Steven Spielberg is one of Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest and most influential filmmakers in the world. Spielberg has countless big-grossing, critically acclaimed credits to his name, as producer, director and writer. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1946 and attended California State University Long Beach, but eventually dropped out to fulfill his career in entertainment. He gained notoriety as an uncredited assistant editor on the classic western "Wagon Train" (1957). Steven made a few short films afterwards. The next couple of years, Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would portend his future career in movies. In 1968, he directed Amblin' (1968), which featured the desert prominently, and not the first of his movies in which the desert would be a large part in so many of his movies. Amblin' also became the name of his production company,
which created classics such as E.T. Spielberg had a unique and classic early directing project, Duel (1971) (TV), with Dennis Weaver. In the early 1970s, Spielberg was working on TV, directing among series as Rod Serling's "Night Gallery" "Marcus Welby, M.D." and "Columbo". All of his work in television and short films, as well as his directing projects, were just start ups to prove his worth in many acclaimed films of today.
Spielberg's first major directorial effort was The Sugarland Express (1974), with Goldie Hawn, a film mad him a rising star. His next effort, however, made him an international superstar among directors: Jaws (1975). This classic shark attack tale started the tradition of the summer blockbuster or, at least, he was credited with starting the tradition. After Jaws he created the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a unique and original UFO story that remains a classic. In the next three years, Spielberg produced his his first two films "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (1978), and "Used Cars" (1980), but shot back up and hit gold yet once more with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Spielberg produced and directed two films in 1982. The first was Poltergeist (1982), but then the highest-grossing movie of all time up to that point was the alien story E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg also helped pioneer the practice of product placement, which is just when you place an advertised name or object in a film. For example seeing Tom Cruise dig into his pocket and take out a Blackberry. The concept though very common starting in the 1980's arose from low-key to very popular with his famous placement of Reece's Pieces in "E.T." Spielberg was also one of the pioneers of the big-grossing special-effects movies, like "E.T." and "Close Encounters", where a very strong emphasis on special effects was placed for the first time on such a huge scale. In 1984, Spielberg followed up "Raiders" with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), which was a commercial success but did not receive the critical acclaim of its predecessor. As a producer, Spielberg took on many projects in the 1980s, such as The Goonies (1985), Gremlins (1984)also the cartoon An American Tail (1986). His biggest blockbuster in 1985 though was Back to the Future (1985), and made Michael J. Fox an instant superstar. As director, Spielberg took on the book The Color Purple (1985), with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, with much success. In the latter half of the 1980s, he also directed Empire of the Sun (1987).
The late 1980s found Spielberg's projects at the center of pop-culture and produced the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The next year proved to be another big one for Spielberg, as he produced and directed Always (1989) as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Back to the Future Part II (1989). All three of the films were box-office and critical successes. Aside from producing "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", he produced the animated series "Tiny Toon Adventures" (1990), "Animaniacs" (1993), "Pinky and the Brain" (1995), "Freakazoid!" (1995), "Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain" (1998), "Family Dog" (1993) and "Toonsylvania" (1998). Spielberg also produced other cartoons such as The Land Before Time (1988), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), Casper (1995) (the live action version) as well as the live-action version of The Flintstones (1994), where he was credited as "Steven Spielrock". Spielberg directed Hook (1991) and produced such films as the unusual comedy thriller Arachnophobia (1990), Back to the Future Part III (1990) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). While the movies were big successes they were surprisingly weak in the box offices as opposed to previous films. In 1993, Spielberg directed Jurassic Park (1993), which for a short time held the record as the highest grossing movie of all time, but didn't have the universal appear as others. Big box-office spectacles were not his only concern, though. He produced and directed Schindler's List (1993) and won best director at the Oscars, and also got Best Picture. In the mid-90s, he helped found the production company Dream Works.
As a producer, he was very active in the late 90s, responsible for such films as The Mask of Zorro (1998), Men in Black (1997) and Deep Impact (1998). However, as a director Spielberg was amazing. He directed and produced the epic Amistad (1997), a spectacular film that was shorted at the Oscars and in release. The next year, however, produced what many believe was one of the best films of his career: Saving Private Ryan (1998).
Spielberg produced a series of films, including Evolution (2001), The Haunting (1999) and Shrek (2001). he also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993), which were financially but not particularly critical successes. In 2001, he produced a mini-series about World War Two that definitely *was* a financial and critical success: "Band of Brothers" (2001). Also in that year, Spielberg was back in the director's chair for Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), a movie with a message and a huge budget.
Spielberg has been extremely active in films there are many other things he has done as well. He produced the short-lived TV series "SeaQuest DSV" (1993), an anthology series entitled "Amazing Stories" (1985), created the video-game series "Medal of Honor" set during World War Two, and was a starting producer of "ER" (1994). He has a great interest in World War Two. He and Tom Hanks collaborated on Shooting War (2000) (TV), a documentary about World War II combat photographers, and he produced a documentary about the Holocaust called A Holocaust szemei (2000). With all of this to Spielberg's credit, it's no wonder that he's looked at as one of the greatest ever figures in entertainment.
0 comments:
Post a Comment