George Lucas Took Moviegoers For A Spin Through The Past In American Graffiti

George Lucas has become highly synonymous with Star Wars, to the point that he hasn't directed a motion picture that wasn't set in the Star Wars universe in 45 years (this isn't counting how he was apparently the director of reshoots for the Lucasfilm drama Red Tails). But not only did he direct two non-Star Wars movies, his last feature film prior to the original Star Wars was a pop culture behemoth in its own right. That movie was American Graffiti, a dialogue-driven comedy that feels like a precursor to certain Richard Linklater movies like Dazed And Confused, a sharp contrast to the cosmic VFX-heavy productions that Lucas would commit himself to in the years ahead.

The Documentary Spielberg Looks At An Iconic Career In An Engaging Manner

This morning, the nominations for the 90th Academy Awards were announced and among the nine films nominated for Best Picture was The Post, Steven Spielberg's newest directorial effort. With The Post securing a Best Picture nod, this meant, as pointed out by Mark Harris on Twitter, that Spielberg has now had eleven of his movies nominated for Best Picture, the second highest amount of movies a single director has ever had nominated in Best Picture (William Wyler has the most with 13 of his features scoring Best Picture nominations). That's an astonishing accomplishment and it's far from the only place where Spielberg's career has been marked with great success as anyone who's been to a movie theater in the last four decades can attest.

In Laman's Terms: Five Classic Directors Who Deserve A Major Comeback

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

While a number of directors from the big American cinema revolution of the 1970's (like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen) are still doing regular work in Hollywood, it must be said that quite of the few masters from this era as well as other prolific directors from other epochs of Hollywood have found shockingly little work in the modern day cinematic landscape given how many classics they've delivered in their career. As just a little fun exercise, I've compiled five notable directors, some of whom come from the aforementioned creative boom of the 70's, others who come from other eras of Hollywood, who don't get much in the way of work anymore but totally deserve more high-profile gigs, perhaps from the likes of studios like Netflix, Annapurna or Amazon who are now in the business of financing costly auteur-driven projects that major studios are hesitant to greenlight.

What If George Lucas Put His Own Spin On The Trailer For The Force Awakens? (From The Interwebs)

George Lucas has done a lot of great things for cinema, but there's no denying he's also had plenty of bumps in the road of his career.......to put it lightly. Changing the Original Trilogy with terrible CGI, while keeping the original versions of the movies under wraps, was a hideous move, and it's those changes to the original movies that get lampooned in this trailer that ponders what would happen if George Lucas gave his own spin on the trailer for The Force Awakens.