At what point did Scorsese decide to go the Spielberg route, and why, oh why did it have to happen?

It's very simple - he can't work well with a huge budget. His best films have always been with limited financial resources. Had he been given the $40 million requested for Last Temptation instead of $7 million, I guarantee you it would have sucked.

I don't see Scorsese's recent work being similar to Spielberg's in any significant way (I assume that's an automatic Spielbash there; *sigh*). MS's 2 worst films are Cape Fear (which Spielberg was supposed to do, oddly) and Gangs of New York, which are nevertheless identifiably Scorsesian (alas with Monty Python inadvertently thrown in with Gangs).

I think the budget of The Age of Innocence was $50-60 million, and I quite like it. I'm looking forward to The Aviator. In a 90-minute show on TCM, Scorsese made it clear he's had it with the ultra-naturalistic chronicling of gang violence, so you should expect him to work frequently on epic American canvases in the future.

i've had it with ultra-naturalistic gang violence as well, and so i dont have much use for scorcese. i admire a whole lot of his movies tho.

im looking forward to the aviator too, should i take this thread to mean you didnt like it anthony? (heck if scorcese ever made a movie as good as jaws or AI i would be flabbergasted--but let's not turn this into another spielberg thread)

Girolamo is otm and Age of Innocence only confirms it. In fact, whatever he may symbolize, Spielberg has done some good work in recent years, even with big budgets and annoying stars. So
AI > Age of I

"i've had it with ultra-naturalistic gang violence as well, and so i dont have much use for scorcese."

He hasn't really made this type of film since "Casino" though. Unless you're using "gang" in the more broad since of "group violence" instead of "mob violence".

I thought "Age of Innocence was an incredible film.

Age of I > AI

you're right jay. i was including Gangs of New York though. i just saw the aviator and thought it was pretty wonderful--doesn't strike me as spielberg-esque though (maybe the mommy stuff i guess).

Everybody here seems to love Age of Innocence - it's like the Big and Rich of ILF. Somebody please explain to me what's good about it, without resorting to quoting Rogert Ebert.

AofI, as heavily-decored adaptations of respected Anglo-American literary sources go, is far more "filmic" and involving on a character level than anything Merchant-Ivory have tried in a long time ("Room with a View" maybe). MS said he wanted to make clear that the 1870s aristos were just as ruthless and clannish as the goodfellas, and I thought he did. Visually, Visconti's "Leopard" seems a major source.

Also DD-L and Pfeiffer (even tho she's miscast) are good, and Winona Ryder exceeded her efforts everywhere else by light-years.

I'm not sure "Kundun" isn't better tho, and my fave film of his remains "The King of Comedy."

And yeah, in the TCM show he ID'd "Casino" as his last statement of unflinching ultraviolence. Hence the stylization in GONY.

GONY > AI

So all you AI haters, do you actually think it is a bad movie, is it bad because it came from Spielberg who gave us Jaws and all that came after, or is there another thread where this position was established that I should be reading?

yeah it has been hashed out quite a bit actually--can't really remember where. there are a lot of AI supporters here. an unusual amount, even.

i liked GONY and never quite understood why people consider it so terrible. it's not exactly crying out to be taken seriously, it looks cool, and i can forgive the more grandstanding moments such as the final shot.

AI isn't bad at all.

I've debated the "AI" thing extensively in other threads, so I won't do it now.

GONY wasn't Scorcese's best by a long shot, but it was still a decent film--Daniel Day Lewis' acting was fantastic & some of the shots were gorgeous.

Yes, it's not awful ... and neither is The Aviator, but "hollow" (NY Times) rings largely true... a Citizen Kane hommage (as every critic has laboriously noted) by Film Professor Marty. The middle section is kinda zippy, but DiCaprio's boyishness ultimately works against him, and the script is pretty routine, especially in the last third on Hughes' battles against his political and business enemies. Some of the comedy falls flat (Leo & Blanchett actually have decent chemistry).

It DOES have the most spectacularly violent plane crash I've ever seen onscreen. And an OCD scene of milk bottles filled with pee.

In response to the second question posed in the thread:Marty wants an Oscar. He wants it BAD.

i will never understand oscar-lust.

It's funny how the "hollowness" started when Scorcese started working with that punk DiCaprio. Where the hell he got it in his head that this kid is anything more than a no-talent pretty boy dillettante is beyond me.

"Kundun" was a beautiful film, and proof that Scorcese is still an artist at heart. I'm always amazed by the incredibly vast knowledge of film history he has, and the wide range of his influences (especially avant-garde directors--he has acknowledged that Kenneth Anger was a strong influence on his early works, and Brakhage's influence can be seen in "Last Temptation" (Scorcese has a strip of a Brakhage 35mm paint film framed and hanging in his living room).

I hate to say it, but sometimes I really wish Marty would reach a low point in his life, go on a coke binge & make some more films like he did in the '70's. God knows I'd love to see another "Taxi Driver".....

I think Scorsese proved his artistry more in Bringing Out the Dead, though Kundun was impressive in execution and in its lack of an implanted Western POV.

Bringing out the Dead should have gotten more love.
Kundun is GREAT.
GONY..who knows? They cut an hour from it at the last minute.
THE AVIATOR has nice bits, buth overall, it's awful and a baffling re-write of history (Hughes as an anti-McCarthy hero? What???)

Funny, when I saw the trailer for The Aviator I thought it looked like a Spielberg film. The plane thing (from Empire of the Sun, Raiders, 1941), the lighting and maybe even the use of DiCaprio in a period setting, which seemed reminiscent of Catch Me If You Can in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Well, I saw it the other day. At some point - oh, between Kundun and Gangs of New York, say - Scorsese became a director of Big Prestige Period films, starring Movie Stars, with not much thematic depth. Neither Gangs nor the Aviator really plays like a Scorsese film. One of the most startling things about Gangs for me was its anonymity. There was none of the visual poetry Marty was once capable of. But then that has been absent except for the odd fleeting glimpse since he discovered that he can do flashy and superficial in Goodfellas and be successful with it.
The Aviator was more of the same. Nicely shot, some nice performances, overlong and quite empty. Spielberg would have made a more distinctive film from the same script, I think....

"It's funny how the "hollowness" started when Scorcese started working with that punk DiCaprio. Where the hell he got it in his head that this kid is anything more than a no-talent pretty boy dillettante is beyond me."

HE SHOULD WORK WITH JAMES VAN DER BEEK IN HIS NEXT MOVIE

Or rejuvenate the career of Luke Perry....

You guys are being a tad rough on DiCaprio, whse callowness is fine for the young Hughes but just doesn't project as an obsessed Master of the Universe. (His best scene in the movie is privately stuffing his fists into his uncontrollable mouth.)

"Superficial" is not the right adjective for Goodfellas. There, the glitz provided the bait for Henry Hill, and masked / complemented the bloodshed.