Let's talk about E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

It was great fro it's time and I've watched it a couple of more times (Those with my son when he was a mere child). I remember seeing it for the first time though.

Took my girlfriend at the time to the matinee not really knowing a damn thing about the movie.

I was wearing a tank top, 19 years old and didn't have a damn thing to wipe the tears out of my eyes when I thought he had died.

Not even a sleeve.

It will always hold a special place in my movie fandom.

 

I agree, this is very true. To me, it's not that Spielberg is manipulative as much as he has fallen back on sentimentality far too often for my tastes. As a visual storyteller, however, he has used the medium in dynamic and exciting ways. That he is brilliant is indisputable. It's his sensibility that I sometimes find myself disliking, but I also realize that you could make the same claims about Frank Capra.

 

I worked at one of the large toy stores back then and we sold bicycles. Huffy or Columbia or one of the bicycle companies sent us tons of plastic baskets to include one with each bicycle we sold - I guess kids who saw that movie had to have a basket to go on the front of their bikes.
We went out of business in 1992 and still had baskets leftover that I offered to the employees when we closed. 35 years after the movie and I still have 3 or 4 of those baskets in my home that I use to organize my cd's.

 

After "ET", Spielberg seems to have lost his touch with kids. He helped bring out remarkable performances from the kids in "ET", and he got a strong performance from little Cary Guffey in "CE3K".

After that, though, the kids in his movies tend to be more markish and annoying - it's like Spielberg used all his kid-related magic with "ET" and was a spent force!

 

That's for sure - filmmakers don't get much more manipulative and sentimental than Capra.

I think people focus on Spielberg for this trait because he's arguably the most successful director of all-time. The big dog gets the most attention/criticism...

 

Did Spielberg have a hand in directing The Goonies? Or was that all Richard Donner? That movie had some well-directed kids.

 

Which toy store? ChildWorld/Children's Palace? Lionel Kiddie City? (Both went out of business around that time). Just wondering.

 

AFAIK, all Donner. Spielberg is rumored to have directed much of "Poltergeist" but I recall no indications that he did that on "Goonies".

And we'll have to agree to disagree on the kids in "Goonies" - I remember them being more annoying than anything else, though some of that was the dumbed-down script...

 

Ah, right. Poltergeist was the movie I confused with The Goonies.

 

CW/CP

 

But if he did get eaten by the T Rex he wouldn't go on to play John Deacon in the forthcoming Queen
movie.