Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
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David
Pure Phase
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:33 am Posts: 34865 Location: Maryland
Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
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Michael Cimino, the director of the Vietnam war classic The Deer Hunter and the infamous epic western Heaven’s Gate, has died. He was 77.
Thierry Fremaux, the director of the Cannes film festival, tweeted the news on Saturday, saying: “Michael Cimino has died, in peace, surrounded by friends and the two women who loved him. We loved him too.”
Cimino directed eight films, starting in 1974 with the highly rated Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges-starring crime movie Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, for which he also wrote the screenplay. The Deer Hunter, a harrowing story of friends from working class Ohio played by Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken, in which a young Meryl Streep also appears and her then fiancé John Cazale takes his final role, followed in 1978.
The film was a critical and commercial success. On its re-release in 2014, Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw saluted The Deer Hunter’s “combination of sulphurous anti-war imagery, disillusion and patriotic melancholy”.
“A simple, much-forgotten fact slaps you in the face after watching The Deer Hunter,” Bradshaw wrote. “Vietnam was different to Iraq and Afghanistan in one vital respect: the soldiers were drafted. They had no choice. The idea of sacrifice permeates everything, along with the cruelty and horror. This is Cimino’s masterpiece.”
Heaven’s Gate (1980), starring Walken and Kris Kristofferson and loosely based on the Wyoming Johnson County war of 1889-93, was a critical and commercial failure which hastened the demise of the United Artists studio and coloured the rest of Cimino’s career.
The film has since undergone something of a critical rehabilitation. In 2013, Bradshaw called it “colossally ambitious and mysteriously moving, with an unhurried, unforced pace, beautifully photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond”, the cinematographer who died in January at the age of 85.
Cimino’s other films included Desperate Hours (1990), a thriller starring Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins, and the gangster film The Sicilian (1986), which was adapted from a novel by Godfather author Mario Puzo.
1. The Lost City of Z - 2. A Cure for Wellness - 3. Phantom Thread - 4. T2 Trainspotting - 5. Detroit - 6. Good Time - 7. The Beguiled - 8. The Florida Project - 9. Logan and 10. Molly's Game
Last edited by David on Sat Jul 02, 2016 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Sat Jul 02, 2016 6:42 pm
David
Pure Phase
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:33 am Posts: 34865 Location: Maryland
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 71
I love The Deer Hunter (top 20 of all-time), Heaven's Gate (top 100 of all-time), and Year of the Dragon. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is very fine, too. He was obviously a colorful, gifted, volatile artist. He did not direct a feature after 1996, so it is hard to mourn this as the loss of an active director, but still RIP. Glad he lived long enough to see Heaven's Gate reappraised and remastered and revived.
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1. The Lost City of Z - 2. A Cure for Wellness - 3. Phantom Thread - 4. T2 Trainspotting - 5. Detroit - 6. Good Time - 7. The Beguiled - 8. The Florida Project - 9. Logan and 10. Molly's Game
Sat Jul 02, 2016 6:52 pm
David
Pure Phase
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:33 am Posts: 34865 Location: Maryland
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
Another notable '70s director, Robin Hardy (The Wicker Man), also died. He was 86.
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1. The Lost City of Z - 2. A Cure for Wellness - 3. Phantom Thread - 4. T2 Trainspotting - 5. Detroit - 6. Good Time - 7. The Beguiled - 8. The Florida Project - 9. Logan and 10. Molly's Game
Sat Jul 02, 2016 7:16 pm
Algren
now we know
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:31 pm Posts: 68321
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
Another big-ish name dead. Never known a year like it.
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Sat Jul 02, 2016 10:08 pm
Algren
now we know
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:31 pm Posts: 68321
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
Caroline Aherne, the writer/actress of The Royle Family, Mrs. Merton, and The Fast Show, also died this week, of lung cancer. She was 52.
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Mon Jul 04, 2016 12:18 am
David
Pure Phase
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:33 am Posts: 34865 Location: Maryland
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, director of the Palme d’Or-winning Taste of Cherry and the Juliette Binoche film Certified Copy, died in Paris at the age of 76.
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1. The Lost City of Z - 2. A Cure for Wellness - 3. Phantom Thread - 4. T2 Trainspotting - 5. Detroit - 6. Good Time - 7. The Beguiled - 8. The Florida Project - 9. Logan and 10. Molly's Game
Mon Jul 04, 2016 4:58 pm
Algren
now we know
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:31 pm Posts: 68321
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
Pretty Woman director, Garry Marshall, bites the dust. He was 81.
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Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
Well, he made the recent Mother's Day which I expected could become a moderate success, but instead it failed critically big time and I'm not even sure what it made. But that also made me revisit some of his filmography and I love Pretty Woman, so although I'm not a fan of his other work, I knew him to some extent of familiarity.
Wed Jul 20, 2016 8:18 am
Algren
now we know
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:31 pm Posts: 68321
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
Well, he does have more posts in this thread than the dead guy whose name is in the thread title.
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Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:26 am
Dr. Lecter
You must have big rats
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:28 pm Posts: 92093 Location: Bonn, Germany
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
He also created "Happy Days" and "Mork & Mindy" and started the careers of Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, Robin Williams and Ron Howard.
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Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:45 am
David
Pure Phase
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:33 am Posts: 34865 Location: Maryland
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
Garry Marshall was a mediocre film director. Just way too cheesy, pat, sentimental, etc. Those A-list-cast holiday extravaganzas, ouch. Impressive television career, though, and he acted in a few great films, such as Albert Brooks' Lost in America.
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1. The Lost City of Z - 2. A Cure for Wellness - 3. Phantom Thread - 4. T2 Trainspotting - 5. Detroit - 6. Good Time - 7. The Beguiled - 8. The Florida Project - 9. Logan and 10. Molly's Game
Fri Jul 22, 2016 10:11 pm
Algren
now we know
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:31 pm Posts: 68321
Re: Iconic, troubled director Michael Cimino dead at 77
MAD Magazine and film poster cartoonist, Jack Davis, passed away at the age of 91.
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