In Jordan, RIP Moustapha Akkad -- news for the film buffs

This took me by surprise -- two of the victims of the Amman bombings earlier this week were Akkad and his daughter Rima. As you can see from Akkad's IMDB page, he's probably most well known for being a (if not the) moneyman behind the Halloween series, though he also tried his hand at directing, most notably The Message, his mid-seventies epic about Mohammed that faced a slew of controversies, the attention of bad film buffs via the Medveds, and even a hostage situation during its initial American run.

Without knowing much else about the man, I have to say Akkad was, at the least, a classic case of the smooth operating wheeler-dealer who loved films, wanted to make it big and had to get to the States from a long ways away to do it. His peers would be the likes of di Laurentiis and Golan and Globus; if he didn't make as big a splash he tried his best to be that memorable.