In Popular Culture
- A still from the film – the final "escalator" scene, with the trial court reunited at Carter's surgery – was used as the cover for Phil Collins's 1989 single "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven".
- The British pop duo Pet Shop Boys used the escalator in the video for "Go West".
- The film inspired the song "A Matter of Life and Death" by Rinaldi Sings, featured on the 2005 album What's It All About. The song features a sample of Kim Hunter's voice from the film.
- The film is also referenced in an episode of the British sketch comedy TV series Big Train, where three separate doomed pilots get their wires crossed with each other while talking to the female radio operator.
- A short sequence, in which Peter Carter asks June her name, was used in the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, in the "Frankie and June" musical number.
- On camera J.K.Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe, while discussing the near-death or afterlife scenes from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, both reveal A Matter of Life and Death to have been their favorite film and something that each had had in mind when working on the scenes in Harry Potter.
Read more about this topic: A Matter Of Life And Death (film)
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.”
—Gerald Early (b. 1952)