Ravings of the Loquacious Madman

Indianapolis Regional

#1 Louisville 52 over #2 Michigan State 64

Boston Regional

#3 Villanova 78 over #1 Pittsburgh 76

Glendale Regional

#1 Connecticut 82 over #3 Missouri 75

Memphis Regional

#1 North Carolina 72 over #2 Oklahoma 60

Indianapolis Regional

#1 Louisville 103 over #12 Arizona 64

#3 Kansas 62 over #2 Michigan State 67

Boston Regional

#1 Pittsburgh 60 over #4 Xavier 55

#3 Villanova 77 over #2 Duke 54

Glendale Regional

#1 Connecticut 72 over #5 Purdue 60

#2 Memphis 91 over #3 Missouri 102

Memphis Regional

#1 North Carolina 98 over #4 Gonzaga 77

#3 Syracuse 71 over #2 Oklahoma 84

Indianapolis Regional

#1 Louisville 79 over #9 Siena 72

#12 Arizona 71 over #13 Cleveland State 57

#3 Kansas 60 over #11 Dayton 43

#2 Michigan State 74 over #10 USC 69

Boston Regional

#1 Pittsburgh 84 over #8 Oklahoma State 76

#4 Xavier 60 over #12 Wisconsin 49

#3 Villanova 89 over #6 UCLA 69

#2 Duke 74 over #7 Texas 69

Glendale Regional

#1 Connecticut 92 over #9 Texas A&M 66

#4 Washington 74 over #5 Purdue 76

#6 Marquette 79 over #3 Missouri 83

#2 Memphis 89 over #10 Maryland 70

Memphis Regional

#1 North Carolina 84 over #8 LSU 70

#4 Gonzaga 83 over #12 Western Kentucky 81

#3 Syracuse 78 over #6 Arizona State 67

#2 Oklahoma 73 over #10 Michigan 63

Natasha Richardson, a Tony Award-winning actress whose career melded glamorous celebrity with the bloodline of theater royalty, died Wednesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She had suffered head injuries in a skiing accident Monday north of Montreal, and was flown to New York on Tuesday. She was 45 and lived in Manhattan and in Millbrook, N.Y.

Alan Nierob, a spokesman for her husband, the actor Liam Neeson, announced Ms. Richardson’s death Wednesday night.

“Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha,” a statement said. “They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”

The statement did not disclose the cause of death or discuss Ms. Richardson’s medical condition.

The gravity of her injuries had prompted an outpouring of public interest and concern and flurries of rumor and speculation since Monday, when reports of her accident began filtering out of the Mont Tremblant ski resort in the Laurentian hills.

Ms. Richardson, who was not wearing a helmet, had fallen during a beginner’s skiing lesson, a resort spokeswoman, Lyne Lortie, said Tuesday. “It was a normal fall; she didn’t hit anyone or anything,” Ms. Lortie said. “She didn’t show any signs of injury. She was talking and she seemed all right.”

Still, an instructor and a ski patrol member accompanied her off the slopes, and when Ms. Richardson complained of a headache about an hour later in her hotel, she was taken by ambulance to a hospital nearby and later transferred to one in Montreal. She was flown to Lenox Hill on Tuesday afternoon.

On Wednesday, as television news vans stood outside, friends including Lauren Bacall and family members including Ms. Richardson’s mother, Vanessa Redgrave, and sister, the actress Joely Richardson, were observed arriving. Mr. Neeson was seen crouched beside her in an ambulance in Montreal the day before.

The news media attention harked back to the early 1990s, when the couple’s relationship was noted in newspapers. She was a blond, beautiful English actress, he was her ruggedly handsome Irish co-star, and the two were thought to be courting right on stage, during a New York production.

Ms. Richardson was an intense and absorbing actress who was unafraid of taking on demanding and emotionally raw roles. Classically trained, she was admired on both sides of the Atlantic for upholding the traditions of one of the great acting families of the modern age.

Her grandfather was Sir Michael Redgrave, one of England’s finest tragedians. He passed his gifts, if not always his affection, to his daughters, Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, and his son, Corin Redgrave. The night Vanessa was born, her father was playing Laertes to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet.

Ms. Richardson was the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and the film director Tony Richardson, known for “Tom Jones” and “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.” Married in the early 1960s, they were divorced in 1967. He died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 63.

Ms. Richardson came to critical prominence in England in 1985 as Nina, Chekhov’s naïve and vulnerable ingénue in “The Seagull,” a role her mother had played to great acclaim in 1964. It was a road production, and when it reached London, Vanessa Redgrave joined the cast as the narcissistic actress Arkadina. The production became legendary, but working with her mother intimidated her.

“She rehearsed like a tornado,” Ms. Richardson recalled in a 1993 interview with The New York Times Magazine. “It was completely crazy. She rolled on the floor in some scenes. I was terrified of being on stage with her.”

But almost no one doubts that Ms. Redgrave inspired her daughter as well. Like her mother, Ms. Richardson was known for disappearing into a role, for not capitalizing on her looks and for being drawn to characters under duress.

In the performance that made her a star in the United States, she played the title role on Broadway in a 1993 revival of “Anna Christie,” Eugene O’Neill’s grueling portrait of a waterfront slattern in confrontation with the abusive men in her life. Embracing the emotional wreckage that showed in her character’s face, she modeled her makeup each night on Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.”

Her performance, nominated for a Tony Award, was vibrantly sensual, and her scenes with her co-star, Mr. Neeson, were acclaimed as sizzling and electric. The chemistry between them extended offstage as well; shortly after the run, Ms. Richardson separated from her husband, the producer Robert Fox. She and Mr. Neeson married in 1994.

Besides her husband, Ms. Richardson is survived by their two sons, Micheal Richard Antonio Neeson, 13, and Daniel Jack Neeson, 12, as well as her mother, her sister, a half-sister, Katherine Grimond, and a half-brother, Carlo Sparanero, also known as Carlo Nero, the son of Ms. Redgrave and Franco Nero.

Ms. Richardson’s Tony Award came in 1998, for best actress in a musical, for her performance as Sally Bowles, the gifted but desperately needy singer in decadent Weimar Berlin who is at the center of “Cabaret.”

It was a remarkable award: Ms. Richardson’s strengths did not include singing. But her reinvention of a role that was performed memorably by Jill Haworth in the 1966 Broadway production proved that a performer could act a song as well as sing it and make it equally affecting.

“Ms. Richardson, you see, isn’t selling the song; she’s selling the character,” Ben Brantley, writing in The Times, said of her delivery of the title song. “And as she forges ahead with the number, in a defiant, metallic voice, you can hear the promise of the lyrics tarnishing in Sally’s mouth. She’s willing herself to believe in them, and all too clearly losing the battle.”

Natasha Jane Richardson was born in London on May 11, 1963. She made her first film appearance at the age of 4, playing a bridesmaid at the wedding of her mother’s character in “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” directed by her father. She attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and got her first job in an outdoor production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

She eventually moved to the United States, where “no one cares about the Redgrave baggage,” as she once said. She gave her greatest performances there.

In the movies she played the title character in Paul Schrader’s film “Patty Hearst” (1988), about the heiress and kidnap victim. She worked with Mr. Schrader again on “The Comfort of Strangers” (1990), a creepy psychological drama with a screenplay by Harold Pinter from a novel by Ian McEwan.

The same year, she also starred in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” an adaptation of the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood about subjugated women in a pseudo-Christian theocracy. In a 1993 television adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s one-act play “Suddenly, Last Summer,” she was Catherine Holly, a young woman (played by Elizabeth Taylor in the original movie) driven to the brink of insanity by the gruesome death of her young cousin. And she played the title role in the 1993 television movie “Zelda,” based on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ferociously competitive and emotionally delicate wife.

Ms. Richardson’s more recent work has included more conventional Hollywood fare, including a remake of “The Parent Trap” (1998), the comedy “Maid in Manhattan” (2002) and the teenage melodrama “Wild Child” (2008).

On stage, she appeared on Broadway in “Closer,” Patrick Marber’s play about infidelity and the Internet, and as Blanche DuBois in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Though the production did not draw much praise, Ms. Richardson’s performance did, as perhaps her grandfather had envisioned.

In 1985, a week before he died, Sir Michael, enfeebled by Parkinson’s disease, went to see Ms. Richardson as Ophelia in a production of “Hamlet.” Turning to his daughter Vanessa, Ms. Richardson’s mother, he uttered a brief review. “She’s a true actress,” he said.

Indianapolis Regional

#1 Louisville 74 over #16Morehead State 54

#8 Ohio State 72 over #9 Siena 74 2OT

#12 Arizona 84 over #5 Utah 71

#4 Wake Forest 69 over #13 Cleveland State 84

#6 West Virginia 60 over #11 Dayton 68

#3 Kansas 84 over #14 North Dakota State 74

#10 USC 72 over #7 Boston College 55

#2 Michigan State 77 over #15 Robert Morris 62

Boston Regional

#1 Pittsburgh 72 over #16 East Tennessee State 62

#9 Tennessee over #8 Oklahoma State

#12 Wisconsin 61 over #5 Florida State 59 OT

#4 Xavier 77 over #13 Portland State 59

#6 UCLA 65 over #11 Virginia Commonwealth 64

#3 Villanova 80 over #14 American 67

#7 Texas 76 over #10 Minnesota 62

#2 Duke 86 over #15 Binghampton 62

Glendale Regional

#1 Connecticut 103 over #16 Chattanooga 47

#8 BYU 66 over #9 Texas A&M 79

#5 Purdue 61 over #12 Northern Iowa 56

#4 Washington 71 over #13 Mississippi State 58

#6 Marquette 58 over #11 Utah State 57

#3 Missouri 78 over #14 Cornell 59

#10 Maryland 84 over #7 California 71

#2 Memphis 81 over #15 Cal State Northridge 70

Memphis Regional

#1 North Carolina 101 over #16 Radford 58

#8 LSU 75 over #9 Butler 71

#5 Illinois 72 over #12 Western Kentucky 76

#4 Gonzaga 77 over #13 Arkansas 64

#6 Arizona State 66 over #11 Temple 57

#3 Syracuse 59 over #14 Stephen F. Austin 44

#10 Michigan 62 over #7 Clemson 59

#2 Oklahoma 82 over #15 Morgan State 54

Actor and longtime political activist Ron Silver died Sunday morning, succumbing to a long battle with cancer, friends of the liberal Democrat-turned-GOP stalwart told The Post.

"Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him this morning," said Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition, which Silver helped create.

"He had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years and his family is making arrangements for a private service."

Friends of Silver first told Post columnist Cindy Adams of the native New Yorker’s death.

The steely-eyed, blunt-talking Silver, 62, enjoyed a long career on the stage, TV and in movies, and most recently hosted a public affairs talk show on Sirius satellite radio.

Silver might be best known for playing legal scholar Alan Dershowitz in "Reversal of Fortune," about the successful appeal of Claus von Bulow’s conviction for putting his socialite wife into a permanent coma.

Once a self-identified lifelong Democrat, Silver was a founding member of the liberal-leaning Creative Coalition in 1989. But he made a breathtaking political transformation, going from far left to radical right after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, enthusiastically backing a second term for President Bush.

"Twelve years ago I was here for the Democratic convention. I was on the platform committee. Zell Miller was the keynote speaker. A lot’s changed since then, I can tell you," a chuckling Silver told The Washington Post.

"If you asked me on September 10, 2001, would I consider going to the Republican National Convention and speaking, I would have thought you were from another planet and didn’t know who I was."

Silver’s last public appearance came on "Larry King Live" in late October just before last year’s presidential election.

The actor seemed to be swinging slightly back to the left, and took a moderate, down-the-line stance on then-Sen. Barack Obama’s race with GOP rival John McCain.

Silver acknowledged the GOP’s failings under President Bush and seemed resigned to an oncoming landslide.

"The Republican Party, if they are out of power for a while, needs to regroup and rethink who they are as a party," he said. "This deregulation, this whole Reagan Revolution did not seem to work in this crisis."

Silver’s art followed his life.

NY Post

On Sunday March 8th 2009 at 1:59AM, clocks will move forward one hour.  Enjoy the missed sleep.