Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

Hanks U2-spyplane thriller due by year-end

with Bono playing lovable sidekick.

http://youtu.be/oW4aZCcvuqg

http://youtube/oW4aZCcvuqg

I give up. Spielberg BP advert.

"it's what i do" = http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BuiL-Lz8S0g/T0JfzsGHm2I/AAAAAAAAB1U/_PEi0NG2Pn4/s1600/7.png

ew

Steven Spielberg is set to direct Ready Player One, the highly anticipated project based on the popular sci-fi book by Ernest Cline that takes place in a virtual world. What a coup for Warner Bros, which will bring it to the screen along with Village Roadshow. This is expected to be Spielberg’s next movie after The BFG.

Ready Player One also marks the director’s return to Warner Bros after a 14-year absence. The last picture he directed there was A.I. Artificial Intelligence in 2001, which the grandmaster Stanley Kubrick had developed there. Before that, it was Empire Of The Sun (1987) and the critically acclaimed The Color Purple (1985). He also produced Gremlins and Goonies in the mid-1980s for the studio. “We are thrilled to welcome Steven back to Warner Bros,” said Greg Silverman, the studio’s President of Creative Development and Worldwide Production. “We had an historic series of collaborations in the 1980s and 1990s and have wanted to bring him back for years.”

Spielberg and his films are actually mentioned in the 2011 book. “I also absorbed the complete filmographies of each of his favorite directors, “says the main character Wade Watts at one point as he’s studying the interests of digital utopia creator James Donovan Halliday. “Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And of course Kevin Smith.” There are also references to the Indiana Jones franchise, which Spielberg directed, and E.T. in the wide ranging cultural touchpoints of Ready Player One.

ew? is he gonna wuin your widdle bewoved geek book?

or is that from EW?

you're an odd man

the ew was for the material btw

sorry. that's a major ambiguity in showbiz posts.

I have read the widdle geek book though, and it's even worse than you can imagine (well possibly not but it is really bad)

ok. Jaws the novel is crap too.

“Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And of course Kevin Smith.”

...

That sentence is indicative, yes

Lubitsch, Hawks, Sturges, McCarey, Capra. And of course Judd Apatow.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBDLCi9UwAARpKE.jpg

Ex-ILG-mod Laura Hudson writes a wonder excoriation of the sequel to "Ready Player One," which will no doubt sell enough copies to get a cinematic adaption, God Forbid:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/07/armada_by_ernest_cline_follow_up_to_ready_player_one_reviewed.single.html

Armada often feels like it's being narrated by that one guy in your group of friends who never stops quoting the Simpsons, a tic that feels increasingly tiresome and off-putting in the face of the novel’s supposedly apocalyptic stakes. On more than one occasion, soldiers salute each other en route to world-ending battles by solemnly swearing that “the Force” will be with them, and one character flies to his supposedly tragic and moving death while screaming quotes from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This is a book that ends with someone unironically quoting Yoda.

https://41.media.tumblr.com/63a95879df23d5d1045375321e8448b4/tumblr_nxinqnt4pq1r5cyr0o1_1280.jpg

RIP Vilmos Zsigmond

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_v0fV15P7uQo/S8pIpdzirnI/AAAAAAAAHfk/Wx_B61uzi-8/s1600/ce3k+points.jpg

OK, put me down as a lifetime Spielberg hater, or to less harshly a Spielberg non-believer, but holy fuck on rewatching Jaws is quite awesomely directed! I will take the first 2 Indy films, Duel was alright, EOTS I appreciate from a Ballard fanboy POV, but everything else falls on the spectrum of *shrug*>ACTIVELY DESPISE to me. Like, as a pre-teen in the 80's I genuinely got into fistfights (not initiated by me) because I didn't like E.T. or Close Encounters. And suddenly on my whatever-number viewing of Jaws I am appreciating the composition and framing and suchansuch of a shortbread tin director? Maybe I should rewatch some of his later work to see if my newfound appreciation carries over. I recall Lincoln and eh Minority Report being not overly bad.

Not rewatching Bridge Of Spies though, that was bad.

Like, BAD bad.

About half as good as the Hateful Eight, which was pretty rubbish.

OK, this Jaws rush is wearing off now, fuck Spielberg.

Jaws is amazing.

I watched War Horse at home the other night, and there was lots that I liked about it. Even the hokiest parts were done with restraint. ((Good restraint--not what Lester Bangs called "tasty licks and all that Traffic twaddle" restraint.) Thought the scene where the British and German soldier tended to the horse was excellent, ditto Niels Arestrup as the grandfather.

War Horse is the only recent Spielberg I never watched. My Mother saw the stage version and was blown away, then hated the film version and warned me off it, and I generally do what she tells me. But that may just have been a comparison-based attitude, I can see the film being underwhelming after that mechanical puppet horse bisnes.

it has one great scene of the horse running through the battlefield.

the Great Man's films are obv wasted on you of course

OK I won't bother rewatching then, I'll just wait until I get my perfect nuclear family set up then I might identify better. I don't dismiss your opinions (Amour Fou was great) but Spielberg just baffles me, I cannae see the craft in it and I don't get any emotional hit from his works.

Spielberg's families do not generally fit that model. One often wonders what the haters are seeing.

One one might. Another one might question the level of animosity it should even been seemly to exhibit over middle of the road dripping such as Spielberg has produced in his latter worthy phase.

Catch me if you Can was rly good tho.

I'll just wait until I get my perfect nuclear family set up then I might identify better.

this is flat out wrong

I think I'll start the big Spielberg rewatch, one a day, starting Monday (I'm going out drinking shortly, I cannot vouch for my opinions over the next coupla days, and I want to do this PROPER). Looking it up, I'll start with Duel (not seen in decades, I assume still competent), are Something Evil and Savage things I need to watch, or can I move on to Sugarland Express on Tuesday? (which btw I forgot about up there, but I know is AWESOME).

Something Evil and Savage must be TV, like Night Gallery or Kojack or something.

Aye but so was Duel, and I ain't skipping that.

I am sure I have seen Catch Me If You Can, also The Terminal, I am struggling to remember a single scene from either tho, oh well I'll get to them sometime in a coupla weeks.

No, I mean, Duel was a movie that he made for TV. But he also did a couple of episode for hire regular TV things.

yeesh, if there's any director who isn't all about "the perfect nuclear family setup" it's spielberg -- "close encounters" is basically about a guy who abandons his family, "e.t." is about a lonely kid, the fathers in all of his films tend to be shitty and inattentive or non-existent.

he used to be anyway, in the director commentary for CE, he said he wouldn't have made that movie today, due to his feelings about family. Which basically tells me everything I need to know about modern Spielberg

Having not rewatched this shit (yet), isn't the point of Close Encounters the creation of a new perfect family? Wait, and E.T., it's all about building a new family unit with an alien, I am totally ready to accept that I am wrong here, til I get round to these. But I wasn't suggesting these films initially portrayed a perfect family, just that that seems to be Spielberg's ideal, his happy ending.

in Lincoln and BOS the dads are decidedly chilly.

To me, the point of that movie is tied up in the "when you wish upon a star" motive that runs through the score -- ie, Dreyfuss' character was always someone who didn't quite fit into his own life, and even tho he didn't know how or why, he took his chance to follow a dream by leaving the Earth (and his family) behind. It's a bittersweet message at best, but I've always thought it was one of Spielberg's most honest depictions of humanity on film

xpost No way. If anything, they're all about escape from unhappy, boring lives, and a willingness to chuck the family under the bus to do it. They're like Springsteen's "Hungry Heart:" pretty dark shit hidden in a pop song.

I will give my opinion on Close Encounters on eh Thursday, was there different versions of that? Like a directors cut or summat? Don't tell me I need to visit Family to accomplish this project...

yeah, there was a special edition that featured a few new scenes in the body of the movie, but the main change was actually showing the inside of the ship at the end. Which frankly, you don't need to see and kind of spoils the mystery imo

I want to say there are three cuts now?

he wouldn't have made that movie today, due to his feelings about family. Which basically tells me everything I need to know about modern Spielberg

criticism by express psychoanalysis sure beats thinkin'

or watchin'

Oh OK, I don't need to see Dreyfuss's new(clear) family.

I mean, I'm kidding, but that's 4 on my list chronologically, I recall it being annoying, but I am open to being proved wrong (as I admitted to for Jaws). And I like the first 3, Close Encounters is the first "Spielberg" Spielberg, I am open to re-evaluation, if it means Morbs will be nice to me..

except when a new film comes out i havent got the energy for this anymore.

or watchin'

it's mostly shorthand for messageboard talkin'. I've seen enough modern era Spielberg to know I don't find his movies very interesting or deep or emotionally engaging -- when I heard the quote in the CE DVD feature, it confirmed that feeling, and gave me a kind of retrospective, deja vu-ish feeling of "oh of course he wouldn't have made the movie like that today, because none of his movies are anywhere near as ambiguous or ambitious anymore".

A.I.

lincoln is pretty ambiguous and quite dark in some ways imo

yeah, Munich isn't as ambitious as his early genre films! whaaa?

I should watch AI again. I recall being disappointed, but maybe years removed from having to wonder what Kubrick would have done will make it easier to watch with fresh eyes.