Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

i just found the staging of the reunions in WotW and WH to be impossibly stilted and phoney, almost ludicrously so. i don't get the feeling that spielberg feels it; he can't imagine a convincing, much less an unexpected, way to stage this sort of thing. yet many of his scenes of utter horror are admirably inventive and effective.

but opinions are opinions.

also i don't know that we've argued about spielberg before, at least not that much. i don't have very strong opinions on the guy in general.

I meant the communal "we," hehe.

In the case of War of the Worlds character is action to a large degree; 90% of it worked for me, and i am inclined to fuckin' hate Tom Cruise.

i don't get the feeling that spielberg feels it; he can't imagine a convincing, much less an unexpected, way to stage this sort of thing. yet many of his scenes of utter horror are admirably inventive and effective.

been over this 100x on ILX but this nails exactly what's so suggestive about the final scenes of A.I. imo.

but I dunno I find the standard Spielberg "happy ending" kind of a mannerist affectation of his at this point...there's something strictly formal, i guess you could say, about its function in the narrative.

especially in the sense that they almost seem detachable from the movie proper.

well, in the case of War Horse, a reconciliation/happy ending is part of what he's adapting, it's a children's book!

i feel like spielberg has the ability to infuse anything he does with a shitload of movie magic for lack of a better term, and sometimes its astounding and sometimes its a huge disaster (Always), usually if the material's too thin or bad to be redeemed. the reunion at the end of WotW is just dumb to me, but in WH i thought it worked. and i think the staging in WH's final scenes are just better and more interesting; in war of the worlds its risibly phony but in war horse it feels more like hes going for some heightened non-reality 'fable' - and i guess your reaction to that could be dependent on how skeptical you are of modern fables

i really liked War Horse

I just don't get the utility of phrases like "heightened non-reality" re Hollywood studio-made films (and many others made elsewhere)... this is what all but *maybe* 2 of his films are. That's what Hitchcock films were. When mainstream filmmakers decided to be "gritty" between the '50s and '70s, they made up a new heightened-reality version of naturalism! (stealing that last point from Stephin Merritt I think)

that's why to me Cassavettes films look more like Storybook Land than a Selznick production.

i don't really know where you're coming from morbs! i would agree that many filmmakers are working in a heightened reality idiom, even those whose work is characterized as naturalistic, but im just talking about this specific movie. i didn't mean it critically, just that the ending of war horse seems conspicuously different from anything else you see in movies today - the composition (which struck me as Ford-like, not that im an expert), use of color, music - in a way that evokes the movies of SS's childhood

Yeah, when the material calls for it (ie not in Munich), he mines that vein expertly (tho WH is only a semi-success for me).

that's why to me Cassavettes films look more like Storybook Land than a Selznick production.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 17, 2012 10:17 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wha--? this applies more to, like, jules dassin than cassavetes.

yeah the ending of war horse was seriously mega-stylized (no less than the much more interesting climactic scene of haywire) -- i don't see how you can argue against that.

what would a not-stylized ending look like?

The boy and horse going home is more a coda -- the 'endings' seem more like the two scenes before that.

So is the "ending" the " ... and zee horse" part?

much more interesting climactic scene of haywire

challops!

Is that French granddad? I saw it 2-1/2 months ago, 98% of it is gone.

xp

Yeah, it's the 2 seconds of suspense about whether the horse and the boy will actually end up being allowed to stay together.

much more interesting climactic scene of haywire

challops!

― RudolfHitlerFtw (Hungry4Ass), Friday, February 17, 2012 2:16 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not really. whatever you think of haywire, the climactic scene on the beach is great.

wha--? this applies more to, like, jules dassin than cassavetes.

Cassavettes' naturalism is way stylized.

do you mean in the performances? because that i get, completely.

as for the mise-en-scene in other respects, i don't get it.

that was the worst fight in the movie!

well in terms of fight choreography, maybe.

in terms of crazy editing and deliberately mismatched lighting, hell no.

the shot of her running up behind mcgregor is great. the way the fight was shot really grated me, with the camera centered on like a nice sunset with the two fighters stuffed in the corner. it further depersonalized a conflict that was already thin and difficult to care about. i felt like soderbergh was throwing it in the audiences face in an unpleasant way

that's probably true, but i like the way that instead of trying to match the lighting they just allow the sunset light to radically shift with each cut. i thought that was kind of brilliant.

there are also lots of really (deliberately i assume) jarring elliptical cuts.

yeah i rarely notice editing choices like that. i'd be interested in reading an analysis of some of the things he was doing stylistically - i couldn't really tell why he made certain decisions (like how he shot that beach fight), maybe it's really obvious from a certain perspective, he seems to have like a unifying aesthetic for each movie he does

I'd love to see a comparison between that scene and a "standard" action scene because it certainly felt different. i remember one particular cut that shifted the POV exactly 180 degrees, which certainly seemed unusual to my eyes.

oh, great

oh great people are actually talking about movies in an interesting and detailed way

I just happen to like stayin on topic

Classic.

on the early TV work:

http://www.reverseshot.com/article/spielbergs_early_television_work

Some great essays on Spielberg, plus memorabilia and diary excerpts from Truffaut's acting stint on CE3K, in the February Cahiers.

Reverse Shot continues its Spielberg coverage: http://www.reverseshot.com/section/steven_spielberg

Munich

War of the Worlds

Tom Hiddleston sure can wear an uniform (as he proved in The Deep Blue Sea).

He played one of the sharks?

He played Samuel L. Jackson.

Goldman isn't a fan then..

http://achtenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/saving-private-ryan-goldman-essay.html

ha i remember reading that in Premier. pretty OTM to be honest.

Janusz Kaminski on 11 shots:

http://www.vulture.com/2012/11/how-steven-spielberg-cinematographer-janusz-kaminski-got-these-shots.html

Munich
"It's almost over-the-top to some degree, right?" admits Kaminski

and all the better for it.

What the hell. Ranked my favorite Spielbergs out in response to that Salon ranking and here's what I came up with:

01. A.I. Artificial Intelligence 2001
02. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial 1982
03. Munich 2005
04. War of the Worlds 2005
05. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 1984
06. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977
07. Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981
08. Lincoln 2012
09. Schindler’s List 1993
10. Jurassic Park 1993
11. Minority Report 2002
12. War Horse 2011
13. Jaws 1975
14. Saving Private Ryan 1998
15. The Color Purple 1985
16. Catch Me If You Can 2002
17. The Lost World: Jurassic Park 1997
18. Amistad 1997
19. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 2008
20. Hook 1991
21. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 1989

Biggest blind spots still are Duel and Empire of the Sun.

Top 3 are always rotating, tho.

I'd place Jaws in the top ten instead of JP and our hierarchy differs but otherwise we're in perfect mind meld.

our hierarchy differs

LOL, aside from that.

No love for Last Crusade then?

The opposite, pretty much.

Tho Hook is probably admittedly likely worse.