STEVEN SPIELBERG'S MAGIC TOUCH.

Byline: David Kronke

TV Critic

Somewhat surprisingly, TCM's tribute to Hollywood's most successful, most wow-inducing director, Steven Spielberg, is a fairly foursquare affair.

"Spielberg on Spielberg," written, directed and produced by Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel, is composed of clips from the filmmaker's canon interspersed with Spielberg himself discussing his films shot from two angles -- straight on and from his right. The budget for this thing wouldn't have covered one lunch on the set of a Spielberg flick.

Which is not to say that "Spielberg on Spielberg" doesn't provide plenty of insight into the mind of Hollywood's A-plus A-list director. Spielberg himself offers plenty of fascinating insight into his successes (of "Saving Private Ryan's opening sequence at Normandy, he says, "If anything gave that scene impact, it's because I didn't know what was going to happen next"), failures (he calls the virulent response to "1941" "the best thing that happened to me") and films that actually aspired to art (he calls the Shoah Project, inspired by "Schindler's List," the first thing I've done that was better than the movie").

Though other biographers have called into question the mythological yarn that Spielberg began his career by sneaking onto the Universal lot, that's presented as unquestioned doctrine here.

Films such as "Amistad," "The Terminal" and "Always" are given short shrift or ignored altogether.

Still, what Spielberg does discuss is, for film fans, at the very least interesting and, given his fervor and relative candor in discussing his oeuvre, often fascinating.

David Kronke, [phone]

[e-mail]

www.insidesocal.com/tv

SPIELBERG ON SPIELBERG - Three stars

What: The famed director discusses his many movies.

Where: Turner Classic Movies.

When: 9 tonight.

In a nutshell: Straightforward assessment of a remarkable career.

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Steven Spielberg will provide insights into "E.T." and other movies he directed in a TCM special.