4 movies that Spielberg watches

Gohanto said:
Personally I make a point of watching other movies before I start shooting, but it varies a lot depending what kind of story I'm doing.
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That's always what I do. I study the type of movie that I'm making. It leats me know not only what the current market is, but good ideas from other directors. I don't think I could study or watch a totally opposite film that what I'm making. I mean would I want to check out Titanic before I go work on a comedy? Sheesh talk about depressing.
 
Erik Olson said:
Not coincidentally, we used to maintain a discussion (usually too one-sided) of these films here on DVXUser. I'd love to see further discussion and analysis. We all stand to benefit from watching and working toward understanding the "great films".

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=99939
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=111951
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=102760
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=96237
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=89356
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=92593

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What's interesting is what people consider to be a great film. I think that's a topic for discussion. While I agree that the above movies are great films, most I'd care less to see again. I'm an action/fantasy junkie. It's interesting that so many filmmakers are really into epic dramas. I'm surprised no one put "the piano" in there, which I think is fantastic.

But I digress. Movies I like include LOTR, SW (ep 4-6), Heat, Man on Fire, Miami Vice, French Kiss, Breaking All the Rules, Do the Right Thing, Serendipity, Matrix 1-3, 28 Days Later, Any Given Sunday, Riddick Series, Zoolander, Die Hard (to name a few)

Recently - Quantum of Solace and Twilight

I'm not really a drama person, The Godfather is probably the only major drama/epic that I really like. But I guess someone's got to make the big budget blockbuster action films while everybody else is making oscar winners! LOL
 
Okay so a serious response from me.

For overall inspiration:

FIGHT CLUB. Fincher is my favorite director. I've always loved SE7EN as well. FIGHT CLUB was just the perfect marriage of vision and storytelling. The visuals truly serve the story and this is really where I feel Fincher turned the corner from being a virtuoso visual stylist to overall incredible storyteller. The visuals truly were there to serve the story and the film is tremendous in scope, style, tone, and content. ZODIAC is heavily underrated and I can't wait for BENJAMIN BUTTON.

JAMES CAMERON. Terminator, T2, True Lies, and The Abyss. I still marvel at the way he composes his action sequences. AVATAR is going to change EVERYTHING.

SPIELBERG. I'll just mention MUNICH for now to avoid retreading territory that has been... retreaded many times. MUNICH reminded me of a 70's era dark and epic film like Taxi Driver told by the greatest natural director to ever walk the planet. One thing that is particularly stellar is the sound design in MUNICH. I can't believe the film was rushed and still turned out so flawless but when you are Spielberg you have the absolute best in the business working for you...

Ridley Scott is another master and BLADERUNNER is a constant source of inspiration. Also GLADIATOR and more recently AMERICAN GANGSTER. Want to watch the directors cut of KINGDOM OF HEAVEN as I hear the studio eviscerated it.

Paul Thomas Anderson. MAGNOLIA is one of my favorite dramas of all time... I love it's sheer indulgence and operatic sensibility. The way certain sequences emotionally build and move is stunning. I truly feel he has fulfilled his promise of becoming something of a modern day Kubrick with THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

Just mentioned Kubrick and I will go with the predictable choices of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, THE SHINING, and FULL METAL JACKET. I want to rewatch BARRY LYNDON and 2001 soon as I feel I would appreciate them more as I haven't watched them in some time.

Charlie Kaufman is another source of inspiration more from a standpoint of sheer originality and innovation, defying genre conventions but reinventing them at the same time. Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine specifically. Haven't seen Synecdoche New York but very intrigued.

For sheer editing brilliance: Goodfellas (Still probably my favorite Scorsese flick, though Taxi Driver is very close but I have to be in a certain mental place for it)

I'm a Michael Mann junky, particularly love Heat and Collateral. I want to watch Miami Vice more. He's just slick as hell, I love his experiments with low light digital cinematography and the way he shoots.

I also love Soderbergh. I love how he's been able to maintain telling the kind of stories he wants, yet still pump out Ocean's XX's and now he's helmed a 4+ hour Che Guevara epic. Awesome. He also frequently directs, shoots, and edits his films and as I mentioned before he delivers great commentary tracks.

Kevin Smith, I envy his life though I do feel he is a bit lazy. But I do feel he is somewhat of a spokesman for a certain niche of my generation and I have a personal connection to him as his films were some of the first that got me thinking about becoming a filmmaker.

Edgar Wright's work is awesome. SPACED, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, all of these I feel kind of make him a British and more talented version of Kevin Smith...

As far as foreign filmmakers, Chan Wook Park.

Well this is way too long so I guess in closing I would agree that it depends on what kind of movie I'm looking to garner inspiration from.

Honestly as of late (as in the last 5 years or more) the best WRITING has been for television. THE SOPRANOS, THE WIRE, SIX FEET UNDER, LOST, etc are absolutely incredible and have inspired me tremendously. It's difficult to achieve that level of depth in 2 hours but people like Nolan are pushing the envelope with THE DARK KNIGHT. Part of the reason for this is also that TV is still a writers medium. I hope that feature writing is going to come back around as we start to see more intricate and interesting stories originating from graphic novels (like WATCHMEN, and THE DARK KNIGHT) proliferate the mainstream. Hopefully it will raise the bar and we will start to see better writing in features.

That's it for now. lol.
 
I've heard from some filmmakers that they actually try to avoid watching similar films to what they are working on as not to fall into emulation, or they watch the complete opposite in order to keep their approach fresh. I remember reading that Alexander Payne (ELECTION) had never seen a John Holmes film or other high school movie before making ELECTION. BTW SIDEWAYS is good. BTW I'm going to go do something constructive now. BTW Peace out.
 
As long as we're talking about TV writing, don't forget The Shield. This last season was briliant, and the last episode...whew I felt emotionally beat up after watching that. I'm getting all the seasons on DVD. Camera work was pretty darn good too.
 
I've heard great things about The Shield and plan to watch it soon. I watched The Wire pretty recently and I'm trying to wait a little while before I start another serious crime show... Plus I honestly needed some time to digest The Wire. But I will definitely check out The Shield and have heard from others as well that it went out quite well.
 
Chance White said:
Personally I watch Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark, Leonetti's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Rupert Wainwright's remake of The Fog, and last but not least Tommy Wiseau's The Room.

Hasn't failed me yet.
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LOL. Don't forget "The Wicker Man" remake.

-Nate
 
For me it's Polanski's "Repulsion", Hitch's "Rear Window", Bergman's "Persona."

Repulsion was the movie that said to me "go ahead, there's no limit to what you can put on film", and, ultimately, the one that led me to say "I can make a career out of this".

Rear Window is, for me, the ultimate studio picture. Nod a wasted drop anywhere.

Persona, a set piece that for me is all about directing and acting. Very stylized, more so than "Scenes form a Marriage", a miniseries that Bergman shot in 16mm and swept the ratings with it when it aired on ABC in the sixties (?), even though most of the 6 hours of program were just two people sitting in bed, at a dining table, nothing else. Talk about the guts to just let the actors act, not to dress anything up.
 
Gohanto said:
Just for fun, any specific movies people here make a point of watching before filming their own films?

Personally I make a point of watching other movies before I start shooting, but it varies a lot depending what kind of story I'm doing. Most recently I shot a fantasy/noir short and I took a lot of inspiration from watching Se7en and Empire Strikes Back.
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Since I can't devote 100% of my time, I prefer simplistic films that allow me to shoot similar scenes... Buffalo 66 is not a great film, but it should inspire us all to dumb it down and see the big picture.

No Country for Old Men, Halloween, Buffalo 66, Chasing Amy, Mystic River, TC Massacre
 
It all depends on what I'm about the direct. I try to go for a type of film that has the same "feel" I'm looking for (not neccesarily the same genre). So, when I was doing a promotional trailer for a cop/mob film; I spent hours watching and re-watching Heat, Collateral, and Goodfellas. When I was working on this 40 minute piece I'm finishing now which is about low-class drug dealers, I went ahead and watched Crash, Do the Right Thing, and City of God (none of these have quite the same story but all have kind of the mood I wanted, especially CoD).

I've heard from some filmmakers that they actually try to avoid watching similar films to what they are working on as not to fall into emulation, or they watch the complete opposite in order to keep their approach fresh.
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I thinks that makes sense in theory but not in practice. I once thought I was so brilliant that I could come of with a perfectly fresh take on anything but, as I get older, I know there's so much value in looking what others have done. Even if you want to do something totally new it's good to watch them just to know what to avoid.

Also, I think you're going to naturally steal from stuff no matter how hard you try to be fresh. I've lost count of the number of times when I thought I came up wtih something totally original and then later realized and actually lifted it from a classic.

For instance, in a recent film I was shooting a scene where a guy goes into a business office for a job interview and gets turned away. I wanted the office to feel sterile and cold. When we were shooting, for some reason, I kept making the camera operator SLOWLY pan or tilt from one subject to another. Often, he's be following the actor's movements and get there a bit late. Others asked me why I was doing that and I just said, "I don't know. It feels rigtht." Only during editing did I realize that I was actually lifting this style from Coppola's The Conversation. In that film, he makes the camera movements very slow and methodical in order to mimick the look of security cameras. He did it to heighten the parinoia of someone who spies on others but I was doing it to add to the impresonal and robotic sense of the office. I really love the effect I got (even though I didn't know why I was doing it at the time) and thinks it works great in context. I hadn't watched that film for years prior but it still stuck with me.

Chance White said:
Personally I watch Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark, Leonetti's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Rupert Wainwright's remake of The Fog, and last but not least Tommy Wiseau's The Room.

Hasn't failed me yet.
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LOL! I actually like to watch those kind of movies (along with bad student films) when an edit is going poorly. Then I can looks at those and say, "well; at least it's not that bad." Of course, on those times when it actually is that bad I usually try to slit my wrists and my friends have to subdue me...
 
What's up with all the Mann fans failing to mention The Insider? I'm not knocking Heat, but The Insider is his masterpiece.
 
It's 5 films... he stated this when tapiing INSIDE THE ACTORS STUDIO in NYC... I know cause I was there in the audience and wrote them down & memorized them. I don't know if this made it into the final cut. Spielberg was the first guest that they literally ran out of tape on. The interview was 6 hours and was a first at the time for the production company. It was suppose to be only 4 hours, but due to bad weather he could not fly out that night and was having a good time talking about film. Spielberg and Hanks were the record holders on time for the show when I was at school there. It was one of the best experiences being in the room listening him talk, especially after seeing JAWS as a kid in a drive in movie in NJ.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
THE SEARCHERS
Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMARAI
and
CITIZEN KANE
 
I always found Russell Crowe's performance in The Insider to be a little too self conscious...I can see him working. Had the same problem with A Beautiful Mind.
 
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