The Steven Spielberg Thread (1 Viewer)

[TonyD]

I’ve tried to watch 1941 so many times over the years.

Never been able to get through it all the way in one sitting.

I put the blu in a couple days ago and watched about 15 minutes.
That was it.

There was a scene that parodied the opening of Jaws.
One that took place in a kitchen and a diner, I think.
And another that has Belushi landing a plane at a gas station then blowing it up and it really looks like people were murded in the lot outside of the gas station when it blow up.

That’s as far as I got this time and it was yesterday and I couldn’t tell you which order those scenes happened.

When Akroyd and Candy are eating, candy says let’s smash up the food so no one else can eat it.

Huh?

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Trust me Colin. None of your opinions of films outrage me. Quite the contrary actually. I find them quite amusing.

Of course my comments don't outrage you - you recognize they're gospel truth and you can't quibble with them!

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I realize that comedy is the most "different strokes for different folks" of tastes but the score (you can hear Raiders beginning to form in Williams' mind) and the special effects are fantastic.

I actually make a positive remark about the effects in my review - as I note, at least it looks like Spielberg used the high-for-1979 budget on the screen.

Don't really remember the score.

I honestly, want to like "1941" but it's just too much of a mess.

Can't really hate a "PG" movie with full-frontal female nudity, though!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The one that I find myself more impressed with each year is "Lincoln".

I was a huge fan of the "Team of Rivals" book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which was impeccably well researched and compulsively readable despite the massive length. Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner excellently choose what to keep in translating it to the screen.

Daniel Day Lewis delivers what may be the best screen performance in the history of the medium.

The only thing that keeps it from being a contender for the very best film ever made, in my view, is that it goes on slightly too long. The perfect ending point would have been when Lincoln leaves the White House to go to the theater, and remarks that while he has to go, he would rather stay. Should've ended as he walks down the hallway after that line.

I have never wished so hard that I could re-edit a film to make it stop there.

 

[Tino]

The answer is simple Tony

Comedy is subjective.

I actually make a positive remark about the effects in my review - as I note, at least it looks like Spielberg used the high-for-1979 budget on the screen.

Don't really remember the score.

I honestly, want to like "1941" but it's just too much of a mess.

Can't really hate a "PG" movie with full-frontal female nudity, though!

There is no full frontal female nudity in 1941. Wishful thinking I suppose.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

There is no full frontal female nudity in 1941. Wishful thinking I suppose.

No, there is during the "Jaws" parody. You don't get a great look at Susan Backlinie's goodies, but her assets do go on display.

I watched the scene a bunch of times to be sure - er, for research...

 

[Tino]

No, there is during the "Jaws" parody. You don't get a great look at Susan Backlinie's goodies, but her assets do go on display.

I watched the scene a bunch of times to be sure - er, for research...

So did I. There is a bit of nudity. However not “full frontal nudity”. You see her butt on the periscope. That’s it. There’s a shot of her disrobing as she’s running toward the beach but it’s obscured by a fence.

 

[WillG]

So did I. There is a bit of nudity. However not “full frontal nudity”. You see her butt on the periscope. That’s it. There’s a shot of her disrobing as she’s running toward the beach but it’s obscured by a fence.

Yeah, that's how I remember it.

However in Jaws, since DVD, if you upped your contrast enough you could definately make out her.....plumage......in the Shark POV shot (rumor has it that in early versions of that shot, it was full on display)

I wonder what HDR will bring.

 

[Tino]

Same actress by the way. Susan Backlinie.

 

[TonyD]

As i mentioned I just watched the beginning.

There was barely any nudity in that scene and what little there was is obscured by shadows and fences and water.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

So did I. There is a bit of nudity. However not “full frontal nudity”. You see her butt on the periscope. That’s it. There’s a shot of her disrobing as she’s running toward the beach but it’s obscured by a fence.

Nah - if you check closely, you can see more than that while she runs past the fence.

Yes, the fence makes it more difficult to see her naughty bits, but they're there!

 

[Tino]

Of course they’re there. You just don’t see them. I don’t think you understand the term “full frontal nudity”.

 

[Malcolm R]

If you guys wanna see boobs, there's this thing called the "internet" where it's much easier to find such things rather than searching DVD movies frame by frame.

 

[Carabimero]

I first met Spielberg when he came to the American Film Institute and spoke to second-year students in 1988. A week earlier Allen Daviau had spoken to us after screening EMPIRE OF THE SUN. We talked a lot about the insert shot of the soap and how it turned the whole movie. When Spielberg spoke a week later, he also talked about the insert shot of the soap and told us it was a "Michael Kahn afterthought"!

Spielberg took questions. I asked him what he thought drama was. He didn't answer. Instead he asked me what I thought drama was. I don't remember what I said (probably for the best). Politely he waited for me to finish, then replied, "To me, drama is a character with no control who fights to gain control." He regretted not directing BACK TO THE FUTURE but was excited about SCHINDLER'S LIST. Janusz Kaminski was in the auditorium that day. I believe that was when he met Spielberg. Back then Spielberg loved to recruit from those AFI classes.

Through that meeting I eventually got a job reading scripts at Amblin. I even got to submit my own script. Ultimately I got a letter from Spielberg that I read a hundred times when I thought I couldn't take another rejection. He told me to never give up, to "keep in touch and I will do the same."

He's been as good as his word. I've seen him a few times over the years, usually in connection with working up a script. My favorite memory is attending a gigantic dinner for him in which he was presented with a trophy for some honor that now escapes me. When the dinner was over he asked if he could borrow my leather satchel to put the trophy in. When I asked him why, he said he had to walk through the mall outside and didn't want to be seen carrying the award. I love that he is humble (I also love that a runner brought my satchel back the next day with a personal note of thanks inside).

The last time I saw him, we talked about Close Encounters and he said he couldn't believe he wrote a movie where a father abandons his family to fly off on a spaceship. I told him that's not the way I saw it at all, that he was being too hard on himself. As always, he asked about my wife, by name. She's a university professor who's had his children in her class.

The day Steven Spielberg dies, I will cry not because I knew him, but because his movies helped me know myself.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I admire Spielberg a great deal. I think Jaws and Raiders of the Last Ark are just about flawless pieces of entertainment. The extended chase sequence (that starts with Indy pursuing the convoy on horseback and ends with him driving the truck into a building) might just be the best action sequence ever committed to celluloid.

Having said that, there are times when I find him too melodramatic and too manipulative, which tends to take me out of the film. Taken as a whole, I'd put him in my top five or top ten directors, but there are other directors who resonate with me just a bit more - Kubrick and Scorsese in particular and Hitchcock at times. In terms of versatility I really like William Wyler and Howard Hawks.

I do think Spielberg's filmography is a bit uneven which knocks him down just a bit (for me). Is it better to have a smaller filmography that always works or is it better to produce more work that is less consistent? I think the former, but I could be wrong.

FWIW, I have enjoyed 1941 since I first saw it theatrically. I won't say it is a good film; it is too sloppy for that. But I like it for what it tries to be - just a silly, slapstick comedy with a lot of over the top sequences.

 

[WillG]

I f When the dinner was over he asked if he could borrow my leather satchel to put the trophy in. When I asked him why.....

Let me get this straight, Spielberg asked to borrow your satchel and you asked him why?!!!

 

[WillG]

The last time I saw him, we talked about Close Encounters and he said he couldn't believe he wrote a movie where a father abandons his family. I told him that's not the way I saw it at all and he was being too hard on himself.

In all seriousness, I would have asked him "Didn't his family abandon him first?" (After all in that scene with the one sided phone conversation it was abundantly clear Ronnie was talking about a separation)

 

[Carabimero]

In all seriousness, I would have asked him "Didn't his family abandon him first?" (After all in that scene with the one sided phone conversation it was abundantly clear Ronnie was talking about a separation)

I did mention that Roy says he would do whatever it takes to fix things. He says it right before he sees Devil's Tower on the TV.

Let me get this straight, Spielberg asked to borrow your satchel and you asked him why?!!!

Dude, it had my stuff in it!

 

[WillG]

Dude, it had my stuff in it!

You could have gotten an invite to his home to get your stuff back!!! (Maybe you did)

 

[Carabimero]

You could have gotten an invite to his home to get your stuff back!!! (Maybe you did)

My strategy is always not to bother prominent people unless I have something relevant for them, that way they usually get back to me and never avoid me. Generally that approach works well.