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I wish more people understood this simple fact!
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The Americans
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Jaws by Daniel Norris
‘Jurassic Park’ and Digital vs. Film: Sound on Sight Podcast # 353
With Steven Spielberg’s landmark blockbuster Jurassic Park making a 3D-assisted comeback in theaters, Ricky, Josh and Simon take a look back in order to rank it among Spielberg’s crowd-pleasers and see how it stands the test of time, regardless of technological additives. After that, the floor is opened to a general discussion of the digital vs. film debate, sparked by the Keanu Reeves-produced and hosted doc Side by Side. (Special guest Gregory Ashman of CriticalMassCast joined us for the first chunk of the show, but had to be dropped due to a Skype issue.)
‘Jurassic Park’ and Digital vs. Film: Sound on Sight PODCAST # 353
With Steven Spielberg’s landmark blockbuster Jurassic Park making a 3D-assisted comeback in theaters, Ricky, Josh and Simon take a look back in order to rank it among Spielberg’s crowd-pleasers and see how it stands the test of time, regardless of technological additives. After that, the floor is opened to a general discussion of the digital vs. film debate, sparked by the Keanu Reeves-produced and hosted doc Side by Side. (Special guest Gregory Ashman of CriticalMassCast joined us for the first chunk of the show, but had to be dropped due to a Skype issue.)
Looking at Dinosaurs: ‘Jurassic Park’ and Its Powerful Hold on a Generation
Jurassic Park is Steven Spielberg at his best, a movie made by a man who understands and wields the all-encompassing power of cinema. So much of the story is about regular people—intelligent, and at the top of their game, but still fairly average people—being tossed into, essentially, a movie. The centerpiece of the film, still its very best scene, is when the Tyrannosaurus Rex breaks free from its enclosure and attacks Tim and Lex in their Ford Explorer after the cartoonish lawyer Donald Gennaro ran in fear to a nearby bathroom. (It’s been said before, but man, Spielberg must’ve hated lawyers something terrible when making this movie.) What struck me this time is that, for a good chunk of the sequence, we are not the only ones watching the terror unfold. There’s a voyeuristic streak laced with a chaser of control throughout—Hammond, Muldoon, and others watch and help navigate the failed tour—most disquieting as Grant and Malcolm sit in their Explorer, paralyzed and initially helpless, just watching. Jurassic Park is packed with scenes where someone is trying to gain or maintain control despite their physical separation from those they wish to dominate: Dennis Nedry wheedling his way onto a ship to the mainland, Hammond and Malcolm bickering over who can lead Ellie to a power grid quicker, that first tour around the park, and on and on. There are also a handful of scenes where these characters, so sure of their power, attempt to break the seal, to break the fourth wall, as when the scientists escape from the introductory video explaining how these dinosaurs were created to interact with those people working behind the glass. These are characters who want control, unable to contain their curiosity, thus creating chaos.
‘Super 8′ and ‘E.T.’
Sound on Sight PODCAST REWIND #276
After over a year of anticipation through teasers, images and speculation, J. J. Abrams’s third feature – and first original screenplay – is finally with us. Super 8has been a source of fierce debate all weekend long, and Rick, Justine and Simon are here to settle the score. Or at least try to. Meanwhile, there’s also time to talk about one of the film’s chief sources of inspiration, Steven Spielber’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Also: finally, an answer to the age-old question: was Jesus an alien?
Sound on Sight PODCAST Rewind #299: Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ and ‘War Horse’
He’s probably the most consistently popular filmmaker in history, as well as one of the most divisive – and he’s also got two new movies out this Christmas. Steven Spielberg’s patented blend of awed faces, childlike wonder, and daddy issues come roaring back to the big screen for the first time since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with the equine WWI adventure War Horseand the long-gestating Hergé adaptation The Adventures of Tintin. We scored early looks at both films, and SOS contributor and resident Spielberg superfan Michael Ryan joins us to measure the Spielbergocity.
Introverted Perspectives: Cinema, Presidents and Wallflowers
Engage in any casual theoretical discussion about the medium of film and chances are you’ll at least touch on some variation of: Why is cinema the most influential art and entertainment form of our time? What’s so special about it? What can movies do uniquely and effectively that other forms of art can’t?
They’re difficult questions to answer in broad terms. Most discussions I’ve had surrounding the essence of film, including the ever-riveting academic subject of medium specificity that grad school types love to beat to death, prove ultimately unsatisfying when they morph into prescription (movies should be such and such), or sweeping generalization (all movies are/do yada yada). What I do find useful and interesting is discussing trends, topics, and types of expression that movies are able to capture in a way that other art forms are less capable of achieving either by limitations in their very nature or by the culture that dictates them. There are, for example, things movies can’t do as well as other media: literature can convey a subjective experience more deeply by putting the reader as close to the inside of another person’s head and language as is humanly possible; music can possess a listener with the perhaps greatest emotional pureness; theatre features potential for immediate audience interaction that film is incapable of offering; and still visual art like painting and photography allow a person to experience a work of art in their own time, at their own pace, without the duration of their experience dictated by the motion of a picture or forward progress of successive frames.
Sound on Sight Podcast #339: ‘Lincoln’
For the first time in Sound on Sight history, Ricky and Simon attempt a crossover episode, joining forces with Ty Landis and Tom Stoup from over at Almost Arthouse in order to assess the latest historical epic from director Steven Spielberg, Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field.
Sound on Sight Podcast #339: ‘Lincoln’
For the first time in Sound on Sight history, Ricky and Simon attempt a crossover episode, joining forces with Ty Landis and Tom Stoup from over at Almost Arthouse in order to assess the latest historical epic from director Steven Spielberg, Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field.
One of the best films of 2012, ‘Lincoln’ is a thrilling and exciting piece of American history
The American political system is hopelessly fractured. Its legislators are viciously divided on how to govern the nation. The president, about to begin his second term in office on a groundswell of grassroots public support, is either too much or not enough of a pragmatist, depending on who you ask. He leans on his advisors when he needs to, but is driven by his fierce intelligence and intense determination to do what he feels is right; in this case, that’s pushing through a country-changing bill through the House of Representatives, dominated loudly by his opposition. Still, he can deliver one hell of a speech when he needs to. Though it applies in many ways to President Barack Obama and the health care bill that’s dominated Western culture for the last few years, this description is specific to the events of Steven Spielberg’s new film Lincoln, about the final months of America’s most beloved president. Parallels to the present day aside, Lincoln is an inspiring and thoroughly entertaining examination of how the political process worked nearly 150 years ago.
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E.T. / zombie getaway by Andy J. Hunter
LOL
New photos from Spielberg‘s Lincoln
