Steven Spielberg is currently in post-production on his Lincoln biopic and the director confirmed a few weeks ago that his next movie will be the robots vs. humans sci-fi Robopocalypse.

Spielberg is a well known multitasker, so it’s no surprise to hear he’s already planning his 2013 schedule. There has been talk over recent months that he may take on the Moses biopic Gods and Kings for Warner Bros, and now it’s looking like a done deal.

From Deadline:

Steven Spielberg is near to etching in stone with Warner Bros on that biopic portraying the Jewish leader as the warrior to beat all warriors. With a working title of Gods And Kings, what’s envisioned is “a movie like a Braveheart-ish version of the Moses story,” an insider tells us. “Him coming down the river, being adopted, leaving his home, forming an army, and getting the Ten Commandments.” And despite the awesome screen possibilities of the parting of the Red Sea, the movie isn’t being contemplated in 3D.

Instead Warner Bros wants Spielberg to direct it with the gritty reality of Saving Private Ryan, which is considered a masterpiece redefining battle movies. ”There have been glossy versions of the Moses story but this would be a real warrior story,” an insider tells us.

Getting Spielberg on-board any project is always tricky as he’s always got multiple films in development, but the director and Warner Bros. are expected to solidify a deal later this month and production could start sometime in March or April of 2013.

Biblical films seem to be popular with a few directors recently. Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) is currently in pre-production on his big screen adaptation of the Noah’s Ark story.

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He’s had two movies open over the holidays and while neither broke any records, he’s still Steven Spielberg, the man behind such classics as Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones.

Winner of three Oscars over the course of more than 38 years of directing, writing, producing and even starring, Steven Spielberg is nothing short of a legend. This top 10 is all about the films he directed and because it’s impossible to accurately adjust for inflation international grosses (considering his long career), I’m gonna have to stick to North America only here.

10. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) $350.6 million – Not exactly a favorite of the fans, this 4th Indiana Jones film received good reviews (77% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest of the series) but was never quite up there with the standards set by the much older previous entries.

9. Saving Private Ryan (1998) $363.2 million – Shakespeare in Love was a good flick, no doubt about it but the Best Picture award in 1999 was pretty much stolen from Saving Private Ryan, the better film that year. I still remember watching the Oscars that night, thinking Steven Spielberg’s film was a shoe-in, yet it lost ending the awards ceremony with five trophies. If you haven’t seen this yet then shame on you.

8. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) $392.3 million – My favorite of the Indy films, The Last Crusade works so well mainly thanks to the great chemistry between stars Sir Sean Connery and Harrison Ford playing father and son (even though there are only 12 years between the two).

7. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) $396.2 million – Arguably the weakest film in this top 10, The Lost World isn’t a bad movie as much as it’s extremely mediocre and forgettable, something unusual for Steven Spielberg. So the dinosaurs are back this time on a different island, unfortunately the magic was all gone.

6. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) $425 million – Out of the old Indy flicks, this one did not age well at all. It’s fun but just way to over the top most of the time. As an added bonus you get to see Steven Spielberg’s real-life wife in here, namely Kate Capshaw playing the female lead. And yes, after more than 20 years they are still together.

5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) $441.2 million – One of my childhood favorites, I always dreamed about replicating that volcano in my living room, just like the one made by Richard Dreyfuss. A groundbreaking movie at the time, still a must see today.

4. Jurassic Park (1993) $684.4 million – This is where CGI in movies really took off and even today those dinosaurs still look great. Seeing Jurassic Park as a child was something incredible for me and while I’ve seen it many many times since then, I still remember that first time, the magic.

3. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) $699.8 million – Coming after two Star Wars movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark raised Harrison Ford to superstardom and made Indiana Jones into one of the most recognized and beloved fictional characters of all time.

2. Jaws (1975) $1,016.9 million – How about this for a second big screen movie. One of the highest grossing films of all time, Jaws inspired many more sequel, parodies and imitators. Haven’t seen this one in many years yet I still remember just about every important scene, a testament to the greatness of Jaws. But then again, how many other films had a huge shark while at the same time a compelling story with characters you care about?

1. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $1,126.3 million – One of the all time classics, E.T. is more than just a movie. In short this is about a boy that finds an alien and tries to help him get back home. This year is the 30th anniversary so it’s hard to believe Universal could miss the opportunity to re-release this in 3D one way or another.

In this last part I usually mention a great movie that missed the top 10 but in Spielberg’s case there are so many. Since I don’t want to forget any (yet I will) I’ll just list what I think are some of his best movies that deserve to be mentioned here in no particular order: Empire of the Sun, Munich, The Terminal, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Schindler’s List, The Color Purple, Catch Me if You Can as well as his last two movies, The Adventures of Tintin (winner of a Golden Globe) and War Horse, both of which will probably go into my Steven Spielberg collection when out on Blu-ray or DVD.

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With The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse now released Steven Spielberg has been focusing on Lincoln, the biopic starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the sixteenth President of the United States. Once post-production is complete he’ll move onto his next project, Robopocalypse, which sees the director return to the sci-fi genre for the first time since War of the Worlds in 2005.

In a new interview Spielberg said Robopocalypse is set in the near future and focuses on “a global war between man and machine”.

From Time Out Film (via The Playlist):

‘I had a great time creating the future on “Minority Report”, and it’s a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would. “Robopocalypse” takes place in 15 or 20 years, so it’ll be another future we can relate to. It’s about the consequences of creating technologies which make our lives easier, and what happens when that technology becomes smarter than we are. It’s not the newest theme, it’s been done throughout science fiction, but it’s a theme that becomes more relevant every year.’

Here’s a detailed synopsis of the novel by Daniel H. Wilson:

In the near future, at a moment no one will notice, all the dazzling technology that runs our world will unite and turn against us. Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial intelligence known as Archos comes online and assumes control over the global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication.

In the months leading up to this, sporadic glitches are noticed by a handful of unconnected humans—a single mother disconcerted by her daughter’s menacing “smart” toys, a lonely Japanese bachelor who is victimized by his domestic robot companion, an isolated U.S. soldier who witnesses a ‘pacification unit’ go haywire—but most are unaware of the growing rebellion until it is too late. When the Robot War ignites—at a moment known later as Zero Hour—humankind will be both decimated and, possibly, for the first time in history, united…

A July 2013 release date is set, so shooting will probably begin later this year. Cloverfield writer Drew Goddard wrote the screenplay.

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It’s no exaggeration to say Steven Spielberg is one of the busiest men in the entertainment industry. As of this writing, he has 21 projects listed as “in development” on IMDB, and it seems as if one in every five new shows debuting on major broadcast networks bears his name.

Case in point: this month, he has two feature films hitting theaters within days of each other. The Adventures of Tintin has been making a splash at the worldwide box office and is a spectacular adaptation of Herge’s classic comics. War Horse is another adaptation, this time of a British book (and ensuing stage play) that has taken the United Kingdom by storm over the past decade. Eschewing the action/adventure genre in favor of a more traditional drama, Spielberg tells the tale of a boy and his horse separated by the hellish landscape of World War I and fighting against all odds to be reunited.

In the small English town of Devon, an alcoholic father bids more than his family can afford for a stubborn young horse named Joey. Faced with eviction, it falls on his teenage son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) to break in the horse and plow the family’s stony field in time to pay their due. Albert and Joey are wrenched apart when WWI hits England, and the rest of the film depicts the war through Joey’s eyes as he travels across Europe, changing owners (and sides of the battle) multiple times on his quest to reunite with Albert.

War Horse is the perfect subject matter for an homage to John Ford, and Spielberg takes full advantage of the opportunity. Sprawling countryside’s, epic vistas, and gorgeous natural locations were hallmarks of the director of The Searchers, Stagecoach, and Rio Grande, and Spielberg uses his beautiful English locations to the same effect, evoking not only Ford but also Gone With the Wind in certain shots. But Spielberg isn’t one to simply bow at the altar of a particular filmmaker without making his own mark along the way. After all, this is the man who essentially defined the visual aesthetic of World War II in modern media with the likes of Saving Private Ryan and the momentous “Band of Brothers.” Delving further back in time to The Great War (a war that is rarely explored in American film, and the first time this director has tackled it), Spielberg and his long-time director of photography Janusz Kaminski employ similar handheld techniques to make the audience feel the immediacy and insanity of battle, but this time favor off-screen deaths to keep a PG-13 rating.

Casting an unknown can be risky, but Jeremy Irvine is a good choice for the lead role. He finds an innocence in the role appropriate for the time period, an unchecked purity that makes Albert’s singular mission the most important thing in that character’s life. The story begins with twenty or so minutes of bonding time between Albert and Joey, a slow swell to a heartbreaking separation. That introductory time feels just a bit stretched out, but it’s necessary to form the strong relationship that justifies the action of the character throughout the rest of the film. Supporting cast members David Thewlis, Emily Watson, and Peter Mullan turn in solid performances, but it’s Niels Arestrup, playing a grandfather to a French girl that stumbles upon Joey halfway through the film, that brings the most emotional heft to his part.

War Horse features one “instant classic” scene fit for inclusion among Spielberg’s best. It’s a meeting of opposing forces as they unite to save Joey, after he – in the film’s second best sequence – charged across a ravaged battlefield and ensnared himself in barbed wire. There are a few other memorable moments, but nothing near as compelling as that scene.

If your family is searching for a crowd-pleasing drama this holiday season, War Horse is your best bet. This has already made many “Best Of” lists as 2011 comes to a close, but if I had to choose my favorite of the two December Spielberg releases, I’d still go with The Adventures of Tintin. They’re two totally different genres, and my personal preferences lean toward action/adventure anyway, but all this is just a warning to keep your expectations in check. If you can avoid too much hype, War Horse will gallop away with your heart. Until next time…

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Earlier this year we heard Steven Spielberg was starting to explore story ideas for Jurassic Park 4, and the director had been meeting with I Am Legend screenwriter Mark Protosevich regarding the script.

While on the rounds promoting The Adventures of Tintin in the US Spielberg said he hasn’t given a fourth film a lot of attention over the past year as he’s been busy on other projects, but it’s “on the schedule”.

From Coming Soon:

“I haven’t been active in the last year because I’ve been so busy obviously on ‘War Horse,’ ‘Tintin’ and now I’m currently shooting ‘Lincoln,’ but right now, it’s on the schedule to bring out another ‘Jurassic Park.’”

Unfortunately, when we attempted to find out if it will continue on from the last movie or reboot and start from scratch, he couldn’t tell us. “It’s just another boring secret,” he chuckled.

In July Spielberg said they had a story and he hopes to make it “in the next two or three years”, so things should start moving forward at some point. Spielberg hasn’t said anything about directing Jurassic Park 4 himself, but i’m sure many would welcome it.

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The Adventures of Tintin has been rolling out across Europe and other countries since the end of October, and so far it has amassed a box office total of $220 million, with more still to come. Given its budget of $135 million the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson collaboration is already entering sequel territory, and that’s even before it hits North America, Australia, and New Zealand later this month.

In a recent interview Spielberg’s long-time producing partner Kathleen Kennedy (Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park) suggested the Tintin sequel could begin shooting as early as next summer for a late-2014 or summer 2015 release.

From Collider:

The first Tintin has been very successful around the world. Mr. Jackson is very caught up in The Hobbit for a while. Assuming that it’s a success in America, when do you envision a sequel being able to move forward? Is it being moved forward right now?

Kennedy: Oh yeah it is being moved forward, in fact Steven and I were talking about it this morning. We’re working on a script right now, we’ll see a script probably February or March. If we can do some camera capture this summer, which I think we could do, then we would be on track to have the movie either Christmas 2014 or summer 2015, and so that’s what we’re looking at right now.

Peter Jackson has already confirmed he’ll be directing the sequel after he finishes shooting The Hobbit, which may be sometime next summer. The convenient thing about Tintin is that Spielberg and his team were able to shooting all the motion-capture elements of the film in just 32 days (March 2009 to be exact), and then Spielberg and Jackson supervised Weta Digital’s work on the visuals for 2+ years.

Originally it was thought that the second film would be based on the comics The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun, but screenwriter Anthony Horowitz told the BBC last month that the direction of the sequel was “still under discussion” but “if Prisoners Of The Sun is not the second film it’ll be the third film”.

Horowitz, Spielberg and Jackson will probably be working on the story for the next outing so that some shooting can begin next year. While we may not be seeing a movie based on Prisoners of the Sun for a while, here’s the plot description from Amazon:

“After The Seven Crystal Balls set the eerie stage, Tintin and his friends continue their adventures in Peru. There Tintin rescues an orange-seller named Zorrino from being bullied, and the young man becomes their guide in their quest to find the Temple of the Sun. But they find more than they bargained for and end up in a hot spot. Calculus and the Thompsons provide their usual comic relief.”

Where would you like the Tintin sequel to go?

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Yesterday Disney released a brand new TV spot for War Horse on their YouTube channel that’s more the length of a standard trailer than a TV spot, but if that’s how they wish to brand the preview, then that’s how I will present it.

This “TV spot” gives us a few new clips from the movie along with shots of the cast explaining what War Horse is all about and trying to sell the family aspects. With War Horse opening December 25th, exactly on Christmas Day, DreamWorks are pushing the family side to maybe turn this into the “must see” movie of the holiday season.

Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hiddleston (Thor), Benedict Cumberbatch (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), David Thewlis (Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies), Emily Watson and newcomer into the world of feature films, Jeremy Irvine, War Horse is the story of a young man and his horse. When that horse is sold to the cavalry and sent to the trenches of World War 1, the young man, despite not being old enough to enlist, heads to France in order to save his beloved friend.

Again, War Horse opens wide on Christmas, leaving little over 3 weeks for DreamWorks to start rolling the marketing campaign in full force, that is if they want to make this the hit it probably should become. Strangely enough, another Steven Spielberg directed movie opens just 4 days before War Horse in North America. I’m obviously talking about The Adventures of Tintin, already an international hit at the box office. This should make for a very interesting Christmas since you rarely see two movies from the acclaimed director opening so close to each other.

So what movie you think will win both the hearts of people and their pockets, War Horse or The Adventures of Tintin?

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The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will be hitting the UK and Europe on October 26th, and positive reviews are popping up everywhere.

Paramount Pictures is still gearing up for a December release in the US though, and they’ve released a new full length trailer which is probably the best one yet. If you haven’t been sold by the previous trailers for Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s collaboration, you will be now.

Watch below:

In the film, co-written by Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim), Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) and Steven Moffat (Doctor Who), Jamie Bell stars as journalist and adventurer Tintin with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing detective twins Thompson and Thomson and Daniel Craig playing villainous pirate Red Rackham.

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Michael Bay has already said Transformers: Dark of the Moon will be his last Transformers movie and Shia LaBeouf doesn’t think he has “anything more to contribute”, but following the release of the latest movie producer Don Murphy said he was “pretty sure there will be a second trilogy”.

Hasbro, who have made millions from merchandise sales over the past few years, are no doubt interested in continuing the franchise, and Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner said during the company’s conference call today that Hasbro is in active discussions with Paramount, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg regarding a potential fourth movie.

THR reports that Goldner “hopes to have news to share in the next quarter”, so we can probably expect an announcement regarding Transformers 4 sometime over next few month or early 2012. The involvement of Michael Bay in these discussions doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be directing again, as he could easily remain on-board as a producer and hire another director to guide the next phase of the franchise. Bay could also change his mind and decide to direct again, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Transformers is currently the 4th highest-grossing movie franchise, with a total of $2.6 billion at the worldwide box office. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the 4th highest-grossing movie of all time (without inflation) behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Titanic and Avatar.

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In 10 days Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will be hitting screens throughout Europe, and the first set of reviews have started to appear online.

The Good

Empire – 4 stars:

The pace throughout is rat-a-tat-tat quick, the plot tripping along, and the exposition breathless. You have a job keeping up, but never at the expense of the sheer goodwill. While luxuriating in its pre-existing universe, here is a film imploring you to join in. It would take a hard heart to resist.

Action-packed, gorgeous, and faithfully whimsical: Hergé thought Spielberg the only director capable of filming Tintin. He was onto something.

Entertainment Focus – 4 stars:

The fact that The Adventures of Tintin is so watchable is a major shock to me. As someone completely indifferent to the books and not that excited about this project in general, it completely blindsided me. Full of action, excitement, amazing visuals and hilarious set-pieces, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is a major success and one that I heartily recommend.

Digital Spy – 4 stars:

This performance capture is far from the glassy-eyed uncanny valley that’s plagued Robert Zemeckis. Through Spielberg’s digital lens there’s charm, warmth and, most importantly, the illusion of life with these characters.

With its dizzying spectacle and fast-paced action, The Adventures of Tintin is top notch entertainment and miles ahead of its performance capture predecessors in its wit and visual sophistication.

The Average

The Telegraph – 3 stars:

The film is also hobbled by its reliance on performance capture simply because the graphics are not good enough. Weta Digital might be able to render the thousand or so hairs in Tintin’s quiff with ease, but watch their PCs’ gears crunch when they try to digitise a personality.

This has quite a few of the hallmarks of a decent family movie, but as a fan of both the Tintin adventures and Spielberg’s cinematic swashbuckling since childhood, it left me underwhelmed.

Total Film – 3 stars:

Like the 3D, an adventure that’s serviceable but doesn’t reach out and grab you as often as you’d expect. Frenetic to a fault, it’ll divert the under-10s; older viewers may feel there’s not enough lift in the quiff.

The Bad:

None yet!

I’ll update with more reviews when they appear.

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