Steven Spielberg

It's 2 AM and you wake with a jerk, alone in your fully-lit apartment and still on the couch. On TV, the credits of some movie you've already seen a billion times are scrolling by. It feels like rock bottom. And we know, because we're just like you: single.

Need a movie to keep you company until you literally can't keep your eyes open? Join us tonight when we pass out to Jaws [starting @ 10:45 a.m. on Action Max]

Why we'll try to stay up and watch it: Last week we saw an Empire Magazine interview with David Fincher, where the director was asked to scribble down his favorite films of all-time. It got us thinking of our own list, something we've obsessively edited and adjusted in our heads for the better part of forever. Ordering our favorite movies is like counting sheep. Does Goodfellas beat out Pulp Fiction? Should The 40-Year-Old Virgin rank ahead of Annie Hall? Do we like Rushmore more than The Royal Tennebaum's? It's an ever-evolving list that changes almost daily. Still, there is one constant. No matter how many times we rethink it, Jaws invariably cracks our personal top-five.  read more »

Gawker's Richard Lawson points us towards a controversy brewing over this week's 12th season premiere of Comedy Central's South Park.

According to a post by Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke and one by Los Angeles Times Show Tracker blogger Todd Martens, some people—especially at Paramount—feel that South Park auteurs Matt Parker and Trey Stone went too far in calling Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a "rape" of a beloved movie franchise. The "joke" was compounded later in the episode by depicting George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as rapists—both of the Indiana Jones movies and of Stars Wars.

What no one seems to remember is that Mr. Spielberg was once the victim of a real-life stalker who may have threatened to rape him. Literally.  read more »

We're feeling a little ‘duh' this afternoon after reading news that a lawsuit has been brought against Stephen Spielberg, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures claiming that their film Disturbia (the surprise 2007 hit starring Shia LaBoeuf as a teen voyeur) ripped off the Hitchcock masterpiece Rear Window. The L.A. Times (via the AP) reports that "The copyright infringement lawsuit, filed Monday in Manhattan, says "Disturbia" copied a short story Cornell Woolrich wrote in 1942 and the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie that starred James Stewart and Grace Kelly and was based on the story."

Was it only a matter of time until this happened?  read more »

Celebrities probably should've been warned that Denver may be the friendliest city in the country. Over the course of an hour or so the other day, four different paparazzi dropped by the coffee shop on the corner of Champa and 18th streets. The conversations went something like the following:

Paparazzo: Have you had any celebrities in here today?

Barista #1: Yes we have! Steven Spielberg was in earlier. He ordered a caramel macchiato.  read more »

After a brief misunderstanding of information, it appears that, yes, Steven Spielberg, and not his fellow producer Peter Jackson, will be directing the first installment of a planned Tintin trilogy, hitting theaters sometime in 2010.

Now at the risk of getting our geek bonafides torn to pieces by irate comic fans, and at least one fellow member of the Culture Czar, since Tintin is being scripted by Doctor Who mastermind Steven Moffatt, we'll ask: why is Steven Spielberg wasting his time directing a movie based on a Belgian comic strip?

We don't know enough about Tintin to trash it.  read more »

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Running Time 124 minutes
Written by David Koepp
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf

As summer time-wasters go, the latest Indiana Jones will go in record time, if you ask me. Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the first chapter in the series since 1989, is a four-star yawn. Harrison Ford started this fairy-tale franchise 27 years ago. At 65, he looks pretty darn trim, but why doesn’t he stop dyeing his hair? Sometimes it’s a rugged, manly silver. In the next scene it looks like he’s wearing a champagne rinse from Elizabeth Arden. Finally it turns orange as a Sunkist popsicle. Whatever else we expect from Indiana Jones, we don’t want him to look like Lucille Ball.  read more »

BEIJING -- When an employee of Rupert Murdoch begins badgering someone about cozying up to the Chinese regime, it's clear that the People's Republic is having a public-relations crisis.

"Spielberg said, 'No, I'm not going to go,'" a reporter said, thrusting a Fox News microphone at British filmmaker Daryl Goodrich on Feb. 23.

Eleven days earlier, Steven Spielberg had publicly announced he was quitting as an artistic consultant to the Beijing Olympics. So why, the Fox man demanded, had Goodrich said yes?  read more »

Peter Bart reports in today's L.A. editions of Variety that Viacom chief Sumner Redstone's relationship with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen is going south.

According to his report-which relies on unnamed sources-the duo could walk in 15 months if their relationship with Mr. Redstone, whose purchase of Dreamworks through Paramount was regarded as a coup in Hollywood, does not improve.

   read more »