anti-Spielberg and a bit on Columbus

[Amy Z]

I having confessed that boggarts turn into Steven Spielberg when they 
see me coming, ***Draco~Malfoy~Lover*** wrote on the main list:

>Why Steven Spielberg? He's a great director! He'd probably do a 
>better job on this film than Chritopher Comlumbus :::mutters darkly 
>about the choice of director:::.

None of the following should be read as an endorsement of Chris "Home 
Alone 2" Columbus, nor, for that matter, a statement that I would 
prefer him to Spielberg as the director of HP.  CC is on serious 
probation as far as I'm concerned. 

Five reasons I don't like Steven Spielberg:

-His chief technique for getting the audience to feel surprise, 
wonder, etc., is to show character upon character gazing in surprise, 
wonder, etc., usually skyward.  This is a fine cinematic approach used 
in moderation, but it wears thin long before SS is done with it, IMO. 
 I caught onto it back at E.T., and it's driven me nuts ever since.  
(I should've caught on earlier.  Shots of people gazing at things take 
up 40% of Close Encounters.)

-Corollary to above:  he's a basically manipulative filmmaker.  I feel 
as if he tugs on every obvious expectation and cliche (I refused to 
see Saving Private Ryan because I couldn't stand one more army flick 
with the squadron of stereotypes--the hick who's ignorant but boy can 
he shoot [all those years of huntin' squirrels 'n' 'possums]).  This 
kind of thing gets my sarcasm engine turned on, as you may have 
noticed.  Now, art is about skillful manipulation, but there are 
artists who make me say "Aha!" and artists who make me say "I'm being 
manipulated."  The great ones are the former; Spielberg is 
consistently the latter.  I also prefer directors who use their powers 
of manipulation toward some lofty purpose, which brings me to . . .

-He has used his considerable talent to make one shallow blockbuster 
after another.  Shallow blockbusters are okay--I rent mostly comedies, 
myself, purely for entertainment and not to change my life--but what 
so irritates me about Spielberg is that he wants recognition as some 
kind of auteur despite basically being a turner-out of entertaining 
bits of fluff.  Case in point:  when he won Best Director for 
Schindler's List (his first directing Oscar), he said something along 
the lines of "at last"; there had been a lot of handwringing about how 
he kept getting passed over.  The only serious film he had made up to 
that point, IMHO, was The Color Purple (never saw it, though I'd like 
to, so I won't venture a judgment; I never saw Schindler's List in 
its entirety, either--the power went out at the movie theater 40 
minutes in, though I did like those 40 minutes).  You would have 
thought that he'd been making masterpieces all these years and been 
ignored.  I liked Jaws, I liked Close Encounters, I even liked E.T., 
but none of them are the kinds of movies I would vote for for Best 
Picture.  (Neither are most of the movies that have won it, 
historically.)  I ask for more than entertainment from a Best 
Director.

-He makes movies for children that are extremely violent.  I loved 
Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was a kid--I think I saw it 5 times the 
week it came out--but now I look at it and realize how many people our 
hero kills along the way.  Dirty Harry, move over.  It really bothers 
me that this stuff is sold as wholesome entertainment.  The 
writer Barbara Kingsolver tells a story about this that is very 
revealing:  a friend of hers told her, "You'll like it, it isn't 
violent at all," and like me, BK watched and counted up the bodies.  
That's the worst thing about that kind of movie--the mayhem is 
presented in such a flip, cartoonish way that we don't even realize 
how much of it there is.

-Rumor had it that he said he'd direct HP only if Haley Joel Osment 
played Harry.  A big raspberry to SS for trying to stack his influence 
against JKR's (anyone know an emoticon for a raspberry?).  No offense 
to HJO, who may be a very talented actor, but he is not British and 
that settles it.  It should have settled it for Spielberg, or at least 
he should have said, "Well, I differ with the author on the necessity 
for a British cast, so I will have to gracefully decline the 
possibility of directing."  As I said, the information that he was 
throwing his weight around is rumor, so do take it with a grain of 
salt.

Ah well, de gustibus non titillandum.

Back to Columbus:  I was heartened by the quote in USA Today where he 
said he wanted to express his darker, less sentimental side in HP.  We 
can only hope so.

Amy Z