad-ass sex god of the 1980s. But with “Freedom! ’90,” Michael sought to overhaul his image once again. And a few moments later, that leather jacket spontaneously combusts; ditto the “Faith” video’s Wurlitzer jukebox and his Gretsch guitar. Goodbye to all that.
“They were horrified,” Michael recalled of his label Sony’s reaction, in an MTVinterview in 2004. “Why would you burn something that made Sony $150 million dollars? But I quite enjoyed it.”
It might be hard to imagine now, but when George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” music video was released in 1990, it was nothing short of revolutionary. Its creator, who was embroiled in a dispute with his label, Sony, over his refusal to heavily promote his album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, chose not to star in his own music video. Instead, he scored a cast of lip-synching supermodels — Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, plus a crew of male models — who vamped gorgeously in a dark and dingy space. And for a Grammy-winning artist who was shaped into a global pop star thanks to MTV, Michael was slyly flipping off the network that helped make him a star.
“George was thumbing his nose at MTV with the video,” producer Simon Straker told EW in 1991.
THE GIRLS of FREEDOM
Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patiz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford
But once it hit airwaves, “Freedom! ’90” went into heavy rotation on the cable channel, scored five MTV Video Music Awards nominations (it won zero), became one of the most memorable videos of the last two-and-a-half decades, and served as a rallying anthem for the LGBT movement. It was such a classic, in fact, that Michael himself tried to recapture some of that supermodel magic for his 1992 single “Too Funky.”
“One of my better ideas was getting five gorgeous supermodels [miming to the song] that people still want to look at today,” Michael said in an interview at the time, according to the biography Careless Whispers. “If you’re going to say to your record company, ‘Look, I’m not going to be in this video,’ I’d say that’s a fairly good consolation prize really, you know, those five gorgeous babes.”
While Michael chose not to get in front the camera, he was heavily involved in its creative execution. The inspiration for supermodel stars came after Michael saw a portrait of the women shot by Peter Lindbergh for the January 1990 cover of British Vogue. And he hired director David Fincher, who’d had success helming Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, and top stylist Camilla Nickerson. The team holed up on a London soundstage for several days. “They were long days,” Turlington told Harper’s Bazaar. “I don’t recall any specific direction from David Fincher. He was focused on the lighting I recall. George was there the whole time and very involved.”
As Nickerson told Allure in a definitive history of the video, “It was epic. It had a grandeur and a Blade Runner feel.”
Michael was friendly with his model cast prior to shooting, but they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into upon arriving on set. Evangelista reportedly had to be convinced to participate. And Michael had sent his stars music to learn just days before production began. Turlington recalled to Bazaar that each model largely shot her parts separately. And the scenes were somewhat uncomfortable. “I do remember feeling a little bit like, ‘Oh, why did I get stuck in the tub? I want the big glamour-puss hair. I want to be wearing the heels or blowing cool smoke rings, like Tatjana,” Crawford told Allure. “But if you were working with good people, you just did what they asked.”
Off-camera, however, the vibe on-set was jovial among cast and crew. “We’d drink red wine and sing songs in the evening because it kind of went on late,” hair stylist Guido told Allure. “And George was just like one of the gang, in the trailers, hanging out.”
“Freedom! ’90” would go on to become one of Michael’s signature songs — he performed it at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics — and the video remains a defining moment in MTV’s history. As for Michael bidding farewell to his past as an ’80s pop icon and embracing an uncertain future at the dawn of a new decade, he felt vindicated: “I thought that was a wonderful way to get rid of the image, really… I felt that way,” he told MTV in 2004. “I wanted to get rid of that. I felt like I’d cornered myself again.”
The SUPER MODELS of the FREEDOM VIDEO
The Most BEAUTIFUL GROUP of MOMEN Ever Assembled
on GEOREGE MICHAELS "FREEDOM" Video
A Young GEORGE MICHAEL
The WHAM DAYS
GOD BLESS YOU GEORGE
George Michael and Linda Evangelista on the set of FREEDOM
It's a sad day in Greenwich Village today, for lovers of good Italian Food and dining out. Famed restaurant to the stars Da Silvano has closed its doors after 40 years in business. Silvano Marcheto of Florence Italy moved to the great city of New York and worked as a waiter at the now defunct Derby Restaurant on Macdougal Street in New York's Greenwich Village before going out on his own in 1976. Silvano acquired a small storefront that was formerly a laundromat and turned it into a place that would one day become the top celebrity spot in the of New York City. When Silvano first opened Da Silvano back in 1976 his rent was a mere $ 500 a month, it's now $41,000 a month and one of the reasons the restaurant is closing, another victim of a greedy landlord. Silvano knew how to churn out great Italian Food, Tuscan in particular and to take good care of his customers. His customers besides us mere mortals would turn out to be a whose who of Hollywood, the Fashion and Art Worlds, Publishing and Media Big Wigs, and all sorts of celebrities under the Sun which include the likes of; Paul McCarteny, Sting, Keith Richards, David Bowie, Richard Gere, Gwyneth Palthrow, Anna Wintour, and on and on, everbody who was anybody dined at Da Silvano and I myself witnessed the throngs of celebrities that I myself took care of as a Maitre'd / Manager at Da Silvano in its heyday as Celebrity Central of New York.Da Silvano had quite a good run doing a brisk busines for about 30 years until a string of events that began to bring less and less business to the onced packed-every-night restaurant. The first thing that started the slow down turn of business and the great luster of this once booming restaurant was when Grayden Carter the famed Editor in Chief of the celebrity powerful Vanity Fair Magazine went and opened his own restaurant the Waverly Inn. This was the beginning of what would become the end of Da Silvano in December of 2016. Carter who dined at Da Silvano 5 night a week where he had his own regular table opened the Waverly Inn in 2008 and things at Da Silvano immediately began going south. Pracitcally the entire Celeb Crowd that frequented Da Silvano on a nightly basis for years simply Jumped Shipped to Carter's Waverly Inn and Silvano had lost most of his Celebrity Crowd. The US and World economy took a tank and this didn't help things either. I who lived in a building very close to Da Silvano noticed an immediate decline in the restaurants business which I estimated at somehere around 40 to 50 percent until the current situation we now see, the sad day of Silvano Marchetto closing the days of his beloved namesake restaurant Da Silvano in December 2016, it's the end of an Era.
by Daniel Bellino Zwicke
SILVANO MARCHETTO
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SILVANO in Better Days
with Art Dealer Tony Shafrazzi (L)
and Publisher Peter Brandt (R)
Silvano Marchetto with one of His Beloved Ferrari 's
A PARTIAL LIST of Da SILVANO'S many CELEBRITY & Notable CUSTOMERS over The Years ...
