Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

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.

Hook and Lost World would definitely not place in my top 20. Duel would, though. And Sugarland might squeak in at 20, just because of its look as a document of the 70s to me. I also have a soft spot for 1941, and may be the only person of whom this is true.

kael's doom-is-the-best meme is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, but jurassic park over jaws is a very very important truth.

the kind of truth that's not actually true?

saving Empire of the Sun for a double bill w/ The King of Comedy, eh?

The worst thing I've seen by him is the Twilight Zone movie segment.

it is NOT worse than Hook or Always.

all yall complaining about bad hacking scenes in skyfall need to appreciate the master of bad hacking scenes in jurassic park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng

ive given Raiders a bunch of chances and aside from the truck chase i dont think very highly of it. i usually disagree with Kael when it comes to action flicks but she nails that one.

Jaws, ET, Munich, Schindly's, Close Encounters would be at the top of my list; Always, Lost World, Terminal at the bottom (and i can find something to like about all of those anyway)

I have not seen Hook, JP2 or Always.

or Joan Crawford's "Night Gallery" which has gotta be better than several of the films

Schindly's Bulletpoints

I've seen Always, but so long ago that I can't even remember it.

always is junk but spielberg really pumps that sucker full of movie magic. the filmmaking is virtuosic but there's no restraint (Lincoln really makes you appreciate how far he's come in that respect) - so you're sorta getting his best and worst, in that you see what happens when he uses his full powers on unredeemable material. there's some great, exciting parts that you cant imagine anyone doing better, but the story just doesn't deserve it.

all yall complaining about bad hacking scenes in skyfall need to appreciate the master of bad hacking scenes in jurassic park

it was the '90s

1.5 years after this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doAnB5_eDnw

she doesn't hack anything in jurassic park she just uses a computer w an admittedly goofy GUI. like, there are no pop-ups where skulls laugh at you. it is in fact a unix system. now there IS that pop-up in an earlier scene where a cartoon of wayne knight laughs at samuel l jackson but that sets up a great slj delivery ("PLEASE!") so it's excused.