Steven Spielberg is busy shooting Lincoln in Virginia, and while I thought the guy from Bill and Ted made an excellent Abraham Lincoln, I guess Oscar-winning  super actor Daniel Day-Lewis is an okay choice too. In the mid 90s, Lewis trained with boxing champ Barry McGuigan twice a day, seven days a week for three years before starring in The Boxer. For The Crucible, he built his character’s house himself using 17th century tools. While it’s highly likely that he’s completely batsh*t insane, you can’t say his process isn’t effective (Bill the Butcher tapping a knife against his metal eye melts my face off every time, as do half the scenes in There Will Be Blood). So, how method is he going with this one? (Also, dude. You know this character eventually gets shot in the head, right?)

Variety‘s Jeff Sneider recently revealed that Day-Lewis “hasn’t broken his Lincoln accent since March” and his “real name doesn’t even appear on the call sheet.” I’ve heard from other sources that it is indeed the high-pitched tone Lincoln is infamous for. [TheFilmStage]

That must be fun to live with. Meanwhile, Day-Lewis’s wife has promised that if he calls her “Mary Todd” one more time, she’s going to cram all four score and seven pieces of his “supper fixins” up his ass one by one.

[picture via Richmond.com]

Steven Spielberg has two movies coming out within four days of each other come Christmas-time, but thanks to a series of special advance screenings around the country, early word is already starting to trickle out. Now, as I’ve pointed out before, kissing Steven Spielberg’s ass is almost a cottage industry in Hollywood. How else to explain Indiana Jones 4‘s 77% rottentomatoes rating? He just lisps in on his palatine carried by JJ Abrams and Kurtzman/Orci, sprinkles fairy dust on everyone, and they completely abandon all critical faculties. As common as it is to ladle on the sycophantic praise, I think this guy still deserves points for panache.

Excerpt from an early review from MovieVu (via Slashfilm):

“War Horse” is as flawless a film as we’ve ever seen from the director. Seeing something as brutal, terrible, and human as war through the innocent eyes of a noble horse is an ambitious form of storytelling, and Spielberg completely pulls it off as being something honest and authentic. I felt each emotion as if I was a marionette, manipulated by Spielberg’s strings. It’s odd. This isn’t the work of the Spielberg we’ve come to know in the last decade. This is back to basics. This is the Spielberg we had from the 70′s to the early 90′s: powerful, gutsy, honest, and effective.

When all is said and done, “War Horse” is beautiful to behold in its celebration of the good in people through its aura of simplistic-yet-authentic humanity. What is all so utterly fascinating is how Spielberg captures the humanity of war: through the entrancing black abysses of a majestic horse’s eyes.

Jeez, I can’t tell if he wants to f*ck Spielberg or the horse. Though it’s true that horses are the noblest of animals. That’s why you see them wearing shoes while cats and dogs just run through the house barefoot like savages. HAVE SOME MANNERS, DOG! WHAT WERE YOU, BORN IN A BARN?

Among people who cover movies for a living, kissing Steven Spielberg’s ass and bashing George Lucas are almost equally popular. So it’s not that surprising that when people talk about Indiana Jones 4, they tend to blame all the worst stuff on George Lucas, even though Spielberg has sole directing credit. (Personally, I blame everyone from the grips down to craft services for not jumping in to stop that piece of sh*t. That whole crew are like Anne Frank’s neighbors, if you ask me.). But according to Spielberg, who recently sat down with Empire, the moment people frequently point to as the worst of the film — the nuke the fridge scene — was actually his idea.

“I’m very happy with the movie. I always have been… I sympathise with people who didn’t like the MacGuffin because I never liked the MacGuffin. George and I had big arguments about the MacGuffin. I didn’t want these things to be either aliens or inter-dimensional beings. But I am loyal to my best friend. When he writes a story he believes in – even if I don’t believe in it – I’m going to shoot the movie the way George envisaged it. I’ll add my own touches, I’ll bring my own cast in, I’ll shoot the way I want to shoot it, but I will always defer to George as the storyteller of the Indy series. I will never fight him on that.”

“The gopher was good. I have the stand-in one at home. What people really jumped at was Indy climbing into a refrigerator and getting blown into the sky by an atom-bomb blast. Blame me. Don’t blame George. That was my silly idea. People stopped saying “jump the shark”. They now say, “nuked the fridge”. I’m proud of that. I’m glad I was able to bring that into popular culture.”

“I sympathise with the MacGuffin people, but y’all gopher haters kin kiss mah ass, nah mean?”

People picked up on the nuke the fridge thing because it was a catchy phrase, but I wouldn’t even consider that worthy of being in the top five dumbest moments of Indy 4. There was the scene where Shia LaBeouf flies into a tree and ends up swinging through the treetops with his monkey army, there was the moment when Indy got stuck in quick sand and they threw him a snake for a rope, there were the fire ants, the raft that went over the waterfall like six times with an 80-year-old man in it with no consequences other than wet hair, etc. etc. Trying to assign blame to Lucas over Spielberg is like arguing about whether Himmler was worse than Goering. I’m still pissed that everyone accepts that it was a terrible movie now with no acknowledgement of the fact that it’s still tracking 77% recommended on RottenTomatoes. SEVENTY-SEVEN F*CKING PERCENT! Among people who review films for a living! All this means is that you won’t be able to trust the reviews for War Horse in the next few months, because a person who couldn’t recognize that Indy 4 was a terrible film when it came out has lost all credibility in regard to Spielberg. TO THE QUICKSAND WITH ALL OF YOU! REMOVE THEIR SNAKE ROPES!

Steven Spielberg slaps his name on a lot of random crap like Transformers and Cowboys and Aliens and Real Steel, but when it comes to movies he’s actually directed, there hasn’t been one since Indy 4 in 2008. This December, there will be two in the space of four days, with The Adventures of Tintin opening on the 21st and War Horse four days later. I’ll probably just pack some handi-snaks and watch this over and over until War Horse comes on.

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YER CHANGIN' THAT HORSE'S LAAHFE!

After the jump I’ve got the first full-length, theatrical trailer for the Steven Spielberg-directed War Horse, opening just in time for Christmas. With a script by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, who have credits on Billy Elliot and Love Actually between them, it looks like either the epic Oscar-bait crowd-pleaser all the dorks on the internet think it is, or the most hilariously bloated act of unintentional self-parody the world has ever seen. The title cards read:

…Tested by battle

…Touched by kindness

…This January

Hope Survives.

MOVE OVER, MARINE BIOLOGIST HARRY CONNICK JR.! THERE’S A NEW DOLPHIN IN TOWN, AND HIS NAME IS WAR HORSE!
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