Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

this thread will always gets worse.

these posts feel like lagoon-style trolls - never thought of Ward as the guy who would go 'give me the tasteful family drama' over killer sharks, killer trucks, killer houses, etc. - maybe i just had him pegged wrong

i want him to make a film like jaws or et w/out the shark or the alien - just give it a try, see how it goes

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 3:55 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he should be more like woody allen!

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 3:57 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol you know you are a true ilxor when you promise not to post any more and then you post some more

hungry4ass i am trly sorry that i have let you down! i like killer sharks and killer trucks and killer houses, but i honestly haven't been gripped by a spielberg 'genre' movie since the first jurassic park, and think that it would just be an INTERESTING movie on his part, to try and make 'scenes from a marriage', no trollin'

guys, Interiors is a comedy.

1941 is def one of spielberg's best

"maybe i just had him pegged wrong" is the most devastating ade insult

to try and make 'scenes from a marriage', no trollin'

well, E.T. boasts one of the most realistic depictions of growing up with a divorced mom so...

and the countryside scenes of Michael Lonsdale and his family in Munich are unlike anything in Spielberg's, er, oeuvre.

One can do family drama in a killer shark movie, ya know. It's not a binary.

if you try to do family drama and nothing but, you get The Color Purple.

in 2013 that's doing a Disney drama and an Oprah film.

One can do family drama in a killer shark movie, ya know. It's not a binary.

― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 21, 2013 5:20 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^^

so wait, did we finally find the one guy in the world who prefers 1941 and the color purple over spielberg's other movies

Bret Easton Ellis has one of those covered:

1: 1941 (1979)

It’s Christmastime in L.A. and no one is really freaking out about the recent attack on Pearl Harbor (people just want to dance and get laid and watch movies) except for a few assorted loony hawks who end up turning Hollywood into a war-torn amusement park. Spielberg has publicly apologized for this epically expensive slapstick comedy made between Close Encounters and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but not for Hook or Always. It was universally reviled and it is a folly, but Spielberg’s visual genius is on full display. The movie was built on such a massive scale that its massiveness becomes part of the joke. It has an anarchic anything-for-a-laugh spirit and a rousing John Williams score, and it’s spectacularly, childishly beautiful, painted with Lite-Brite colors. No CGI, just old-school miniature sets with toy planes chasing each other above Hollywood Boulevard—thrilling. The USO jitterbug dance sequence is justifiably famous and the unmoored Ferris wheel lit up and rolling and wobbling down the pier at the climax is awesome. A young man’s movie ridiculing the jingoism of the military mind-set, 1941 would make an instructive and very troubling double feature with Saving Private Ryan.

an instructive and very troubling Bret Easton Ellis.

1941 does what it sets out to do: leaves its audience feeling unsettled, troubled, and roused to action

and think that it would just be an INTERESTING movie on his part, to try and make 'scenes from a marriage', no trollin'

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 5:06 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

to be fair you walked out on scenes from a marriage: mary & abe edition

and SFAM isn't a very good movie! Not even Spielberg is as schematic as those first three episodes.

JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson in Poltergeist's relationship far more interesting.

"Before, after, before, after, before, after."

The untitled Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks Cold War thriller at DreamWorks just took an intriguing turn.

Joel and Ethan Coen have come onboard to pen a draft of the screenplay that tells the true story of James Donovan, an attorney who was thrust into the center of the Cold War when he negotiated with the KGB for the release of downed U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/coen-brothers-write-steven-spielbergs-706024

Interesting!

Wow, possibly the least intuitive Hollywood collaboration since Spielberg/Kubrick.

Since you put it that way ... NOW I'm excited!

thx chap for saying what someone was going to say however ridiculous it is.

http://www.theonion.com/video/the-onion-looks-back-at-saving-private-ryan,36211

Omg

dying

Shades of http://www.hulu.com/watch/466901 at 18:40

"This is the famous dock-walking scene. You know this whole take was done in one shot; it's a planned sequence like the opening of Touch of Evil and the Copacabana scene in GoodFellas. This is virtuoso filmmaking, you gotta see it to believe it. You know Brian De Palma used this in Bonfire of the Vanities."

I love this:

http://www.avclub.com/article/facebook-users-denounce-steven-spielbergs-senseles-206800

haha

rehabilitating 1941... an interview with co-writer Bob Gale

http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/1941-an-appreciation-and-interview-with-bob-gale

cracking Grantland piece about Spielberg's early 80s peak

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/a-look-back-at-steven-spielberg-at-the-height-of-his-powers/

rong peak

aw come on now

ET only one of his greats in that period

ET: great
Poltergeist: great
Raiders: close enough

credited films only plz

(i found Poltergeist close enough when i saw it last Halloween rlly. Raiders still just an A- pastiche. Like SS better when he grew up.)

As much as I ride for late period Spiel over his commonly-accepted peak period, the latter has nothing so clearly dud as The Terminal or roughly 85 percent of Crystal Skull.

Maybe Tintin too, I dunno, I couldn't finish it.

like The Terminal and Tintin

his Twilight Zone slice is pretty hideous

That piece is OK, but

. It was Spielberg’s last foray into action for action’s sake

BTW, that piece doesn't touch on something from that era that's always struck me, how "Temple of Doom," "Gremlins" and "Poltergeist" (the latter two of which he shepherded and protected) represent him at his most sadistic and horrific. Hearts ripped out, faces ripped off, nearly all the perversity of "Gremlins" - what was going on in Spielville that he would go so dark? His impending divorce?

like about 60% of Skull too

xp

Doom was made around both SS & GL bustups, yes

Heart being ripped out in TOD kinda obvious as a divorce metaphor

Or guy tearing off his own face.

Or the old lady getting launched out of a second-story window.

or Molo Ram and his secret trap door under Kali.

Slim Pickens trying to defecate in 1941

Spielberg cut his teeth in one kind of genre thriller or another, his upping the ante a bit in the era of the slasher film shouldn't require all that psychohistory.

i agree w/ that.

i think of the '80s as his peak but as much for the films he produced as those he directed (with poltergeist in an ambiguous category)--if not for spielberg, certainly no E.T./Indiana Jones films but also no Back to the Future, Gremlins, Used Cars, Innerspace....

but I think there are highlights t/o Spielberg's filmography, so i wouldn't want to press the argument too hard. IMO Jurassic Park, Catch Me if You Can, War of the Worlds... these are all peaks of one kind or another. Jurassic Park may be the most emblematic Spielberg achievement.

and thanks for that bob gale interview, always nice to hear from the other half of the team that made Back to the Future/Used Cars/etc.