Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

Some confirmation that Spielberg directed Poltergeist.

Peter Benchley was a lousy writer too, i think

xpost I mean, there was never really much question in my mind. It's not like any other Hooper film I've seen, but it's super Spielbergian.

filmmakers have been known to produce something different when they get the biggest budget of their lives... and Spielberg was always credited with the story and as co-writer.

The clearest proof that Spielberg did the heavy lifting (beyond being involved in every single step of the production) is that so many of Hooper's movies both before and after are virtually inept, with the almost accidental brilliance of "Chainsaw." I mean, on either side of "Poltergeist" is "Eaten Alive" and "Lifeforce," which both suuuuuuck. Just about everything he's done has been ugly and sloppy, with the glaring exception of machine-precise "Poltergeist."

Salem's Lot smuggled in some eptitude. So did The Funhouse, despite the production problems. He isn't a worthless filmmaker. It's just that Poltergeist is unquestionably a Spielberg film. I used to think otherwise, that Hooper and Spielberg battling for supremacy resulted in a fascinatingly schizo family horror movie. But Spielberg in that era was already dealing in some serious kindertrauma.

Salem's Lot was, at best, ept, but Funhouse - a movie I've inexplicably seen a bunch - is pretty dull. His movies are just ugly and underlit and shot poorly, and that's before the acting and script.

lifeforce is entertainingly tolerable if you set yrself up to expect a late-70s hammer reboot of the quatermass x-periment

(lol i saw it at its london film festival debut, when it was given a very grand opening in a swanky leicester square cinema, as TH's star was at that point very high: oops)

Ha. Yeah, and that was his post Poltergeist big bugdet shot. Oops indeed.

The Amazing Stories episode 'The Mission', starring Kevin Costner and Kiefer Sutherland, is some damn fine Spielberg.

Big Lebowski might be the Coens' best movie...
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, July 28, 2005 11:36 AM (twelve years ago) Bookmark

A pod person was posting as me back in 2005.

I remember watching "The Mission" when it first aired, and my dad was def disappointed at the fantastical turn things took. ("It's called Amazing Stories...")

Taken out of the context of the series' conceit, I can definitely understand that. The forty minutes leading up to the resolution are a great tension build. I wish Spielberg would do more suspense pictures. It's one of his strongest suits, imo.

is "the Mission" the one with the fighter plane that grows cartoon wheels so it can land

wow I had forgotten how crazy the directors' list for that series was

SPOILER shakes

xposts Yes, that's the one.

Watching this series for the first time in 30+ years is wigging me out a little because bits and pieces of it had strongly imprinted themselves on my pre-adolescent brain without me ever realizing where this random assortment of images had come from.

oops sorry I ruined the plot of an episode of a 30 yo children's tv show my bad

Monster, imo.

a children's tv show, huh

so much ronging

After I blow through this series, I'm interested in revisiting some of the other projects from that era which Spielberg was tangentially involved with (e.g. *batteries not included, which was apparently originally intended to be an Amazing Stories episode). He seems to have been trying to curate a particular Spielbergian feel across everything emblazoned with his producer credit (the Williams-scored whimsy and wonder of suburbia intersecting with the fantastic, with just a sprinkling of coke-heightened overacting).

the Williams-scored whimsy and wonder of suburbia intersecting with the fantastic, with just a sprinkling of coke-heightened overacting

kill me now

One of the reasons the episode I mentioned is so good is that it largely eschewed those tendencies that he clung to so tenaciously through at least, what, Hook?

I don't think Empire of the Sun fits that mold, pilgrim

There's something about that tendency that I find ineffably appealing, despite (or maybe because of) how cloyingly sentimental it sometimes is. There's something almost sinister about it. Some of these Amazing Stories episodes (a lot of which have at least a story credit for Spielberg) have this weird artificial sheen that almost feels like the grotesque depictions of humanity from a contemporaneous David Lee Roth video. I feel like there's a weird continuum from Spielberg's '80s sensibility to Joe Dante to, like EC Comics. The mundane overexposed into horrifying cartoonishness.

xpost Yes, I immediately remembered outliers like Empire and The Color Purple after I posted.

p sure I've said this before - Empire of the Sun is great except for the score, which is godawful

i'd remind you OL that the 'wonder of suburbia' generally included divorce, isolation, sometimes poltergeists!

Yes! It is horror as viewed through the gauzy haze of nostalgia.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/steven-spielberg-signs-deal-with-apple-to-bring-back-am-1819324878

https://entertainment.theonion.com/steven-spielberg-recalls-coming-to-blows-with-e-t-on-f-1820392944

i lolled

I appreciate this alternate history.

Haha holy shit, my wife thought Steven Spielberg directed Maximum Overdrive. She thought, at the height of his career, Spielberg got so addicted to coke that he made Maximum Overdrive, and then was so ashamed that he sobered up from then on. I wish that was true. So hard.

— Robert Brockway (@Brockway_LLC) January 7, 2018

meanwhile Emilio Estevez goes on to write and direct The Post starring Ally Sheedy as Katherine Graham and Judd Nelson as Bradlee.

Replace 'Maximum Overdrive' with 'Hook' and that tweet is basically otm.

I don't think I've seen Minority Report in 15 years. Held up better than I remembered, if only because it was so much more of a Hitchcock homage than I remembered, not just the wrong man motif, but overt references, like individual shots and set pieces. Was pretty cool, my daughter dug it.

Haven't seen since it was released, so its due for a rewatch. I suspect, however, that my main problem with the film--the ugly-as-hell cinematography--will only be amplified now.

It's super ugly, almost to the point of confrontational. There's a shot that transcends lens flare, essentially just pointing the camera at the sun. But the effects are pretty good and the retina-scanning ads and whatnot of the future pretty close to fruition. Plus, it's often darkly comical, even slapstick at times, which also seems sort of Hitchcocky.

Spielberg shoots the incredible musical number that opens TEMPLE OF DOOM. pic.twitter.com/ivijLcuIEV

— Nick de Semlyen (@NickdeSemlyen) November 17, 2019

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steven-spielberg-sons-debut-feature-honeydew-heading-berlin-1279391

Honeydew, the New England-set horror starring Steven Spielberg's son Sawyer Spielberg in his introductory role ...

Exit The Warrior/Steven's Son, Sawyer

First off, he's not sick, afaik! But I do assume he is staying at home like everyone else, and as I was reading that Making of Jaws book it occurred to me how cool it would be if someone like Spielberg started making little home movies again, just for the sake of mutual entertainment. (The same holds for any filmmakers, for that matter. Like, I'd expect Soderbergh could whip something fun up for a few minutes of distraction.) But man, Spielberg could make like a 5-minute lark, then send it off to ILM for state of the art FX and John Williams for a quickie score, if he wanted to.

Every few years I rewatch "Empire of the Sun." What an impeccable piece of filmmaking.

Scanning back a bit, a lot of bad mouthing the Williams score, but honestly it didn't stick out that much as particularly oppressive. What you *do* hear a lot is apparently a Welsh lullaby called "Suo Gân," which fits pretty thematically:

As for Suo Gân, the lullaby can be dated back to the start of the 19th Century, with the most commonly accepted lyrics being written by Welsh folklorist and poet Robert Bryan (1858-1920). The song, whose title translates simply as 'Lullaby’, describes the relationship between mother and child, as the elder tries to rock the youngster to sleep, assuring him that all is well in the world. A rough translation from the original Welsh can be seen below.

Sleep child on my bosom
Cosy and warm is this;
Mother’s arms are tight around you,
Mother’s love is under my breast;
Nothing may affect your napping,
No man will cross you;
Sleep quietly, dear child,
Sleep sweetly on your mother’s breast.
Sleep quietly, tonight, sleep;
Sleep sweetly, the pretty of his picture;
Why are you now smiling,
Smiling softly in your sleep?
Are angels above smiling,
On you smiling joyfully,
You smiling back in sleeping,
Sleeping quietly on my breast?
Do not fear, nothing but a leaf
Knocks, knocks on the door;
Do not fear, a small lonely wave
Murmurs, murmurs on the seashore;
Sleep child, there’s nothing here
Nothing to give you a fright;
Smile quietly in my bosom,
On the angels white yonder

p sure I've said this before - Empire of the Sun is great except for the score, which is godawful

Only seen this recently and found myself trying to rationalize the often mystifyingly disjointed acting direction as being intended to convey the effect of traumatic situations but I'm not convinced this was all intentional. Kind of odd, although you can't knock the Bale kid's effort.

The score had some arresting moments I thought, maybe I was getting bored with the images

Bale's performance is unimpeachable.

Spielberg and Hanks make cameos late in Jim Carrey's novel, at first benignly ... but then the worm turns in a matter that will satisfy the haters.

I think the imagery of this movie is impeccable too. Some absolutely gorgeous shots, if anything those are the ones that take me out of the movie.

Just seen three seconds of Tintin jesus christ so ugly what the fuck were they thinking?

give it a few more seconds, it's good imo

I can't watch anything that ugly

Just a pointless tech-driven decision in terms of the style

I can't watch anything that ugly

― big man on scampus (Noodle Vague)

I thought you enjoyed Boris Johnson press conferences