SPIELBERG: FLYING OBJECTS/FAR FROM HOME

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A BIGGER BOAT: CLOSE EMPIRES OF THE THIRD SUN


Theme song maestro and cinema expert Ryan joins us to talk two of his favorite Spielbergs. One is about a man willingly leaving his family and the other is about a kid unwillingly leaving his family. 

1977's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was Spielberg's big swing after the cachet JAWS bought him. After numerous versions of a script were commissioned (including one by pod fave Paul Schrader) Spielberg eventually Dick Cheney'd the whole thing and ended up as the sole screenwriter (one of two times in his career he would have this credit). Spielberg loved Kubrick and 2001 and so he enlisted Douglas Trumbull to do the FX for Close Encounters - FX that still cooks more than 40 years later. Despite going way over budget and shooting schedule, all of the effort is on the screen with some of Spielberg's most beautiful shooting of his career on display. The story has its hiccups, to be sure, but the essential nature of the film, searching for meaning and connection, still resonates.

1987's EMPIRE OF THE SUN was based on the memoir by JG Ballard and adapted by podcast fave Tom Stoppard. Young Bruce Wayne learns about life the hard way as an English boy in a Japanese internment camp. Some of Spielberg's strongest-ever sequences, filled with beautiful narrative and visual austerity are mixed with his penchant for explicitly telling you what is happening and how you should feel.  It's an odd tension, some of his best with his flaws also on bold display. Still, as Ryan tells us, it is one of Spielberg's very best.

Two good films this week in our penultimate Spielberg episode!

THEME SONG: WEIRD A.I.

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