Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Roy Scheider RIP + Blue Thunder vs. Firefox


Blue Thunder (1982) trailer

One of my favourite actors, Roy Scheider (10 November 1932 – 10 February 2008) has died, known for his role in such films as Klute, The French Connection, Marathon Man, Jaws, All That Jazz, and Naked Lunch.

The Scheider-starred Blue Thunder, directed by John Badham in 1982 was an interesting techno thriller with paranoid 1984-ish themes, which came out during the same year as Clint Eastwood's Firefox, another film about an ultramodern flying war machine using stealth technologies, though Badham's film was much more successful than Eastwood's stale effort which lost its interesting technological, even science fiction-like premises (a fighter aircraft with a thought-controlled weapon system) to weary Cold War propaganda, extremely wooden acting and general pedestrian pace. (Though the film poster and Mig-31 itself in the flick are quite cool.)

  • William Friedkin remembering Roy Scheider @ Entertainment Weekly
  • Roy Scheider search results @ YouTube
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