Tag: Steven Spielberg (41-50 of 92)

Aug 15 2012 04:51 PM ET

Shia LaBeouf: 'I'm done' making big-budget studio movies

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Image Credit: VALERY HACHE/AFP/GettyImages

Shia LaBeouf, the star of the billion-dollar Transformers franchise and the one-time presumed heir to Indiana Jones’ fedora, ripped into the studio system of filmmaking and declared his intention to give it up. “I’m done,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “There’s no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist.”

It’s not the first time that LaBeouf, 26, has raised his voice to the movie gods. Two years ago, he told the Los Angeles Times that Steven Spielberg and Co. (including himself) had dropped the ball in the ill-received Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Turns out those comments injured his relationship with Spielberg, who produced several of LaBeouf’s films, including Transformers. “He told me there’s a time to be a human being and have an opinion, and there’s a time to sell cars,” the actor said. “It brought me freedom, but it also killed my spirits because this was a dude I looked up to like a sensei.”

LaBeouf, 26, is promoting the indie, Lawless, co-starring Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain, and his upcoming projects are similarly scaled and structured: Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep, The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman from music-video director Fredrik Bond, and the soon-to-be-shot Nymphomaniac from Lars von Trier.

Read more:
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‘Lawless’ preview

Aug 14 2012 10:04 PM ET

'Raiders of the Lost Ark' set for IMAX re-release

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Fans of a young, sweaty, dirt-covered Harrison Ford as the swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones, hold onto your fedoras.

Steven Spielberg’s 1981 classic adventure romp Raiders of the Lost Ark will be given the big BIG screen treatment with a one-week rerelease in IMAX in September.

Lucasfilm, the studio helmed by the movie’s executive producer, George Lucas, announced that the Raiders IMAX theater showings will begin Sept. 7 as a lead-up to the Blu-ray release of the Indiana Jones series, on sale Sept. 18.

Sure, newer powerhouse films such as Avatar looked crisply modern, deeply blue and lush on IMAX, but Raiders of the Lost Ark is ripe for another generation of new and returning fans of Indiana Jones’s mishaps and misadventures splashed large across a screen. Spielberg told the New York Times no special effects were changed in the IMAX conversion. Only the audio has been bumped up for surround sound.

“When the boulder is rolling, chasing Indy through the cave, you really feel the boulder in your stomach, the way you do when a marching band passes by, and you’re standing right next to it,” Spielberg told the Times.

Another Spielberg favorite, the sharp-toothed 1975 shark saga Jaws, just arrived on Blu-ray this week.

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Read more:
Grab your whip and fedora, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ hits 30

Aug 10 2012 09:27 AM ET

John Travolta, Steven Spielberg light up Foreign Press lunch

Steven Spielberg talked movies with Harvey Weinstein. John Travolta chatted with Bradley Cooper. Dustin Hoffman and Jack Black shared cellphone photos.

Those stars, along with Kerry Washington, Jennifer Lawrence, Kelsey Grammer, Christina Hendricks, and others, lit up the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s annual summer luncheon Thursday at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the group behind the Golden Globe Awards presented grants and introduced its officers for the coming year. READ FULL STORY »

Aug 8 2012 09:30 AM ET

'The Shark is Still Working': The story behind the great doc on the new 'Jaws' Blu-ray -- EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

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J. Michael Roddy was only six years old in the summer of 1975, but like the rest of the country, he developed shark fever after seeing Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. “There are two things that are really cool to a six year old boy, and that’s dinosaurs and sharks,” says Roddy. “I begged my parents to let me see Jaws, and it was the first time I remember being completely lost in a film. It changed my life.”

Roddy isn’t alone. Jaws changed a lot of people’s lives, beginning with the then 28-year-old Spielberg himself. But in The Shark is Still Working, the splendid Jaws documentary that Roddy produced that’s a bonus on the remastered Blu-ray version of the film available next week, a generation of filmmakers who shared Roddy’s fascination — including Kevin Smith, M. Night Shyamalan, and Bryan Singer — delight in the nerdy details and lasting legacy of Hollywood’s first summer blockbuster. “The intensity of the passion is what surprised me,” says Roddy. “Because it made us feel like, ‘Okay we’re not crazy. Everyone loves that film.’”

READ FULL STORY »

Aug 7 2012 08:57 AM ET

FIRST LOOK: Daniel Day-Lewis embodies 'Lincoln' in Steven Spielberg's historical drama

Penny for your thoughts?

Long-range paparazzi (and the occasional sneaky fellow diner) grabbed snapshots of Daniel Day-Lewis as he was shooting Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln last fall.

But in this exclusive new image from the upcoming historical drama (out Nov. 9), we finally see the My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood Oscar-winner in full character, and the result is even more uncanny than originally expected.

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Jul 18 2012 01:05 PM ET

Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln' to face down James Bond, Tolstoy and 'Twilight'

Jeff Vespa/WireImage; Alexander Gardner/Getty Images

Abe, meet James and Anna. Oh, and also Bella and Edward.

Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s epic Civil War-era presidential portrait, will open in limited release on Nov. 9, the same weekend as Skyfall, Daniel Craig’s third outing as James Bond, and Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley as Tolstoy’s tragic heroine.

READ FULL STORY »

Jul 13 2012 05:23 PM ET

Richard D. Zanuck, producer of 'Jaws,' 'Alice in Wonderland,' dies at 77

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Image Credit: AP

Oscar-winning film producer Richard D. Zanuck — who, over a 53-year career, marshaled everything from mass-market popcorn movies like Jaws and Planet of the Apes, to prestige pictures like Driving Miss Daisy and Road to Perdition – died Friday, of a heart attack. He was 77.

Zanuck was born into Hollywood royalty; his father Darryl F. Zanuck ran 20th Century Fox, and the younger Zanuck was named president of production at the studio when he was 28. In 1971, he formed the Zanuck/Brown Co. with David Brown (who passed away in 2010), where he produced Steven Spielberg’s first two films, The Sugarland Express and Jaws, as well as The Verdict and CocoonREAD FULL STORY »

Jun 6 2012 02:15 PM ET

Steven Spielberg on Ray Bradbury: 'He was my muse'

Ray-Bradbury

Image Credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images

The loss of Ray Bradbury, who passed away on Monday at the age of 91, leaves an enormous void in the world of science fiction. His works, which included Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, influenced generations of readers who became fans who became epic storytellers themselves. Epic storytellers — like Steven Spielberg. The director of films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., honored the author with a statement on Wednesday: “He was my muse for the better part of my sci-fi career. He lives on through his legion of fans. In the world of science fiction and fantasy and imagination he is immortal.”

Spielberg and Bradbury were kindred spirits who saw hope in the future and deep space. Back in 2003, Bradbury told the Newark Star Ledger that, “Close Encounters is the best film of its kind ever made. It takes too long, but the transfiguration at the end, with the splendid arrival of the mother ship — that makes up for everything. I was so amazed and changed when I saw it that I went over to the studio to tell Spielberg what a genius he was. And he said, ‘You know, I never would have done this film if I hadn’t seen [your] It Came From Outer Space when I was a kid.”

Read more:
Ray Bradbury, ‘Fahrenheit 451′ author, dead at 91

Jun 1 2012 04:03 PM ET

Kathleen Kennedy to co-chair Lucasfilm as George Lucas 'moves forward with retirement'

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Image Credit: Tim Whitby/Getty Images

Turns out George Lucas wasn’t bluffing with all that talk about retiring. Lucasfilm Ltd. announced today that Steven Spielberg’s longtime producing partner Kathleen Kennedy is joining the production company as co-chair. Lucas will retain his position as CEO but Kennedy’s new role will allow him to “move forward with his retirement plans,” according to a press release.

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May 30 2012 02:12 PM ET

Steven Spielberg's 'E.T.' coming to Blu-ray, and it's walkie-talkie free! -- VIDEO

For many, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial remains Steven Spielberg’s most indelible film, holding a special spot in moviegoers’ hearts. (I know it does for me.) But when the movie was re-released in theaters in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, Spielberg tried to fix something that was not broken and “updated” the movie’s visual effects. He gave E.T.’s face a CG makeover, added back in a couple deleted scenes, and — most controversially — switched out the rifles held by police officers chasing down Elliott and his bicycle buddies with walkie-talkies.

Fans cried foul. South Park mocked the decision. Last year, Spielberg himself even admitted he regretted making the changes, vowing that the Blu-ray release would just be the 1982 theatrical version of the film.

And by gum, it’s exactly that. As you’ll see in the trailer for the 30th-anniversary Blu-ray edition of the film, out this October, those walkie-talkies are no more:  READ FULL STORY »

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