Blade Runners Deer Hunters And Blowing The Bloody Doors Off

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."

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.

Her Again is an intimate look at the artistic coming-of-age of the greatest actress of her generation, from the homecoming float at her suburban New Jersey high school to her star-making roles in The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, and Kramer vs. Kramer. The book charts Meryl Streep's heady rise to stardom on the New York stage, her passionate, tragically short-lived love affair with fellow actor John Cazale, and her evolution as a young woman of the 1970s wrestling with changing ideas of feminism, marriage, love, and sacrifice. This is a captivating story of the making of one of the most revered artistic careers of our time, offering a rare glimpse into the life of the actress long before she became an icon.

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.

More than just a box office flop that resurrected itself in the midnight movie circuit, Blade Runner (1982) achieved extraordinary cult status through video, laserdisc, and a five-disc DVD collector's set. Blade Runner has become a network of variant texts and fan speculations a franchise created around just one film. Some have dubbed the movie "classroom cult" for its participation in academic debates, while others have termed it "meta-cult," in line with the work of Umberto Eco. The film has also been called "design cult," thanks to Ridley Scott's brilliant creation of a Los Angeles in 2019, the graphics and props of which have been recreated by devoted fans. Blade Runner tests the limits of this authenticity and artificiality, challenging the reader to differentiate between classic and flop, margin and mainstream, true cult and its replicants.

Cult has entered the cultural psyche in a profound and pervasive way. There is no corner of popular culture beyond the potential for cult transformation. Indeed, in entering common parlance the term has effectively lost its clandestine mystique. But why? And how did we get here with cult? "Withnail and Us" charts the journey of cult in culture through an exploration of British cult films and their fans. It is about our bizarre and enduring fascination with once obscure or shocking movies, from "A Clockwork Orange" to "The Wicker Man". What is it about certain films that provokes such obsessive fan devotion? What impells people to remote locations in search of filmic relics? Why do they gather in groups to re-enact scenes learnt by heart? Is any film worth re-viewing over 100 times? From 1968 and all that, through the cultural byways of the 1970s, this book attempts to explain such strange practices, and to trace their origins in the makings of some remarkable films, including "Tommy", "The Man Who Fell To Earth", "Quadrophenia", "Withnail & I", "Trainspotting" and "Performance". Prepare to enter the arena of the unwell!

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.

In the Silent Era, film reissues were a battle between rival studios—every Mary Pickford new release in 1914 was met with a Pickford re-release. For 50 years after the Silent Era, reissues were a battle between the studios, who considered old movies “found money,” and cinema owners, who often saw audiences reject former box office hits. In the mid–1960s, the return of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)—the second biggest reissue of all time—altered industry perceptions, and James Bond double features pushed the revival market to new heights. In the digital age, reissues have continued to confound the critics. This is the untold hundred-year story of how old movies saved new Hollywood. Covering the booms and busts of a recycling business that became its own industry, the author describes how the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart and Alfred Hitchcock won over new generations of audiences, and explores the lasting appeal of films like Napoléon (1927), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Rocky Horror Show (1975) and Blade Runner (1982).