https://mattkprovideo.com/2017/09/05/close-encounters/
Sept 5, 2017, 2017,
Just saw the re release of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS……
The language of cinema has really speeded up since 1978, you could tell the same story today in HALF the time.
Oh and last years ARRIVAL was all but a remake. With inky sign language in place of the “simon” musical notes.
No internet for abductee families or people with the alien ” implant” in them to share info with each other. You couldn’t just google “devils tower” or maps and coordinates.
And hey- I guess Roy Nearys family had to fend for themselves after he went with the aliens. And hey hey- those aliens were DICKS…. kidnapping all those people- planting haunting images in innocent peoples minds….
Its a 70s time capsule, the hair, the fashions, the payphones, looking up movie times in the newspaper….
Close Encounters reminded me a little bit of Martin Scorsese’s Silence. Another movie that could be cut in half
One of the cops early in the film, right after the cop car goes off the cliff, looks exactly like Paul Giamatti. imdb says he was born in 1967 so he would only ten years old in 1977.
The scene his doppelganger is in is right AFTER this clip stops:
I did a google search on “paul giamatti close encounters” and got:
But how if he was only ten?
The mother ship model shots still hold up but most of the other model work looks dated. Even shots that aren’t science fiction-ey, ( houses/ railroad crossing) look like…. models.
The final scene has way too many repeated shots and close ups of people that AREN’T in the plot…. The mothership looks great but the smaller ships look fake.
The alien “attack” on Giliian and the baby boys farmhouse still holds up-
The whole film is Spielbergs most “spielbergey” movie ever. Every shot seems like a TV commercial, the very thing Michael Bay gets criticised for Spielberg was praised for. I’m glad Spielberg has outgrown this with ” Saving Private Ryan” “Schindlers List” and “Munich”.
Seeing this made me wonder if Stephen Spielbergs movies all happen in the same cinematic universe? The Marvel Superheroes all live in the same comic book universe and most of them can be assumed to be in the same world. DARK TOWER ties to The Shining, and I think CHRISTINE, CARRIE and THE SHINING could all happen in the same world.
“E.T.” looks and feels exactly the same as “Close Encounters” and I could sort of see those government alien experts in CE3K being the same ones who hide the Ark in the Area 51 warehouse in “Raiders,” and theres no reason JAWS couldn’t have happened in the same world. And movies that Spielberg did NOT direct but produced ( Gremlins, Explorers, Back to the Future, etc..) all seem to happen in “Spielberg-land”
mattkprovideo 