STEVEN SPIELBERG RESTROSPECTIVE, PART I
July 4 - September 4

Steven Spielberg has been without peer for so long--just over three decades now-- that it's easy to forget he was once a wunderkind, the twentysomething phenom who, gifted with both a preternatural vision for the filmmaking medium and the tenacity to realize it, guided a troubled project cursed with a malfunctioning robot shark into what became, at the time, the biggest blockbuster in history. He's continued to deliver big-screen spectaculars ever since, whether directing his own films or producing many others', and while this dizzying level of productivity is surely unequalled in the post-studio era, just as remarkable is the fact that it's been accompanied by an equally steady maturation as a film artist. AFI Silver presents the first part of a two-part career retrospective, focusing on Spielberg's innovative early work, including his first--and still most personal--masterpieces. (Look for Part II during summer of 2009!)

AFI member passes will be accepted at all screenings in the Steven Spielberg Retrospective, Part I series.

JAWS

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." Spielberg's monster hit, adapted from the Peter Benchley bestseller, didn't merely set box office records. It reshaped the fundamentals of the movie world, setting the template for how future summer blockbusters would be made, marketed and released. Though it spawned several sequels and countless rip-offs, Spielberg's original remains as deliciously unsettling today as it was in the summer of 1975.

DIR Steven Spielberg; SCR Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb; PROD David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck. US, 1975, color, 130 min. RATED PG

Friday, July 4, 2:00, 9:20; Saturday, July 5, 7:15; Sunday, July 6, 3:00, 9:45--show added!; Tuesday, July 8, 4:30, 7:00; Thursday, July 10, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30--shows added!

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS

Shot in 1974, THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS was made by a 26-yearold Steven Spielberg just one year before he rose to international fame with JAWS. Goldie Hawn and William Atherton are a husband and wife who have both done time for petty larceny in Texas. Hawn forces her husband into a jailbreak in pursuit of the child they were forced to give up to an adoption agency, and the stakes grow higher as they take a state trooper hostage along the way and become outlaw celebrities in the process--with a fleet of police cruisers on their tails. Best Screenplay, Cannes Film Festival.

DIR Steven Spielberg; SCR Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins; PROD David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck. US, 1974, color, 110 min. RATED PG

Saturday, July 12, 12:45; Monday, July 14, 7:00

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

DUEL

Driving down a deserted Southern California highway at a safe and sane 55 miles per hour, David Mann (Dennis Weaver) steps on the pedal to pass a large tanker truck. Moments later, the truck is back, dangerously tailgating Mann before abruptly cutting him off. For the next 90 minutes, Mann and the never-seen truck driver are pitted against one another in a motorized duel to the death. Author Richard Matheson conceived DUEL after a similar experience with a reckless trucker. The director chosen to helm DUEL on location in Soledad Canyon was a bright 23-year-old who'd shown promise on such series as NIGHT GALLERY and COLUMBO: Steven Spielberg.

DIR Steven Spielberg; SCR Richard Matheson, based on his short story; PROD George Eckstein. US, 1971, color, 90 min. RATED PG

Sunday, July 13, 1:00; Tuesday, July 15, 9:00

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

1941

Having enjoyed massive success with JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND before the age of 30, the precociously talented Spielberg's next picture was an ambitious period farce, centered on the threat of a Japanese sneak attack on the California mainland in the very early days of WWII. Sadly, the film was given short shrift by critics and audiences alike, but for Spielberg fans, it offers many pleasures, from the opening's sly spoof of JAWS--substituting a Japanese sub for a man-eating shark--to the jitterbug contest-cum-barroom brawl, still the director's most impressive sequence of sustained action and comedic choreography, rivaled only by the opening of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. The wonderful ensemble cast includes funnymen John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and John Candy, plus Slim Pickens, Warren Oates, Toshiro Mifune as the Japanese sub commander, and horror legend Christopher Lee as an imperious Nazi.

DIR Steven Spielberg; SCR Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale; PROD John Milius. US, 1979, color, 118 min. NOT RATED

Friday, July 18, 7:00; Sunday, July 20, 12:30

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

After the major box office success of JAWS, Spielberg had initially wanted to do a smaller-scale story about a man obsessed with an alien encounter, but, opting to go with special effects, the project became enormously complicated--cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond was fired and rehired twice--but ultimately resulted in another groundbreaking success. Richard Dreyfuss witnesses a UFO on an abandoned road and, against the wishes of wife Teri Garr, goes searching for answers. Also featuring Francois Truffaut as a French UFO specialist who leads the effort to communicate with the aliens. Nominated for eight Oscars--the only winner? Zsigmond for Best Cinematography!

DIR/SCR Steven Spielberg; PROD Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips. US, 1977, color, 135 min. RATED PG

Saturday, July 19, 7:05; Sunday, July 20, 3:00; Monday, July 21, 4:15; Wednesday, July 23, 4:15; Thursday, July 24, 9:30

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

The much-ballyhooed collaboration between STAR WARS' George Lucas and wunderkind Spielberg resulted in one of the biggest blockbusters of the early 1980s, launched an enduring and much loved franchise of sequels, and established Harrison Ford as an A-list leading man. The inspired script by Lawrence Kasdan synthesizes the tradition of boyish adventures in exotic lands (not least, the Tintin stories that Spielberg will bring to the screen in 2009), two-fisted pulp fiction heroes like Doc Savage and Allan Quatermain, and the cliffhanger-heavy serials of old Hollywood into a rip-roaring, action-packed yarn that breathlessly careens from steamy South American jungle to snowy Nepalese mountaintop to dusty Egyptian desert, with Ford's intrepid and wily adventurer-archaeologist Indiana Jones battling ruthless Nazis to be the first to discover an ancient and possibly magical relic.

DIR Steven Spielberg; SCR Lawrence Kasdan, based on the story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman; PROD Frank Marshall. US, 1981, color, 115 min. RATED PG

Friday, July 25, 7:00; Saturday, July 26, 7:00, 9:30; Thursday, July 31, 7:00

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

Winning four Academy Awards out of its nine nominations, E.T. would go on to become one of the all-time box office champions and cement Spielberg's reputation as a leading Hollywood director. The science-fiction fable centers on withdrawn young boy Henry Thomas who befriends an extra-terrestrial that has been accidentally left behind by his spaceship. With the help of siblings Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore, he helps E.T. navigate his new earthly environment, with comic results, and evade capture by the government, all in an effort to get home.

DIR/PROD Steven Spielberg; SCR Melissa Mathison; PROD Kathleen Kennedy. US, 1982, color, 120 min. RATED PG

Friday, August 1, 1:30, 7:10; Saturday, August 2, 7:30; Sunday, August 3, 5:40; Monday, August 4, 4:30; Tuesday, August 5, 7:00; Wednesday, August 6, 4:30

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE

Produced by Spielberg as a theatrical version of the television classic, it features three remakes of popular TV episodes by Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller and an all-new original directed by John Landis. The cast includes John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd, Scatman Crothers and the future voice of Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright.

DIR Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, George Miller, and John Landis; SCR John Landis, George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson and Melissa Mathison, based on the TV series created by Rod Serling; PROD Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Jon Davison, Michael Finnell, Kathleen Kennedy. US, 1983, color, 101 min. RATED PG

Friday, August 8, 9:45; Monday, August 11, 7:20

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM

The further adventures of Indiana Jones, famously opening with a bravura action sequence that begins in a Shanghai nightclub and ends with our hero and compatriots jumping out of a plane over the Himalayas without the aid of parachutes. An Indian death cult that has enslaved village children takes over the bad guy roles from the Nazis this time around. The graphic human sacrifice scenes, involving the extraction of a still-beating human heart, eventually led to the creation of the PG-13 rating.

DIR Steven Spielberg; SCR Williard Huyck and Gloria Katz; PROD George Lucas and Frank Marshall. US, 1984, color, 118 min. RATED PG

Friday, August 15, 7:00; Saturday, August 16, 7:20; Sunday, August 17, 1:00

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

Nominated for six Academy Awards. Based on J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, EMPIRE OF THE SUN is Christian Bale's feature film debut as a British boy living with his wealthy family in pre-World War II Shanghai. With the Japanese invasion, he is separated from his parents and falls in with American opportunist John Malkovich while placed in an internment camp. Stunning cinematography, sets and music enhance this underrated Spielberg historical epic.

DIR/PROD Steven Spielberg; SCR Tom Stoppard based on the novel by J.G. Ballard; PROD Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. US, 1987, color, 154 min. RATED PG

Friday, August 22, 7:00; Saturday, August 23, 7:00; Wednesday, August 27, 4:00

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE

Sean Connery enters as Indy's medievalist father Prof. Henry Jones, kidnapped by the Nazis while researching the whereabouts of the fabled Holy Grail. Ford and Connery make for a wonderfully entertaining odd couple as they bicker their way through the adventure. River Phoenix stars in the opening sequence as the young Indiana Jones.

DIR Steven Spielberg; SCR Jeffrey Boam; PROD George Lucas and Frank Marshall. US, 1989, color, 127 min. RATED PG-13

Friday, August 29, 7:00; Saturday, August 30, 4:15, 7:00; Monday, September 1, 7:45; Wednesday, September 3, 6:30; Thursday, September 4, 3:45, 6:30

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.


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