Steven Spielberg

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bearcuborg
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#226 Post by bearcuborg » Mon Apr 08, 2019 9:07 pm

Zot! wrote:
Mon Apr 08, 2019 7:32 pm
To be fair, and I say this on the authority of having spent my first 40 years in Chicago, the Blues Brothers covers of Soul Man and particularly Sweet Home Chicago got regular play on radio. Nobody thought they were authentic or definitive, but both are infectous and populist enough to maintain their cachet.

Keep in mind that the film features a slew of real blues and soul heroes for a reason.
That is quite true. Though, I haven’t lived in Chicago for almost 15yrs, I don’t know if those two songs are still in rotation on classic rock stations (if such a thing exists out there) but in the 80s/90s you could probably hear them as often as anything else.

Perhaps I’m biased, but I love every bit of the Blues Brothers film. And while I certainly can’t dispute how poorly some of the musical numbers are shot, the Ray Charles stuff with all the kids on old Maxwell Street is a real delight. Landis was also thankfully insistent on Cab doing Minnie the Moocher the old fashioned way.

As for 1941, I’ll be damned, I still want to see it someday, despite all the reasons stated here...

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fdm
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#227 Post by fdm » Wed Apr 10, 2019 9:15 pm

For some reason Belushi's impression of Joe Cocker comes to mind... similar kind of SNL thing. (I think the film was pretty good for what it was, but it was what it was...) (Liked 1941 too.)

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MyFathersSon
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#228 Post by MyFathersSon » Thu May 16, 2019 9:02 pm

If you rewatch Schindler's List, here's how to understand the ending better than Mamet or Kubrick or Gilliam: Neeson as Schindler does not say "I could have saved more". This would be just a quibble, but the scene should not be referred to so frequently by a line of dialog that doesn't exist; it demonstrates to me that the scene is not fully understood. Schindler's recital of regrets begins when Stern tells him that the inscription on the ring "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire" is from the Talmud. Oskar drops the ring because one person in particular suddenly enters his mind. Two shots that can be thought of as bookends contribute to the story: At the beginning of the movie Schindler puts on the gold lapel pin with the swastika, and near the end he removes the pin and stares at it in anguish. This happens after he says "I could have got more out", the closest dialog to the often misquoted line. The dialog that best sums up the ending comes at the end of the litany of regrets; Schindler stares at the obscene gold lapel pin, and utters words for 'one more person' six times; the last being "I could have gotten one more person, and I didn't. And I didn't!" The novelist Thomas Kenneally, screenwriter Steven Zaillian, and Spielberg combined to sharpen a great if not historically accurate story about a girl in a red coat, a double epiphany, and a mixed ending of hundreds saved by one man with a broken spirit.
Last edited by MyFathersSon on Fri Jul 26, 2019 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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HinkyDinkyTruesmith
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#229 Post by HinkyDinkyTruesmith » Thu May 16, 2019 9:15 pm

That's a beautiful reading of the end of the movie. Although I think most of the criticisms against the movie tend to be rather didactic and condescending (even if you can make ethical criticisms based on the movie's narrative strategies), the clarification your post makes realizes the end of the film not as one concerned with the simple sentiment of saving more lives, but rather with the overall failure of Schindler's strategies (entirely based around numerics and numbers, which will always mean that there's never enough––the doctrine of capitalism) but the reality of his success (one is one). The film's "mixed ending" (as you put it) is a great contradiction: to save one is always enough and yet never enough.

And ironically to believe that one is enough is where a lot of the film's criticism comes from; wasn't it Kubrick who said it wasn't six million Jews who died, it was about the eleven hundred who lived? For the (reasonably) pessimistic, to gleam anything resembling a positive charge from any narrative involved in the Holocaust would be a failure.

ford
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#230 Post by ford » Fri May 17, 2019 10:45 am

HinkyDinkyTruesmith wrote:
Thu May 16, 2019 9:15 pm
That's a beautiful reading of the end of the movie. Although I think most of the criticisms against the movie tend to be rather didactic and condescending (even if you can make ethical criticisms based on the movie's narrative strategies), the clarification your post makes realizes the end of the film not as one concerned with the simple sentiment of saving more lives, but rather with the overall failure of Schindler's strategies (entirely based around numerics and numbers, which will always mean that there's never enough––the doctrine of capitalism) but the reality of his success (one is one). The film's "mixed ending" (as you put it) is a great contradiction: to save one is always enough and yet never enough.

And ironically to believe that one is enough is where a lot of the film's criticism comes from; wasn't it Kubrick who said it wasn't six million Jews who died, it was about the eleven hundred who lived? For the (reasonably) pessimistic, to gleam anything resembling a positive charge from any narrative involved in the Holocaust would be a failure.
Strongly agree. More and more the scoffing about this movie—clearly a masterpiece that’s “smarter” than any one of its collaborators and certainly far more ambiguous than its detractors suggest—starts to sound like the musings of a teenaged atheist.

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domino harvey
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#231 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 17, 2019 10:57 am

I don’t think the film’s detractors are upset for the same reason an edgelord might be, but there’s no doubt some degree of hyperbole in the most fervent reactions against the film because a film this widely liked (among non-film forum members, perhaps) needs loud voices against it to be heard at all. But I don’t fall on either side.... Here are some of my thoughts on revisiting the film from the Best Picture thread, which left me neither a true believer nor a hater
domino harvey wrote:
Mon Nov 25, 2013 1:48 am
Spielberg's film gets a tough rap now, in some part due to years of it being held as an unquestionable work of Importance, but revisiting it I found myself neither ready to come fully over to the light nor eager to get out the pitchforks. The most interesting stuff here are the easiest targets, especially Ralph Fiennes being a classic Nazi dick, shooting without discrimination and providing a colorful cartoon character of an eight-year-old's idea of evil. The film does have one moment of clarity with regards to the juvenile treatment of both the villain and the savior: Liam Neeson makes a baldfaced appeal to Fiennes' vanity and suggests he try pardoning those who transgress him, which leads to a darkly humorous montage of the Nazi forgiving innocent Jews who commit exceedingly mild slights, until he quickly grows tired of the play-acting and shoots the last little boy he let off with a warning in the back. But Fiennes' flamboyant Nazi only really factors into the middle and on either side we get not especially interesting Holocaust imagery with only a few new touches (I enjoyed the sequence early in the film explaining how Neeson cons his way into the Nazi party's establishment).

As for the questionable morality of how the film presents a "winning" story amidst one of the most indefensible acts of systematic genocide imaginable, the true life premise and contentious scenes like Ben Kingsley getting rescued at the last minute from a train headed to the concentration camp and yet everyone else on board still getting presumably killed didn't bother me, and for a simple reason: We've been trained as viewers to practice our focal length to those in front of us. If you aren't complaining about disaster films or action movies because so many non-foregrounded people die but the narrative favors some of our main characters over the rest of humanity, then you don't get to use that excuse here. Now, maybe you do think that way across the board, but if so you are probably a total chore to deal with in real life.

All that said, I didn't really walk away with much from the film. Certainly it failed to make me tear up or even consider the events of the film from an emotional vantage, nor did it engage me much intellectually or philosophically with its underdeveloped capitalism to compassion tale. I enjoyed Fiennes' colorful performance and the film is generally well-made and directed, but this wasn't even the best film Steven Spielberg made this year, much less the best film in this category.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#232 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon Jun 10, 2019 3:35 pm

There’s a lot to take in from this Variety article, but it appears that Spielberg is:

1. writing (!)...
2. a horror series (!!)..,
3. that can only be watched at night (?)...
4. For Quibi, a streaming service designed to provide 7-10 minute bits of content to be watched on your phone (???)



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Luke M
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#235 Post by Luke M » Mon Jul 29, 2019 11:06 pm


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therewillbeblus
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#236 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Dec 06, 2020 2:31 am

I forgot how much of what makes Catch Me If You Can work is in the last act
SpoilerShow
where Spielberg inserts his signature happy ending to create cheeky irony in the final print, but first takes us through the rounds of fake-out 'will he/won't he' suspense in a recontextualized game of cat-and-mouse, that has now moved from traditional chases in threats of imprisonment vs. career failure from two lonely souls to banal, domesticated threats that Frank will run from the home he's finally found. We as an audience stray from our accustomed position of rooting for the individual (in this case, already backwards in identifying most with the criminal, who Spielberg empathizes with over his resilience coping with thwarted belongingness) to wishing for harmony for both men, an anti-climax. We spend the bulk of the film wanting our hero to escape, to dazzle us with his wit and movement through exciting setpieces, and then we secretly pray for him to return to the only person who's respected his humanity, in the antithesis of that forward momentum: an office job. We might all run, but we all want someone to catch us. Spielberg has built a career off the theme of celebrating the harmony in mankind's priceless reciprocity of affection, and here demonstrates that the gift of a supportive nest bests the thrills of all the adventures in the world one can have alone.

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aox
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#237 Post by aox » Thu May 20, 2021 4:55 pm

Because I saw it was available on Hulu, I finally sat down to watch The Color Purple; one of the last films in Spielberg's oeuvre I had yet to see. It's not a bad film but it just seemed incredibly dull. Especially after finally seeing The Help this year which deals with similar themes, albeit in a different time period. The acting, photography, sets, etc... are all competent. I can see why in 1985 this would get numerous Oscar nominations but not win anything. Somewhere in this thread, it was mentioned that Spielberg is a master of pacing, and I think this is a good example of Spielberg not showing off this talent. Individual scenes work really well, so I don't know what I would cut or re-edit, but this movie plods.

While I would like to stay away from the modern criticisms of the film: 1. it completely waters down the lesbian subplot in the book (didn't this also happen to Fried Green Tomatoes too?) 2. it was directed by a white man, but I feel I have to address the latter. Without having any connection to the experiences the characters in this film endure, I don't fully understand why this was made and what Spielberg is trying to say. I'm desperately trying to put myself in 1985 and view the film through the lens of contemporary events and progressive attitudes/politics of the time, and I am still confounded. How big of a deal was this in 1985, and can someone compare it with a modern equivalent in terms of impact?

The Sugarland Express, The BFG, The Adventures of Tintin are the only Spielberg films I haven't seen. I really only have a passing (read: completist) interest in Sugarland Express and have seen no compelling arguments for the latter two.

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knives
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#238 Post by knives » Thu May 20, 2021 4:59 pm

Sugarland Express is legit one of his best films.

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Pavel
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#239 Post by Pavel » Thu May 20, 2021 5:04 pm

And Tintin is wonderful

beamish14
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#240 Post by beamish14 » Thu May 20, 2021 5:18 pm

aox wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 4:55 pm
Because I saw it was available on Hulu, I finally sat down to watch The Color Purple; one of the last films in Spielberg's oeuvre I had yet to see. It's not a bad film but it just seemed incredibly dull. Especially after finally seeing The Help this year which deals with similar themes, albeit in a different time period. The acting, photography, sets, etc... are all competent. I can see why in 1985 this would get numerous Oscar nominations but not win anything. Somewhere in this thread, it was mentioned that Spielberg is a master of pacing, and I think this is a good example of Spielberg not showing off this talent. Individual scenes work really well, so I don't know what I would cut or re-edit, but this movie plods.

While I would like to stay away from the modern criticisms of the film: 1. it completely waters down the lesbian subplot in the book (didn't this also happen to Fried Green Tomatoes too?) 2. it was directed by a white man, but I feel I have to address the latter. Without having any connection to the experiences the characters in this film endure, I don't fully understand why this was made and what Spielberg is trying to say. I'm desperately trying to put myself in 1985 and view the film through the lens of contemporary events and progressive attitudes/politics of the time, and I am still confounded. How big of a deal was this in 1985, and can someone compare it with a modern equivalent in terms of impact?

The Sugarland Express, The BFG, The Adventures of Tintin are the only Spielberg films I haven't seen. I really only have a passing (read: completist) interest in Sugarland Express and have seen no compelling arguments for the latter two.


Spielberg was taken to task quite a bit by some critics at the time. He's also acknowledged that he didn't feel comfortable enough with Celie and Shug's sexuality to explore it enough on screen, and it damaged the film significantly. Come to think of it, I don't think he's ever really even tried to explore any LGBTQ characters on screen beyond this film. I've always wanted to read Menno Meyjes' original screenplay of it. I have a suspicion that the film adaptation of the Color Purple Broadway musical (which Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey are producing, and which is essentially the first remake of a film directed by him) will similarly obscure much of what makes the novel so powerful.

I concur with the others on Sugarland. One of the most iconic final shots in 1970's American cinema, courtesy of Vilmos Zsigmond. Goldie Hawn's performance is so rich and complex; it's the same traits that make her so endearing in Richard Brooks' $ as well. I love Michael Sacks' performance in it and Slaughterhouse-Five, and it's a shame that he departed from the business decades ago to pursue a career in finance.

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aox
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#241 Post by aox » Thu May 20, 2021 5:33 pm

Thanks for the Sugarland encouragement. I didn't realize it was that much of a gap I'm missing in 70s cinema or Spielberg. I will seek that out ASAP.

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Re: Steven Spielberg

#242 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu May 20, 2021 5:56 pm

I recently completed what I could of his gaps on backchannels, and I hated most of the blind spots. Amblin' is a competent silent short, but it's not very interesting, and his TV movie Savage is just plain boring (I hate defaulting to this criticism, but have no other words for it). The Night Gallery pilot is mostly lame, but his segment, "Eyes," is easily the highlight as Crawford hams it up in an above-average ironic tale of elusive wish-fulfillment using the familiar supernatural parable structure. The absolute worst offender is Something Evil, one of the most obnoxious and stupid horror films I've ever seen, not only dull but poorly made on every front. There's a decent cast, all of who give egregious perfs, especially Sandy Dennis during her peak era, specializing in playing eccentric roles like this! As an aside, her bizarre perf in Altman's That Cold Day in the Park turns a flawed film into one of his very best by the end.

I also can't stand Duel, so early Spielberg isn't really my thing. Once he turned to features with Sugarland, he really took off. No idea why anyone gave him money to make it though considering his prior output, but glad they did. Oh, and Pavel is right, Tintin is one of his best films, and one of the most entertaining adventure films of the decade.

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Re: Steven Spielberg

#243 Post by beamish14 » Thu May 20, 2021 6:01 pm

I'm fond of his episode of the television show The Name of the Game, "L.A. 2017", which is an interesting look at the future as filtered through early 1970's disenchantment and new religious movement ideologies.

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knives
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#244 Post by knives » Thu May 20, 2021 6:07 pm

He probably got the money through well placed bluster. Supposedly he got his first television job by pretending to have an office on the lot and so a producer told him that they needed him. That same bluster also helped get Duel a theatrical release in some markets. Young Spielberg was kind of a screwball character.

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Re: Steven Spielberg

#245 Post by beamish14 » Thu May 20, 2021 6:18 pm

knives wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 6:07 pm
He probably got the money through well placed bluster. Supposedly he got his first television job by pretending to have an office on the lot and so a producer told him that they needed him. That same bluster also helped get Duel a theatrical release in some markets. Young Spielberg was kind of a screwball character.

I think he's exaggerated the story of how he ingratiated himself into the Universal backlot a bit. Apparently his father (or a friend of his) was already working there. Despite having offices at Paramount, Warners, and obviously DreamWorks, I'll always associate him with Universal, much like Eastwood/WB and Wilder/United Artists


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Re: Steven Spielberg

#247 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Oct 21, 2022 9:43 pm

Mark Cousins interview with him in 1998 for Saving Private Ryan

Dick Cavett in 1981

He’s maybe the one director whose interviews I like the most. That DGA thing really kind of cemented that in how little ego he has about it and the wonder of memories like the ones he shares in these videos, in a way reflective of those he created onscreen.

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Re: Steven Spielberg

#248 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Oct 22, 2022 1:41 am

I remember his interviews for the Indiana Jones DVDs being amusing. Like how he was the only one to avoid the runs because he had crates of Chef Boyardee shipped to him, which he ate cold and out of the can. Also when he excitedly tells a crew member that they both were the smart ones because they didn't dare step on that rickety-looking set bridge in Temple of Doom.

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Re: Steven Spielberg

#249 Post by beamish14 » Sat Oct 22, 2022 12:04 pm

It finally happened. He made a music video

Spielberg turned down many opportunities in the past, saying in interviews that he felt their capacity to show meaningful stories is limited, although he’s done cameos in a small handful, including Michael Jackson’s “Liberian Girl” (which has a zolly shot of his directing chair).

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domino harvey
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Re: Steven Spielberg

#250 Post by domino harvey » Sat Oct 22, 2022 12:47 pm

Not sure why you wouldn't just link to the video itself which tellingly doesn't even have a million views. Spielberg really held out for decades and then gave us something YouTubers like La Blogotheque et al have been doing for 15+ years, only worse? It is also a terrible song, good lord

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