Dr. DVD

Is Ben Kingsley still slated to play a role? If he drops out, I suggest going for Alfred Molina.

starseed1981

Creating films in this quick a fashion really makes me think that many sacrifices will be made due to time restraints. I read in EW that War of The Worlds post is gonna be three months. I dunno how they can get something that effect intensive done in that little time..

scott shelton

I'm with you on that one.




And not so much on this one.

Gil Jawetz

Why is this film called Vengeance? What a stupid title.

kms_md

does the film deal with the mossad's tracking down and killing of those involved in the planning of the attack? if it does, then vengeance would be a good title. i believe there was a book printed in the 80s or 90s titled in a similar fashion that dealt with this issue.

kms

Gil Jawetz

Good question. I had been assuming it's just about the hostage situation. One Day in September was already such an excellent film on the subject but since the majority of people have no interest in documentaries I can see it being plundered for a film.

jaeufraser

Well, he's done it before. He shot Jurassic Park through November of 1992 and had that ready for June 93. He then shot Schindler's List during post production on JP, which was also a rather effects heavy film, from March til May 1993, and had that ready for a December release.

So it's not impossible, he's done it before, and he's gotten excellent results from it despite the hectic schedule. Granted, this isn't the exact same schedule, but I'm guessing Stevie knows what he's doing.

auto

Somebody's starting to worry about their legacy.....

I'm beginning to have more and more respect for directors who only film 5-10 films during their whole career. I've never understood the need to crank them out.

DRG

IMO Spielberg has greatly improved as a filmmaker since Schindler's List. As good as that movie was, it still relied on some of his old gimmicks at times. Whereas his most recent work is some of his best from a technical standpoint, even if the material itself isn't always as good as his old classics.

Duder

Agreed. Not to downplay any of his earlier classics, but I really like the new Spielberg.

HN

Looks like it will be about the events that occur after the olympics.
NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/mo...gewanted=print

well, my knowledge of this is about to show because i had no idea there was more to the 1972 Munich tragedy beyond the murders of the athletes. a must read and see for sure.

marty888

Technically, this is a remake, since one of the main sources for the Spielberg film (a book entitled Vengeance) was the basis of a powerful HBO movie (1986) SWORD OF GIDEON. It starred Steven Bauer, Rod Steiger, Michael York and Colleen Dewhurst. Unfortunately it hasn't been released here on DVD yet, but is out (quite cheaply) in the U.K.
The story is quite powerful, and indeed is about vengeance.

Derrich

Spielberg has the whole '1 for me, 1 for the studio' thing down to a science.

D

MasterCXtreme

No kidding. I hadn't realized that until I looked at that list previously posted.

Robert

Looks like that puts the kaibosh on Indiana Jones 4.

HN

for this year. Indy never would have made it for 2005. get the munich project out by december '05 for oscar season, and then ramp things up for Indy 4 for summer '06.

Fincher Fan

If he's planning on squeezing out a bunch films right now, surely it couldn't hurt for someone to slip Indy 4 unnoticed onto his schedule?

auto

Looks like the film will be called Munich.

bboisvert

Platinum Disc released this in the U.S. on DVD. I've had it for at least 2 years. I think I got it at Best Buy...

Cottington

Is anyone else excited about this upcoming film? I am interested in how the directors' own personal religious beliefs will play out in this movie, considering he DID direct Schindlers' List.

Here is a recent new item-

"The alarm bells went off like crazy when Steven Spielberg hired Tony Kushner last year to rewrite the script of a movie about Israel's clandestine — and lethal — response to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Spielberg's dissatisfaction with the original draft by Eric Roth, as well as his fear that Jews will be outraged by his Munich movie when it opens this December, was reported on at length in the July 1 New York Times.

Since the Monitor has long held the view articulated by the columnist Don Feder — that for all his filmmaking talent, "Spielberg is another star-struck, not terribly bright celebrity" — the emphasis here will be not on Spielberg, of whom little is expected when it comes to Israel, but on Kushner, a truly vile leftist whose views on the Middle East are virtually indistinguishable from what can be seen on the most rabidly anti-Israel websites.

Kushner's main claim to fame is as a playwright — he'd never written a movie before Spielberg came calling — so one can't help wonder why Spielberg would turn his film over to a novice, unless there is something about Kushner's worldview that Spielberg finds appealing.

It is a worldview that has inspired Kushner to declare, "I think the founding of the State of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity.... I wish modern Israel hadn't been born."

It is a worldview that had him tell the Times of London, "I deplore the brutal and illegal tactics of the Israeli Defense Forces in the occupied territories. I deplore the occupation, the forced evacuations, the settlements, the refugee camps, the whole shameful history of the dreadful suffering of the Palestinian people; Jews, of all people, with our history of suffering, should refuse to treat our fellow human beings like that."

It is a worldview that caused him to sign his name to a noxious newspaper advertisement released by the Not In Our Name Project in 2002 that viciously attacked both the U.S. and Israel. Sample: "In our name, the Bush administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere and any time. The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to Palestine, where Israeli tanks and bulldozers have left a terrible trail of death and destruction."

It is a worldview that inspired him to sit on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an outfit that boasts of its public support for the Presbyterian Church's decision to consider selective divestment measures against Israel and which on its website "call [s] upon the United States to suspend military aid to Israel, and on U.S. corporations such as Caterpillar to stop supplying the Israeli army" as long as Israel maintains "its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem."

It is a worldview that sees nothing off-kilter or one-sided in the JVP prescription for peace: "Palestinians must stop suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians," while "Israel must cease its use of military force against Palestinian civilians, including attacks involving American-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters. Moreover, Israel must stop land seizures; destruction of homes, infrastructure, orchards and farms; arbitrary arrests and imprisonment; torture; assassinations; expulsions; curfews; travel restrictions; abuse at checkpoints; raids; collective punishment; and other violations of human rights."

It is a worldview that led him to co-edit, along with the equally far-left Alisa Solomon, a nauseating volume called Wrestling With Zion: Progressives Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Of that book the Forward's Ami Eden wrote: "...reading [it] takes you to an alternative universe, where the Israel of today has reoccupied Palestinian territories and adopting harsh security measures — but not in response to a Palestinian-launched intifada bent on blowing up babies on buses. Instead, Israel's presence in the territories today is primarily the product of — Kushner and Solomon's words — ‘Ariel Sharon's mad, bloody dream of Greater Israel, which he and his comrades of the radical Israeli right have pursued for decades.' "

FinkPish

This article seems less about the movie and more about dissecting Tony Kushner. There is nothing that leads me to believe that his political views are going to dominate the movie; I honestly can't see a studio releasing something that could be so potentially inflammatory. But it has happened before (Passion of the Christ), so I'm not completely discounting it.

RyoHazuki

Thats interesting that you brought up Passion of the Christ. Like Passion, this film seems to be hit with all this criticism and accusations of bias despite the fact that info on this film is sparse at best.

Groucho

Link to the "news" item, please?

DodgingCars

$pielberg sucks!

mookyman

I don't think that either view has much weight.