Team Top Ten: Steven Spielberg for his 75th Birthday

by... our team here at TFE!

West Side Story, now in theaters. is Steven Spielberg's 32nd motion picture. Though he directed one self-financed "feature" at 17 (shown at one movie theater), Duel (1971) a made for television movie was his first Hollywood gig. His movie career proper began with the spring release of The Sugarland Express in 1974. By the end of the following summer, due to Jaws, he was globally famous and a bankable A list director, lists he'd never fall off of. To celebrate Spielberg's 75th birthday (today, December 18th) we recently polled the team about the work of America's most beloved auteur: his best, worst, and most underappreciated.

It was fascinating to be reminded how widely viewed Spielberg's filmography is. Of his 31 pictures prior to West Side Story, not a single one of them went unmentioned in the answers to our three-part poll which 23 members of our team participated in. That said the least often cited for any reason (so probably the least seen?) were Sugarland Express and 1941. Of Spielberg's blockbusters Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom  and War of the Worlds were the two that had the weakest turn out under any section of the polling.

In the end we opted not to focus on the Worst as that isn't celebratory and, what's more, there was not a clear consensus but if you're curious Ready Player One, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Terminal, The BFG, and Lost World Jurassic Park all sprung up regularly. Hey you can't win them all but Spielberg has won more than most. Ready for the Best of List? Enjoy...

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Streaming Roulette, Dec: Summit of the Gods, Hitchcock for the Holidays, Power of the Dog

What's streaming in December? You know the drill by now. We pick two handfuls of titles and freeze them on the scroll bar at a random place (no cheating) and share what came up. Then we list the other titles streaming. Let's go.

Everybody has a Jaws story. Mostly you hear them from boys who took ownership of that summer as their fanboy nation origin story. But girls -- we were there, too. 

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Doc Corner: (Belated) Shark Week — 'Playing with Sharks' and 'Fin'

By Glenn Dunks

Sally Aitken’s Playing with Sharks and Eli Roth’s Fin are two very different documentaries but share common ground. Not just in that they are both about sharks, but because they each want to use their platforms to advocate for the preservation of the ocean’s perfect predators. Neither film reaches the heights of other better, similarly themed films (in recent years, I stump heavily for Karina Holden’s Blue), but it’s something of a sad indictment that their very existence is important as the environmental crises happening in our oceans appear so far from being solved.

Aitken’s film chooses to focus its lens on Valerie Taylor, a famed Australian diver whose role in some prominent Hollywood productions (you may know of one called Jaws, but also Blue Water, White Death in 1967) led to being a conservationist. Fin on the other hand is a most unexpected non-fiction diversion for Roth; a film more akin to The Cove than the gory horror features that he is better known for.

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Linkin' what comes naturally

• MNPP Corey Stoll has joined the cast of Spielberg's West Side Story remake as Office Krupke and a bunch of other new movies too. Yay.
• Polygon all the things Disney owns now with the Fox deal completed. Cultural hegemony be frightening, people! (So over the past 20 years or so Disney, 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, Pixar, ABC, and Marvel have become one company essentially)
• Variety ...has an analysis of what this new Media Giant movement might mean for the future

More after the jump including Fiddler on the Roof, Missing Link, a reaction to all the memes about Bohemian Rhapsody's terrible Oscar-winning editing and famous movie characters you didn't know were on the down low. Lol...

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Tweetweek: Bowing Down to Extra Divas

Tweet of the week... no, year. 

Sadly Marvel didn’t take my suggestion of a 30 min sequence in #AntManAndWasp where everyone shrinks down slightly smaller than Michelle Pfeiffer and bows their heads, refusing to look her in the eye because they’re not worthy.

— mat whitehead (@matwhi) July 4, 2018

After the jump the poor man's Johnny Depp, Mamma Mia Fallen Kingdom, Disney Princesses, actress kerfuffles, and a bit of politics because who can avoid it now...File the next two tweets under 'You learn new things every day!'...

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