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Michael Mann |
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Director / Producer / Screenwriter |
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1943 - |
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Born February 5,
Chicago, Illinois, USA |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres:
Crime,
Crime Thriller,
Thriller |
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Key
Collaborators:
Dante Spinotti (Cinematographer), Dov Hoenig (Editor), William Goldenberg (Editor), Paul Rubell (Editor),
Jamie Foxx (Leading Player), Bruce McGill (Character Player), Al Pacino (Leading Player),
Jon Voight (Leading Player), Pieter Jan Brugge (Producer), Eric Roth
(Screenwriter) |
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Highly Recommended: Heat
(1995)*, The
Insider (1999) |
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Recommended: Manhunter
(1986), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Public Enemies (2009) |
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Worth a Look: Thief
(1981), Collateral (2004)^ |
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Approach with Caution:
The Keep (1983), Ali (2001), Miami Vice (2006) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; ^
Listed in TSPDT's
21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films
section. |
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Links: [
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Salon
Feature ] [
Filmbug
Biography ] [
LA Weekly Interview (2006) ] [
Observer Article (2006) ]
[
Cinema Blend Interview (2006) ] [
BBC
Article (2004) ] [
NNDB ] [
Screening the Past Article (2008)
] [
Flickering Myth Profile ] |
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Books:
[
The Cinema of Michael Mann (Genre Film Auteurs) ] [
Michael Mann (Pocket Essentials) ] [
Michael Mann ] [
Blood in the Moonlight: Michael Mann and
Information Age Cinema ] |
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"Although
Michael Mann's film output is small in comparison to his work
for television (as writer, director and producer), so strong has
been his influence on recent styles in both media that, provided
his film career escapes the marketing problems that have
blighted it so far, future recognition of his importance seems
assured." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) |
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"Like
contemporaries
Tony Scott and
Adrian Lyne, Michael Mann is a
visual stylist with a penchant for modernist design. But while
Scott and
Lyne seem content to admire their reflections on the
gleaming surface they create, Mann reveals himself as an
old-fashioned existentialist, expressing an obsessive male
social alienation in neo-noir thrillers like Thief
(1981), Manhunter (1986), and his masterpiece, Heat
(1995)." -
Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006) |
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"He
wrote scripts for television series including Starsky and
Hutch and Vega$ before making his debut as a feature
film director with Thief (1981). He has brought a strong
visual flair to a number of stylish, moody thrillers, as well as
to the acclaimed literary adaptation Last of the Mohicans
(1992) and the biopic Ali (2001)." -
(Chambers Film Factfinder, 2006)
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"Could
I have worked under a system where there were Draconian controls
on my creativity, meaning budget, time, script choices, etc.?
Definitely not. I would have fared poorly under the old studio
system that guys like Howard Hawks did so well in. I cannot just
make a film and walk away from it. I need that creative
intimacy, and quite frankly, the control to execute my visions,
on all my projects." -
Michael Mann |
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"No
one has done more to uphold, extend, and enrich the film
noir genre in recent years than Michael Mann. He is a
director and producer, an organizer of TV series, a
visionary of modern style who somehow integrates the fluency
of Max Ophuls
with the iconic poise of the most hip TV commercials. His
theatrical movies come years apart, but his work for
television has filled the time and been just as vital an
creative a part of what he does... By the late nineties,
Mann had clearly moved further ahead. Heat, it seems
to me, was one of the best-made films of the decade, by
which I mean that the need to look and listen closely was
constantly rewarded."
-
David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film |
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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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Jonathan Demme |
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David Fincher |
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John Frankenheimer |
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William Friedkin |
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Walter Hill |
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Takeshi Kitano |
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Sidney Lumet |
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David Mamet |
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Jean-Pierre Melville |
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Martin Scorsese |
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Steven Soderbergh |
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Ridley Scott |
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Michael Mann's Favourites |
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Apocalypse Now (1979)
Francis Ford
Coppola,
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Sergei Eisenstein,
Citizen Kane (1941)
Orson Welles,
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the
Bomb (1964)
Stanley Kubrick,
Faust (1926)
F.W. Murnau,
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Alain Resnais,
My Darling Clementine (1946)
John Ford,
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Carl Dreyer,
Raging Bull (1980)
Martin Scorsese,
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Sam Peckinpah.
Source: Sight & Sound (2002) |
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