Tag: steven spielberg

Movie of the Week: War of the Worlds (Spielberg).

Not entirely sure why: that version of WAR OF THE WORLDS has been coming across my screen a few times over the last week or so. It’s actually not a bad film, although it grapples with the usual problem of How do you make an almost entirely reactive protagonist heroic? that WotW movies have. I also remember being amused at the time at how Spielberg did everything to favorably portray American soldiers except put actual halos around their head. Given the absolute crap that passed for war movies in the Oughts, this was no small act of defiance.

#commissionearned

The Spielberg WEST SIDE STORY trailer.

It’s not… terrible? If you like WEST SIDE STORY in general, that is. I never thought it was all that great, honestly. A couple of the songs weren’t bad, though.

Also, it’s been sixty years since the last one, so it’s fair game for a remake. Not sure why Spielberg’s eager to do one; this is the sort of thing you’d do as the cinematic equivalent of a masterwork, except that Steven Blooming Spielberg already did one of those with SCHINDLER’S LIST. I dunno. Maybe he just likes WSS more than I do.

Steven Spielberg refused to remake JAWS.

GeekTyrant noticed this, buried in a story about Amblin Entertainment partnering with Netflix:

One area the director will not revisit is Jaws. Deadline heard recently that Universal broached the subject to reboot Spielberg’s breakout classic, with Spielberg producing, and the answer was a firm no.

…Personally, I might have preferred that Spielberg had responded to such a highly impertinent question by dangling the unlucky Universal suit over a shark tank, but that would have been unethical. After all, you don’t blame the messenger for the message. Life is not a Conan movie. And JAWS should not be remade.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t actually want to see a Spielberg Conan movie. I want to see a Guy Ritchie Conan movie, set in Conan’s thief days.