How Long Has It Been Since You've Seen "Close Encounters"?

Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind turns 34 this month. On a whim recently we put in the 30th anniversary edition Blu-Ray* and gave it a spin. I hadn't seen the movie since I was a kid and my memory of it was hilariously incomplete and childlike.

a production sketch shown on the special edition DVD

I remembered, for example, the oft repeated five musical notes that always made me nostalgic for that old light-up Hasbro game "Simon Says" and I remembered all the glowing lights and alien children at the end. My third most vivid memory was Richard Dreyfuss's mashed potato replica of Devil's Tower in Wyoming (a shape to which all the characters are drawn). Strangely I had zero recall of the far more narratively pronounced massive sculpture he builds inside of his house of the exact same structure. Funny the things you remember. The mashed potatoes must have stuck in my child brain because little kids play with their food but they're fully aware that adults aren't supposed to.

To my great astonishment, given decades of familiarity with Spielberg films, the movie is miraculously open ended. It's also open sided and open fronted which is to say that there are dozens of emotional entry points and next to nothing in the way of force-feeding or exposition. You can feel whatever you want to feel about it all the way through without the director telling you how you should be feeling (aside from free-form "wonder" which he expects and earns) or explaining any of those feelings away. In short, were his filmography a bookshelf, this would a lonely inkblot nestled between dozens of how-to instructional textbooks. 

Oscar History and 70s Nostalgia after the jump

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Spielberg Buried In Gold

Remember a couple of weeks ago when we noted how crowded the Lifetime Achievement field is getting already for 2011? Well, add another huge name to the list:  Steven Spielberg, who already has three Oscars, a Thalberg, 3 Golden Globes and a Cecil B DeMille, 4 Bafta honors of varying sorts, 2 NBR honors, an honorary Cesar, 11 Emmys of different types, 3 DGAs and a lifetime achievement, at least 1 award from every critics organization, and dozens upon dozens of other prizes will be adding to his trophy collection in January. He will be honored by the Producers Guild of America with the David O. Selznick award on Saturday January 21st, 2012 three days before the Oscar nominations are announced. (Just in case War Horse isn't Oscar worthy?)

This will be the 8th time Spielberg has been feted by the PGA. He's won 4 times competively and received 3 additional special honors from that guild. If you melt down all his statues to form one big one how big would it be? Bigger than a mechanical shark named Bruce that's for sure! Maybe even bigger than a T-Rex?

In other lifetime achievement style honors...
We forgot to mention that Glenn Close's first tribute of 2011 (we're betting more will follow) happened over Emmy weekend at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

She looks happy.

Little known fact: All gold plated statues contain gooey centers filled with endorphin rushes, chocolate, and melatonin.

Cinema de Gym: 'Minority Report'

Kurt here. (Surely many of you recall that Michael C. just recently offered an Unsung Heroes post on the Minority Report think tank, so allow me to pre-arrest myself and apologize in advance for the déjà vu.) Minority Report turned out to be a perfect movie to watch in my gym's cardio theater, each of us exercisers piloting our own personal machines like hovercraft-riding Spielbergian cops. Like most, I adore this film in all its blue-filtered beauty, and I'm happy to report that I was lucky enough to walk in for one of my favorite scenes: Tom Cruise's eye transplant surgery.

Surely the dirtiest segment of this very sterile sci-fi noir, the scene, which sees Peter Stormare's ex-con play doctor with Cruise's fugitive, John Anderton, is squirmingly tactile and visceral, greatly conveying the nightmarish ickiness of its atmosphere. Within the apartment unit, a setting of uglified modernity most evocative of Ridley Scott, the great Stormare enhances the dread tenfold with his mad-scientist line readings, which reveal that he was once arrested by John...for burning his patients. With that stirring revelation, we're invited to sit back and relax in the operating chair, seeing Stormare and his nurse – if I remember correctly – through John's eyes, which, y'know, are about to leave their sockets.

When John awakes, the nightmare continues, as the good doctor has playfully misled him as a means of mild, yet nonetheless grotesque, revenge. Blindfolded, and forbidden to remove his bandages lest he actually go blind, John has a string tied to each arm to lead him to the kitchen and bathroom, which – again, if memory serves – have been intentionally mixed-up. The new scene conjures a sort of schoolyard-bully terror, never greater than when John finally heads for the refrigerator. Reaching for the sandwich and milk his caretakers promised him, John instead grabs a brick of mold-covered grossness, and after spatting it out, attempts to wash out the taste with a big swig of green god-knows-what. Gaaahhh, I can feel the shivers now. It's such a repulsive moment, for which, of course, I tip my hat to Mr. Spielberg.

Minority Report supports one of my favorite Tom Cruise talking points, a theme that can be traced through much of his '00s filmography. To help boost John's post-op anonymity, Stormare's doc gives him an emergencies-only, taser-like device that, if zapped under the chin, will turn his face into an unrecognizable glob of Quasimodo skin-putty. If it hadn't been already, vanity was surely the Tom Cruise motif of the new millenium. Everything from the Mission: Impossible franchise to Valkyrie involved some degree of covering up or disfiguring Cruise's million-dollar mug, as if to say there was no greater sin or provocation in mainstream movies. Certainly, Cruise used it as a way to both be self-indulgent and shallowly work against his icon status, superficially striving for character-actordom by obstructing – or, god forbid, destructing – his pretty face. Minority Report came on the heels of Vanilla Sky, wherein this theory is surely most apparent, with Cruise Vanity essentially serving as its own subplot. What does it all mean? Ultimately, I prefer to think of it as eerie foreshadowing, an inundation of Cruise defacement amidst a career climax, after which his face would never be the same.

Conclusions?

1. Though not exactly one for always putting a distinct stamp on his work, Spielberg sure can draw you into the moment.
2. Though not exactly one for pushing the boundaries of foulness, Spielberg sure can gross you out good.
3. Though often reduced to a negative Russian stereotype, Stormare can bring a whole lot with very little.
4. Though his need to remind us did indeed grow tiresome, Cruise does have one killer face to deface.

If the '00s marked the era of Cruise vanity, which Cruise era are we in now?

Unsung Heroes: The Think Tank of 'Minority Report'

Michael C here from Serious Film. With Spielberg poised to dominate the end of the year discussion with the one-two punch of Tin Tin and War Horse, I felt now was a perfect time to look back at his last film I enjoyed without reservation.

On screen, every historical era comes packaged with its own handy kit of movie clichés, most likely because a lot of lazy screenwriters did no more research than to watch other movies. The Old West has the bartender drying the glass with a rag and the draw down over someone a-cheatin’ at cards. Medieval periods come standard with a foppish lute player and a crowd of filth encrusted peasants. You know the drill.

This gets particularly egregious with movies set in the future. The majority of stories opt for either the Blade Runner urban hellscape treatment or the slick, sterile 2001 route. Each approach has its appeal but seldom do either have a real ring of truth. To my mind the most plausible vision of the future was done in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report. More than any film I’ve seen the 2054 of Report is recognizably a believable extension of the time we live in.

This was the result of a lot more than clever art direction. Spielberg was determined to have the most believable future world ever put to film. So where most directors would lock a bunch screenwriters in a room to brainstorm variations on the flying car, the man who directed E.T. convened a three-day think tank of the world’s brightest minds, including computer scientists, biomedical researchers, the architectural dean of MIT and various other luminaries, to brainstorm a bible of predictions for his production team to work from.

Let me quickly add that Mr. Spielberg should get points here for not letting all this technical info stymie his movie’s artistic mojo. It seems to have had the opposite effect, providing the film with a springboard for some unforgettably imaginative riffs, from the Fantastia-evoking conducting of the computer screen to the creepy metallic spiders that skitter about scanning retinas.

And now that it’s 2011 and the future world Minority Report envisioned is nine years away from fantasy and toward being a provable or disprovable collection of educated guesses, what do we find? Turns out so far Minority Report was scary accurate in ways too numerous to list here.

It may not be surprising to learn that the identity recognition advertisements are in the works or that the use of retina scan equipment is become increasingly prevalent, but would you be surprised to learn that that the US Military is developing work along the lines of Report’s insect robots? Or how about the fact that crime prediction software is being developed at the University of Pennsylvania attempting to predict future crimes based on past ones? True, it’s not exactly Samantha Morton floating in a tank of milky water, but it’s way too close for my taste.

Most future-set movies eventually inspire chuckles at its creators for assuming we would all be zipping around in jetpacks by the late 70’s or some similar naïveté. So far, Minority Report appears to be experiencing the opposite fate. One where we look back and admit we can’t say we weren’t warned.

Yes, No, Maybe So: "War Horse"

I didn't think we'd be getting this trailer so soon but I guess the year is getting on. Wowee - 2011 is half over tomorrow... should we do a "best of"? Herewith, the first trailer for Steven Spielberg's Christmas-time presumed Oscar frontrunner spectacle War Horse. We'll decide how excited we are with our yes, no, maybe so treatment.

Can you imagine flying over a war, and you know you can never look down? You have to look forward or you'll never get home. I ask you: What could be braver than that?

YES If there's any director who excels at capturing the spirit of (boy) wonder, it's Spielberg. The first shot of the lead (Jeremy Irvine as Albert) brings to mind both E.T. and Empire of the Sun in particular as a boy is amazed at the wonderment he beholds ...in this case, a horse rather than an alien or an airplane. The trailer also reminded me of something totally off-topic but that warmed my heart. Do you remember those old ads about indie movie making starring Jesse Eisenberg's little sister Hailee. Remember those? I forget what they were for. She played the world's youngest movie director or something?

My movie is called Horses Are Pretty because horses are pretty.

That they are. Don't think Spielberg won't know how to exploit their innate majesty.

NO "RUN FORREST ALBERT RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN" [trailer and Oscar commentary after the jump]

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