For those interested: there is a very good discussion of how the blockbuster rose out of the ashes of the failed auteur-driven epics of the late 1970s ("Heaven's Gate," "Apocalypse Now," "New York, New York," etc.) in Chapter 2 of Timothy Corrigan's _A Cinema Without Walls_. As for naming 3 recent epics: it seems to me that these days attempts at epics seem largely to be biopics (call it the "Pale-Imitation-of-Lawrence- of-Arabia Syndrome"), so I'd add "Hoffa," and "Chaplin." But the only film I've seen in the last decade that I actually think of as an epic is the director's cut of "Once Upon a Time in America." (Incidently, I would take friendly issue with whomever suggested "Last Temptation of Christ," simply because that film not only cost very little but *looked* as if it cost very little, which runs counter to my intuitive sense of what an epic is. Scorsese has recounted in an interview somewhere how he didn't have enough money to hire the extras for the scene in which Roman soldiers storm the temple, so he just used the same seven guys over and over to suggest hoards of Roman soldiers. He says he learned this strategy while working for Roger Corman. Maybe its just me, but I don't think anything should be called an epic is it contains techniques learned at Corman's knee.) JRG ______________________________________________________________________________ John R. Groch <[log in to unmask]> | "Work! FINISH! THEN sleep." English Department/Film Studies Program | -- The Monster, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 | "Bride of Frankenstein" ______________________________________________________________________________