Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

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.

duh, I forgot to mention Jaws. i guess i was thinking 80s and later.

difficult listening hour is a marvelous proselytizer for the glories of JP.

I had to ask Lucas about the heart. The metaphor seemed too perfect. Is that your heart being ripped out? I asked. “Yeah,” Lucas said, but he insisted the glee with which it was ripped out was Spielberg’s.

from some Grantland piece

i always think that Zemeckis took a lot of the premises of Spielberg's cinema and kind of surpassed the master in terms of narrative and stylistic engineering. Spielberg may have caught up on the latter, but never the former; I don't think Spielberg has ever worked with a script as sublimely well-tuned as BttF's, though Jurassic Park might come closest.

Everything Jaws was trying to do, War of the Worlds did way better ... aside from showing restraint, of course.

to be fair I don't know of a better-written popular genre movie script from that period than BttF... Die Hard is beautifully proportioned, though without BttF's filigree.

xpost

I'd say WotW is largely at least as good as Jaws... except for the ending, which even Spielberg can't sell (you could charitably read it as one of those false happy endings, a la Bigger Than Life)

BttF is a sneaky incest-spiced kids' movie that profanes Chuck Berry

Die Hard script >>>> BttF.

Actually, I just watched the latter again this past week with the kids, and for the first time it almost lost me. Just the shitty lighting, and the dumb jokes, and all the dated in a bad way stuff. In the end I and it still rallied, and the kids liked it, but no way would I ever put Zemeckis>>>Spielberg. Zemeckis is much more of a cold stylist. I never get the feeling he has much passion or reverence for the medium. Or for people.

shitty lighting?????

philistines, all of you.

Backlot sitcom lighting. Everything brighter than everything else.

BttF is bad. He made good movies when he thought he was a kid. Then he didn't.

^ strike that and pretend i was high. was talking about spielberg and meant WotW. exit, stage embarrassed...

can't think of any Spielberg movie I like more than Roger Rabbit. Jaws maybe.

clearly BttF would've been better if shot in black and white with a lot of poetic wide-angle shots of empty lots

BttF is a sneaky incest-spiced kids' movie that profanes Chuck Berry

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Friday, February 20, 2015 3:27 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you say that like it's a bad thing!

ppl sticking w/ stuff they loved when they were 12

BttF is a sneaky incest-spiced kids' movie that profanes Chuck Berry

helluva first line for a positive review

Chuck Berry has profaned himself enough.

WOTW is, aside from the Raiders series, Spielberg's absolute best action/thriller/"horror", and I'm including Jaws, which I love. None of his other movies have anywhere near the sustained tension/terror of that one. (Schindler possibly excluded.)

I will stan for pretty much any Spielberg as much as anyone, but movies like Munich are playing an entirely different game, and doing it a lot better.