Posted on 07/05/2005 7:47:27 PM PDT by CaptIsaacDavis
Good catch. It's still possible, since the premise is that they go on a long walk from circa Albany to Boston, with how many days in that house?, and other delays not shown to end up with the leaves just starting to fall in Boston (October). Perhaps the confusion by the author came from having so many flags flying on the porches of the rowhouses (and so many people with mixed clothing, some Fall-like, like the girl and mother, but many others with summer street clothes and no jackets in the early scenes).
You give Hollywood both too much and too little credit. Although the financing of movies is pretty much down to five companies (actually virtually ALL popular culture is created by those five companies) beneath the surface it's chaotic. Writers, directors, actors etc. fighting for projects, money, etc. Scripts being re-written at the las minute. Actors and directors being replace. For instance, the movie Pretty Woman was originally written as a very dark social commentary and then changed as they were shooting it to romantic comedy. So who knows how Starship Troopers, by that most American of Scifi writers, started out or how it was seen by a dutch guy who directed both action adventure and social commentary.
Who even knows how they edited it or re-cut it once it was shot? Body Heat, for instance, was re-cut (brilliantly) at the last minute with something like 20 minutes edited out of it. If you look closely, you can see conversations between two characters taking place while they are in different locations.
That said, there is no "Hollywood" as you think of it. No monolithic organization with a single vision -- at least not a vision that extends beyond keeping their jobs and making money. I've met a bunch of Hollywood producers, directors, etc. over the years through odd twists of fate and I can state without hesitation that they are the most frightened people you would ever hope to meet. They are in a highly competitive field that offers big money, but only if you "guess" right almost every time. It's pretty much like having a high paying job where the boss tells you to go into a casino and make three very large bets. If you bet right, then you get to keep your job. If you guess wrong, then you're fired.
You need to reaquaint yourself with Norman Rockwell. See, unlike Spielberg, Rockwell's iconic America was one of complete families, religious faith and enduring American ideals. Spielberg, OTOH, is just another touchy feely boomer, albiet a talented film maker. His philosophical content and the enduring messages of his films, however, will be like that of most of his g-g-generations artists and luminaries - a mirror reflection of a lost and self-absorbed generation without root or branch. He is a painter of pretty signs on a dead end road.
It's inevitable that an Artist will reflect his age. For better or for worse. His theme is the collapse of the nuclear family and the nostalgia for said nuclear family. The dissastifaction of one generation with another that you speak of has been around since Classical times. Boomers don't like Gen Xers either.
The thing that makes classics classic is that they speak for all time about the human condition. Better still are the cultural messages of Western civilization that uphold God, man and the artifice of government. There is no need other than the ego of directors to 'update' classic works or shed the dim rays of the time on the perfect work of past ages. This is the slight of hand artifice of those with nothing to say but with the technical means of crafting entertaining illusion. Spielberg does reflects his age - a vapid and self serving one.
The WOTW movie still sucks, but I believe we have made some progress in defining Spielberg and his 'message' for what they are - nothing.
Pretty damn good post.
Rockwell's wife was loony as hell and spent a good portion of their marriage in and out of institutions and under the care of various therapists. In later years he turned bitter and that fact is reflected in his paintings. The painting entitled "The Problem We All Live With" is dark in the extreme.
Norman Rockwell had neither a "Norman Rockwell Family" nor a particularly Norman Rockwell outlook on life.
That would have been his second wife. He divorced the first. The second loony one died. And he ended up reasonably happy with a third.
Uh, Rockwell was an illustrator. The intent of his illustrations was to sell magazines, in this case The Saturday Evening Post. When he switched over to Look in the 1960s, his style changed to meet the needs of that magazine, which was probably closer to his own thinking. He was, afterall, NYC born and raised.
If artists don't reflect their times or if that is too trite, then what times should they reflect? Few artists of any talent set out by saying, "Hey, ya know what? I wanna do something morally uplifting. Yeah, that's the ticket!" What they do is look at the world around them and reflect it back through the lens of their own intellect.
I'm no Spielberg fan, but you really give him too much credit and power. Families fly apart because they can. Women are no longer bound to their husbands financially. Husbands are often unable to meet the financial obligations of raising a famiy. And both husbands and wives say, "I'm unwilling to spend the rest of my life in this situation. I refuse to accept that this is as good as my life is going to get." Whether that's morally right or not, it's not Spielberg's fault.
Spielberg is a mentally ill man who remains a functioning human being by externalizing his illness into movies which force the rest of humanity to absorb his sick mind just so he can feel a little better after each poisonous film.
He was "under" their shield when he used the gernades. If he was outside the shield, they would have been ineffective. That's the way I saw it anyway.
...and he has no fashion sense whatsoever!
This review is whacked.
Funny, I read a different review that stressed the reviewer's assessment that Spielberg had gone well out of his way to AVOID making a political statement (and I largely concur). I guess people with axes to grind will always find something to pick at.
I thought it was a terrific film.
Of course Harlan Ellison is an infamous crank who seems to hate everything not Harlan Ellison most of the time.
He hates mediocrity. He has nothing but praise for genuninely great writers. But yes he is a crank. It's part of his charm.
SCREENWRITER TALKS ABOUT BACKROUND. Admits Iraq came up, anti-imperialist theme, but strangely claims no post-9/11 scenario (despite the planes and dust and all in the final cut).
http://www.eveofthewar.com/articles/7411
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