Last movie watched...

[Ghost MacRoth]

Fair enough!  But I can't rest in my head how you can differentiate between Lucas de Hutt and Spielberg like that! 

[Frank]

http://www.jewornotjew.com/profile.jsp?ID=97

[Hawkmumbler]

...thats enough internet for tonight I think. Jaws and/ or Duel and SPR any number of Hitchcock rip-off's? How exactly?

[TordelBack]

If Spielberg had only ever made Jaws, he'd still be one of the most important filmmakers of all time.  As it stands, he has made many more that are almost as influential and enjoyable.  Yes, he's had his name plastered over a hell of a lot of dross, but his good stuff more than balances the record.

[Silent_Bomber]

http://www.jewornotjew.com/profile.jsp?ID=97

Spielberg doesn't have to be a Christian himself to fill his movies with saints and goody two-shoes'

[Professor Bear]

While I think there's enough of a difference between Nightmare Before Christmas and Burton's other efforts to legitimately suggest that the lion's share of credit for the end product lies elsewhere, would Nightmare Before Christmas exist without Burton?  I do not think that it would.

Spielberg has made some very good films, and no-one put a gun to George Lucas' head and said "make a billion dollars", but I think Spielberg has long had a vested interest in SW's financial returns that led him to negatively impact on the films themselves while Lucas has taken the brunt of fan ire for it.  If GL hadn't been taking advice from the guy who pioneered the use of merchandising as part of the average movie event, I wonder what kind of sequels/prequels from the man who made American Graffitti and THX we might have ended up with.

Shindler's List I found a cold and cynical offering compounded by Spielberg reining in the extent of Nazi atrocities just so the film could remain a PG, which to me says it was little more than the portrayal of suffering as entertainment, well-made and ultimately soul-less.  But JAWS is still a class film, and while I have only seen ET once when I was 9, I also gather it went down well. 

[Silent_Bomber]

ET, jeez, I was searching for the barf bag during that one.

Just remembering how he completely gutted Minority Report, making a smart Sci-Fi story into a crappy human interest film. It has the opposite bloody ending FFS!!!!

and Hook, jesus no, Robin Williams prancing around in tights

I'm going to shut up now  , I've got a feeling I'm going to be ripped to pieces soon 

[Ghost MacRoth]

If GL hadn't been taking advice from the guy who pioneered the use of merchandising as part of the average movie event, I wonder what kind of sequels/prequels from the man who made American Graffitti and THX we might have ended up with.

I gotta start by saying I am very prepared to be proven wrong, as I'm tired, and a tad pished, and my brief check of my initial thoughts took my google search to wikipedia......

But didn't George pioneer the merchandising thing?

[JOE SOAP]

Back to the Future

That'd be another example of when his influence as a producer is felt so keenly folk think he directed a film.

Poltergeist: not only a film about ghosts but allegedly ghost-directed by Spielberg for which he didn't take the credit.

Spielberg couldn't contractually direct another movie while E.T. was being prepped, he simply hired another director to stand in for the credit, and directed it anyway.

[Ghost MacRoth]

ET, jeez, I was searching for the barf bag during that one.

Just remembering how he completely gutted Minority Report, making a smart Sci-Fi story into a crappy human interest film. It has the opposite bloody ending FFS!!!!

and Hook, jesus no, Robin Williams prancing around in tights

I'm going to shut up now  , I've got a feeling I'm going to be ripped to pieces soon 

Doubt it.  No one's actually having a pop I don't think.  We can't all like the same things. Otherwise we'd have pretty dull discussions!

'Did you like that?'
'Yes'
'Me too.'

The End.

[JOE SOAP]

I think Spielberg has long had a vested interest in SW's financial returns that led him to negatively impact on the films themselves while Lucas has taken the brunt of fan ire for it. 

Not too far from the truth:

How Steven Spielberg Won A Lucrative Percentage Of Star Wars Off A Bet With George Lucas

[sheldipez]

"On the direction of the film, [director] Selick reflected, "It's as though Burton laid the egg, and I sat on it and hatched it. He wasn't involved in a hands-on way, but his hand is in it. It was my job to make it look like 'a Tim Burton film,' which is not so different from my own films." When asked on Burton's involvement, Selick claimed, "I don't want to take away from Tim, but he was not in San Francisco when we made it. He came up five times over two years, and spent no more than eight or ten days in total." "

Nightmare before Christmas is a better movie as it has Burton's fingerprints on it instead of his grubby hands all over it.

[JOE SOAP]

But didn't George pioneer the merchandising thing?

Well he did it on an unprecedented scale but there is this. There were no toys for THX 1138.

[Professor Bear]

Spielberg pioneered the merchandising age by taking all the stuff that studios gave away to promote their movies and instead charged people for it, which doesn't sound like that much of a brainstorm nowadays, but at the time it shifted the mindset in moviemaking towards the notion (since proven correct) that movie events could be engineered in advance rather than just happening when something caught on with the public.  We aren't just talking toys, either, but even stuff like posters and advertising stands which until that point (the mid-late 1970s) were destroyed when cinemas were done with them, yet now were being returned to the studios to give the illusion they were worth something in and of themselves - suddenly these movies coming up were definately gonna be huge and you'd be mad not to want a piece of them...

Which is a roundabout way of saying that they should have hired Spielberg to make that Catwoman movie.

[Silent_Bomber]

Doubt it.  No one's actually having a pop I don't think.  We can't all like the same things. Otherwise we'd have pretty dull discussions!

Well, if things do go badly I'm gonna' do a quick subject change to how good Dredd was.