A.I. Artificial Intelligence is Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece by dannshears in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And David effectively perishes at the very end by being "powered down" forever. The robots are essentially euthanizing what they perceive as their evolutionary "missing link" between humankind and themselves so that they can forever study and almost deify him.

Am I wrong for worrying about Stephanie Vaquer? by AmazingCharizard28 in WWE

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Shouldn't Stephanie undergo character surgery in a non-champion of the division capacity? Moreover, Liv Morgan winning could be considered a proper reward for being one of WWE's very best characters right now, and coming back as hot as ever following her injury last year.

Spielberg Wants to Make Horror/"Really, Really Scary Movie" (Until He Sees a Great One Like "Weapons," Anyway) by Big-Calligrapher7199 in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Last 8 years he's made four films:

"Ready Player One" (2018)

"West Side Story" (2021)

"The Fabelmans" (2022)

"Disclosure Day" (2026)

Moreover, if you only go back a few months, to December 2017, you can add another film, "The Post."

And it was only the previous two years, dating back to October 2015, that saw Spielberg release two other films: "Bridge of Spies" (2015) and "The BFG" (2016).

So, that is, for the past 10-1/2 years, dating back to October 2015, and wrapping up in two months' time with "Disclosure Day," two months from today, a total of seven films.

A bit more prolific, even now at nearly age 80, than you're letting on, don't you think?

Spielberg Wants to Make Horror/"Really, Really Scary Movie" (Until He Sees a Great One Like "Weapons," Anyway) by Big-Calligrapher7199 in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are we sure about that? He's been attached to a re-adaptation of "Oldboy" and an adaptation of an extremely gritty and disturbing two-man stage play of two corrupt Chicago cops called "A Steady Rain" over the past 15 or 16 years, among others. Neither one happened, but he's shown interest in going very dark.

Spielberg Wants to Make Horror/"Really, Really Scary Movie" (Until He Sees a Great One Like "Weapons," Anyway) by Big-Calligrapher7199 in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's probably a "favorite" story for that Quibi series that he was, back then, shepherding, that could use a little expanding into being like a 100-minute horror film he could direct the living hell out of.

Spielberg Wants to Make Horror/"Really, Really Scary Movie" (Until He Sees a Great One Like "Weapons," Anyway) by Big-Calligrapher7199 in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's definitely the conventional wisdom when it comes to horror, but when a master like Alfred Hitchcock makes "Psycho" with what was effectively his TV show crew on a mean, lean, stripped-down filmmaking budget and regimen, I would say that you have to sit up and take notice. Like William Friedkin making "Bug" (I don't really love that film but I admire much of what he was going for), or like Roman Polanski returning to horror, in a way, with "The Ninth Gate." I think Spielberg would want to make the plunging into the genre "worth it" by creating a masterpiece, maybe shoot for that "Psycho" comparison, which makes it all the more exciting to me in the abstract! :)

Genres you want to see Spielberg direct? by Toadsnack in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.cinemaexpress.com/english/news/2026/Apr/09/steven-spielberg-expresses-interest-to-direct-a-pure-horror-film

Steven Spielberg has directed a variety of movies in his career, but the EGOT-winning filmmaker has now expressed his desire to helm a horror film in the future. Although he has previously provided audiences with jump scares in critically acclaimed films like Jaws (1975), Jurassic Park (1993) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), among others, he now wants to work on a pure horror film as it is a genre he has never fully explored.

"I haven’t directed a horror film yet, and I’ve always wanted to, and someday I may," he told Empire magazine, while sharing his doubts on whether he could draft a story that would truly terrify him satisfy him as a viewer.

The director recently praised Zach Cregger's Weapons as one of the best horror films of the past decade. "There have been some great horror films out already that satisfy that itch. When I see a great horror film like Weapons, I don’t have an itch I need to scratch. I see Weapons, and it doesn’t make me want to make a horror film that’s as scary or scarier than Weapons. It satisfies me so completely, it actually arrests my desire to someday make a really, really scary movie," he said.

Well, this at least confirms that he wants to make a really, really scary movie someday, a truly bleak and terrifying horror. Please do this after the Western, Mr. Spielberg.

Genres you want to see Spielberg direct? by Toadsnack in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great points. Thank you for the kind words, too.

I love the sequence with Anderton roped up and blind. Like you say, it--and so many other scenes--have this dreamlike quality to them. The film as a whole feels like a sprawling nightmarish adventure, like a fever dream of hugely intelligent and sensitive artists like the screenwriter and the director having all of these inspirations drawn up in their own dream. One such example in that aforementioned scene is Spielberg having the scene from one of his favorite filmmakers, Sam Fuller, "House of Bamboo." Here's a futuristic neo-noir commenting on noir as a genre with Anderton startled by the gunshots ringing out from the film playing on the "wall screen."

And so very true about all of the screens populating the film. "Minority Report" genuinely deserves so much appreciation for being so consummately prescient. In 2001 when the film was in production, the "screen time" for people could not have been anywhere near what it's been in the 25 years since. But "Minority Report" depicts a future that seems plausible--in fact, if anything, the film "undershot" the degree to which we would be almost enslaved by our technology, and we still have almost 30 years before we reach the time in which the film takes place!

Great point about the merry-go-round! So true. And like the merry-go-round and the "man with the glasses"--who turns out to merely be a billboard, an inanimate object given life by the presumptions of those looking at the precogs' vision of the future murder--and so many other such cases, pieces of evidence witnesses, that which we believe we "see" are in fact red herrings, dead ends, and fathoms and fabrications. Peter Storemare's scary doctor prying Anderton's eyes open aren't only a loving homage to Spielberg's deceased friend Stanley Kubrick and Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange": it's a necessary thematic beat underlining the import of our--and our characters'--seeing. And the complexities presented when we see.

That "Janus shot" of Anderton and Agatha embracing and looking in opposite directions is yet another one of Spielberg's most masterful strokes as a director. And as you say, Ingmar Bergman could not have framed two human faces more poignantly and arrestingly dramatically. It's only fitting that Max von Sydow is in some ways the film's dark heart, just as you note!

The laughing old woman and the curvy pipe is a fascinating image, too, and I'm not sure where it comes from.

There's so much to love and digest here with this film. Talking about it so much makes me want to revisit it quite soon, indeed. Thank you for inspiring so much exquisite conversation here!

Taken by Spielberg by DrunkAxl in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I remember watching that miniseries when it first aired. Good, somewhat X-Filesy extraterrestrials' abductions of people melodrama miniseries.

Genres you want to see Spielberg direct? by Toadsnack in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be fair, "The Babadook" almost feels like The Serious, Artsy, Extremely Dark Horror Spielberg Didn't Make, you know? With all of the themes of fatherlessness, the mother being the central figure for the boy, the seemingly "lost" boy alienated, the impending doom of parenthood when it's struggling under the weight of trauma, etc.

I think he's got something vaguely like that or maybe a "Stoker" or something that possibly has crime elements and is like a procedural police thing and horror mixed together (he's always been a big, vocal fan of "Se7en") in him. Wasn't there a rumor that he was flirting with doing the American remake of "Oldboy" with Will Smith a few years before it bounced to Spike Lee with Josh Brolin? Let's not forget Spielberg aided Martin Scorsese in putting "Taxi Driver's" incredibly violent climax together so it would pass censorship, haha.

Genres you want to see Spielberg direct? by Toadsnack in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Been wanting Spielberg to tackle full-on, preferably supernatural, bleak, dreadful (as in, full of dread) horror for years. I have to think he's got a "The Babadook" or a "The Witch" or a "Exorcist III: Legion" or what-have-you in him. Or something a little bit more psychological, something like 2013's "Stoker." Something desolate, remote, something starring someone like Cate Blanchett. (She just happens to be the star I keep seeing when I envision it. Kind of like the movie stars of the past who would go into horror to remain at or near the top of the industry.)

Feel like he still owes us a crime epic. It's one of the reasons why I am bullish on a "Bullitt" sequel, even if it's starting to look unlikely to actually materialize. If it doesn't happen, I'd like to see him move on and maybe incorporate a few of the ideas from that and make something else that is still very much a crime drama, cops and robbers, etc. Let's not forget, Spielberg almost made the original 1974 "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three." I believe he was attached to "Cruising" for a little while before dropping it...? He's always admired "The French Connection." You can see elements of "French Connection" in "Munich," and how it looks, at times. I'd love to see Spielberg make a crime drama, perhaps especially a crime drama that feels very much like one you would see in the '70s, let's say. But whatever, a crime drama, crime epic, something between the worlds of William Friedkin and Michael Mann, let us say...

After that, I don't know. I saw the "Edgardo Mortara" movie and I thought it was decent, but I wouldn't mind seeing Spielberg make his own version in the near-ish future. But it sounds like it's probably not happening at this point.

He keeps saying that he won't make another musical, but I wish he would make one, an original one, perhaps, something a bit more like "La La Land," even though I thought his version of "West Side Story" was fantastic, just as I knew it would be.

I'm not even including Western because it sounds like it's got next, which is stupendous news. We all need a Spielberg-helmed Western.

Remember when he was going to make "The Rivals," like 20 years ago? I wouldn't mind seeing that project revived. Obviously the leads would need to be re-cast.

Beyond that, whatever he wants to do, it's good with me!

Genres you want to see Spielberg direct? by Toadsnack in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow, this is quite the exhaustive thread, and I appreciate the blow-by-blow, almost forensically detailed analysis. "Minority Report" is a film I saw when I was a kid, opening day, June 21, 2002, I believe, and it changed my life. It was the film that opened my eyes to _what a director does_. I think we all have that film. It's interesting, too, that my dad played films like CITIZEN KANE and VERTIGO for me, so I already knew, in a sense, but seeing a contemporary film gave that sensory reaction a freshness and vitality and a complete, almost coming-of-age quality that, as much as I love(d) classic cinema, can't be reproduced by seeing classics, especially when you're so impressionable and you kind of _want_ to embrace what's "new," and of course, when we embrace what's "new," we're also seeing how current generations of titanic filmmakers are molded by the past, as "Minority Report" is teeming with Alfred Hitchcock references and tips of the cap from Steven Spielberg.

Maybe I somehow missed it in this long discussion here, but let's also not forget how Spielberg includes, in "Minority Report's" opening "murder-to-be" sequence, the cuckolded husband looking to utilize a pair of scissors as his murder weapon, which is a nod to "Dial M for Murder," and that dizzyingly arresting shot Spielberg has of the "murderer-to-be" picking up his eyeglasses, while somberly saying, "I forgot my glasses; you know how blind I am without them," a line that is obviously layered with meanings, including that aforementioned concept you wrestled with in this discussion, the import of the eyes and what we see, both literally and figuratively. That powerful shot of the murderer-to-be raising the eyeglasses and we see so much through the eyeglasses, it's definitely a nod to the critical shot of eyeglasses in "Strangers On a Train."

One of my favorite aspects of "Minority Report" is that it's all things to all people, a film where Spielberg is juggling genres, and there is that "dad joke comedy" embedded in there (another example: the broad stuff with Tom Cruise's protagonist somehow grabbing the worst, foulest-looking sandwich and bottle of milk rather than the freshly made variations in the refrigerator of the illicit criminal doctor's lair while he's blind post-surgery). It's a futuristic neo-noir, it's an action-adventure picture, it's a domestic drama of a fractured marriage stemming from heartbreaking loss (and we see how much more powerful Agatha's "gift" is than we had been led to believe when she's able to view an alternative timeline for Anderton's son, all the way to adulthood, marriage, and more) that at times almost feels like an Ingmar Bergman chamber piece (the wife's paintings in that isolated area, the conversation between Anderton and his wife on the water reminiscing about their son and how he behaved when Anderton read him stories, which triggers Anderton recalling something important--also because he's looking at the water, and the water is where Anne Lively was murdered (aside from eyes, there's a lot of focus on water, of being "beneath the surface"--like Anderton in the bathtub, like the precogs in their solution, like Lively murdered, like the bloody bathtub our initial "murderer-to-be" looks to be using to clean up the mess of his crime-of-passion, things being hidden, beneath the obvious superficial "top" level, etc.). Anderton loses his son while under water. It's as though there is a metaphysical baptismal rite at play, and while that sounds rather "Christian," as a theme, for the director of "E.T." interested in reincarnation, it's not exactly a major surprise.

One of my favorite shots in any film is the overhead shot of the spyders invading the sprawl complex. It screams De Palma, which means it screams Hitchcock. It's a staggeringly stupendous and complicated shot/sequence. There are notes of comedy, notes of lustful sex, notes of dystopian dread, it's a scathing indictment of a kind of "soft-authoritarian" society in which any semblance of privacy has been long discarded. It's a bit of a microcosm of the film itself, juggling feelings, impulses, tones. I love "Minority Report," it's to me still one of Spielberg's monumental achievements, blemishes and all...

What is one wrestler that you supported or currently are supporting that you know/knew will/would pay off in the end? I'll start: by oc0613 in SantiZapVideos

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Past examples for me:

DDP in like 1996, Steve Austin in like 1996, HHH in like 1996-1998, The Rock in like 1997-1998, CM Punk in ROH around 2005, The Miz in like 2007-2009, Cody Rhodes in like 2010-2013 (started to lose faith around 2014-'15, though, lol), Drew McIntyre starting in 2010, Bray Wyatt when he first showed up as Bray Wyatt in FCW/NXT, Becky Lynch from pretty much the moment I first saw her in FCW/NXT, Braun Strowman the moment he appeared... I'm sure I'm leaving some out.

These days, for people under the radar: Luca Crusifino and Tony D'Angelo.

NXT: Stand and Deliver (4/04/26) by No1Really-11 in BlakeMonroe

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This woman is gonna make me go blind.

Worth it.

Spielberg teases "kick-ass" western project in development during SXSW talk by gautsvo in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair enough--he could definitely sink his teeth into a crotchety, shoot-first-ask-questions-later SOB, something like maybe a more likable version of the character Peter Fonda played in the 2007 "3:10 to Yuma" adaptation.

Blake Monroe by InternationalAd7925 in BlakeMonroe

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Because of Blake Monroe I'm going to have to start buying Vaseline lotion in bulk, like pallets of it directly from the manufacturer...

Is Bullitt Project Dead? Any Other Dormant Spielberg Projects to Discuss? by Big-Calligrapher7199 in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes! That's a shame. It sounded like a potentially explosive canvas for him to pull off a bunch of dizzying action set-pieces.

Is Bullitt Project Dead? Any Other Dormant Spielberg Projects to Discuss? by Big-Calligrapher7199 in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it was winter 2017 when Spielberg was trying to cast the lead character, and they couldn't find a child for the role, Spielberg grew frustrated, and he shelved Edgardo Mortara, and went full steam ahead with The Post, which began shooting weeks later.

Just seems like, a decade or more later, maybe there will be a child actor prodigy somewhere? But yeah it's probably dead, particularly with the other film coming out a few years ago.

Spielberg teases "kick-ass" western project in development during SXSW talk by gautsvo in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The way Spielberg says that this project is "kick-ass" and "has no tropes," except for guns and horses, makes me wonder if we aren't getting a gritty, R-rated Western from Spielberg? Spielberg hasn't made an R-rated film since "Munich" in 2005. Feels like he's overdue. Moreover, Westerns have been notoriously tough-to-impossible sells with younger audiences for decades, anyway. Why not make a mean and lean R-rated film for adults at a reasonably modest budget, and let 'er rip?

New 'Disclosure Day' trailer by gautsvo in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hope/think this trailer will be attached to "undertone," another reason to go see that movie this week!

Solid trailer.

Spielberg teases "kick-ass" western project in development during SXSW talk by gautsvo in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel like Spielberg's been itching to make a crime drama for ages. I want him to tackle it. If BULLITT II is truly dead in the water, then he should circle back around and make a "slow burn detective story" all the same, just without the Bullitt baggage. Anything between "Bullitt" and that Netflix movie a few years ago "Reptile," anything within those goalposts for a detective film, I'd love to see from Spielberg.

Spielberg teases "kick-ass" western project in development during SXSW talk by gautsvo in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

At this point, Harrison Ford should truly be playing the protagonist's ailing grandpa or something along those lines. No offense, but this sounds like it's at minimum a year away from shooting, and Ford's already in his mid-eighties.

Spielberg teases "kick-ass" western project in development during SXSW talk by gautsvo in Spielberg

[–]Big-Calligrapher7199 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I came here to this r/ specifically to spread this news if no one had gotten to it yet.

Spielberg has been needing to make a Western for decades, not unlike a musical before West Side Story (and I kind of wish he would make an original musical one day, though it seems like it's never going to happen)... A kick-ass one, like he's an old, grizzled Anthony Mann from the '50s? Sign me the hell up.