MIchael Crichton, 1942-2008

Phil Nugent — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Michael Crichton, who died of throat cancer Tuesday at the age of 66, started out as a prodigy and developed into something like a smoothly functioning assembly line of marketable concepts. Crichton, who graduated from Harvard in 1964 and obtained an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1969, published his first novels under the name "John Lange", starting with Odds On in 1966; he also published the thriller A Case of Need (which would be filmed, in 1972, by Blake Edwards under the title The Carey Treatment) in 1968 under the psuedonym "Jeffrey Hudson" and co-wrote the countercultural action comedy Dealing (1970) with his brother Douglas, which they published under the name "Michael Douglas." (It too was made into a movie in 1972.) Under his own name, Crichton published Five Patients (1970), a nonfiction account of his medical experiences, as well as the sci-fi thrillers The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man, both of which were also quickly snapped up by Hollywood. Not surprisingly, Crichton, by all reports a bit of a control freak and no shrinking violet, soon decided to get more involved, in a hands on way, with what the movies were doing to his books, and he launched his own directing career with Pursuit, a 1972 TV-movie based on a John Lange novel. A year later, he made his feature directing debut with Westworld, an ingenious sci-fi movie about a futuristic amusement park where average joes can pay to inhabit robot-infested, pasteboard versions of the wild west, medieval times, and ancient Rome and live out their sleaziest, movie-inspired daydreams. The movie, which featured Yul Brynner as a sinister robot version of his own character from The Magnificent Seven, demonstrated just how far Crichton could go in powering a movie with his own cleverness. It also dropped an early hint that he might not have the most flattering opinion of the mass audience he'd decided to pitch his work at.

Crichton would also direct the medical thriller Coma with Genevieve Bujold in 1978 and, in 1979, adapt an elegantly staged version of his 1975 novel The Great Train Robbery, starring Sean Connery as a Victorian super-thief. In the 1980s, his pace slowed considerably. He Between 1980 and 1989 he published only two novels, Congo and Sphere, that were not well received, as well as a couple of non-fiction books, including a follow-up to Five Patients and an introductory guide to computers. He also wrote and directed a couple more sci-fi movies, Looker (1981) and Runaway (1984), and directed a forgotten-on-impact Burt Reynolds movie, Physical Evidence (1989), which would remain his last credit as a director. (He reportedly came out of retirement to do some uncredited reshoots on John McTiernan's 1999 The Thirteenth Warrior, which was based on his 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead.) But his 1990 novel Jurassic Park relaunched Crichton as an idea man, a master of high concept with a knack for latching onto hot-button issues and molding them into audience-friendly gimmicks ranging from rampaging, resurrected dinosaurs to his illustrating the issue of sexual harassment by having, in the movie made from his novel Disclosure, Demi Moore terrifying Michael Douglas (the real one this time) with her mechanical-career-woman sexual avidity. (To some degree, Crichton never really stopped writing for robots.) Crichton's genius reputation in Hollywood was solidified by his work as creator-writer on the TV series ER, which made George Clooney a star and provided work for every other English-speaking actor within reach of a SAG card, proving to be a lot harder to kill than dinosaurs. Out of deference to the newsmagazine-cover-worthy success of his second act, Hollywood once again fast-tracked everything by Crichton they could get their hands on, including not only his Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World, Timeline and Rising Sun (which enlivened his chilly technocrat image by lending it an arresting undercurrent of deranged, crackpot xenophobia) but earlier, dodgier novels that had been lying dormant for years. (He also produced and co-wrote the 1996 Twister.) His last work to appear in his lifetime was his 2006 novel Next. It generated headlines when it appeared that Crichton had avenged himself on a journalist who had attacked a previous Crichton novel, State of Fear, for its dismissive attitude towards global warming by giving the man's name to a fictional character who was a child molester.

DVD Digest for September 2, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week’s DVD Digest is highlighted by a bumper crop of new TV-on-DVD releases in conjunction with the upcoming fall season. In addition, a large number of Blu-Ray only releases and a crush of new indie films on DVD helps to smooth over the lack of a first-rate “DVD of the Week”-worthy release.

This week’s high-profile new releases on DVD include Ira Sachs’ acclaimed fifties-set drama Married Life (Sony, also Blu-Ray), the Norwegian import Reprise (Buena Vista) (click here for Bryan Whitefield’s interview with the filmmaker), and the animated direct-to-DVD Marvel feature Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray). Also, in a strange coincidence, this week also brings the release of four films I caught at Columbus’ Out@Wex series of GLBT films this past spring: Jacques Nolot’s Before I Forget (Strand), the coming-of-age drama Water Lilies (Koch), the gender politics comedy Itty Bitty Titty Committee (Wolfe Video), and Lagerfeld Confidential (Koch), a documentary about the fashion designer.

This week’s slate of classics coming to DVD is highlighted by three new Fox Noir releases: Elia Kazan’s Boomerang, Jean Gabin in Moontide, and Road House (no, not that one), which includes a commentary track from Screengrab favorite Kim Morgan. Somewhat less notable is MGM’s 20th Anniversary Edition of the unholy union of Michael J. Fox and Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City.

In the TV-on-DVD department, this week brings Desperate Housewives Season 4 (Disney), Eli Stone Season 1 (Disney), Ghost Whisperer Season 3 (Paramount), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 3 (Fox), Life Season 1 (Universal) starring the ever-underrated Damian Lewis, Supernatural Season 2 (Warner), and The Office Season 4 (Universal).

Finally, this week’s action-heavy Blu-Ray only releases include: Jet Li in Black Mask (Lionsgate), Arnold Schwarzenegger in Eraser (Warner), the Clint Eastwood double feature Every Which Way But Loose (Warner) and The Gauntlet (Warner), Marvel’s animated The Invincible Iron Man (Lionsgate), the killer-virus thriller Outbreak (Warner), Michael Bay’s Transformers (Paramount), and Steven Seagal ridin’ the rails in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (Warner).

The Screengrab : next avengers heroes of tomorrow

MIchael Crichton, 1942-2008

DVD Digest for September 2, 2008