Blade Runners, Deer Hunters, & Blowing the Bloody Doors Off

Blade Runners, Deer Hunters, & Blowing the Bloody Doors Off
Author: Michael Deeley
Publisher:
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2009-04-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Recounts the author's career in films and the battles he fought while making his cult classics, from defending the infamous love scene of "Don't Look Now" to seizing control of "Convoy."

Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off

Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off
Author: Michael Deeley
Publisher:
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2017-10-24
Genre: Motion picture producers and directors
ISBN: 9780750985925

Few would imagine that one man links Ridley Scott's visionary sci-fi classic Blade Runner; The Deer Hunter, that searing study of lives ruined by the Vietnam War; and The Italian Job, the much loved British caper that made an icon of Michael Caine. But Michael Deeley has worked with some of the toughest film-makers, and lived to tell the tale, in this frank and humorous rollercoaster-ride through the ways and wiles of getting great movies made.

The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter
Author: Brad Prager
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2023-09-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1839025425

Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter was met with both critical and commercial success upon its release in 1978. However, it was also highly controversial and came to be seen as a powerful statement on the human cost of America's longest war and as a colonialist glorification of anti-Asian violence. Brad Prager's study of the film considers its significance as a war movie and contextualizes its critical reception. Drawing on an archive of contemporaneous materials, as well as an in-depth analysis of the film's lighting, mise-en-scène, multiple cameras and shifting depths of field, Prager examines how the film simultaneously presents itself as a work of cinematic realism, while problematically blurring the lines between fact and fiction. While Cimino felt he had no responsibility to historical truth, depicting a highly stylized version of his own fantasies about the Vietnam War, Prager argues that The Deer Hunter's formal elements were used to bolster his troubling depictions of war and race. Finally, comparing the film with later depictions of US-led intervention such as Albert and Allen Hughes's Dead Presidents (1995) and Spike Lee's Da Five Bloods (2020), Prager illuminates The Deer Hunter's major presumptions, blind spots and omissions, while also presenting a case for its classic status.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner
Author: Matt Hills
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2011
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1906660336

More than just a box office flop which entered the midnight movie circuit, Ridley Scott's 'Blade Runner' has gone on to become a cult classic which continues to inspire and influence the latest cinema releases. This book studies the legacy of the film.

Postmodern Metanarratives

Postmodern Metanarratives
Author: Décio Torres Cruz
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2014-07-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137439734

Postmodern Metanarratives investigates the relationship between cinema and literature by analyzing the film Blade Runner as a postmodern work that constitutes a landmark of cyberpunk narrative and establishes a link between tradition and the (post)modern.

Some Kind of Hero

Some Kind of Hero
Author: Matthew Field
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 756
Release: 2015-10-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0750966505

For over 50 years, Albert R. Broccoli's Eon Productions has navigated the ups and downs of the volatile British film industry, enduring both critical wrath and acclaim in equal measure for its now legendary James Bond series. Latterly, this family run business has been crowned with box office gold and recognised by motion picture academies around the world. However, it has not always been plain sailing. Changing financial regimes forced 007 to relocate to France and Mexico; changing fashions and politics led to box office disappointments; and changing studio regimes and business disputes all but killed the franchise. And the rise of competing action heroes has constantly questioned Bond's place in popular culture. But against all odds the filmmakers continue to wring new life from the series, and 2012's Skyfall saw both huge critical and commercial success, crowning 007 as the undisputed king of the action genre. Some Kind of Hero recounts this remarkable story, from its origins in the early '60s right through to the present day, and draws on hundreds of unpublished interviews with the cast and crew of this iconic series.

The Future Was Now

The Future Was Now
Author: Chris Nashawaty
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2024-07-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 125082706X

“Hollywood boldly went where it hadn’t gone before and Nashawaty chronicles the journeys.” —Los Angeles Times ("Books You Need To Read This Summer") “Written with a fan’s enthusiasm . . . An important inflection point in Hollywood filmmaking.” —New York Times ("Nonfiction Books to Read This Summer") In the summer of 1982, eight science fiction films were released within six weeks of one another. E.T., Tron, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Mad Max: The Road Warrior changed the careers of some of Hollywood's now biggest names—altering the art of movie-making to this day. In The Future Was Now, Chris Nashawaty recounts the riotous genesis of these films, featuring an all-star cast of Hollywood luminaries and gadflies alike: Steven Spielberg, at the height of his powers, conceives E.T. as an unlikely family tale, and quietly takes over the troubled production of Poltergeist, a horror film he had been nurturing for years. Ridley Scott, fresh off the success of Alien, tries his hand at an odd Philip K. Dick story that becomes Blade Runner—a box office failure turned cult classic. Similar stories arise for films like Tron, Conan the Barbarian, and The Thing. Taken as a whole, these films show a precarious turning-point in Hollywood history, when baffled film executives finally began to understand the potential of high-concept films with a rabid fanbase, merchandising potential, and endless possible sequels. Expertly researched, energetically told, and written with an unabashed love for the cinema, The Future Was Now is a chronicle of how the revolution sparked in a galaxy far, far away finally took root and changed Hollywood forever.

The Man Who Got Carter

The Man Who Got Carter
Author: Andrew Spicer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2013-10-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0857734539

Michael Klinger was the most successful indpendent producer in the British film industry over a 20 year period from 1960 to 1980, responsible for 32 films, including classics such as Repulsion (1965) and Get Carter (1971). Despite working with many famous figures- including actors Michael Caine, Peter Finch, Lee Marvin, Roger Moore, Mickey Rooney and Susannah York; directors Claude Chabrol,Mike Hodges and Roman Polanski and author Wilbur Smith- Klinger's contribution to British cinema has been almost largely ignored. This definitive book on Micheal Klinger, largely based on his previously unseen personal papers, examines his origins in Sixties Soho 'sexploitation' cinema and 'shockumentaries' through to major international productions including Gold (1974) and Shout at the Devil (1976). It reveals how Klinger deftly combined commercial product-the hugely popular 'Confessions' series (1974-78)- with artistic, experimental cinema that nurtured young talent, including Polanski and Hodges, Peter Colinson, Alastair Reid, Linda Hayden and Moshe Mizrahi, the Israeli director of Rachel's Man (1975). Klinger's career is contextualised through a reassessment of the British film industry during a period of unprecedented change and volatility as well as highlighting the importance of his Jewishness. The Man Who Got Carter offers a detailed analysis of the essential but often misunderstood role played by the producer.

Dead Precedents

Dead Precedents
Author: Roy Christopher
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1912248352

The story of how hip-hop created, and came to dominate, the twenty-first century. In Dead Precedents, Roy Christopher traces the story of how hip-hop invented the twenty-first century. Emerging alongside cyberpunk in the 1980s, the hallmarks of hip-hop - allusion, self-reference, the use of new technologies, sampling, the cutting and splicing of language and sound - would come to define the culture of the new millennium. Taking in the groundbreaking work of DJs and MCs, alongside writers like Dick and Gibson, as well as graffiti and DIY culture, Dead Precedents is a counter-culture history of the twentieth century, showcasing hip-hop's role in the creation of the world we now live in.

The House of Redgrave

The House of Redgrave
Author: Tim Adler
Publisher: Aurum
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2011-09-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1845136861

From the landmark films of Tony Richardson to the untimely death of Natasha Richardson – this is the saga of one of the greatest dynasties in British film and theatre. In 1928, at the end of a production of Hamlet at the Old Vic, Laurence Olivier strode to the front of the stage to hush the audience and announced, pointing at his co-star Michael Redgrave, 'Tonight a great actress has been born. Laertes has a daughter.' He meant Vanessa Redgrave. That is where this dramatic book’s story begins. It concludes in 2009, with the sudden and tragic death in a skiing accident of Vanessa’s daughter Natasha Richardson – and further family sorrow soon to follow with the deaths of both Corin and Lynn Redgrave. The story of this amazing family is explosive throughout - from the tangled private life of Tony Richardson, Natasha’s father, who directed major films such as Look back in Anger, to Vanessa and Corin’s complicated involvement with the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, to the emergence of a fourth generation of fine actors with Natasha and Joely.? There is truly never a dull moment – but plenty of scandal, melodrama, tragedy and intrigue – in the story of this remarkable dynasty, whose contribution to British drama and film has been immense.