{"id":19808,"date":"2019-12-06T10:12:37","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T15:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19808"},"modified":"2019-12-06T10:24:21","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T15:24:21","slug":"susan-lacys-spielberg-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19808","title":{"rendered":"Susan Lacy&#8217;s Spielberg (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago I reviewed Susan Lacy\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19749\"><strong>Jane Fonda in Five Acts<\/strong><\/a> (2018), one of several docs Lacy has directed or produced for PBS and HBO. In <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19807\">Spielberg<\/a><\/strong> (2017), the subject is the iconic director-producer-writer-studio-co-founder-humanist Steven Spielberg, whose impact on film has never been doubted, but whose legacy as an innovator will endure, much like the filmmaking heroes from his childhood.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tjrL0qOtGXA?rel=0\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When Spielberg was given the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Irving_G._Thalberg_Memorial_Award\" target=\"window\">Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award<\/a> at the 1986 Oscars, the montage featured a clip in which the director was leading a flock of people of various ages on some exterior location trip (no doubt for the media). The director wore his familiar glasses, long coat, and long billowing scarf, which added to his image of a pied piper of pop culture artists.<\/p>\n<p>His Amblin; Entertainment was making films and TV series, and one stark image projected in his family-oriented fodder was the tight-knitted nuclear family in an idyllic suburban environment \u2013 a fantasyland which Lacy identifies as an attractive, cosmetic alternative to his own youth which was affected by his parents\u2019 separation &amp; divorce \u2013 the last touching his mother, dimming, as Spielberg recounts, her bright energetic light.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19817\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19817\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-19817 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Spielberg-Lucas_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"527\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Spielberg-Lucas_m.jpg 350w, https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Spielberg-Lucas_m-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-19817\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, unhappy the photographer drank the last chilled bottle of Mike&#8217;s Hard Lemonade of the RAIDERS shoot.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The happy ending for the Spielbergs as a whole is sweet \u2013 director Steven is now an elder statesman working into his 70s with no sign of slowing down, and his parents have reunited after living through separate life experiences.<\/p>\n<p>At almost 2.5 hours, Lacy\u2019s doc is never dull nor slow \u2013 the wealth of archival materials are marvelous \u2013 but perhaps as a sign-off before my next blog, it\u2019s worth poking a hole at Quentin Tarantino\u2019s preposterous theory in which \u2018a great director has 10 good films in his canon.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Spielberg\u2019s 10th film was the flawed drama <strong>Empire of the Sun<\/strong> (1987), after which should\u2019ve come lesser works bearing feeble creative content and having minimal affect on pop and film culture as a whole, but what followed at #14 (<strong>Jurassic Park<\/strong>), #15 (<strong>Schindler\u2019s List<\/strong>), #16 (<strong>The Lost World<\/strong>), #18 (<strong>Saving Private Ryan<\/strong>), #20 (<strong>Minority Report<\/strong>), #21 (<strong>Catch Me If You Can<\/strong>), and #24 (<strong>Munich<\/strong>) aren&#8217;t exactly the works of a weakened artist.<\/p>\n<p>Tarantino\u2019s 9th film, <strong>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<\/strong>, streets on home video next week, and it\u2019ll be interesting to see if this is the cultural event inferred by the ad pap, and why its reception among filmgoers and critics was divided.<\/p>\n<p><em>But coming next: <\/em>Severin Films rescues the preposterous shocker <strong>Werewolf in a Girl\u2019s Dormitory<\/strong> \/ <strong>Lycanthropus<\/strong> (1961) on Blu, and a podcast interview with film historian Jason Pichonsky on the restoration of Julian Roffman\u2019s feature film debut, <strong>The Bloody Brood<\/strong> (1959), the latter reviewed in tandem with John Huston\u2019s worst film, the CanCon stinker <strong>Phobia<\/strong> (1980), both on DVD &amp; Blu from KINO.<\/p>\n<p><em>And in the works:<\/em> a blog on whether it&#8217;s possible to watch, and enjoy, a film on laserdisc in a 1080p environment using a mish-mash of old consumer, broadcast, and relatively new gear.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for reading,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor<br \/>\n<strong>KQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review of Spielberg (2017), Susan Lacy&#8217;s engaging doc on the iconoclastic filmmaker from HBO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[2562,2563,6340,1910,108,6331],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Duel_featured.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-59u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19808"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19826,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19808\/revisions\/19826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}