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Time magazine has Steven Spielberg's only interview prior to the release of his latest film, Munich, heralded as a sure Oscar-shot for, among other things, the way it deftly entwines pangs of momentary assassin guilt into its aria of Mossad revenge killings. The eternally optimistic director (at least in his movies' last ten minutes), refers to Munich as a "prayer for peace." It's an uplifting sentiment, but it doesn't quite erase the fact that the onetime Ambassador of Childhood Wonder is now feeling more like a Debbie Downer:

Spielberg: Maybe the child in all of us dies just when we need him the most. I cannot tell you how many people come over to me on the street and repeat almost verbatim the line the Martians say to Woody Allen in Stardust Memories: "You know, we like your earlier, funnier films."


Time: They come up to you?

Spielberg: They'll say, "Why can't you get back to making E.T. or Raiders?" This is not from young people but from older people, who I guess grew up with the movies I made when I was a kid and they were kids too. So I'm bewitched by Woody Allen in the sense that I keep hearing this scene from Stardust Memories played out in my real life. It's very bedeviling.

Allen's ensorcelling effects aside, we must hand it to Spielberg's sweetly ignorant fans, who gamely trample over the protective towers of Hollywood sycophancy afforded the Greatest Living Director, and tell him exactly what it is he's doing wrong. Prayers for peace are nice; but a fully body-waxed Robin Williams in green tights doing an improvised riff on the versatility of pixie-dust is, at the end of the day, nicer.