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Was looking for this little excerpt for quite some time. Its from the Wender's Documentary ROOM 666. Here is Spielberg in 1982 "on the future of cinema."

Reading Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, I discovered that the prison for political crimes during the Austrian empire, was Spielberg citadel, in Brno; now, I wonder which is Steve's family name origin.

Where "Spielberg family" came from? I've looked at wikipedia (where almost all USamericans have descriptions of all their grand grand parents' origins) but there's no explication on his article.

Is He Austrian ? German ? Czech? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spielberg_(disambiguation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) I have not read a biography or studies about him (sorry).

rohmerin wrote:Reading Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, I discovered that the prison for political crimes during the Austrian empire, was Spielberg citadel, in Brno; now, I wonder which is Steve's family name origin.

Where "Spielberg family" came from? I've looked at wikipedia (where almost all USamericans have descriptions of all their grand grand parents' origins) but there's no explication on his article.

Is He Austrian ? German ? Czech? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spielberg_(disambiguation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) I have not read a biography or studies about him (sorry).

Probably useless to answer this question now, but for Jews surnames are basically useless as a way to tell family point of origin. The best indicator they serve is when they got that surname. Being Germanic that would put him at the mid 1800s for example. Given the descriptions he gives of his family's religious practices, at least according to the wiki article, which are a better indicator than names I'd assume he was either Lithuanian or Polish.

According to Joseph McBride's decent biography on Spielberg, Arnold Spielberg, Steven's father, believed the roots of their family were in Austria-Hungry. The name is German-Austrian and means "play mountain." His mother's side originated in Poland, and his maternal grandfather, Fievel, immigrated from Odessa, Russia (apparently An American Tail was inspired by his grandfather's stories).

Though even something like that can be difficult in pinpointing Jewish ethnicity rather than nationality since that just considers where they were in the last three hundred years or so.

At nearly 70, Spielberg is on a bit of a tear. If things go as planned, he'll have five films in five consecutive years -- juggling filming, post, and press schedules for multiple films at once, as he's done several times before.

Following last year's stellar Bridge of Spies, he's got The BFG in the can and coming out in July. Ready Player One will be filming by then, but a lengthy post-production (and avoidance of a certain galaxy far, far away) will push its release to March of 2018. While that's in post, Spielberg will shoot and release the just-announced The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara. Then he'll spend the following year readying the next Indiana Jones installment for a summer 2019 release. If he's eyeing retirement in the near future, it looks like he intends to go out with a bang.

It's strange. I don't think of him being 70.

FrauBlucher wrote:It's strange. I don't think of him being 70.

Not surprising considering people were still referring to him as the "boy wonder" when he was approaching 40. And he's always seemed really young—I remember John Williams saying Spielberg looked like he was 15 years old when they first met (Spielberg would have been in his mid-20s then).

I just got Close Encounters on Blu-ray and am looking forward to revisiting it for the first time in probably 12 years. The disc appears to contain no less than three versions of the film--original cut, "special edition," and director's cut--which differ from each other in running time by a mere 2-5 minutes (!?). What, if anything, is the difference between these cuts and which one is recommended? (A better question might be does it even matter?)

This site has some very extensive comparisons.

Thanks. I hadn't realized how different the three cuts are.

The 137-minute director's cut sounds the most appealing to me but I'd be interested to hear what others' preferences are.

Is the extended version the one where they go inside the ship? I would strongly recommend against that one, it feels tacked on in the worst way.

Yes, I'm planning to avoid that version (what the Blu-ray calls the "extended cut"). As I understand it the director's cut omits that sequence, but includes extra footage of Richard Dreyfuss's breakdown as well as a new scene set in the Gobi desert.

The "Director's Cut" restores most of the footage cut from the initial release (footage I recalled fondly when seeing the film first-run and missed for thirty years) and retains the best of the additional footage and effect shots used in the 1980 reissue (minus the unnecessary trip inside the mothership) - it's the best version in my opinion.

Director's Cut is my favorite as well.

What's up with the hot triplets in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan?

firstlast wrote:What's up with the hot triplets in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan?

Hah, forgot about the triplets! I would have to see it again, but I recall them resembling blonde-haired models, which came off weird, like someone dropped some escapees from a shampoo commercial into the wrong movie.

Spoiler

They're obviously there to distract the audience from the major sleight of hand: that the film flashes back into the perspective of the Tom Hanks character (literally through the move into matching shots of eyes) about to land on the beaches on D-Day, only to at the end of the film reveal that the flashback structure has involved Matt Damon's character (who never experienced the D-Day landings) who has been doing the reminiscing all along!

EDIT: For clarity!

colinr0380 wrote:

Spoiler

They're obviously there to distract the audience from the major sleight of hand: that the film flashes back into the perspective of the Tom Hanks character (literally through the move into matching shots of eyes) about to land on the beaches on D-Day, only to at the end reveal that it has been Matt Damon's character (who never experienced the D-Day landings) who has been doing the reminiscing all along!

The film cuts from old Ryan's eyes to a shot of the beach obstacles, then a shot of the amphibious landers, then a shot of Hanks' shaking hands, then Hanks' face. Obviously cheap misdirection on Spielbergo's part. The stupid, now-dated "morph" fade from young Ryan to old Ryan's face takes place at the end, which may be what you're thinking of.

The triplets are just odd. Any straight adult male viewer will immediately distractingly sexualize the situation, which Spielbergo - chaste as he is - must have known, so if that wasn't his intent (and why would it be, in an entirely nonsexual film?) then it smacks of pointless stunt casting. The only thing I can think of is that Ryan is one of many siblings (no mention is made if they were quadruplets or different ages) so maybe it runs in the family (if such a thing is possible? more likely the culprit is fertility drugs, which I don't believe existed when Ryan's momma was crapping out four little Will Huntings.)

At any rate, terrible film. Too facile, too many gimmick scenes, etc.

firstlast wrote:The triplets are just odd...The only thing I can think of is that Ryan is one of many siblings (no mention is made if they were quadruplets or different ages) so maybe it runs in the family.

This can be true - on a smaller scale, I've had several conversations with identical and fraternal twins about this, revolving around how fraternal twins (but not identical twins) are actually much more likely to have twins themselves when they have children. So in Spielberg's defense, if he wanted to show a man building a family over generations, it would make sense.

BUT, picking glamorous blonde triplets is a huge misfire, and undermines my defense since the Ryans were "regular" people and it's strange to see a significant portion of his family come straight out casting for a shampoo commercial. He wanted something like the epilogue to Schindler's List - Ryan's closing remarks make this too blatantly clear - but in that case you had REAL people that really were alive because of Schindler, and it was more powerful knowing that. Not surprisingly, they also looked like regular people, not like typical actors or models.

firstlast wrote:What's up with the hot triplets in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan?

They got mentioned here: http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2013/01/ci ... sters.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Never cared for the bookends in SPR myself...

I've seen the movie many times (though not recently) and I honestly do not recall noticing the triplets, and I'm as adult male as anyone else.

Strikes me as an extremely random (and in this case, literally pointless) thing to make a big deal about for a nearly twenty-year-old movie.

It took me a long time to figure out what anyone was talking about with triplets. The bookends never bothered me, this sort of ellipsis in the flashback is a bit of a bait and switch, but no one would complain if it were a short story that was so bookended, the point of the film is that the old man is wondering if the life he lived has been worth the sacrifice of wwii, and the story told is of what those sacrifices were, and frankly, having spoken with wwii vets about the film, the bookends and the end of the film are incredibly important to them. Because it acknowledges the survivors guilt that they feel that isn't always fore grounded so clearly when films and documentaries are made about the "greatest generation" the whole, "my buddies died and I've had a good life...have I had a good life?" Struggle is one that is universal to many veterans. This idea is explored under the symbolic story of saving one soldier. So in looking at the individual case of saving private "john doe" (so to speak) the film communicates a larger idea about all the soldiers who survives and all the soldiers who didn't. Given that the film is blowing up the specific to talk about the general, it actually works, thematically, that the audiences expectations are upended in regards to the identity of tom hanks vs Matt Damon as the old man.


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Close Encounters of the Third Kind to come out on 4K UHD Blu-ray in September.

A career retrospective will air on HBO the following month.

Close Encounters is actually being rereleased in multiplexes nationwide the first week of September.