Peter Yates has left the room.

Another sad day for film with news of the death of Peter Yates. He was one of the directing greats with Steve McQueen's Bullit being the one particular movie of his that I love and in fact was one of the first DVD's I bought when the format was the new big kid on the block and video was still king.
But in later years he gave me another  pleasure and that was Krull.  This was an attempt to do something different from Star Wars but utilising the same sort of classic mythic structure popularised and informed by the works of Joseph Campbell. If I had one criticism of the film is that the world seems spartan,  there is no background colour no feeling of a world existing around our heroes. But he gave us one of the coolest weapons ever to feature in a film  the heroes glaive. Other notable films are The Deep and Breaking away. Its another sad day for cinema but he leaves behind some great films which are there for the  viewing.