March 18, 2018
This permanent A+ list mostly movie director is rebooting an old Broadway hit for the movies. The star of the Broadway revival that led to the new movie thought he had a chance at the role, but the director is totally blowing him off for his own favorites and only gave the actor an audition to make himself look good in case anyone asked.
Steven Spielberg/West Side Story/Matthew Hydzik
This permanent A+ list mostly movie director is rebooting an old Broadway hit for the movies. The star of the Broadway revival that led to the new movie thought he had a chance at the role, but the director is totally blowing him off for his own favorites and only gave the actor an audition to make himself look good in case anyone asked.
Steven Spielberg/West Side Story/Matthew Hydzik
Don't say I didn't try and warn you!
ReplyDeleteOr the multitudes of others didn't.
Or CDAN itself didn't.
I don't understand this blind.That happens all time during a casting.
ReplyDeleteI hate that I'm going to write "You mean Steven Spielberg raping underaged children?" and you wouldn't be incorrect.
DeleteCan’t figure this dude out. Astounding technical ability aimed squarely at 8 year old children.
ReplyDeleteCase in point, Minority Report. A Philip K Dick story with a Philip K Dick ending (meaning the dude doesn’t know what his reality is).
SIr Steve gives it a scooby doo ending. “you used the memory of my dead son to set me up!” That’s shitty writing. Even Joe E. can do better than that for free.
Sir Steve doesn't do it for the pillow talk
DeleteSpielberg's casting his favorites? So, I guess Tom Hanks is going to play Tony?
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't have to be remade.
ReplyDeleteLol @ Do Tell
ReplyDeleteMaybe he'll be officer Krupke 🙄
But really, who are his favorites in this case?
Amen @sandy
ReplyDeleteso I guessing this reveal more or less cements the fear I had that spielberg is a ped0
ReplyDelete?
OH WHOOPS...I thought this was a reveal for the casting kids of west side story blind. wow, maybe I should read it first. TIRED.
ReplyDeleteThat’s coming next? I was waiting for that when I opened it as well
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ReplyDeleteNormal - understand it like this and this is just my guess. Spielberg of course has talent but it's not great talent. I believe there is an interesting psychology going on. Outside of what is suspected of him and discussed on these boards, his greatest talent is that he plays to Middle America sensibility which makes up about 90% of America. By no means does he make art. This is pandering. I give him credit for writing Close Encounters and directing Jaws and Jurassic, but outside of that he's no David Lean, or even a Lumet. Luemt was not interested in "pleasing" the audience as a filmmaker. My take is, I think Spielberg has a fear deep inside of him that when he does a movie, he/it will not relate to the masses - perhaps because deep inside him it's his way of lying to himself about what/who he actually is as a person. His films may be a balm to assuage his conscience? Think of the power he has and what he chooses to create? It speaks volumes about him as a person. Imagine what he would be as a filmmaker with no fear and a deep concern for the Human condition, the world, and where we are headed as a species? What would his films be then?
ReplyDeleteNo fucking way he “wrote” close encounters. According to the legend Matthew Robbins and others wrote it by committee.
DeleteE.T.??????
DeleteI have to disagree. Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List were incredible films. Spielberg is very talented.
ReplyDeleteJaws and E.T, were also crowdpleasers and are considered classics. Very well made films.
The Goonies?
DeleteRichard Donner (Schwartzberg) became the executive producer for the 2000 Marvel Comics film X-Men, then also an executive producer for the 2009 X-Men prequel, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and producer on X-Men: Days of Future Past. In addition, Donner's wife has produced all of the films in the X-Men film series under their Donners' Company brand.
DeleteJust saiyan
Do tell - never said he wasn't talented, He's a definite talent but there's a HUGE difference between Paths of Glory and Saving Private Ryan. Outside of the Opening to SPR it is infused with Ramboesque" 1950's ideology. It is by no means a "Platoon."
ReplyDeleteSchindler's was also safe for him. Great - but safe, and by certain accounts from Holocaust authors like Norman Finkelstein - not entirely accurate.
For all those skeptic:
ReplyDeleteLook up the Blind Item: "Long Time Coming"
It talks about he Spielberg molests kids on Neverland Ranch. There are 3 stories. One took place on Hook(where I believe they were given Laserdisc, not DVDs). Another one had an A to B list actor (who IS NOT Robin Williams, Bob Hopkins, or Jeff Goldblum). There is also an article that talks of Micheal Jackson wanting to kill Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, make that as you will. There is also one on Judith Barsi regarding the film Jaws The Revenge, and it being one of the reasons why Lorraine Gary left acting.
Add to that the American Dad clip implying something happened to Jonathan Ke Quan, Drew Berrymore's rehab at a young age, and Indiana Jones's backstory of him sleeping with a 15 year old that ties into Spielberg's friendship and support of Roman Polanski.
So yeah, something is going on here.
Normal yes I heard that. I'm with ya.
ReplyDeleteSaving Private Ryan was groundbreaking in putting the audience square in the middle of the action. The brutality shown in the movie waws unprecedented, and D Day vets said it was the closest any movie had ever come to showing what it was like that day. Platoon was also a great movie. It isn't a contest, each excels in its own way.
ReplyDeleteAnd Schindler's List was a very well made film, well structured, brutal and compelling. Sorry if you feel it was "safe." It was a true story, and takes nothing away from the achievements of that movie.
SPR and Schindler's are good films but my initial point was even within these films is a Spielberg idealized fantasy. Saw SPR with my uncle who was in Battle of the Bulge and he was emotional when he saw it, and eventually got pissed as the film progressed. The opening to SPR is phenomenal, but the film weakens as it moves along. The ideology within it is an artistic version of Rambo. Only Spielberg can take powerful subjects, still make a good film, but infuse them with a non-realistic idealized fantasy to appease the masses. All of his films have it, but it doesn't matter really what I think, it's just what I think and he's still an amazing filmmaker, but with interesting flaws which are rarely discussed, which perhaps ties in to what people accuse him of here on CDAN.
ReplyDeleteI've never been a fan. A few of his films I found enjoyable in a tear jerker way, but even then I knew I was being manipulated. Popcorn films aren't interesting to me. His films are shlocky, manipulative, and created for a purpose other than art.
ReplyDeleteBlech.
I'd wager that if I watched SPR or Color Purple today, they would not hold up. I would gag, and not just because of what I know now.
SS best work came while young: Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters, first Indiana Jones. After that, his work gets more mean-spirited and subversive as he's given more free reign to pursue his darker impulses in public. And, as he ages, increasingly seeing himself as both legendary auteur and populist entertainer.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if SS day will come or not, but there are certainly more people aware of who he really is and what he's really done and the scattered souls he's left behind, tramped underfoot, bloody and broken and crippled inside. It was interesting to see the comments on here a day or so ago about his wife Kate Capshaw and her coven, particularly her tight friendship with Tom Hanks, another allegedly all-American Hollywood hero with boyish charm.
Most Hollywood filmmakers of films based on history do not get all those historical facts correct or even close just like they don't follow the novels they adapted for film. The latter is my bigger pet peeve. If it is a great piece of fiction, don't mess with it. The Year of Living Dangerously is the only movie in recent memory that I felt did justice the book even thought they did play with a minor point in the timeline.
ReplyDeleteSo Spielberg is hardly alone- per criticism of Schindler's List. I enjoyed that movie and watching it again recently I still enjoyed it. Saving Private Ryan I need to watch again to refresh. I seem to get it mixed up with Band of Brothers in my head probably from watching both of them too close together and Spielberg was involved with both projects.
If you want documentaries watch documentaries. I am beginning to think that if we judge all films by the behaviour of the director or the producers or indeed all art, music, plays by the behaviour of their creators, especially ones that have been dead for a long time and lived in a very different era, you may find you have nothing to watch or appreciate. Hitchcock was a bit of a freak. But he made incredible movies.
Movies are supposed to be all about escapism though I don't mind it when it doesn't. When movies deal with issues honestly and really hit close to home but making movies is about appealing to different audiences or find your niche.
I really enjoyed Band of Brothers and for a TV series did a good job capturing of what life was like for soldiers in WWII. The episode where they walking into their first concentration camp. The casting in the series from Damien Lewis in a feature role to Tom Hardy in small role. Fantastic. It usually is aired on HBO around November 11th every year and I do not get tired of watching it all again.
But then I love a good war movie precisely because I have never experienced it though my parents have, living under Nazi occupation, which is why I loved Dunkirk directed by Christopher Nolan. I loved The Hurt Locker - I was on the edge of my seat for 2 hours.
That said it is amazing how many good movies are made by people outside of Hollywood and in other countries, superior to much Hollywood schlock, that is lucky to get a screening in film festival. Films made in countries where the director and film crew had to keep ahead of the police and risked going to prison.
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ReplyDeleteThis is in the grand tradition of Hollywood; when they filmed My Fair Lady, which starred Julie Andrews on Broadway, she was not hired to do it in the movie, they hired Audrey Hepburn, who couldn't sing. Someone else sang the songs. The same thing happened again to Julie Andrews when they cast for Camelot, she was the original Guenevere, but someone else was hired to do the movie, which seems inconceivable now! (Fun fact, the same woman who sang Eliza Doolittle for Audrey Hepburn also sang Natalie Wood's songs in the original West Side Story!)
ReplyDeleteAgreed Sandy, don't fool with the original!
I've never been a fan of Spielberg's movies. There's always been a discomforting and fetid undertone to them.
ReplyDeleteHate remakes
ReplyDeleteHonestly, all this is depressing. My mom his having a Liam Neeson bender recently. I would've loved for her to see Schindlers List, as its such a well done film. But it pains me to bring it up. I never grew up with his movies(but ironically I grew up with his cartoons). I didn't see Jaws and Jurassic Park until very recently, but I always understood his contribution to film. They were all beautiful films. Movies can effect you both positive and negative, but usually positive. Its just sad to see that go away because all of the darkness and secrecy in the industry. And sadly the alternative isn't very great either being full of conspiracy nuts, victim complexes and just out right unhealthy cynicism.
ReplyDeleteThere’s still nothing in CDAN that has said SS is a pedo. No reveal. Yet there’s so many commenters frothing at the mouth trying so hard to convince us it’s true. And most of them are kooky.
ReplyDeleteStevie the Pedo, Hollywood's dirty little secret
ReplyDelete@Shawn McGuire
ReplyDeleteThe post I said has the blinds. The "Long Time Coming" one has that consensus. Though one of the did have the reveal, but its probably because Enty didn't want to out one of the biggest directors of all time of doing this. The reason he revealed it here is because this blind itself isn't really anything big.
I saw the casting call, the leads will all be Latina.
ReplyDeleteThis particular blind is pretty pointless, so perhaps Enty is doing this reveal in lieu of others that he can't do. But that's just my guess.
ReplyDeleteApologies if I've mentioned this here before, but Rob Ager has a couple of good videos on YouTube where he breaks down how Saving Private Ryan is very well-made pro-war propaganda. People think it shows the horrors of war because of the opening scene on the beach, but as the movie goes on, it gradually sanitizes the fighting. It's also very one-sided, as Germans are shown going down like plastic army men, rarely showing pain or crying out.
As @Spider Rico said, it's a very safe subject, because you can do anything to Nazi soldiers in a movie, even outright war crimes, and modern audiences will nod and say, "Good, they deserved it." The movie takes full advantage of that, and Spielberg uses his filmmaking talents to keep it that way.
@Cail Corishev - ++++1Million....Thank God for you you get it. There is a God...
ReplyDelete@Cali - Except art is open to interpretation and as much as I've liked some of what Ager has done, he's another one who sometimes jumps straight off the deep end in his analysis. While I think you could make the case for SPR being 'propaganda' you can easily argue that like latter-day Spielberg it is also morally complex.
ReplyDeleteCase in point, there is a fleeting moment where 'German' soldiers are cruelly gunned down. Except that moments before they're gunned down they try to argue that they're not in fact German and they are actually Bulgarian soldiers who were forced into fighting for the Nazis. Spielberg doesn't subtitle it, but it's a moment that flies directly against the 'Propaganda' narrative.
ANYWAY. This blind is pointless because so few Broadway actors make the transition to the movie version of their musicals. And Spielberg still isn't a pedo, despite how hard some of the commenters want it to be true.