Jiri Menzel, a Czech director whose 1966 movie "Closely Watched Trains" won the Academy Award for the best foreign language film has died. He was 82.
Menzel's wife, Olga, announced his death late Sunday, saying he died the previous day. No details were given. Three years ago, Menzel underwent a brain operation and was kept in an artificially induced coma for several weeks after it.
"Dearest Jirka, I thank you for each and every day I could spend with you. Each was extraordinary," his wife said on Facebook.
Menzel made some 20 movies and was one of the leading filmmakers of the new wave of Czechoslovak cinema that appeared in the 1960s. His movies represented a radical departure from socialist realism, a typical communist-era genre focusing on realistically depicting the struggles of the working class.
Unlike colleagues such as Milos Forman, Jan Nemec and Ivan Passer, Menzel didn't emigrate after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
"Closely Watched Trains" was his first feature movie. Based on a novel by Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, it tells the story of a dispatcher's apprentice coming of age at a small train station during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
His next collaboration with Hrabal, "Larks on a String" in 1969 was another tragicomic description of life under a totalitarian regime, this time under communism.
The movie was immediately banned by the communist authorities. After the 1989 anti-Communist revolution led by Vaclav Havel, it won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin international film festival.
Menzel's other adaptation of Hrabal's work include "Cutting It Short" (1980), "The Snowdrop Festival" (1984) and "I served the King of England" (2006).
His 1985 comedy "My Sweet Little Village" was nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign film.
A graduate of Prague's Academy of Performing Arts in 1962, he was also known for directing plays and also as an actor.
Among other awards, Menzel received the French Order of Arts and Literature.
Nintendo reports lower profits as demand drops for its aging Switch console
Nintendo, the Japanese video game maker behind the Super Mario franchise, said Tuesday that its profit fell 60% in the first half of the fiscal year, as demand waned for its Switch console, now in its eighth year since going on sale.
Kyoto-based Nintendo Co. reported a 108.7 billion yen ($715 million) profit for the April-September period, as sales slipped 34% from the previous year to 523 billion yen ($3.4 billion).
More than 74% of its sales revenue came from overseas, according to Nintendo, which didn't break down quarterly numbers.
Global Switch sales during the period dropped to 4.7 million machines from 6.8 million units the previous year.
But Nintendo said in a statement that Switch sales were still growing and vowed to stick to its goal of selling a Switch console to each and every individual, not just one Switch per every household.
Nintendo stuck to its earlier projection for a 300 billion yen ($2 billion) profit for the full fiscal year through March 2025, down nearly 29% from the previous fiscal year.
Annual sales were forecast to drop 23% to1.28 trillion yen ($8.4 billion).
It also lowered its Switch sales projection for the fiscal year to 12.5 million units from an earlier forecast to sell 13.5 million.
Nintendo and other game and toy makers rake in their biggest profits during the Christmas shopping season, as well as New Year's, a holiday celebrated with fanfare in Japan, when children receive cash gifts from grandparents and other relatives.
Nintendo has not yet announced details on a successor to the Switch.
Among its million-seller game software titles for the fiscal half were "Paper Mario RPG," which sold 1.95 million units since going on sale in May, and "Luigi Mansion 2... Read More