The Home of the Creative Mind

Welcome to PooBahSpiel, the online voice and home of the creative mind of Mark Monlux, Illustrator Extraordinaire. Prepare yourself for an endless regaling of art directly from the hand of this stellar artist. And brace yourself against his mighty wind of pontification. Updates are kinda weekly and show daily sketches, current projects, and other really nifty stuff.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

The Comic Critic's Movie Review of Close Encounters of the Third Kind






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Close Encounters came out in 1977 the same year Voyager I and Voyager II were launched into space. Everybody was excited about the possibilities of space and what discoveries would be made out there.  Folks were looking up at the sky and dreaming about man’s venture into the cosmos. Close Encounters tapped into our deep desires to explore space. Steven Spielberg guides audiences into a search rather than presenting an invasion underway. First it’s a search for answers to why we are seeing what we are seeing. Then it becomes an urge, a desire to express or explain what is being seen. And before you know it, audiences are filled with a grand sense of homecoming, of returning. That joy of return and exploration is what powers Close Encounters. A lot has been said about the movie’s special effects. An obvious child of the ’70s with its lack of home computers and portable technology, they’re wonderful, practical special effects that still hold up today. But you don’t really notice the tech; what you do notice is its vibrating core message of exploration and hope which continues to make Close Encounters a great movie.


 [J1]Space is used twice in the same sentence. Changed to avoid that.

 [J2]Deleted to clarify the meaning.

 [J3]Changed because “the public” seems to remove both you and the readers from the rest of us.

 [J4]“Hungry” changed to “deep” to strengthen the sentence structure and meaning. Another way to say this is “…tapped into our deep hunger to explore space.” I think that this is a stronger sentence.

 [J5]“Rather than feeling that an invasion was underway, Steven…” seems to mean that Spielberg may have felt that an invasion was underway.

 [J6]Changed to “audiences” to reflect that audiences everywhere felt this rather than only one audience. You may want to substitute “movie-goers” for “audiences.”

 [J7]Moved to strengthen your meaning (I hope).