The day's movie news was obviously dominated by the passing of Elizabeth Taylor. Some examples:
Roger Ebert pays tribute: "[A] great actress and a greater star … Of few deaths can it be said that they end an era, but hers does." (RogerEbert.com)
The Telegraph collects Taylor's "20 best quotes," from "Big girls need big diamonds" to "It seems the older the men get, the younger their new wives get." (The Telegraph)
The Academy moves Taylor's two Oscar acceptance speeches to the head of its page devoted to video from past Oscar ceremonies. One is the emotional speech she gave in 1961 not long after being released from the hospital, where she had undergone an emergency tracheotomy. Her breathless and brief acceptance speech (left) begins, "I don't really know how to express my gratitude for this and for everything." The second came 32 years later, when she was honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her work on increasing AIDS awareness, and when she vowed to be "as rowdy and activist as I have to be, and God willing for as long as I have to be." (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)
Todd McCarthy begins his remembrance of a chance encounter with Taylor at Chasen's restaurant in the late 1970s with a blunt statement: "She literally took my breath away." He almost collided with her walking in the door, he says, remembering his flustered, breathless apology and her quiet smile, which he imagines contained "a little acknowledgement that throwing guys off balance was something not unknown to her." I'm with him up until the last paragraph, when he calls Angelina Jolie "the only major female Hollywood star whose beauty and dramatic personal life rival those of her predecessor," which is something I suspect Jolie would be the first to term an overstatement. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Jeff Wells agrees with McCarthy about the effect of seeing Taylor in the flesh as he recalls seeing her in a New York nightclub about 30 years ago. "I managed a glimpse or two of her eyes, and was slightly surprised to discover that they were really as beautiful as I'd been told. I was mesmerized. I think I actually said out loud, 'Wow,'" he writes, before going into a lengthy and sober assessment of her career. (Hollywood Elsewhere)
From Movie City News, a link to a 2010 Vanity Fair story that excerpts the Sam Kashner/Nancy Schoenberger book "Furious Love," which draws upon previously unpublished letters that Richard Burton sent to Taylor. One prime tidbit: when they met on the set of "Cleopatra" for the first time, Burton appeared to ignore Taylor at first, then leaned to her and deadpanned, "Has anybody ever told you that you're a very pretty girl?" (Vanity Fair)
The Mirror notes that Taylor had a Twitter account (where she once famously raved about her friend Michael Jackson's posthumous movie "This Is It"), and rounds up celebrity tweets that paid tribute to the actress and icon. The list has a distinctly British slant to it, and includes tweets from Kylie Minogue, Stephen Fry, Serena Williams, George Michael, Kirstie Alley and Boy George, whose tribute was typical: "R.I.P. the amazing Liz Taylor, goddess, actress, aids activist and one of the world's true beauties!" (The Mirror)
