Day: July 4, 2017

Variety‘s JD Knapp reported today that Columbia will re-release Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Friday, September 1st. For a week, that is. In honor of the 40th anniversary. Here’s the non-promotional website (i.e., it currently contains a signup form).

The actual CE3K 40th anni is on 11.16.17, but what’s a few weeks? I presume they’ll be re-releasing the original cut (135 minutes) but what do I know?  They could also re- release the Directors Cut (137 minutes) and/or the Special Edition (132 minutes).  

Ten years ago I ran a piece about the fact that while Spielberg’s Jaws (’75) has aged fairly well, Close Encounters has not. I called the article “Close Encounters Deflation“:

“I’ll always love the opening seconds of Steven Spielberg‘s once-legendary film, which I saw on opening day at Manhattan’s Zeigfeld theatre on 11.16.77. (I wasn’t a journalist or even a New Yorker at that stage — I took the train in from Connecticut that morning.) I still get chills thinking about that black-screen silence as the main credits fade in and out — plainly but ominously. And then John Williams‘ organish space-music sounding faintly, and then a bit more…slowly building, louder and louder. And then that huge orchestral CRASH! at the exact split second that the screen turns the color of warm desert sand, and we’re in the Sonoran desert looking for those WW II planes without the pilots.

“That was probably Spielberg’s finest creative wow-stroke. He never delivered a more thrilling moment after that, and sometimes I think it may have been all downhill from then on, even during the unfolding of Close Encounters itself.

“I saw CE3K three times during the initial run, but when I saw it again on laser disc in the early ’90s I began to realize how consistently irritating it is from beginning to end. There are so many moments that are either stylistically affected or irritating or impossible to swallow, I’m starting to conclude that there isn’t a single scene in that film that doesn’t offend in some way.

“I could write 100 pages on all the things that irk me about Close Encounters. I can’t watch it now without gritting my teeth. Everything about that film that seemed delightful or stunning or even breathtaking in ’77 (excepting those first few seconds and the mothership arrival at the end) now makes me want to jump out the window.

“That stupid mechanical monkey with the cymbals. The way those little screws on the floor heating vent unscrew themselves. The way those Indian guys all point heavenward at the the exact same moment when they’re asked where the sounds came from. Melinda Dillon going ‘Bahahahhahhree!’ That idiotic invisible poison gas scare around Devil’s Tower. That awful actor playing that senior Army officer who denies it’s a charade. The way the electricity comes back on in Muncie, Indiana, at the same moment that those three small UFOs drones disappear in the heavens. The mule-like resistance of Teri Garr‘s character to believe even a little bit in Richard Dreyfuss‘s sightings.

“It’s one unlikely, implausible, baldly manipulative crap move after another. The only scene I really like besides the grand opening is the “air-traffic controller scene in which UFOs are being spotted and reported by unseen commercial pilots.

“The worst element of all is the way Spielberg has those guys who are supposed to board the mother ship wearing the same red jumpsuits and sunglasses and acting like total robots. Why? No reason. Spielberg just liked the idea of them looking and acting that way. This is a prime example of why his considerable gifts don’t overcome the fact that Spielberg is a gifted hack. He knows how to get you but there’s never anything under the ‘get.'”

I’ve never known my film critic pals to be anything but sharp, knowledgeable, inquisitive, highly charged. But Francois Truffaut was on to something when he suggested during one of the “Hitchcock-Truffaut” discussions that imagination might not be among their strong suits. Paradoxically or not so paradoxically, my imagination got in my way when I was trying to launch myself as a film critic back in the late ’70s. I tried to sound like a “film critic”, but deep down I always had something more free-form and fuck-offish in mind. It took me a long time to find the brass to just be myself. My reactions were always more along the lines of “it would be better if…” rather than “it doesn’t work and here’s why.” In my early struggling years it was my imagination that blocked me, got in the way. Then I embraced it, and then everything started to come together.

Another 4th of July holiday. Blue skies, hot outside, a.c. on, computers humming, the Oppo playing Criterion’s new Straw Dogs Bluray (slight improvement over the 2011 MGM Bluray). On top of which I have a party to attend around 5 pm. Translation: I don’t feel like cranking out fresh material today.

But I feel slightly guilty. I’ve re-examined some 4th of July favorites this morning and they’re all good stuff so why not? Submission #1: “Money Talks,” posted on 10.14.13:

“I never think about what big-name actors and filmmakers are worth. I know most of them are loaded but I don’t care. I’ll read an occasional Forbes article about who’s the richest or highest paid, but you know me — I try to focus on the purely creative and spiritual, what’s going on inside. At least to the extent that external aesthetic choices are often metaphors for “internal affairs,” so to speak.

“Even during my 2009 battle with the legendary Hispanic Party Elephant, the guy who lived upstairs from my place in North Bergen, it was essentially about sensitivity and spiritualism or rather the lack of as that guy was toxic — he was fucking nowhere. I know that if I sense that a woman I’ve met is inordinately impressed by financial splendor, I immediately write her off. The important thing is to do what you love and then live with the rewards of that, whatever they may be. Which is what I’m doing, and I’m reasonably happy as a result. Especially since ’06 or thereabouts.

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