

To mark his 60th birthday, we celebrate the genius of Steven Spielberg by counting down (in no particular order) the greatest moments, amazing stories and monumental impact of the world's greatest film director...
WORDS: Ian Freer and Ross Bennett
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His Ability To Judge Comic Relief
No film director is better than Spielberg at inserting deft comic relief into the height of the drama. To wit here are the top 5 moments of comic relief, Spielberg style...
5. Schindler's List
Even in the midst of his darkest movie, Spielberg manages to find droll humour: see the montage in which Oskar Schindler pays rapt attention to a cavalcade of beautiful but ineffectual typists then reads the paper when confronted by a bulbous battleaxe makes light of Schindler's typing test.
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4. Jurassic Park
Walking round the sick triceratops, Ian Malcolm comes across steaming pile of dino doo-doo, uttering "This is one big piece of shit." The camera pulls back to reveal Ellie Satler's arm deep in another triceratops turd, timed to garner maximum "Urghs" from the audience. Toilet humour elegantly staged.
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3. Saving Private Ryan
The running joke about Cpl. Upham trying to discover the meaning of the word FUBAR. It is finally revealed to him to be Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
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2. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Lost in his truck, power worker Roy Neary stops to check his map. Headlights pull up behind him and he belatedly waves them past, receiving a barrage of abuse ("You're blocking the road, jackass!") in the process. Still studying the map, he blithely waves the next car on. Only to have the headlights of "the car" rise behind him - his first close encounter. Simple, sublime, stunning.
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1. Jaws
On board The Orca on the hunt of that Great White Shark, the antagonism between shark slayer Quint and marine biologist Hooper grows. As if to assert his machismo to the college boy, Quint downs a can of beer in one and crushes the can in his hand. In riposte, Hooper downs the polystyrene cup of water and, eyeballing Quint all the way, squashes the plastic cup in his hand.
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