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Mira Furlan has passed away - at the age of 65 - far too young.
Babylon 5 is one of the great stories - top notch writing and acting - and Mira's portrayal of Delenn is memorable.
Good bye and thank you.
Mira Furlan, 'Lost' and 'Babylon 5' actress, dead at 65:
Actress Mira Furlan, best known for her roles in the television series "Lost" and "Babylon 5," has died. She was 65.
Furlan's Twitter account confirmed her passing on Thursday with a photo that included her death date as Jan. 20. It also shared a past quote from Furlan.
"I look at the stars. It's a clear night and the Milky Way seems so near. That's where I'll be going soon. 'We're all star stuff', I suddenly remember Delenn's line from Joe's script. Not a bad prospect. I am not afraid. In the meantime, let me close my eyes and sense the beauty around me. And take that breath under the dark sky full of stars. Breathe in. Breathe out. That's all," the quote reads.
[...] "Very few people knew that side of Mira: the fiery, fearless side that fought ceaselessly for art. She brought all of those traits to Delenn, and in turn I tried to write speeches for her that would allow her to comment on what was happening to her homeland without calling it out by name," Straczynski wrote.
Mira Furlan, ‘Babylon 5’ and ‘Lost’ Actress, Dies at 65:
Mira Furlan, best known for her roles as Delenn on “Babylon 5” and Danielle Rousseau on “Lost,” died on Wednesday. She was 65.
Her Twitter account announced[*] the news on Thursday, and “Babylon 5” creator J. Michael Straczynski posted a tribute to the actress later that night.
[...] While a cause of death has yet not been revealed, Straczynski said the cast and crew of “Babylon 5” had “known for some time now that Mira’s health was fading.” “We kept hoping that she would improve,” he wrote. “In a group email sent to the cast a while back, I heard that she might be improving.”
However, Straczynski said he later got the call from “Babylon 5” co-star Peter Jurasik that Furlan’s husband, director Goran Gajić, was “bringing her home.”
“Mira was a good and kind woman, a stunningly talented performer, and a friend to everyone in the cast and crew of ‘Babylon 5,’ and we are all devastated by the news,” he wrote. “The cast members with whom she was especially close since the show’s end will need room to process this moment, so please be gentle if they are unresponsive for a time. We have been down this road too often, and it only gets harder.”
[*] https://twitter.com/FurlanMira/status/1352421126496894976/photo/1
Also at BBC.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Sunday January 24 2021, @08:46AM (13 children)
She will be missed. Babylon 5 was one of those formative series for me as a teenager. I will remember her face forever.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday January 24 2021, @08:58AM (5 children)
I feel the same about Peter Falk. Whereas this article just made be go "wtf is Mira Furlan, wtf is Babylon 5 and wtf cares?" But I recognize my bias: different generation :)
(Score: 5, Funny) by driverless on Sunday January 24 2021, @11:12AM
Mira Furlan is the code name for a chipset for RISC-V under development in Finland, to go into an overall system design called Babylon-V, in this case typo'd into "Babylon 5" in the press release. As for who cares, all free software fans everywhere I'd say.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday January 24 2021, @02:52PM
Considering that Babylon 5 began airing nine years before Columbo ended, I suspect it's at least as much a matter of preferred genre as generation... Though at 35 years Columbo ran long enough to span a couple generations.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by oumuamua on Sunday January 24 2021, @03:20PM (1 child)
For those who have not seen it, wondering if they should; the answer is yes. But be warned that it is not as polished looking as other shows. What it does have is great sci-fi, acting and drama. A multi-season arc tackles the philosophical question of whether societies should cooperate or compete.
(Score: 2, Informative) by TomTheFighter on Monday January 25 2021, @02:46PM
>not as polished
Interestingly enough, the CGI animation ( at least in first couple seasons as I recall ) was all done using Commodore Amigas and Video Toaster appliances.
http://www.generationamiga.com/2020/08/30/how-24-commodore-amiga-2000s-created-babylon-5/ [generationamiga.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster [wikipedia.org]
Per the GenerationAmiga article, each frame took 45 minutes to render.
Cutting edge stuff the time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Monday January 25 2021, @05:55AM
I don't think B5 is generation-specific. It combined some of the best parts of the Golden Age with modern character development. It's worth a try, you may love it. Don't let the first episode turn you off.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Sunday January 24 2021, @11:56AM (6 children)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/arts/television/mira-furlan-dead.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @01:03PM (5 children)
Tragedy! The hospital is going to miss out on the Covid-death bonus and the media can't include her on their "young people dying of Covid" sob stories.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @02:26PM
Oh, come on, since when have inconvenient little things like facts or truths ever stood in the way of a good story...there's always a way to spin things...blah blah blah '..death hastened by complications caused by current Covid emergency..' is a vaguely all inclusive weasel phrase, and will do if you can't pin the Covid tail directly on the donkey.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @04:53PM
I overheard my mother listening to German state media doing one of those stories about a 20-something dying of Covid. "He was always so healthy, and he said nothing could happen to him!" - that kind of stuff.
I looked at the official death stats for people his age (minuscule), and the official age pyramid. Turns out on a national population that would yield about 20 deaths in that cohort per year. So the media could have a new story about every two weeks to keep the panic up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @07:09PM (2 children)
I thought COVID went away right after the election?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @08:25PM
But Trump contested, so the Demonrats had to increase the covid.
I just spent two weeks in Florida being face to face like a human again. And the streets weren't piled up with hearses and coffins. It was pretty much life as it used to be.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 25 2021, @07:03PM
Nope.
COVID will be with us for a very long time. (at least the next four years)
Many new policies must be enacted because of COVID.
A WHERE clause on a SQL UPDATE statement is just adding unnecessary complexity to something simple.