Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

The Terminal stripped him of any claim to classicness.

It's one thing to get excited in a 'film school' sort of way about his technique. It's another thing to sit in a dark theater and be moderately entertained by his movies. But has Speilberg overcome the limits of his medium to create great and lasting art in the way of Cocteau or Fellini or Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges? Not in my view. He generally makes clever confections. He's a great chef.

However, his depiction of the D-Day landing in Saving Private Ryan is a classic that stands head and shoulders above his normal work, including the remainder of SPR.

Take, for example,Brininging Up Baby. It aims at nothing more than sheer entertainment, but it is so entertaining that it sheerly delights me with its artistry and wit, its little-red-wagon sense of fun. It is an exemplar of light-hearted foolery, a gush of google-eyed silliness, a whole 'nother world you step into.

E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial aims at something a bit more than 'mere' entertainment. It wants to achieve a certain modicum of significance, in a warm and fuzzy sort of way - as a statement about wonder and innocence or something like that. But it doesn't really work on that level. It achieves a sappy, happy sentimentality about wonder and innocence. You cry when ET is dying at the hands of the mean, cold-hearted scientists because, um, never mind why. But can you take any part of it back into your life and make it work for you.

That's why Spielberg is meh. He's a perfect B+ student. He gets all the low-hanging fruit and most of the middling stuff, but never quite bags the topmost stuff.

He may be pretty middlebrow, but stuff like Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, WOTW etc is very entertaining, well made cinema. I agree that he often feels like he's trying to make a bigger statement than he actually achieves, but I cannot think of another director working currently who has consistently entertained me so well over the last 25 years.

No mention of it yet here, but I'm on the side that feels A.I. is one of his best films, too. There's plenty not to like about it, but the stuff that works (the whole opening act, the journey to drowned Manhattan, fuck it, even the ending) is some of the most mesmerising, compelling sci-fi I have ever seen. Real cinema of wonder in a very pure form.

xp

i actually LIKE spielberg and feel he gets a bad rap from "entertainment is not art" types, but howard hawks is a greater director than spielberg for the same reason charles schulz is a greater artist than dave sim.

i. dis. agree. there, that wasn't so hard. in this context, i don't care about great directors. i care about entertaining films. hawks' films are *quite* entertaining. but they don't stand out particularly from hollywood films of the 'classic' (c. 1930 - c. 1960) period.

he has a slightly nasty, right-libertarian view of society based on the rugged-individualist/masculinist ideal (women have to be men). it's this glib view of 'how to deal' that i mean by 'audience-minded'. he's all about winners.

expressive editing (blah phrase, but whatevs) is not film school bullshit. following the aesthetic choices of 1950s cahiers du cinema is film school bullshit!!

point is the kind of stuff spielberg does, like the beach scene, was beyond the dreams of any classic hollywood director. they'd have fucking killed to have done it. maybe sam fuller with spielberg's crew would be the best thing.

# Indiana Jones 4 (2006) (announced)
# Untitled Steven Spielberg/Abraham Lincoln Project (2007) (pre-production)
# Untitled 1972 Munich Olympics Project (2005) (filming)
# War of the Worlds (2005)
# The Terminal (2004)
# Catch Me If You Can (2002)
# Minority Report (2002)
# Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)

This list, of films I have seen, arranged more or less in descending order of quality (last = best) is the reason why I'm not interested in any of the films above:

# Saving Private Ryan (1998)
# The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
# Schindler's List (1993)
# Jurassic Park (1993)
# Hook (1991)
# Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
# Empire of the Sun (1987)
# The Color Purple (1985)
# Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
# E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
# Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
# Jaws (1975)
# Duel (1971)

In conclusion, Thank You Mr. Spielberg for bringing some really fantastic adventures to the big screen, and showing us some highly exciting moments, No Thank You Mr. Spielberg for saddling nearly all of them with increasingly awful casting as time marches on and for trying to choke us to death with your faith in the human spirit or whatever you want to call that unbelievably smug annoying self-congratulatory horseshit.

xpost,
more complexity and disturbingly adult themes
So do the fucking Matrix movies. OMG HE DIES TO SAVE EVERYBODY

this is kinda otm -- it's there in the movies -- but the horseshit bits are outnumbered by the highly exciting moments. or, they're *both* there. same way fall-flat bits of unfunniness and misanthropy coexist with real chills in hitchcock.

otoh, is 'saving private ryan' really that smug? it has those terrible bookends, and the matt damon bits are really annoying, but i've seen far less convinving movies about war.

The first time I saw Duel I knew it was supposed to be "atypical" Spielberg but I still spent probably half the movie waiting for some insipid deus ex machina to rob me of all my actual emotions and replace them with spoonfed lotus blooms. This is what he's done to his legacy.

Looking at that list above I realize I've disliked a LOT of his movies, without even really realizing they were Spielberg flix. I mean the only movies that I like in that list are Raiders, Last Crusade, Duel, Catch Me If You Can (and that's not even an active like because I forgot I saw it until recently) and...uh...well, I don't actually like Jurassic Park at ALL but Jeff Goldblum dresses fantastically in it so I'll give it a little bit of a pass (THAT FINAL SHOT OF THE T-REX AND THE RAPTORS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST SHOT IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION AND THAT IS A STONE COLD FACT PEOPLE). I'd like Saving Private Ryan better if the bookends were deleted and it was about a half hour shorter.

Dr. Morbius, how about you discuss the "disturbing adult themes" in, say, Catch Me If You Can?

jaws fucking rules ally. jpark3's pretty great, the best of the bunch no doubt. poltergeist was pretty great. band of brothers was incredible. into the west was rousing fun.

Jaws does NOT fucking rule!

UNIFIED WORKS suck anyway

ie his refusal to end his recent movies unyuckily is the price he is prepared to pay for the chance to shoot [x] idea

i don't buy this really, but i wd admire SS lots if i discovered this is where he's secretly at

oh, begone intentionality! i think most movies are compendia of bits with lots of redundancies put in to keep front office happy. it's always been like that(?). spielberg is a total enigma as a man -- i have read a biography of him and know NOTHING about him.

but cutting through or ignoring the 'greatest generation' blah i've been impressed by the action scenes in the saving private ryan/band of brothers projects.

as with albums, ignore the rubbish bits.

My hyperbole is totally correct, watch JP again and wait for it...that final shot of the freaking T-Rex. Claymation dinosaur, why you ruin shot all the time? I would've liked Jurassic Park better if there was no dinosaurs, but instead Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider.

Anyway I am still interested in finding out how Spielberg classics like Catch Me If You Can or The Terminal or The Lost World explore more disturbing, dark, and adult themes than Bamboozled and are more complex than The Big Lebowski! I'll give Morbius Soderberg.

XPOST ARGH STOP IT WITH THOSE MORPHED ANIMALS

Does this make him classic, or just Darryl Zanuck reborn?

I stick with my B+ assessement. He has good chops, and a consistent record. I like him OK, but nothing he makes excites me much.

aimless -- steve is hurt, but he will try to improve his record for next semester.

what's your point here exactly? that people in film school like him because he's successful? wtf does that have to do with anything

>how about you discuss the "disturbing adult themes" in, say, Catch Me If You Can?<

No, not a classic. Quite a decent Missing/Inadequate Dad Complex meditation (major Spielberg motif), tho, with both Leo and Walken putting in unusually deep performances before returning to check-cashing roles.

The Terminal: America as Last Best Melting Pot AND Dubya's Fortress ("America is closed").

JP2 was the last of his I skipped.

I think Walken's performance in Catch Me If You Can is completely immemorable, as immemorable as he gets, at least. Also, I'm not sure how I understand in what way Savion Glover's character in Bamboozled is any more of a "2-D sketch" than Leonardo DiCaprio's character here (note: this does not imply that DiCaprio's character IS a "2-D sketch"). And yes, the 25th Hour beats the crap out of both of these movies, and anything Spielberg's done in, oh, 10 or 15 years. I was keeping off the sucka punches on the "Spielberg more provocative than Lee" comment but if you wanna kick yourself in a metaphorical discussion-genitals go ahead!

Not quite. Film schoolies love him because he is the archetypal film school product. Speilberg sat through all the same classes, learned all the same rigamarole as them and then he went out and became the Nu Robot Overlord of films. It sprinkles fairy dust (read: imagined money & power) over the whole film school experience.

Never said that. But Lee can't really fake provocation regularly anymore. Cine-hipsters turn to City of God, Y Tu Mama Tambien etc for that pose now.

Yeah, Walken's much more memorable sleepwalking through gangster and vampire roles, or SNL. Hey, he recites lines off the expected beats!

I was quite moved by the ending of The Terminal and chilled by A.I.

By the same token Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't make $250 million as an actor by being chopped liver, either. Although it is rather hard to pin down exactly what his talent was. Your point being?

and it STILL looked fake

i read that all the "futurists" were pissed off because spielberg ignored them and just did what he wanted to anyway!!

the worst is futurizing stuff that doesn't make any sense, like in AI... in the future cars will only need THREE wheels!

have you seen the LA refinery lately? that IS Bladerunner.

1. dude who did joe vs the volcano
2. dude who did disney's the kid

I dunno. Seems like most Spielberg movies lately generate a lot more heated discussion (even if a massive chunk of the chatter comes from the usual suspects, the "spielberg/lucas killed the '70s renaissance, et al" folk) than anything Lee's put out, which are either given surprising auld lang syne (25th Hour) or ignored outright (nearly everything else in the last decade).

Big Lebowski might be the Coens' best movie, but I don't see it being their most complex or, more to it, having even a fraction of the complexity/contradiction of A.I.

Fritz Lang did a lot of stupid stuff too. Doesn't change the fact that he's among the three or five best directors ever.

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OTM. its been pretty much drivel ever since. tho O Brother has its moments (I enjoy Clooney's Clark Gable impression)

the only good bit about TMWWT was Tony Shaloub.

A 200+ thread about how Minority Report's ending sucks /= the film explores deep, dramatic, adult issues in a refreshing and/or interesting manner.'

Blade is one of those movies I have seen all of, but not in the correct order or all at the same time, I am pretty sure.

xpost

To bring the topic back 'round, though, Spielberg & Scorsese together might make an interesting movie.

Allyzay, you have hit it on idiot-male 'debates' on the internets! However, you're still all wet on equating Spielberg with run-of-the-mill schmaltz. (at least post-Color Purple, that was a mistake)

I'm glad you guys hate S.S. given the snarky twaddle you like tho. "Schindler's List" has more intentional laughs than several Coen films.

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), July 28th, 2005.

IRONY

Excepting Jaws and Close Encounters and maybe Jurassic Park (<1997) I don't really care about him.

My big issue with his films is the race/gender-handling and how awkward-but-well-intentioned-he is w.r.t. this.

x-post

(And I don't rememeber ET that well, just that I found it profoundly mawkish. I think if I saw it again I might like exactly what you like, M., - the weird and freaky bits.)

Unfortunately this part of ET lasts what 5-10 minutes.

"Lou-Jean, a blonde woman, tells her husband, who is imprisoned, to escape."

when being blonde is outlawed, only outlaws will be blonde....

Yeah, there was nothing at all mawkish and MOR and suburbanite about Traffic.

(tho my favorite movie of his is THE LIMEY! Terence Stamp! blithely evil Peter Fonda! Yes!)

I give you The Limey, though.

Know the enemy, people.

I agree with this, Malcolm X is one of my least favorite Spike Lee joints (though I have it in my Netflix, just to make sure that I'm right).

Anyway, I agree with the statements about Schindler's moral ambiguity (which is a matter of fucking historical record, why white wash the dude when his own actions quite frankly white washed his moral ambiguity anyway), also the whole Neeson speech at the end where he's quivering on the floor like I don't even know what, carrying on about how each item represents a person he could save...it's so....argh. I don't even know what it is, it's so high school play. This is a fault of Neeson was well as the director, cos Neeson is awful, absolutely atrocrious in the scene...and the girl in the red dress...and the really specific bookend about what the holocaust was about, which I remember even when I was a kid seriously alienating my mother whose non-jewish relatives were persecuted...Spielberg's whole agenda with that movie...the unnecessary nakedd women everywhere...the weirdly unambigious character played by Ralph Fiennes...Ugh. The movie has it's good qualities and has its heart in such the right place but goes so, so wrong.

I like movies like Downfall better, where everythying is not so...excuse the pun here...black and white.

Re: Soderberg, Alex is totally, totally, so unambiguously and so horrifyingly and so mind-shatteringly OTM about Traffic. That movie was not very good and the only things saving it was Benecio Del Toro, but that's Benecio for you, he even saved crappy boring Bond films for me. I like Soderberg's pop epics better, someone else touched upon his POP sensibility and how it is edgier, less hamfisted and LOOK AT ME than Spielberg's...Erin Brokovich and Ocean's Eleven are both fantastic movies, despite all odds (ie Julia Roberts and Andy Garcia). They are both fantastic pieces of film-making, inherently entertaining and watchable and the messages (esp. EB) are not so I AM GOING TO HAMMER THIS INTO YOUR HEAD SO HARD YOU WILL NOT KNOW WHERE YOUR ASS IS AND YOUR HEAD IS ANYMORE as Spielberg tends to be. Soderberg's more "serious" movies...well...Solaris was shit, dude. Let's hope he remakes Posiedon Adventure real soon.

xpost Why apologize, it was a great post, better than expected, and I was highly entertained and quite frankly, I salute you, sir, for that post.

Del Toro only started to earn the plaudits he earned for Traffic in 21 Grams. Before then he was coasting on mannerism and sheer weirdness.

x-post

I think that's part of the thing, right? I feel like Spielberg, "recently" meaning since 1990, wants us to THINK about his movies. THINK SO HARD yr brain explodes, right? But he doesn't give us that much more than base questions we might have already had. What questions does AI raise that you might have already had? What questions does it explore in a way that someone might unthink their other way of thinking? That's something I don't like. The feeling that I SHOULD be thinking, reconsidering, after watching Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, AI...except he doesn't give you anything besides a pretty middle-America-stereotype way of thinking about it. He doesn't actually explore the questions he raises, he doesn't give you anything different from what the Hollywood cliche says he should...

I won't tell you that Spielberg is a "bad" director...it's just that he's not a "good" director in my estimation of good either. I'd rather watch Lee or Scorcese's worst films than Spielberg's...because even Girl 6 or..well, wait, I won't defend recent Scorcese but even the Aviator gave me a bit to think about.

xpost Lee IS very sloppy...but in a way I like that about him. It's like there is TOO MUCH going on in his head to contain in one movie, you are left asking a question. I don't feel this sentiment about Do The Right Thing, Bamboozled, or 25th Hour. They are not sloppy movies, though you are left thinking. A lot. Summer of Sam and Girl 6 are really well meaining train wrecks...

Re: Del Toro, I agree that Cheadle deserves more love than he gets, but Del Toro is very good. Del Toro also looks like the swarthy Brad Pitt. Has anyone else noticed this? They're dopplegangers, cross-ethnicity. THink about it.

So OTM. My friends still think I'm fuckin' crazy. Popist entertainment vs Rockist Grand Statement.

okay it still would have sucked...

re: 25th Hour I will fully admit that I'd watch Ed Norton read a phone book but it doesn't really diminish the fact that it'd a good movie. So is Bamboozled, even thoubgh it is a little bit of a mess. Bamboozled haunted me for a long time. The ending of that movie, whether stock "someone get killed tonight" Lee or not, is seriously disturbed and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to think about Savion Glover and people like him for a long, long time afterwards. Which is what I think is the power of Lee vs. Spielberg...they don't belong in the same category. Even if the biggest Lee messes I've seen , I've THOUGHT aobut them for ages and ages. I still think about Bamboozled...a deeply flawed movie (Mainly in Damon Wayans's character) but good nonetheless...sometimes. It still haunts me, the end of that film. I can't think of a Spielberg film that does that to me, even his best. Sometimes I think about how Raiders of the Lost ArK would be better with me instead of Karen Allen...but not the same thing, is it?

I wish I didn't know this.

xpost Karen Allen to the Nazi iks like a whole different level of disappointment.

No. In Raiders its clearly established that Allen and Indy had met before - long before - back when Indy was still working with her professor father (which would imply they met back when Indy was a student or at least not an academic authority in his own right, ie, prior to Temple of Doom).

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Being that we own like 600 DVDs and go through at least 3-4 netflix movies a week, we do like us some crap, but the only Spielbergs we have are EOTS, Duel, and the Indy box. Point being: he blows ass.

I do own Traffic. It's not a superwatchable excitement popfest, no, but as an amalgam of a few short slice-fo-life novellas made into an epic, it's great, and beautiful to watch and listen to. I'm a sucker for the sustained chords in Benicio's ballpark at the end.

I think what everybody on this thread needs to do is go rent Buffalo Soldiers and see where Lee AND Spielberg have completely missed the fuck out.

As for SS, he's pretty great through Raiders and progressively spottier since.

....

I'm partial to Buffalo Soldiers because that's about 50% or more of our active duty military, especially during peacetime, so as long as guys like NRQ want to request more "convincing war movies" why not show a little bit of the real fucking deal?

Have you ever DONE drugs, Eric? More importantly, have you ever been on speed?

And Requiem wasn't 'sex with a black man' it was 'doing a double-dildo scene on a mirrored coffee table in front of a bunch of Wall Street fuckers.'

I've got no intentions of rewatching any of those three movies again anytime soon, mind you, but at least I remember shit that happened in them and felt affected by the events depicted, which is more than I can say for anything our thread topic man has done since he did that one movie with our very own Alba, I think he was 10 or 11 at the time?

also i've never seen a spielberg movie that made me want to talk about it. there is a good article on war of the worlds in the new york review of books though -- it didn't make me want to see the movie, but it made me want to reread the book but i think they ran the article coz they're selling reprints of the gorey illustrated version of the book.

wait.. i forgot that i heart the indy films too. they're totally funny.

The 'sex with a black man' came before that, and was the deciding moment in her basically turning into a drug whore.

And yes, it's very enlightened to say it doesn't matter what race they were, but it was still two young pretty white women having sex with black men for drugs, in both cases being clearly presented as depths-to-which-drugs-will-make-you-sink. And realistic? It was realistic that the rich suburban princess in Traffic went from honor student to ghetto crackhead in two weeks or whatever? It was like the worst reefer-madness hysteria imaginable.

plus spielberg is abt setpieces and sodenb really isnt, i prefer the latter cuz sexier but this is apples and oranges, like hitchcock vs ford

but above i only meant if you want to cf spielberg w anyone it shd be something anon like disney. like maybe steve year to year hasnt made anything as great as the incredibles, in awhile but maybe we cld be more rigorous abt our weight classes?

well, are there any biopics about public figures that aren't kinda like high-school filmstrips? you have to admit it's light-years ahead of "nixon."

i mean schindler's list sorta opened the floodgates to emotionally manipulative holocaust flix -- jacob the liar, that one about the piano player (i think it was called "the jew who played piano good"? no, that wasn't it) if you want to stretch it, "life is beautiful" and etc. came out the same year as swing kids too.

same argt. can go for maybe a few of his other big blockbusters? like if nothing else he was the first to be that audacious. that was the dinosaur lure fersure -- i.e. we can take something outrageously schlocky that conjures up claymation and make it EXCITING and SHINY.

like once he taps that inner sap potential, everyone can follow suit, but until he comes up with the formula, it doesn't seem so obvious? or at least achivable?

well, any ray harryhausen dinosaur movie is at least as good as JP, but i think the last one came out in like 1970. so i guess you're right actually. but i don't think the concept of a "dinosaur movie" is inherently schlocky!

Have ever done a The Pianist vs. The Piano vs. The Piano Teacher thread?

The director, Steven Spielberg, is 26. I can't tell if he has any mind, or even a strong personality, but then a lot of good moviemakers have got by without being profound. He isn't saying anything special in The Sugarland Express, but he has a knack for bringing out young actors, and a sense of composition and movement that almost any director might envy. Composition seems to come naturally to him, as it does to some of the young Italians; Spielberg uses his gift in a very free-and-easy, American way -- for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors -- a born entertainer -- perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks. In terms of the pleasure that technical assurance gives an audience, this film is one of the most phenomenal debut films in the history of movies. If there is such a thing as a a movie sense -- and I think there is (I know fruit venders and cabdrivers who have it and some movie critics who don't) -- Spielberg really has it. But he may be so full of it that he doesn't have much else.

I'm just saying Steven Spielberg this and Steven Spielberg that, but let's not forget there are actual forces of evil in the world.

Shakey, I grew up loving Woody Allen, and his decline pains me, but as far as filmmaking chops go vs Spielberg's, whose work would you rather see with the sound off?

And the "white man makes slavery movie" was beneath you; it's not like Richard Attenborough did it. Why not take SS's statement that he made Amistad for his black children at face value (yes he has some).

Also there's no real arguing with the statement that Temple is more fun than Raiders: that view simply has nothing in common with my reality.

(this is partly sentimental -- i saw last crusade in the cinemas like 4 times before seeing any of the others.)

NB: obviously I'm not going to see anything with Tom Hanks in.

Oh and that Matt Dillon thing just made me nearly spit water out my nose.

Ally, have you seen "Crash"? I'd love your opinion on it.

Re: the way way up thread Requiem for a Dream thing...I can buy the argument being made in Traffic about stock characters, black man and white woman, but not so much Requiem for a Dream. I think that's missing the point entirely, especially since, as already mentioned, the far more memorable (and FAR more degrading and horrifying) sex scene is two white girls and about 30 investment bankers.

RFAD was just deeply, ridiculously fucked up. The part where Leto's injecting into his gangrenous arm... YEAUGH.

N_RQ right about Woody largely being filmed theater, tho beginning around "Manhattan" he started to move the camera nicely.

(I refuse to use "OTM" now that I'm picturing it tattooed on some of your rumps)

The last shot was pulling back from the hospital bed revealing his missing arm, wasn't it? That's almost Spielbergian in its lack of subtlety. Or Lucasian, had he screamed NOOOOOO.

The shoot-up montages didn't seem like much until I saw part of that Jason Schwartmann speedfreak movie and realized how much worse they could have been.

Cause "movies" originally meant "moving pictures." God...

xpost for fuck's sake

This is completely awesome if you imagine it being said by Napolean Dynamite.

OK, Jared Leto gettin his face pulped in Fight Club DID get me hard, and bye!

I saw RFAD in a mostly empty theater, but there was a group of goth kids up in the front row, and at the end of the movie as they were walking out one of the girls was sobbing and going "That was SO wrong!" and one of the guys was like, "That movie must have been made by the Christian Coalition, man."

And re: the white girl/black guy blowjob-for-drugs encounter in that movie, I agree it's just one of several degradations the characters go through. It mostly stuck with me because I had recently seen Traffic, and it didn't seem quite a coincidence that both films went for that same reefer-madness cliche (YOUR GIRLS WILL FALL INTO THE CLUTCHES OF DARK-SKINNED MEN, O NO).

But, like, that's yr thang so it's be cool.

yeah I like it. Frankly I probably like Spielberg more often than I like Scorcese now.

I really want to see Duel, and maybe also Sugarland Express. A guy I lived with all 4 years of college was in Amistad, and I still haven't seen it. Some day.

also, for context...
Barton Fink = C+
Lebowski = B-
Sex, Lies and Videotape = B+
Erin Brockovich = **
Traffic = *
Ocean's Eleven = B
Do the Right Thing = A+
Mo' Better Blues = ***
Jungle Fever = *
Crooklyn = **
Pi = **
Requiem for a Dream = F

It's got a marvelous rapt quality. There are scenes that defy description (E.T.'s ravaged corpse being chewed on by raccoons; Elliott in the backyard waiting for the alien to appear); others approach comic bliss, like the biology class sequence, with a drunk Elliott kissing his crush in the manner of John Wayne in The Quiet Man.

Henry Thomas gives one of the most intelligent child performances in film history; it's unlikely that Drew Barrymore will ever top her sassy, slattern-in-making Gertie.

Great one-liners too ("How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?").

anyway--classic with dudly moments. i've argued for him all over ilx tho so i'll leave it at that.

I need to see E.T. again too.

ILX demanded it--

THE 31 DAYS OF SPIELBERG blog!

http://damianarlyn.blogspot.com/

today, E.T.

this is one thread that makes me glad I no longer get replies to threads I started mailed to me.

that's nice.

Oopsies.

http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2007/08/from-editor.html

Blogging is a rough world, man.

I'm sort of scared to re-read some of my old stuff (as well as stuff I read long ago, like most of Kael's reviews) for this very reason.

haha

yeah, I saw that. I guess I should read the plagiarized guy's book.

I guess I'll have to think twice before recycling what I already wrote about Cruising on my blog for a forthcoming Slant review.

... then again, it's not plagarizing if I wrote it the first time around ... right?

Did I mention that Shattered Glass is the most stomach-churning thriller ever?

the Hayden Christensen thing? who are you plagiarizing now, Peter Travers?

I think rewriting from your own blog or ILX posting is not plagiarizing, it's "cannibalizing."

More like it's impossible for me to re-watch the film before I have to turn in the review, but I have no illusions it will be one of my better reviews.

the Hayden Christensen thing? who are you plagiarizing now, Peter Travers?

No, seriously, that movie is all sorts of squirmy uncomfortable.

Hasn't Cruising got new footage? like the legendary fisting sequence?

Does it? If so, it's still supposedly sumbliminal, and probably wouldn't have much bearing on what I'd write about.

btw Aaron Sorkin may be writing a Chicago 7 movie for S.S. to direct, certainly an event I've long thought should be a film, but only those two now likely have the pull to get made.

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/07/12/spielberg-may-direct-sorkins-script-about-68-democratic-conven/

Who'd be a good Abbie Hoffman? is Robert Downey too old?

OK, not "may be," he IS (at least for someone to direct)

"No, seriously, that movie is all sorts of squirmy uncomfortable."

I liked it. The more recent film that guy did with Chris Cooper and Mr. Witherspoon about the spy thing was really good too (is he still Mr. Witherspoon or did they get divorced?

they're divorced, and, yeah, it's decent. No one will notice how good Chris Cooper was come award time. All the film lacked was a fisting sequence.

how about JUDGE Hoffman? Richard Dreyfuss?

it was kind of hilarious how they waited until the last possible moment of the On The Lot finale for Spielberg to finally appear onscreen. I almost thought he wasn't gonna be there at all, like some light-filled doorway would just open up and the winner would walk off-camera to "meet Mr. Spielberg."

Who'd be a good Abbie Hoffman?

Sam Rockwell?

I think rewriting from your own blog or ILX posting is not plagiarizing, it's "cannibalizing."

I managed to write about Cruising without recycling more than a couple phrases from before.

i dont know why we're talking about it here, but shattered glass is excellent. breach is interesting but not as good.

It came up because the Spielberg blogger plagarized.

Which, for some reason, struck me as hilarious and scandalous.

The Terminal has a lot of commercial signage in it because it is set in an AIRPORT TERMINAL, Cosmo Vitelli.

I pre-ordered BOOM BLOX last night.

Terminal isn't bad, despite the ending.

boom blox looks fun.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/05/19/steven-spielberg-to-produce-martin-luther-king-biopic/

DreamWorks has acquired the rights to make a feature film based on the life of civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

“In trying to tackle such an ambitious project, the question we had to ask ourselves is, ‘Why now?’ ” DreamWorks CEO and co-chairman Stacey Snider told Variety . “The answer lies in MLK’s own words: ‘All progress is precarious.’ With every step forward, new obstacles emerge and we must never forget that his life and his teachings continue to challenge us every day to stand up to hatred and inequality.”

I could write about the history of MLK, but if you don’t already know this story, than you should probably be educating yourself instead of reading a film blog. I’ll be very interested to see who is hired to write and direct this biopic. It would be very easy to create an on the nose and preachy film about King. Personally, I would like to see the story that isn’t in the history books, a more personal take on King’s life story.

Who should direct? Nothing has been decided yet, but it has been a life long dream of Steven Spielberg to make a film based on King. Spielberg will produce with Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones.

Discuss: Who would you like to see write/direct an MLK movie?

I've never thought much of most Spielberg movies that aren't in the action-adventure genre. And from what I've read The Color Purple and Amistad were both awful, so is there reason to fear Spielberg tackling directorial duties here? I think It'll be hard for anybody to make this movie and not have it get dragged into being the most didactic, ready-to-kill-two-hours-of-class type of film.

This is going to suck.

maybe they can give MLK a cocky son played by shia leboeuf

too bad he doesn't make "rad" shit like Star Trek.

do not want

maybe they can give MLK a cocky son played by shia leboeuf

Oh c'mon, you'd enjoy seeing a Will Smith-starring MLK biopic that opens over the 4th of July weekend, wouldn't you?

I have never enjoyed a Will Smith movie ever so no

"too bad he doesn't make "rad" shit like Star Trek."

Even if he made the greatest movies in the world, he still shouldn't be making this movie.

And from what I've read

Alex's posts?

None of Spielberg's three masterpieces as a director are action-adventure.

yeah Jaws is a horror movie

and always is a romance

Cunga, you do know that DreamWorks /= A Steven Spielberg Film, right?

and Hook is a travesty.

would live to see jj abrams' take on this tho

Amistad isn't awful, actually: perfectly respectable middlebrow Oscar-style drama.

"Cunga, you do know that DreamWorks /= A Steven Spielberg Film, right?"

Uh he's producing the thing and it was his LIFE long dream to do so. So yeah it's kinda his film no matter what hack they get to helm this.

Judd Apatow's MLK

Perfectly respectable middlebrow Oscar-style dramas are awful, but hey to each their own.

yeah after the Hours I wanted to stab my eyes out

Some are less awful.

Compared to the fifteen minutes of Million Dollar Baby I watched, Amistad seems positively brilliant, it's true.

lolz

k guyz can we just agree to all hate every film ever and move on?

the hours book was so bad, can't believe people actually watched the movie

Virginia Woolf's real nose is so bad, I can't believe Nicole Kidman actually went through the trouble of wearing a fake one.

actually last i heard baz luhrman had signed on to do the MLK pic

AVPVMLK

None of Spielberg's three masterpieces as a director are action-adventure.

"I've never thought much of most Spielberg movies that aren't in the action-adventure genre."

Judd Apatow's MLK

Tim Meadows is...

it was his LIFE long dream to do so

u heard of PR

gus vant sant's MLK

It was his LIFE long dream right after his LIFE long dream to make the Holocaust flick.

"u heard of PR"

Big Project Runway fan, yeah.

And his LIFE long dream to film a slow-motion sequence of Eric Bana fucking.

Then in 1983, Spielberg fulfilled a life-long dream by producing a big-screen adaptation of The Twilight Zone.

With the inclusion of star Sean Connery, Spielberg vicariously fulfilled a lifelong dream to make a James Bond movie.

hahaah

Finally, after decades of talks, negotiations, rows and reconciliations, the copyright holders of Tintin have struck a deal with Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks studios. Finally, Spielberg’s lifelong dream will come true.

Would totally dig a Tintin adaptation.

When the P.A. returned from his run, Spielberg fulfilled his lifelong dream of having an iced soy chai latte

Steven Spielberg's been workin' on the railroad all the lifelong day

he HAS done more for America than Obama, at least.

uh Alex, Tintin is his & Peter Jackson's Christmas present to you.

are we really doing spielberg vs. obama here.

i mean, really?

JOEKS

EVERYTHING'S A JOEK

LIKE YOU GUYS PRETENDING "MUNICH" & "EMPIRE OF THE SUN" NEVER HAPPENED

Dr Morbius is actually the screen name for that kid who dropped out of high school and watched movies with his dad instead, right?

http://www.broadvalleyorchard.com/?p=63

Empire of the Sun is pretty good, but mostly ruined by Williams' oppressive score.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, July 27, 2005 11:21 PM

seriously, Williams completely fucked up this movie

still Bale's best performance.

lots of good in munich

And his LIFE long dream to film a slow-motion sequence of Eric Bana fucking.

Is that such an odd dream to have?

"Oy ownly weeyp fowr Jewish blud, chaps"

"Hi terrorist, convenient that we are sharing the same safehouse, it has allowed me to see that you and I are perhaps not so different, we both love our countries but are doing morally dubious things to support them, DO YOU SEE? DO YOU SEEEEEEEEE?"

I think Zohan was a more thought provoking study of the Israel/Palestine conflict.

"Is that such an odd dream to have?"

No. But it's odd to insert it into Munich.

"uh Alex, Tintin is his & Peter Jackson's Christmas present to you."

Is Jackson directing it? Until I see a preview these things don't exist for me cuz I don't read industry rags.

"LIKE YOU GUYS PRETENDING "MUNICH" & "EMPIRE OF THE SUN" NEVER HAPPENED"

I try to pretend the former never happened all the time. The latter has its moments though.

I have never enjoyed a Will Smith movie ever so no

― High in Openness (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 19, 2009 12:24 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

on a thread full of wrong u took the cake right here

id like to see jan de bont's MLK

on a thread full of wrong u took the cake right here

I would eat all this will smith-free cake

like there's a bomb wired to mlk that will go off if he stops making a speech

shakey mo collier

1995 Bad Boys Detective Mike Lowrey 2,000,000
1996 Independence Day Captain Steven "Steve" Hiller, USMC 5,000,000
1997 Men in Black James Darrell Edwards / Agent J 5,000,000
1998 Enemy of the State Robert Clayton Dean 14,000,000

^^ imo this is a completely unfuckwitable run

i mean hes only made two good movies since but

id pay to see michael bay's MLK too tbh

"^^ imo this is a completely unfuckwitable run"

Yeah if you have the attention span of a gnat.

</>Morbius

i dont follow

Focus.

Is Will Smith a Scientologist? Scientologists + Spielberg tend to be a dubious mix.

Is Will Smith even attached to this? It's hard to imagine him as King frankly.

C. Thomas Howell needs work, right?

it's gonna be a series of actors for different parts of the story, really unique & powerful choice imo

im particularly excited for the jim-carrey-as-young-mlk segment

I hope Dakota Fanning is one of them.

Dakota Fanning as teenage MLK I hope

arrgh fuck you x-post!

lolz great minds think alike

I'm ashamed it took me this long to realize that pretty much everyone on ILX exaggerates their hatred of Spielberg in a sort of equal-but-opposite fashion.

I'm ashamed it took me this long to realize that pretty much everyone on ILX exaggerates their hatred of Spielberg in a sort of equal-but-opposite fashion let's-pick-on-Morbius way.

dr.morbius has done more for america than all of ilx

I'm ashamed it took me this long to realize that pretty much everyone on ILX exaggerates their hatred of Spielberg in a sort of equal-but-opposite fashion.

― neu hollywood (Eric H.), Tuesday, May 19, 2009 3:28 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think most people do this -- at times it feels awfully deserved

(most ppl i know anyway)

Whatever makes Spielberg seem controversial and vital is all good imo.

i always say i like spielberg!

i a.i. say i like spielberg!

i indiana jones for spielberg movies.

It's remarkable how well he's done considering a main theme is I wanna fuck my Mom

i mean hes only made two good movies since but

wtf is the 2nd one????

It's remarkable how well he's done considering a main theme is I wanna fuck my Mom

― i, grey, Tuesday, May 19, 2009 8:18 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

worked for sophocles

ILX really hated Hitchcock in 1965

well he'd just made marnie, which was a very divisive picture

i'm sure S.S. will make something really fluffy w/ Julia Roberts & Steve Martin if only Surmounter asks him.

"ILX really hated Hitchcock in 1965"

Yeah they're really similar directors except for Stephen Spielberg consistently sucking and Hitchcock being consistently great.

i'm sure S.S. will make something really fluffy w/ Julia Roberts & Steve Martin if only Surmounter asks him.

that would be too unpretentious

i mean hes only made two good movies since but

wtf is the 2nd one????

― Lamp, Tuesday, May 19, 2009 4:30 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i am legend

wtf is the 1st one?

bad boys 2

: /

lol i tht u were going 2 say hitch

xp really?

Yeah they're really similar directors except for Stephen Spielberg consistently sucking and Hitchcock being consistently great

Nice poll idea. I can think of at least 10 Hitchcock films that totally suck, though.

More talk of sucking and cock plz.

haha no i pulled "two" out of my ass and then just named the first 2 i could remember

aka i did what ive been doing on ILX for 3 years now

Part of being a commercial filmmaker is that you're going to mistake the public mood and make terrible movies on occasion. I don't hold Spielberg or Hitchcock's failures against them.

bad boys 2 is pretty good if not the masterpiece that some other ilc mod claims but yah

u know whats a good movie is minority report

mistaking the public mood seems to be an excuse for a film that flops rather than a bad film

It's both too.

how would it result in a bad film?

minority report is good but has a kind of dum ending

"Nice poll idea. I can think of at least 10 Hitchcock films that totally suck, though."

Guy made like 50 though. He's entitled to a few stinkers. 10 seems high though.

There's plenty of bad films that flop!

Hitch's: Torn Curtain, Topaz -- bad films and totally out of step with their respective release year's big films.

Okay that's two.

He made nearly 20 movies before arriving at the original Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps, and most of them are no Rear Windows.

i guess what i'm asking is why a film that misreads a commercial audience would = a bad film, unless you're saying certain hackish tendencies of both filmmakers (in angling for box office) ruin the film

i guess what i'm asking is why a film that misreads a commercial audience would = a bad film, unless you're saying certain hackish tendencies of both filmmakers (in angling for box office) ruin the film

I never suggested a causal relationship, and sorry if I didn't make myself clear.