Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

also i've never seen a spielberg movie that made me want to talk about it. there is a good article on war of the worlds in the new york review of books though -- it didn't make me want to see the movie, but it made me want to reread the book but i think they ran the article coz they're selling reprints of the gorey illustrated version of the book.

wait.. i forgot that i heart the indy films too. they're totally funny.

The 'sex with a black man' came before that, and was the deciding moment in her basically turning into a drug whore.

And yes, it's very enlightened to say it doesn't matter what race they were, but it was still two young pretty white women having sex with black men for drugs, in both cases being clearly presented as depths-to-which-drugs-will-make-you-sink. And realistic? It was realistic that the rich suburban princess in Traffic went from honor student to ghetto crackhead in two weeks or whatever? It was like the worst reefer-madness hysteria imaginable.

plus spielberg is abt setpieces and sodenb really isnt, i prefer the latter cuz sexier but this is apples and oranges, like hitchcock vs ford

but above i only meant if you want to cf spielberg w anyone it shd be something anon like disney. like maybe steve year to year hasnt made anything as great as the incredibles, in awhile but maybe we cld be more rigorous abt our weight classes?

well, are there any biopics about public figures that aren't kinda like high-school filmstrips? you have to admit it's light-years ahead of "nixon."

i mean schindler's list sorta opened the floodgates to emotionally manipulative holocaust flix -- jacob the liar, that one about the piano player (i think it was called "the jew who played piano good"? no, that wasn't it) if you want to stretch it, "life is beautiful" and etc. came out the same year as swing kids too.

same argt. can go for maybe a few of his other big blockbusters? like if nothing else he was the first to be that audacious. that was the dinosaur lure fersure -- i.e. we can take something outrageously schlocky that conjures up claymation and make it EXCITING and SHINY.

like once he taps that inner sap potential, everyone can follow suit, but until he comes up with the formula, it doesn't seem so obvious? or at least achivable?

well, any ray harryhausen dinosaur movie is at least as good as JP, but i think the last one came out in like 1970. so i guess you're right actually. but i don't think the concept of a "dinosaur movie" is inherently schlocky!

Have ever done a The Pianist vs. The Piano vs. The Piano Teacher thread?

The director, Steven Spielberg, is 26. I can't tell if he has any mind, or even a strong personality, but then a lot of good moviemakers have got by without being profound. He isn't saying anything special in The Sugarland Express, but he has a knack for bringing out young actors, and a sense of composition and movement that almost any director might envy. Composition seems to come naturally to him, as it does to some of the young Italians; Spielberg uses his gift in a very free-and-easy, American way -- for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors -- a born entertainer -- perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks. In terms of the pleasure that technical assurance gives an audience, this film is one of the most phenomenal debut films in the history of movies. If there is such a thing as a a movie sense -- and I think there is (I know fruit venders and cabdrivers who have it and some movie critics who don't) -- Spielberg really has it. But he may be so full of it that he doesn't have much else.

I'm just saying Steven Spielberg this and Steven Spielberg that, but let's not forget there are actual forces of evil in the world.

Shakey, I grew up loving Woody Allen, and his decline pains me, but as far as filmmaking chops go vs Spielberg's, whose work would you rather see with the sound off?

And the "white man makes slavery movie" was beneath you; it's not like Richard Attenborough did it. Why not take SS's statement that he made Amistad for his black children at face value (yes he has some).

Also there's no real arguing with the statement that Temple is more fun than Raiders: that view simply has nothing in common with my reality.

(this is partly sentimental -- i saw last crusade in the cinemas like 4 times before seeing any of the others.)

NB: obviously I'm not going to see anything with Tom Hanks in.

Oh and that Matt Dillon thing just made me nearly spit water out my nose.

Ally, have you seen "Crash"? I'd love your opinion on it.

Re: the way way up thread Requiem for a Dream thing...I can buy the argument being made in Traffic about stock characters, black man and white woman, but not so much Requiem for a Dream. I think that's missing the point entirely, especially since, as already mentioned, the far more memorable (and FAR more degrading and horrifying) sex scene is two white girls and about 30 investment bankers.

RFAD was just deeply, ridiculously fucked up. The part where Leto's injecting into his gangrenous arm... YEAUGH.