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| Birth Name(s) : Steven Allan Spielberg |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
Amy Irving (1985-1989) |
| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Steven Spielberg Biography
Steven Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director and producer. Spielberg is a three-time Academy Award winner and is the highest grossing filmmaker of all time; his films having made nearly $8 billion internationally. Forbes Magazine places Spielberg's net worth at $3 billion. As of 2006, Premiere listed him as the most powerful and influential figure in the motion picture industry. TIME named him in the '100 Greatest People of the Century'. At the end of the 20th century LIFE named him the most influential person of his generation.
Rejecting offers to direct Jaws 2 and Superman, Spielberg and actor Richard Dreyfuss re-convened to work on a film about UFOs, which became Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). One of the rare movies both written and directed by Spielberg, Close Encounters… was a critical and box office hit, giving Spielberg his first Best Director nomination from the Academy as well as earning six other Academy Awards nominations. It won Oscars in two categories (Cinematography, Vilmos Zsigmond, and a Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing, Frank E. Warner). This second blockbuster helped to secure Spielberg's rise.
Spielberg developed three video games in collaboration with Electronic Arts that will be unveiled at the E3 Conference in Los Angeles, one code-named LMNO, a contemporary action adventure and another with the tentative title Blocks, a puzzle game designed for Nintendo's Wii console.
A strong consistent theme in his family-friendly work is a childlike, even naïve, sense of wonder and faith, as attested by works such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook and A.I.. According to Warren Buckland these themes are portrayed through the use of low height camera tracking shots, which have become one of Spielberg's directing trademarks. In the cases when his films include children, (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, etc.) this type of shot is more apparent, but it is also used in films like Munich, Saving Private Ryan, The Terminal, Minority Report and Amistad. If one views each of his films, one will see this shot utilised by the director, notably the water scenes in Jaws are filmed from the low angle perspective of someone swimming. Another child orientated theme in Spielberg's films is that of loss of innocence and coming-of-age. In Empire of the Sun, Jim, a well-groomed and spoilt English youth, loses his innocence as he suffers through World War II Japan. Similarly in Catch Me if You Can Frank naively and foolishly believes that he can reclaim his shattered family if he accumulates enough money to support them.
The most famous example of Spielberg working with the same professionals is of course his long time collaboration with John Williams and the use of his musical scores in all of his films since The Sugarland Express (except The Color Purple). One of Spielberg's most prominent trademarks is perhaps his use of music by John Williams to add to the visual impact of his scenes and to try and create a lasting picture and sound of the film, in the memories of the film audience. These visual scenes often uses images of the sun (e.g Empire of the Sun, Saving Private Ryan, the final scene of Jurassic Park and the end credits of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (where they ride into the sunset)), of which the last two feature a Williams score at that end scene. Spielberg is a contemporary of filmmakers George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, and Brian De Palma, collectively known as the "Movie Brats". Aside from his principal role as a director, Spielberg has acted as a producer for a considerable number of films, including early hits for Joe Dante and Robert Zemeckis.
Spielberg has several pets including a dog. His previous dog, Elmer, starred in several of his films in various guises including Jaws, Close Encounters and 1941.
Adoption: Italics Bernice Colner Arnold Spielberg Leah Posner Bernie Adler
French New Wave giant Jean-Luc Godard famously and publicly criticised Spielberg at the premiere of his film In Praise of Love. Godard, who has continuously complained about the commercial nature of modern cinema, holds Spielberg partly responsible for the lack of artistic merit in mainstream cinema. Godard accused Spielberg of using his film to make a profit of tragedy while Schindler's wife lived in poverty in Argentina. American artist and actor Crispin Glover also criticised Spielberg in his 2005 essay What Is It?. Among Glover’s accusations are that Spielberg purchased a sled used in Orson Welles' 1941 film Citizen Kane for $50,000 but refused to fund Welles' would-be final film, that he received money from the United States government to promote his personal religious and cultural beliefs and that he exploited tragedy for personal gain in the film Schindler's List.
An episode in the sixth season of South Park satirizes Spielberg and Lucas for their revisions of previous films, such as E.T. and the Star Wars series. In the commentary for this episode, Parker and Stone, the makers of South Park, indicate that the films are being revised to make them more politically correct and to make money, disregarding the original work of art. |
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