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The comedy world has lost another beloved performer, in a year that has seemed to claim more legends than most years. The iconic Gene Wilder passed away earlier today, at the age of 83, at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. His nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, revealed that the actor died due to complications from Alzheimer's disease.

The actor was born Jerome Silberman on June 11, 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Jeanne (Baer) and William J. Silberman, who worked as a manufacturer of miniature whiskey and beer bottles. He made his professional acting debut in the 1961 off Broadway adaptation of Roots, before making his Broadway debut later that year in The Complaisant Lover. He won the Clement Derwent Award that year as the most promising newcomer. He also starred in the 1963 play Mother Courage and Her Children, alongside Anne Bancroft, who would become Mel Brooks' wife, which would change his life forever.

After meeting...

The Criterion Collection's recent releases of Chantal Akerman's early work have given me my first opportunity to see many of the films that established her reputation. The most lauded—Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975); Je, tu, il, elle (1976); and News from Home (1977)—more than live up to their reputations, but it's the feature film she made immediately after News, Les rendezvous d'Anna(1978), that has most piqued my curiosity. This post will be the first in an on-going series of brief essays that attempt to describe why a particular sequence or image generates an unexpected frisson in the viewer, or how a particular moment represents in concentrated form the larger formal or thematic interests of the film. Pedantry aside, Girish recently provoked a fair amount of discussion about the "small, striking moments" in films. That's what I'm after here. We'll see if it works.

The Image In Question

This...