– Bad news comes in threes, and there’s been plenty of it the last few days. Firstly, as we’re sure you’ve seen elsewhere, comes the sad death of Patrick Swayze, aged 57. The star of “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” passed away Monday at home, after fighting pancreatic cancer for the last 18 months. His last role was in the A&E series “The Beast” earlier in the year, filmed after his diagnosis. Chris Hewitt over at Empire has paid tribute better than we ever could.
– Poet, punk rocker and “Basketball Diaries” author Jim Carroll passed away on Friday of a heart attack. A high school basketball star turned heroin addict turned rock-star-and-poet, The Jim Carroll Band’s best known song, ‘People Who Died’, was featured in “E.T,” and his high school memoir was turned into a 1995 film, where Carroll was played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
– Finally, Michael Galasso, the Louisiana-born composer, died in Paris last Wednesday, aged 60. He was best known for his extraordinary collaborations with Wong Kar-Wai, in “Chungking Express” and his all-time-classic score for “In The Mood For Love,” where he brilliantly expanded on Shigeru Umebayashi’s haunting theme, as you can hear below.
– In better composer-related news, the concert “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” will see Ennio Morricone conduct the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for an evening of music drawn from his film scores. We still stare off into the middle distance sometimes, dreaming of a world in which Ennio Morricone was able to do the score to “Inglourious Basterds”. Tickets go on sale at 10am Sunday, and the concert is at the Hollywood Bowl on October 25th. [The Daily Swarm]