February 2012
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I was lucky enough to catch a big screen performance of Raiders of the Lost Ark last night. Here are my thoughts on the film and cinematic re-releases.
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This is a fantastic Washington Post piece by Spielberg’s unofficial biographer Joseph McBride. The writer explains how Spielberg learned to collaborate and delegate work during the shooting of his first intended-for-cinema film The Sugarland Express.
The article also gives an indication of what McBride thinks of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and War Horse.
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Roger Ebert’s Great Movies essay about Raiders of the Lost Ark is, I feel, one of the more accurate pieces about the movie’s ‘politics’. The film gets a lot of criticism from academics, who accuse it of racism, and upon release eminent critic Pauline Kael said it was Spielberg’s most impersonal film.
Ebert, however, reckons that Raiders deals with issues very close...
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While at high school, Steven Spielberg (or Steve Spielberg as he was known then) was a sports writer for his school newspaper. This period in his life is covered in Joseph McBride’s excellent biography, but actual excerpts were difficult, if not impossible, to come by. Until now.
This is one of a few articles floating around the web with actual examples of Spielberg’s reporting....
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This is a typically brilliant article from Time and critic Richard Schickel about Munich. In it, Spielberg discusses the tone of the film, the delicacies in making it and his working relationship with writer Tony Kushner.
In a situation rare in modern filmmaking, the screenwriter was on the set 90% of the time. “When something was more action driven, Steven would take the lead,”...
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The A.I. passage in the Vanity Fair piece I posted last night got me thinking about the film. Spielberg said, “A substitute love child, you know, is almost a crime, and the human race pays for that crime” and that’s certainly true. The only human we see at the end of the film is a projection of David’s mother. Everyone else is long gone, replaced by robots. What interested...
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Robert S. Leventhal’s ‘Romancing the Holocaust, or Hollywood and Horror: Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List’ isn’t an exactly favourable view of the film, but it’s even-handed, engrossing and well worth a read.
Leventhal writes: “Steven Spielberg’s epic film Schindler’s List (1994) is the latest installment in this americanization of...
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This is an interesting set report from War of the Worlds that’s so long Ain’t It Cool split it over two posts. There aren’t many quotes from Spielberg, but it’s a great insight into his on-set process.
Part 1
Part 2
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Ain’t It Cool News’s Eric Vespe (Quint) caught up with Spielberg last summer for this brilliant Q&A session. The two touch on Spielberg’s whole career, but the focus is very much on Jaws. There are too many great moments to pick out just one, but this excerpt gives a fascinating insight into Spielberg’s casting process:
“Quint: What’s great about the three leads...
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Two links from a Vanity Fair issue released around the time of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The first is a feature, entitled Keys to the Kingdom, which covers Indy 4’s length production cycle, the second is a one-on-one interview with Spielberg in which he discusses Schindler’s List, A.I., redemption and darkness.
“I never saw redemption for the main...
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A.I. Artificial Intelligence opened to mixed reviews in 2001, with many accusing Spielberg of misrepresenting Kubrick’s vision, but this is a great, fair-minded analysis by a man who knew Kubrick: the Evening Standard’s Alexander Walker.
Walker is particularly accurate in his look at the controversial ending, of which he writes:
“Nor is the ending of A.I. an identifiably...
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Written around the time of A.I Artificial Intelligence’s release, this is a great look at Brian Aldiss, the author of the short story on which the film is based - Super Toys Last All Summer Long.
It’s a fascinating interview that includes the following passage about the creative differences between Aldiss and Stanley Kubrick:
“Stanley was set upon making a modernised version of...
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From Blu-Ray.com’s Silver Screen section, this is one of the best and most exhaustive Jurassic Park making-ofs I’ve ever seen. The film has already been so thoroughly covered that it hardly seems necessary to revisit it, but Robert Siegel’s piece is so thorough it really is a must-read.
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Though this is blog is dedicated to Spielberg, I thought I’d post something I’ve written on another site I run, Quiet of the Matinee, about a man Spielberg worked with on A.I. Artifical Intelligence: Stanley Kubrick.
In a piece entitled Circles of Life: 2001: A Space Odyssey, I analyse Kubrick’s use of circles as a visual representation of perfection in both 2001 and The...
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As an added little bonus to yesterday’s John Williams celebrations, here’s a great article from Film Music Society, which features snippets about Williams from Spielberg and George Lucas.
My favourite section is this fascinating insight into the Spielberg/Williams working relationship:
“I usually try to give him the book or the script to go on. Sometimes he reads it and...
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Williams has won three Academy Awards for his scores for Spielberg’s films and the first was for his astonishing work on Jaws. The Oscars’ YouTube channel has his winning speech up, and while embedding is sadly enabled, it can be seen at this here link.
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Ever wanted to know more about Catch Me If You Can’s brilliant Saul Bass-esque titles? The Art of the Title have a great interview with the sequence’s creators, Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Deygas.
Here’s a nice quote that gives an insight into the sequence, the movie and Spielberg’s film-making…
“In order to capture the spirit of Leonardo DiCaprio’s...
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