TALK Steven Spielberg

[trailergod]

Date of birth (location)
18 December 1946
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Spielberg,%20Steven

So who is Steven Spielberg to you?
Do you like his movies?
What is your favorite movie that he directed?

Trade mark
[flashlights] Uses powerful flashlights in dark scenes. (see Jurassic Park (1993) and Lost World: Jurassic Park, The (1997) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) )

Frequently uses music by John Williams.

Often shows shooting stars

Often portrays fathers as reluctant, absent, or irresponsible.

Onscreen performers staring, usually at something off camera.

He often uses images of the sun e.g The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Saving Private Ryan

His films often show children in some sort of danger.

Consistent references to World War II

Frequent references to Disney (movies, films, music, or theme parks)

what there to say about Steven Spielberg... other than the most recognized director from Hollywood and also the one who started all these SUMMER blockbusters....

he directed 46 movies...

my favorites

Empire of the Sun (1987)
and
Saving Private Ryan (1998)

he is not making any commentaries in any of his DVDs...

[ZUBi]

>So who is Steven Spielberg to you?

almost genious

>Do you like his movies?

all of his movies are somehow great (to watch)

>What is your favorite movie that he directed?

i like his earlier stuff: Jaws (1975), Duel (1971), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) ...

[carl]

The most commercially successful filmmaker in Hollywood history, Steven Spielberg was born December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, OH. A lifelong cinema buff, he began directing his first short movies while still a child, later studying film at California State University and winning notice for his 1969 short feature Amblin'. He first made his mark in television, directing Joan Crawford in the pilot for Rod Serling's Night Gallery and working on episodes of Columbo and Marcus Welby, M.D. Spielberg's first feature-length effort, 1971's Duel, a taut thriller starring Dennis Weaver, was widely acclaimed as one of the best movies ever made for television. The film proved so successful on the small screen, in fact, that it later was the recipient of theatrical distribution throughout Europe, where it proved to be a major box-office hit.
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Spielberg permanently graduated to feature films with 1974's The Sugarland Express, but it was his next effort, Jaws, which truly cemented his reputation as a rising star. The most successful film of 1975, this tale of a man-eating Great White shark was widely recognized as the picture which established the summer months as the film industry's most lucrative period of the year, heralding a move toward big-budget blockbusters which culminated two years later with his friend George Lucas' Star Wars. Spielberg's follow-up, 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was another staggering success, employing state-of-the-art special effects to document its story of contact with alien life.

With the 1979 slapstick-war comedy 1941, Spielberg made his first major misstep, as the star-studded picture performed miserably at the box office. However, he swiftly regained his footing with 1980's Raiders of the Lost Ark, a homage to the serial cliffhangers of yesteryear. Produced by Lucas, the film was one of the biggest hits of the decade, later launching a pair of sequels as well as a short-lived television series. However, it was Spielberg's next effort which truly asserted his position as the era's most popular filmmaker: 1982's E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, the touching tale of a boy who befriends an alien, was hailed upon release as an instant classic, ultimately becoming one of the most commercially successful movies of all time.

After 1984's Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg went against type to direct The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker's much-honored novel exploring the lives and struggles of a group of African-American women during the Depression years. The film went on to gross over $100 million at the box office, later securing 11 Academy Award nominations. On Oscar night, however, it won nothing, a shut-out widely attributed to industry resentment over Spielberg's staggering success. A 1987 dramatization of J.G. Ballard's novel Empire of the Sun was his next picture, and was one of his few box-office disappointments. A similar fate met the sentimental Always, a remake of the wartime weeper A Guy Named Joe, but Spielberg returned to form with 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

With 1991's 60-million-dollar production of Hook, Spielberg again fell victim to negative reviews and lackluster box-office returns, but in 1993 he returned with a vengeance with Jurassic Park, a special-effects extravaganza which ranked among the most aggressively marketed films of all time. The result was a global blockbuster of mammoth proportion, with receipts coming in at over one billion dollars. That same year, he released Schindler's List, an epic docudrama set during the Holocaust. Again, a number of Oscar nominations were forthcoming, but this time Spielberg was rewarded for his accomplishments -- the picture won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director honors.

As befitting his role as a major Hollywood player, Spielberg and his company, Amblin Entertainment, also produced a number of highly successful features, including 1982's Poltergeist, 1985's Back to the Future, and 1988's groundbreaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He also diversified into television, beginning in 1985 with the anthology series Amazing Stories and later supervising the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures and the underwater adventure Seaquest DSV. However, in the wake of Schindler's List, Spielberg's status as a power broker grew exponentially with the formation of Dreamworks SKG, a production company he headed along with former Disney chief Jeffrey Katzenberg and music mogul David Geffen; consequently, Spielberg spent much of the mid-'90s behind the scenes, serving as executive producer on films such as Twister (1996), Men in Black (1997), and two 1998 films, Deep Impact and The Mask of Zorro. He returned to the director's chair with the 1997 smash The Lost World, the inevitable sequel to Jurassic Park. The same year, he was rewarded with several Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Amistad, a slavery epic for which he served as both director and producer. Whatever disappointment Spielberg may have felt over not actually winning any of the above awards was most likely mollified the following year with Saving Private Ryan. The World War II epic, which Spielberg both directed and produced, won international acclaim, garnering a staggering 11 Academy Award nominations. Eventually winning five, including Best Director, Best Cinematography (for Janusz Kaminski), and Best Editing (for Michael Kahn), the film lost out to Shakespeare in Love for Best Picture, a slight that was the subject of a heated feud between Dreamworks and Miramax, the company behind Shakespeare. Ryan did win a Golden Globe for Best Picture (in the Drama category), as well a Best Director nod for Spielberg.

Serving as producer on numerous projects in the latter 1990s, Spielberg stepped back into directorial duties with the short documentary The Unfinished Journey for the millennium New Year's Eve broadcast before tackling the Stanley Kubrick-conceived A.I. in 2001. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

The single greatest mainstream director in the buisiness. His first directing job on Duel proved that he was set for greatness and since then he has directed such classics as Jaws, The Indianna Jones Trilogy, and AI. A director of amazing range who unfortunately insists on Happy Endings even in the bleakest of stories. See AI and Minority Report.

• Catch Me If You Can (2002) ****

• Minority Report (2002) ***half

• A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001) *****(Crap ending though)

• Saving Private Ryan (1998) ****

• Amistad (1997) ****

• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) ***half

• Jurassic Park (1993) *****

• Schindler's List (1993) *****

• Hook (1991) ***

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) ****

• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) *****

• Twilight Zone - The Movie (1983) ***

• E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) *****

• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) *****

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)***

• Jaws (1975) *****

• Duel (1971) *****

[Matrix]

I Liked Saving Private and jurassic most...
Really Cool Movies...
and spielberg doesnt comment on DvDs ???

[carl]

Originally posted by Matrix

and spielberg doesnt comment on DvDs ???

No he doesn't.
He says he doesn't want his voice distracting people from the movie.
He doesn't realize we watch the commentory after we've seen the movie.

[Stormwalker]

So who is Steven Spielberg to you?
a awesome director who has gotten way tooo soft..

Do you like his movies?
yup jurassic park is one of my all time favorites

What is your favorite movie that he directed?
JP

here is my gripe.. he went an changed guns to walkie talkies.. what the!!!! cmon steven. i know this is only a small thing but.. really.. how about you go spend some tiem with real kids, from real families. and im not talking about your millionaire neighbours in hollywood im talking about those who live in suburbia, those who live in urban centres.. i think you will find none of them give a **** for walky talkies.. none care that there were guns.. and least of all none are going to go on a shooting spree because two dudes had guns.. in a film..

its almost like you let Michael Moore loose in your editing room..

[Jake]

Spielberg - #2. Saving Private Ryan (on my movie list)

although I think there are better directors out there (Fincher, Bay (don't ask), ...) I think his movies are very very good.