RIP Michael Apted (Seven-Up)

I was fearing this day....

__________________
https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

Haven't seen the series but had it on my radar for quite some time now. Remember recently thinking I won't watch it unless it's definitely ended like the director died or something. I feel like an a-hole now!

__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

It's one of the best documentaries I've ever seen..


He also directed "Coal Miner's Daughter"

After completing O.J. Made in America (and absolutely loving it) I've had enough documentaries and I'm more into Japanese weepies atm but I might give it a go later this year

Thunderheart


I believe this is the end of The Up Series, for better or worse.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Oddly I've still never seen any of the hugely proclaimed (7-)Up series, surprised to learn just now it wasn't actually him who directed the original (he was one of the researchers) but his periodically following up on that original was a fantastic idea imo.

Requiescat in pace Michael!

The Up series is rightly Apted's legacy in cinema, but he made competent and sometimes quite good feature films without any definitive style and featuring generations of movie stars. A few stinkers in there, of course, but overall a decent batting average and he was handed the keys to a couple big budget franchises.

Oliver Reed in The Triple Echo (1972)


David Essex in Stardust (1974)


Stacy Keach in The Squeeze (1977)


Dustin Hoffman in Agatha (1979)


Sissy Spacek in A Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)


John Belushi in Continental Divide (1981)


Lee Marvin in Gorky Park (1983)


Teri Garr in Firstborn (1984)


Jon Polito & Richard Pryor in Critical Condition (1987)


Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist (1988)

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in Class Action (1991)


Val Kilmer & Graham Greene in Thunderheart (1992)


Madeline Stowe in Blink (1993)


Natasha Richardson, Jodie Foster, and Liam Neeson in Nell (1994)


Gene Hackman in Extreme Measures (1996)


Bill Cobbs in "Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned" (1998)


Pierce Brosnan as Bond in The World is Not Enough (1999)


Jeremy Northam in Enigma (2001)


Jennifer Lopez in Enough (2002)


Ioan Gruffudd in Amazing Grace (2006)

I need to check some of those out Holden.

I adore the Up series. I just ordered a $40 box set last night because it doesn't feel like 63 will ever be streaming here and I have been dying to see it. Think I may try to get my mom and dad to watch the series with me. Just amazing to watch the maturing human in that manner. I don't even have a word to describe how it makes me feel. Just fragile and human I guess. Can't imagine being a participant.

__________________
Letterboxd

Tilda Swinton in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)


Gerard Butler in Chasing Mevericks (2012)


John Malkovich in Unlocked (2017)



Though never nominated for an Oscar Apted did receive a Best Director nod from the Directors Guild of America for Coal Miner's Daughter, the year Robert Redford won that award and the Oscar for Ordinary People. Though he was very British he was well respected by the DGA including earning the Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award for service to the Guild and in 2018 their Lifetime Achievement Award for his body of work in film, television, and documentary.

Coal Miner's Daughter did earn seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture and of course won Sissy Spacek her Oscar as Best Actress. Gorillas in the Mist was nominated for five Oscars including Sigourney Weaver as Best Actress, and Jodie Foster was Oscar nominated for her performance in Nell.


R.I.P
(1941 - 2021)

Coal Miner's Daughter and Gorillas in the Mist would be where to start, I would say. Thunderheart may be his most entertaining picture, and while it is involving with fine performances by Kilmer and Green, Apted also made the very good documentary Incident at Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story at the same time, which is the real event that the fantasy of Thunderheart was sort of spun from. After Thunderheart I think Gorky Park is the best of his thrillers while Blink, Enough, and Extreme Measures are compelling if obvious genre nods. He didn't do many comedies but Continental Divide is solid and gives a good glimpse of the kind of charming dramatic actor John Belushi would have become when not in Bluto Blutarski mode. Agatha with Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave is a great concept but a flat execution. Worth seeing but one of those movies that looks amazing on paper but is less than the sum of its parts.

He didn't have the visual flair or variety in material of his contemporary Alan Parker, who died last summer. But he had a long career apart from the Up series.

R.I.P. Michael.

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

RIP. I loved the 7-Up Series.

__________________
Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

So sad. Shocking to me that we won’t see the 7UP gang at age 70 now. Guessing that some of the gang will be glad their tv ordeal is over now. (Susie didn’t appear in 63UP.)

End of an era. R.I.P. ✝️🙏

__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Or maybe we will. Turns out that the producer for the entire thing might be willing to do 70UP. I would love it if we could at least do it for 70. Seems like a nice way to end it.