Steven Spielberg's comfort blanket remake of
Harvey is a sign of the end. It's the movie where a once innovative and ambitious film-maker, the best guy holding a camera during a 18 year golden era which ended with
Schlinder's List, has ran out of steam and ambition to take a risk and is entering those latter day directing years that most creative talents in this industry eventually hit. The years when they simply stop caring. The years when even the bad movies they make (
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) are just shockingly lazy efforts, not bad because they were major failures by a an auteur who just got the puzzled mixed up (
A.I.), just bad, bad, bad movies. Bad, because there was no effort. I think the term is "hack job". Spielberg stopped caring the moment he chose to remake
James Stewart, instead of stepping up to the plate and making
Lincoln, a project at this point he is frightened of. Will today's news even be on Spielberg's radar? Is he so distanced now from the figure of
Lincoln - that he won't care? It's been reported that
Mr. Sundance Robert Redford intends to direct The Conspirator, a low budget Indie film focusing on
Mary Surratt, alleged conspirator of Abraham Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth which should film before the end of the year.
James McAvoy is the studio's first choice for a major role, probably that of her son and co-conspirator John Surratt. Mr. Spielberg... if your not going to make
Tony Kushner's (
Munich) biopic of
Lincoln into a motion picture, then stand aside. Let someone else make this with
Liam Neeson, whilst you play around with invisible rabbits.