steven spielberg

Chris Knight's avatar

On Independence Day some friends asked if I wanted to join them at the theater to see the new Steven Spielberg movie Disclosure Day.  I went with them and we agreed afterward that it’s a great movie!  Not Spielberg’s best but it’s definitely tapping into “old school Spielberg” that a lot of us remember from our youth, with a dash of the “mature Spielberg” who has been with us since Schindler’s List.

That is how I gauge our greatest living filmmaker.  There is the Steven Spielberg that I met at the Boy Scout Jamboree in 1989: the “big kid” who was as giddy as a schoolboy, dancing around in his Scout uniform.  That’s the man who brought us E.T. and Indiana Jones and Jaws and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.  He had a childlike twinkle in his eye and we were fortunate to have him.
Then Spielberg went
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Chris Knight's avatar

To be honest, it’s not a notion that I’ve given any real thought to, now almost four and a half decades since first seeing E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.  It’s the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, E.T. and Elliott had a happy reunion many years later, when Elliott was all grown up.  Might the heart-burning alien who found his way everywhere in 1982 (or at least all over your own house especially when you had small children… and let’s not forget the Atari game!) have made a return to Earth?

It’s a question that Steven Spielberg himself has now addressed.  Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to discuss his new movie Disclosure Day (a friend said it’s worth seeing especially for John Wiliams’s score), Spielberg shares about whether Elliott and his pal had a reunion…

“No, never saw him again,” he said.  “But he did dream about him.  So

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I’ve been arguing for over five years now, since we started going back to the cinema in the wake of COVID, that movies must spend some time in the theaters before going onto streaming video or some other digital delivery service.  A film represents more than just casual entertainment.  It is the result of the efforts of a lot of people who collaborated together to produce something that, ideally, has not been seen before.  Those people deserve appreciation, and acknowledgement.  Their labors merit watching in as big a venue as is feasible.

When movies come out in the theaters, they can take on a life of their own.  A good movie without much fanfare can become a “sleeper hit” that finds success by word of mouth (two examples of good sleepers are The Artist and My Big Fat Greek Wedding).  Movies get talked about, and vigorously discussed.  It’s
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I had no idea that Raiders of the Lost Ark had returned to theaters for its fortieth anniversary until my iPhone suggested it from a list of movies playing nearby.  Whatever other plans I’d made last Sunday got dropped like a hot Sankara Stone as I headed to the big cinema the next town over.  And that’s how, for only the second time in my life, I got to behold my all time favorite film on the big screen.

 
I was far from alone.  About forty-some others had shown up too.  Including the family of four that sat in front of me.  Two little girls, maybe seven and eight.  Just how old I was when I first saw Raiders.  I could tell this movie was giving them thrills and chills, just as it did me.
 
Maybe it made some of the same impact on them that watching
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Chris Knight's avatar

It was on December 14th, 1979 – thirty years ago today – that the mostest highest-decibel movie ever directed by Steven Spielberg was released.

I am, of course, referring to 1941.

With a crazy eclectic cast featuring John Belushi, Christopher Lee, Slim Pickens, John Candy and Dan Ackroyd among many others and backed up by a rousing score by John Williams, 1941 pokes fun at the very real paranoia that beset the West Coast in the days and weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. At the time 1941 confused and bewildered critics (who weren’t sure if it was supposed to have been a drama or a comedy) but three decades later, it is now considered a cult classic. 1941 is a screaming movie. The filming was so loud that Spielberg had to fire a prop machine gun into the air rather than yelling “cut” because otherwise the actors ...

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So sayeth Harrison Ford, adding that he’s already getting in shape and that work on a new Indy movie has progressed further than most of us have suspected…

“The story for the new ‘Indiana Jones’ is in the process of taking form,” Ford told France’s Le Figaro. “Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and myself are agreed on what the fifth adventure will concern, and George is actively at work. If the script is good, I’ll be very happy to put the costume on again.”

Others may disagree, but I thought last year’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a fine addition to the Indy mythos. That and that it was as good a homage to Fifties B-movies as Raiders of the Lost Ark was a tribute to the Saturday serials of yesteryear. With that in mind, I’ll gladly welcome another Indiana Jones movie (and maybe even ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Shortly after E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial came out in 1982, I heard something very interesting: that among numerous scenes that were filmed but deleted from the final print, there was a cameo appearance by Harrison Ford. He plays Elliott’s principal, in a scene that takes place after Elliott goes nuts in the science lab. When Steven Spielberg re-released the movie in 2002 he re-incorporated a lot of the previously deleted material, but Ford’s appearance wasn’t among the additions. The story is that Spielberg wanted E.T. to be a movie about the children, and the principal’s office scene lingered too long on the adults.

So for a quarter-century, I’ve always been intrigued by this scene. I never thought I’d ever get to see it. And then this morning word reaches me that the deleted Harrison Ford cameo from E.T. the Extra-Terrstrial is on YouTube!

Here it is…

Some thoughts here: I find ...

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Tonight I’m still getting plenty of e-mails from folks telling me their tales of woe regarding their not being able to find Transformers: The Score anywhere.

How bad is this? Enough that I’m now feeling some regret at having some copies of the CD here, knowing that most people aren’t getting it.

So here’s my solemn vow, as an Eagle Scout…

Being that I cannot in good conscience listen to Transformers: The Score and feel right about that after knowing that most people cannot purchase it at all, I promise to no longer listen to Transformers: The Score until I have bought two copies of this CD at a traditional retail outlet. That will be an assurance to me that the CD is finally getting the distribution that it deserves.

Hey, I held off on kissing Lisa until our wedding ceremony. Abstaining from the Transformers score is an easy thing ...

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