Came from a short story by William Harrison, evolved into a satire where corporations run everything and we've returned to the blood and circus of the Roman amphitheatre (literally).
The stunt work is brilliant, overseen by Kip Gowans, and the stunt men quite rightly all receive main title credits. John Box designed the rink and it was built in the Olympic basketball stadium in Germany.
In the special feature, Tony Gibbs tells us how he put together such a mass of material, realising that they needed to actually know the rules of the game to make it work. He was phoned by Technicolor at one point to say he had over 900 cuts in one reel of film. But it's not just the action scenes you watch out for - for example, he's doing some interesting stuff at a cocktail party, and where the guests take to shooting trees. (His mate Brian Smedley-Aston is doing the multivision scenes, which may look flashy, but are a dumb idea.)
There's not much about the photography, though you can see Dougie Slocombe has some vehicle going around the rink with a camera on it, pre-Steadicam. Also some Olympic cameramen are shooting some of the action hand held. But Dougie, and Chic and assistant Robin Vidgeon, are also doing a lot of complicated zoom stuff outside of the rink also.
So it's an interesting film technically (Tony and Dougie were BAFTA nominated, Box won), well received in Europe but not so much in the US. The only joke is that the master computer which contains all knowledge has 'lost' the 13th Century! (However this sequence, the journey to Geneva and interview with Ralph Richardson, is virtually pointless.)
With James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn.
The privileged future looks really dull. Costumes and music are horrible. I take it they designed that 'futuristic' (very seventies) font for the film.
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