comment #1

mertonite says ...

Apologies for veering off-topic, but I figured it was best to do so in another Spielberg-fan-baiting post rather than elsewhere. Caught a very early screening of David Chase's still-untitled feature debut last night in NYC. Chase was there, as well as a few Paramount execs, one of whom was sitting behind me and claimed the director had struggled to find a cut he liked, but just got there.

Which baffles me. As a Sopranos fan eagerly awaiting Chase's debut, I was almost shocked by how amateurish and uninvolving the film played. The lead actor - who stands in for a young Chase but distractingly looks like a young Ken Marino - smirks his way through the whole film, less a character than a two-dimensional caricature of feigned disaffection. The music is great (Beatles, Rolling Stones, Huddie Ledbetter - is Paramount Vantage paying for these songs?), and when the band performs, the movie temporary springs to life. But even considering its occasionally trenchant cultural commentary and its great ear for music, it feels way too deliberately directed and choppily edited. None of it feels observed. The actors uniformly underwhelm. Gandolfini is given one scene to deepens his otherwise stereotypical disappointed patriarch father. Big letdown. Anyway, thought I'd comment for those who care...

comment #2

berg says ...

leaving for the AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL on thursday .... some of the films and stars appearing include Johnny Depp (Rum Diary friday night @ the Paramount, 7pm.) withBruce Robinson, and James Franco presenting his film Sal (sunday noon at the paramount)

comment #3

mybrainismelting says ...

So now we're criticizing a movie that hasn't come out yet with an old one nobody saw. Sounds pretty apples to apples.

Spielberg
Michael Jordan
Tom Brady

The best are always either despised or loved, there is never an intermediate degree.

comment #4

Joe Gillis says ...

Jeff, do you know how BORING it is to go onto this website and read ANOTHER piece bashing Spielberg? Based on nothing other than a trailer? Did you even SEE War Horse on Broadway? It's the most moving experience I've had in the theatre in ages.

It is so hip to say that artists "lose it" as they get older: Spielberg, Ford, Hitchcock, Sondheim, and discount the fact that their body of work prior is so strong that they were lucky to have found "it" to begin with.

comment #5

JR says ...

Jeff is simply positioning his darling Moneyball for Oscar glory by bashing the one film he is most concerned about...he does this every year. It is tiresome, but somewhat entertaining, especially when his chosen film loses.

comment #6

Eloi Wrath says ...

In related news, Tintin is getting rave reviews. Would it be eligible for Best Animated Feature? Imagine if Spielberg won TWO Best Pictures at the Oscars. Jeff might have a seizure.

comment #7

Super Soul says ...

"It was my hope that Steven Spielberg..."

These words make the rest of the sentence irrelevant.

comment #8

Mr. F. says ...

"It was my hope that Steven Spielberg, needing to replace the wondrous effect of the pretend horses in the stage show, would shoot War Horse as a total horse-POV thing..."

Yes, because watching a movie for two hours that recreates dichromatic vision would be AWESOME.

comment #9

berg says ...

have I mentioned that MR ED is my favorite television series of all time - much better than Walking Dead ... I've seen all the Arthur Lubin Francis films too and the third in the series Francis Cover the Big Town is the best of the lot although Francis Visits West Point and Francis Joins the Navy have their moments

comment #10

Kakihara says ...

Eoi; "Would it be eligible for Best Animated Feature? "

Why wouldn't it? If that's not animation, I dunno what is. As for the reviews, well, I'm looking at the clips and expecting action and adventure, and all I see is people standing around talking and/or unnecessary camera panning which does not do anything for the story. That Duck Tales movie is more exciting than TinTin. So I'm wondering if they're just giving it a pass, 'cus it's Spielberg, and not a lesser director, like the guy who worked on Megamind.

berg: Then you'll be happy to know Mr. Ed's getting a remake.

comment #11

cinefan says ...

"Yes, because watching a movie for two hours that recreates dichromatic vision would be AWESOME."

My thoughts exactly when I read the posting. It's fine if Spielberg wants to show the horse's POV at crucial moments in the story or to make some sort of artistic point but to experience 2 entire hours of the film from the horse's POV would be both ridiculous and painful to sit through.

comment #12

MartinBlank says ...

I doubt Jeff means a literal horse's POV. More like exclusively the horse's perspective, never moving outside it to scenes of people talking to each other. If the horse doesn't experience it, neither do we. That sort of thing. Not a literal camera-takes-horse's-POV.

comment #13

DavidF says ...

Nice try, Martin. Jeff's a professional film critic so he should know the difference between general "perspective" and an actual POV.

His wording above suggested the same thing to me as everyone else: two hours of the camera-as-horse.

Maybe Spielberg should try something even more daring and have it all be told from the perspective of a bullet, like in the opening of Lord of War. OR, yeah - he could start with a cow and the cow becomes the leather that becomes Joey's reins!!

that would clearly be a more provocative approach than the boring old stuff the most successful director of all time seems to be trucking out here....based on the trailer. OH and on that godawful poster. Yeah, how could this movie be good with THAT poster? Remember it? Terrible!

comment #14

The Pope says ...

Jeff,
You would be a far happier person if you would only be humble enough to accept the things you can't change. And what makes you angry is that no one, least of all Spielberg, will listen to you and do what you want him to do. Going into any film with a closed mind only makes for disappointment. Your boorishness is as ignorant as a person who rejects Bresson out of hand.

Judge a film not on what you want it to be, but on whether the film becomes what it sets out to be.

comment #15

Helen says ...

The sequel's more appealing to me than the original, simply because it's more action-oriented, rather than farcical.

comment #16

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comment #17

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