Steven Spielberg saddles up THE WAR HORSE!

Steven Spielberg has finally decided on his next movie and it will be 'The War Horse', a 'loss of innocence' story set during the backdrop of World War I. Disney and Dreamworks will release the film on August 10th, 2011, a few months before 'Tintin' is released. The movie is based on the 1982 children's book by Michael Morpurgo (and later a long-running and successful play), which to any keen observer must be seen as a quintessentially Spielberg piece and one that is extremely unsurprising in his overall oeuvre. Diverging between three European countries in 1914, Morpurgo's story is that of a 12 year old Devon farm lad who braves the nightmarish front line to try and find Joey, his beloved horse he has become separated from. From the reviews I've read on Amazon, the original novel is unusually centred on the horse who acts as our surrogate eyes to the atrocities of war, unfolding as the witness to the lives of those who temporarily own him. Though we expect the film to be much more focused on the journey of the young boy. 'The War Horse' is of course, a tear-jerking, uplifting tale - which is fine. Those movies can have their power (even if they so often come off as sentimental oscar bait) but the worrying sign comes with the news that recent sugar-loaded writer Richard Curtis ('The Boat That Rocked', 'Love Actually') is seemingly re-drafting Lee Hall's ('Billy Elliott') first crack at adapting. Of course you don't need to remind me that Curtis is responsible for writing one of the most effective moments in World War II on screen but his 21st century fare has indicated nothing more than a sell-out indulging on big paychecks and undisciplined fantasies. We would have had much more faith if Hall's original draft is what was being used here as we have grown quite tiresome of Curtis' ensemble falterings. With 'Empire of the Sun', 'Saving Private Ryan' and he and Hanks' two huge HBO productions 'Band of Brothers' and 'The Pacific', which all used a war setting to show a nation's loss of innocence usually through the eyes of the young men who had not yet matured for this kind of journey, it's pretty clear the magic that Spielberg is aiming to repeat here. In many ways, 'The War Horse' is an old fashioned tale, reminiscent I guess of 'The Black Stallion' and is firmly in Spielberg's comfort zone. Not that I'm complaining all that much as this movie sounds a whole lot more promising than the sequels/remakes Spielberg was previously eyeing ('Indy 5', remakes of 'Harvey' and 'Oldboy') - but I still shed a tear for Jonathan Nolan's reportedly spectacular script for 'Interstellar' (come on - let someone else make that dammit!) and of course 'Lincoln', which we've heard for years is a passion film for Spielberg. Or so he says, but from my p.o.v. he has done nothing but run away like a scared dog whenever it came to actually pulling the trigger on it. I mused back in August of last year that Spielberg was frightened of the shear weight a movie based on the life of Abraham Lincoln would naturally bring and I've seen nothing in the many months since to change my mind from that opinion.