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John Carpenter |
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Director / Composer / Screenwriter |
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1948 - |
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Born January 16,
Carthage, New York, USA |
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Key Production Country:
USA |
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Key Genres: Horror,
Science Fiction, Supernatural Horror, Action |
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Key
Collaborators: Larry Franco (Producer), Dean Cundey
(Cinematographer), Charles Cyphers (Character Player),
Kurt Russell (Leading Player), Garry B. Kibbe (Cinematographer), George "Buck" Flowers (Character Player),
Peter Jason (Character Player), Alan Howarth (Composer), Donald
Pleasance (Leading Player), Debra Hill (Producer/Screenwriter) |
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Recommended: The
Fog (1980) |
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Worth
a Look:
Dark Star (1974), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)*, Halloween (1978)*,
Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982)*, Starman (1984), Prince
of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988), In the Mouth of Madness (1994) |
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Approach with Caution:
Elvis [TV] (1979), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) |
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Duds: Village of
the Damned (1995) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ] [
Wikipedia ] [
The
Official John Carpenter Pages ] [
Director's Profile: John Carpenter ] [
AV Club Interview (2005) ] [
DGA
Interview ] [
MovieMaker Interview (2007) ]
[
Moving Image Source Article (2008) ]
[
A.V. Club Primer ] |
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Books: [
John Carpenter: The Prince of Darkness ] [
John Carpenter (Creative Essentials) ] [
The Films of John Carpenter ] [
The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of
Terror ] |
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"Carpenter is a director
who likes to get his audience on the edge of their seats, then
make them jump off it. He continued to be mighty successful at
it too, although in the early 1980s his films were
insufficiently progressive - one longed for more variety
in his work."
-
David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"In reviews
of his later work, in particular, critics have dismissed John
Carpenter's films as "mechanical" or "workmanlike". Yet his
movies have rarely pretended to be anything more or less than
straightforward action flicks (notwithstanding their elegant
widescreen landscapes), with flatly drawn characters who
function as cogs in his genre machine... Whatever genre
Carpenter works in, you can usually read a social commentary
between the lines. A recurrent motif is the culture in microcosm
under attack." -
Jessica Winter (The Rough Guide to Film,
2007) |
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"Carpenter's
films - mostly cheap(-ish) and cheerful reworkings of sci-fi,
horror and thriller situations familiar from 40s and 50s
B-movies - are full of hokum, yet at their best they are
gripping, witty and mythic... Though Carpenter's stories
gleefully eschewed originality, he displayed his expertise in
creating suspense by cutting back and forth between various
endangered individuals and groups and by his canny, much-copied
use of the wide screen, with the threat to victims suddenly
appearing from the side of the frame or emerging from a murky
background." -
Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"I
have a great feeling for physical movies. I don't like
intellectual films. I love suspense. I want the audience to
laugh and cry - an emotional response... I write a scene the way
a composer writes a score. Then I take the baton and I conduct
it as director. I'm the happiest I can ever be when I'm on the
set directing." -
John Carpenter |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we
haven't seen include Christine (1983), Memoirs of an Invisible
Man (1992), Escape from L.A. (1996), Vampires (1997), Ghosts of Mars
(2001), and The Ward (2010). |
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7- |
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"It
was with his third feature that Carpenter became established
as one of Hollywood's most bankable directors. Produced on a
shoestring budget of $300,000, his effectively executed
horror movie Halloween grossed $60 million worldwide, thus
becoming the most profitable independent production up to
its day... Adept at generating suspense and narrative drive,
Carpenter also uses horror and science fiction
metaphorically to explore the dark side of modern American
culture - personal isolation and distrust in The Thing,
urban decay in Escape from New York, and mass
communications in They Live. However, his films are
often uneven in quality, sometimes over-shadowed by their
own expensive special effects and the conventional demands
of the genres in which they are placed." -
The Macmillan International
Film Encyclopedia |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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Dario Argento |
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James Cameron |
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Wes Craven |
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Brian De Palma |
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Howard Hawks |
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Alfred Hitchcock |
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Tobe Hooper |
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John McTiernan |
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George Miller |
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Steven Spielberg |
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Paul Verhoeven |
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Robert Wise |
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John Carpenter's Favourites |
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Blow-Up (1966)
Michelangelo Antonioni,
Citizen Kane (1941)
Orson Welles,
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Howard Hawks,
Rio Bravo (1959)
Howard Hawks,
Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes (2011) |
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