🚀 go-pugleaf

Bob R. Kenyon wrote:

> In article <3198BCCA.3E40@hitchcock.org>, John R Moore
> <john.r.moore@hitchcock.org> wrote:
> 
> >Haven't seen Twister, so I won't try to defend it, but please point
> >out the technology used by Spielburg in:
> >
> >Sugarland Express
> >Continental Divide
> >The Color Purple
> >Empire of the Sun   and
> >Schindler's List.
> 
> Just because you don't see the special effects doesn't mean they aren't
> there. Most movies made today have some amount of SFX going on, if only to
> make a sky more beautiful or to take out rigging or mistakes. Many times
> it's cheaper to digitize a scene and have someone paint out a mistake
> instead of reshooting it.
> 
> Schindler's List certainly was full of effects. I don't remember enough of
> or haven't seen the other films.
> --
The original post was that Speilberg 'can't seem to tell a story 
without technology' and that all his works lack 'social significance. 
You seem to be saying that nobody can tell a story without technology.
True enough: Projecting a moving, color image on a screen (with stero 
sound) is pretty high tech just in itself. All mass communication
envolves some technology. Even swapping yarns around the campfire 
involves the basic technology of fire itself. Can Speilburg tell a
story without technology? Maybe, if he delivers it orally while
sitting in the dark. But the man is a film-maker and file making is
technology. Show me a film-maker who avoids technology and I'll
show you someone with a real short resume.
 
If this is the case why single out Speilberg. Certainly he has made
many films that were centered around SFX (Jaws. ET, Close Encounters),
but the broad dismissal of ALL his works as lacking social
significance still doesn't hold up. Maybe Twister stinks, OK. But it
stinks not because of technology, but because it lacks a good plot,
has bad acting, poor direction or any of a dozen other reasons. High
tech special effects are never enough to make a bad movie into a 
good one. Speilberg should have known better. But don't tell me that
Schindler's List had no social significance because it used state of 
the art cinemagraphic technology.

Original post from Rodney Fuller <fuller@ctt.bellcore.com>

> Given that the movie was made by Spielberg/Crighton/Lucas I can understand
> your disappointment.  I mean every other movie these film makers have made
> is just loaded with social significance!  For example:
> 
> Lucas:  Some people call _Star Wars_ "Robin Hood in space" but it had a much
> deeper religous/myth significance to it--if you've spent the last 10 years
> in a graduate department of literary criticism.
> 
> Spielberg: This guy can't seem to tell a story without technology-- Jaws?
> ET? "Radiers" of the various world religions [Jews, Hindus, his apology to
> the Christians]?  And that jurassic thing--you can now read Crighton's
> books and see the "Spielberg shots" in them.
> 
> Crighton: He's only made the great train robbery, but he writes in simple
> language about complex things--like complexity theory.  Watch for his next
> jurassic movie--_Lost World_ which has the theme "Extinction means NEVER
> having to say 'you're sorry'"--except that the book/movie is full of apologies
> from the first book:  To Ford Motor Company for implying that the explorer
> was T-Rex proof (the new book has a titanium one), to all the fringe theorists
> that didn't see their theories represented in the new forum of intelectual
> debate:  the Hollywood blockbuster!
> 
> So...  You were expecting in Twister a movie that would do for the Weather
> Channel what Jurrasic Park did for the discovery channel?  They are weather
> nerds!  Some things you just can't make universal.
> 
> Rodney Fuller
> fuller@ctt.bellcore.com
>