MICHAEL CIMINO DEAD AT AGE 77: “’The Deer Hunter’ is being talked about again after all these years. It is seen as a vehicle for understanding the political success of Donald Trump,” Paul Mirengoff writes at Power Line.

Cimino of course is also legendary for Heaven’s Gate, his follow-up to The Dear Hunter, which went so over budget and bombed so spectacularly at the box office it both effectively destroyed United Artists and permanently ended the notion of ‘70s film brats as autonomous auteurs. (Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories tanking that same year after Annie Hall and Manhattan had been big hits didn’t help UA, and its “I hate my fans” theme also impacted Woody at the box office for years to come.)

Because it nuked United Artists, Heaven’s Gate could have also killed the James Bond franchise dead in its tracks. This Digital Bits retrospective on the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only from last week explores how this otherwise so-so Bond outing may have saved the franchise from the fallout of the UA implosion.