Nanaimo Daily News from Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada • 11

Monday. May 3. 1999 Daily FleWS Al 1 TELEVISION i3? v- 'J' Actor Oliver Reed dies in Malta VALLETTA, Malta (Reuters) British actor Oliver Reed died suddenly in Malta on Sunday after suffering a suspected heart attack in a Valletta bar, police said. Reed, 61 who appeared in 53 films, was in Malta for filming of The Gladiator, being produced by a Steven Spielberg company. He was to appear as a trainer of Roman gladiators.

A Maltese man said Reed has been in the bar with his wife, some Maltese friends and crew members of the Royal Navy frigate HMS Cumberland now in a Valletta harbour. "He had been drinking on the floor when he felt sick," said a friend, who asked not to be identified. "I tried giving him artificial respiration on a bench as an ambulance was called" the friend added. Reed died on his way to St. Luke's Hospital, three kilometres from Valletta, at about 2.30 p.m.

Born oh Feb 13, 1938, in Wimbledon, England, Reed reached his acting peak in the 1960s and 1970 in films such as Oliver! Women in Love, The Jokers and The Devils. He landed his first leading role in 1961 in Curse of the Werewolf and was quickly typecast as a villain. Reed, whose off-screen drinkihg bouts were legendary, onc described himself as "only an actor not a priest beyond reproach." "I'm not a villain, I've never hurt anyone," he said. "I'm just a tawdry character who explodes now and again." Glenda Jackson, an Oscar-winning actress turned politician who also starred in Women in Love, told SKY News television station that Reed was "immaculately professional." Jon Voight tackles role of Noah in NBC epic movie LOS ANGELES (AP) Jon Voight is a bit of a puzzle. Once a superstar and perennial player of good guys (Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home), he dropped out of the mainstream, surfacing years later as bad guy (Mission: Impossible, Enemy of the State).

Now he's back in good-guy mode, as the world's best-known flood survivor in the NBC epic Noah's Ark, which started Sunday and ends Monday at 9 p.m. At 60, Voight remains as boyish as when he tried and failed to hustle New York City in the Academy Award-winning Midnight Cowboy, or played the paralysed Vietnam veteran in Coming Home and won his own Oscar. The face is fuller, the cheeks as rosy as Santa Claus'. But Voight says he feels his age. During his years out of the spotlight, he says, "I did a lot of humanitarian things, rauses that I tod mrjor-tant" films about American Indians, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior by the French gov ernment.

He was also feeling "a little confusion" as he watched himself age. "Then I looked at my face, and I found it more interesting," he said with a laugh. It made him feel that "I could start doing a lot of things now." Like playing the turncoat spy boss in Mission: Impossible, the oily corporate lawyer, in The Rainmaker, the mysterious river rat in Anaconda, the renegade intelligence bureaucrat in Enemy of the State. Voight credited his mother with making him revitalize his career. When she was stricken with bone ASSOCIATED WSS Jon Voight poses at his production office in the Century City section of Los Angeles.

Voight undertakes the title role as thewraiTd's best-known flood survivor in the NBC epic, Noah's Ark. which started Sunday night and ends tonight. Behind him are paintings of actors Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange, given to him by a friend. Son of pilot chronicles bomber The Hallmark Entertainment film was shot in Australia and stars Mary Steenburgen, F. Murray Abraham, Carol Kane and James Coburn, who has just staged his own comeback with an Oscar at age 70 for his supporting role in Affliction.

John Irvin directecLBreak "I had an affection for the fellow," "VoTght said of Noah. "It must have been daunting for him to have all that responsibility. He was, after all, just a human being, not as extraordinary as some but extraordinary enough." campaign There is emotion on both Peter Spoden, a night fighter who become an airline pilot after the war, speaks of a moment, years after the whfTi a Historian showed him the nis It struck him that the young flyers were the same ages as his own sons. The horror of that realization is clear in his eyes. "It's something he wants to get off his chest," Linnell said.

He also said that time is ninning out to hear these stories first-hand from the men who lived them. Bob Pratt, a Halifax pilot interviewed in the film, died in February. "Unfortunately, he wasn't able to see the completed work," Linnell said quietly. "It's happening, the guys are going. That's why it had to be done now." Warriors of the Night will be broadcast on Discovery Channel, Tuesday to Friday, 9 p.m.

cancer, he and his brothers, geologist Barry and songwriter Chick, tried to spend as much time as possible with her. v. When Tom Cruise gave Voight his Mission: Impossible role, his mother urged him to take it, and happily accompanied him on location to Prague and London. "My mom and I were always very close," he said. "In the last five years of her life, she became my best friend.

To the last day of her life, she was actually growing in stature. She was "I hadn't seen anything that I felt really told the story in terms of, you know, the tactics and technology, so I sort of thought this might be a good story to tell." Bob Linnell bombers. Linnell combed British, German and Canadian miMtaryarchives, screened hours of film andcohtacted veterans' groups in Canada and Germany. He feels he's come up with a new approach. "I hadn't seen anything that I felt really told the story in terms of, you know, the tactics and technology, so I sort of thought this might be a good story to tell." There are moving moments, especially when the old warriors remember the battles of their youth.

A German pilot tells how he stalked the big, four-engine Lancaster and Halifax bombers, creeping up from below and behind to elude the watch funnier, very wise, very sweet. She was a strong woman." The four-hour Noah's Ark presented Voight with his greatest challenge in years. As written by Peter Barney (Enchanted April; TV's Merlin), Noah is a troubled man whose conversa-. tions with God draw skeptical reactions from neighbours and family. The story covers the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (out of biblical sequence) to the building of the ark, the flood and the aftermath.

ful tail gunners and send a fatal stream of cannon shells into the vulnerable wing fuel tanks. Linnell uses the resources of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Muse um in Hamilton only Lancaster still flying in North America, to show how the tactic worked. Filmed in daylight, a twin-engine vintage warplane slowly slides beneath the big Lancaster, giving the audience the same view (except in daylight) as the German pilot would have had as he pulled the trigger. The Lancaster, named after Victoria Cross "winner Andy MynarsM, is a star of the show in its own right. It is shown in flight, doing the tight, turn-and-dive manoeuvre known as a corkscrew, the recommended escape tactic for a bomber attacked by a fighter.

Another shot, from the bomb bay, shows the great bomb doors slowly swinging open to reveal a city passing below. "That was the other key element in the film, of course, the fact that we have that marvellous, marvellous machine," Linnell said. "If the warplane heritage people" hadn't gotten completely behind the project and could see it, obviously, I don't think it could have been anything," MALL Top Videos By The Canadian Press i The most popular videos for the period ending April 27 based on sales and rentals in Canada, sup- plied by Jumbo Video: RENTALS 1 The Siege 20th Century Fox 2 Stepmom Columbia Tristar 3 At First Sight MGM-Warner 4 A Bug's Life Walt Disney 5 The Waterboy --Touchstone 6. rstill Know Whit last Summer Columbia TriStar 7 Meet Joe Black Universal 8 A Night at the Roxbury Paramount 9 Ronin Warner 10 Home Fries -7 Warner SALES 4 1 A Bug's Life Walt Disney 2 The Rugrats Movie Paramount 3 Mulan Disney Doo's Greatest Myster- ies Warner f- 5 Mighty Joe Young Disney 6 101 Dalmatians Disney 7 Ever After: A Cinderella Story 20th Century Fox i 8 Crunch: Tae Boxing Workout HGV Video 9 BluesClues: Blue's Birthday Paramount i 10 Tae Bo Ultimate Body Workout 2 Pack Video Service 0j 91 Chapel Street 24-Hr. Info Line 754-3534 9:20 OP I WARNING: Suggest Scow, 4 Nutty, Coarse Language mm WARNING: Suggestive scenes, nudity, violence coarae language.

uttawa (ur it was a war Jought in darkness, six kilometres up in the night skies over Europe. Britain's Bomber Command of the Second Wdfld Wafc'fought a six-year carHp'aign that cost the lives of more than 60,000 young Britons, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and others. One of the Canadians who died in the darkness over Berlin in January 1944 left a two-month-old son behind The son, Bob Linnell, now a freelance film producer, grew up determined to chronicle the bomber war that took his father's life. His determination eventually brought him face-to-face with the German pilot who likely shot down his father. It also resulted in a four-part documentary called Warriors of the Night, which is being broadcast on Discovery Channel for four nights at 9 p.m.

ET, starting Tuesday. It marks the 54th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, VE-Day (May 8). The documentary mixes archival footage with contemporary interviews with former air warriors from both sides. Bomber crewmen recount their fears and frustrations as they groped for targets with only the most primitive of electronic aids. German night fighter pilots also talk about braving their own anti-aircraft fire and the gunners on the iX? 4750 Rutherford Road 758-8111 MONDAY ft aving Rutherford It's sure your Children's 16 care to the 6631 N.

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Access to our front doors is by foot on the sidewalk, past the chainlink fence. We apologire for the inconvenience. SATURDAY 9 30-5 30 ft SUNDAY 11:00,5 00.