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Calm down dear - Michael Winner dies
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a452608/film-director-michael-winner-dies-aged-77.html
Maybe not the best director ever but still a great character nonetheless.
Of all his films, Death Wish is possibly his best.
R.I.P.
Maybe not the best director ever but still a great character nonetheless.
Of all his films, Death Wish is possibly his best.
R.I.P.
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He made perhaps the worst remake in film history with his bad film of The Big Sleep. However, many people must have enjoyed his films because they made some money and made him rich, so good on him for that.
Just had a quick look on his IMDB page,and very little else stands out.
I always liked the snippets of interviews I saw him in though and heard many an anecdote about his ego and eccentricity.
I think he would would have been really good as a character actor.
This is my all time favorite Winner moment...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS5S2Dio2_Y
I'm sorry but this is sheer ignorance. Just because YOU only know him for one film (which is a stone cold classic, by the way) doesn't mean anything.
Winner was at the top of his game for a long time in the late '60s/early '70s and was highly enough regarded by Hollywood to be offered directing jobs on James Bond and The French Connection, among others - jobs which HE turned down in order to make films HE wanted.
He directed horror films, literary adaptations, remakes, gangster films, thrillers and comedies. He worked with huge stars including Brando and Mitchum. His films may have tailed off during the 1980s but he still leaves a body of hugely entertaining work behind him. He and Ken Russell were the twin enfant terribles of their day, challenging the censors and pushing the boundaries of taste and decency.
He's not a favourite of mine but to say he lived the best part of his career on Death Wish's paycheque is ludicrous.
As far as I can remember, The Jokers was the first film I ever saw at the cinema unaccompanied by adults. A friend and I sat through it twice, and were roundly told off by his mother for staying out too late.
all from Death Wish?
Rarely seen but excellent Ollie Reed flick. INFW, Death Wish, The Mechanic and The Stone Killer (awesome Roy Budd soundtrack on this) are his finest pictures.
He made some clunkers (what director hasn’t?) but he was far from the hack he was all too often portrayed as. It speaks well of the man that he accepted that criticism with an amused tolerance where other directors would not have been so gracious.
As others have said " A Michael Winner Film" ranged from the good to the downright awful.
I agree with others that The Stone Killer is probably one of, if possibly not his finest in terms of overall sleekness and credibility.
The Sentinel, widescreen and uncut is far more ghoulish and gleefully exploitative fun than I remembered from a third or fourth generation copy of the completely spineless American TV version that was all that was available here on video for years.
RIP Michael. Along with Ken Russell's demise, that's the last of the English true film world characters gone. I'll never forget!
If I recall correctly there was an urban legend bbfc director from 1975-98 James Ferman hated Winner and cut his films purely because it amused him to send Winner a cuts list, though who knows if that is true.
There may be an element of truth to that, in that Winner certainly was not shy and retiring in his disdain for some of the BBFC's decisions and demands, especially so during Ferman's tenure and with the whole Death Wish II furore. Although Ferman passed the theatrical version of Dirty Weekend uncut, despite it having been prime material for him to tear to censorial pieces, and subject of some degree of public fuss and bother; and the video release only suffered cuts as it was one of a handful of delayed casualties from the fallout of the James Bulger/Child's Play 3 renewed tabloid hysteria frenzy around 'video nasties' (Beyond Bedlam suffered a similar fate). To much dismay, the uncut version seems unlikely to ever surface on DVD; which means I'm consigned to digitising my old pan-and-scan Sky TV broadcast for content integrity
As much as any other,The Sentinel highlights Winner's modus operandi of 'crude but effective'. Hiring people with real facial deformities for the finale showed the old opportunist hadn't lost his touch either.
Winner tailed off in the eighties, but for a long stretch previous he'd been a good purveyor of solid 'thick ear' thrillers that still stand (Scorpio, The Mechanic). His eating out column in the Times was a guilty pleasure too.
Maybe no genius, but certainly a character, and a good one at that.
I trust when some channel uns a Winner flick it'll be one of his better outings and not something like Chorus of Disapproval or that Agatha Christie film.
I had high-ish hopes for Appointment With Death as at the time I just discovered the all-star Agathie Christie films such as Death on the Nile.
But unfortunately Winner didn't quite grasp the opportunity and make full use of stars and locations.