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I love the fact that so many great movies get (re)released on DVD for the holiday season. I hate the fact that I don’t have time to watch them all!
But I have managed to watch Spider-Man and E.T. this past week, and it was time well spent
E.T. – A classic, for sure. Probably one of Spielberg’s best. The new DVD release contains the remastered/edited 20th anniversary edition, which looks and sounds great. The changes are largely useless, though. They add a CGI E.T. for one scene which looks really fake (think Jabba in the Star Wars special edition…), and the edits are pointless. In one scene where the police have guns in the original, they are now holding flashlights. I wouldn’t have noticed this at all if I hadn’t been looking for it. The other edit was the dialogue “you look like a terrorist”, which has been changed to “you look like a hippie”. Considering the character doesn’t look like a terrorist *or* a hippie… well, you get the idea.
The coolest feature of the DVD, and possibly the coolest DVD bonus *ever*, is the newly recorded orchestral score. For the premier of the 20th Anniversary, they had a live orchestra (directed by John Williams) to recreate the entire score IN SYNC with the movie as it was playing. Which had to be an amazing thing to see/hear in person. The neat thing is, they included the live recording on the DVD, which you can select as an optional audio track… i.e., you can watch the movie with all the sound effects, dialogue, AND the live orchestral track. Very very nifty.
Spider-Man – I didn’t see it in the theater, sadly. It is probably the best comic book movie since Superman. Sam Raimi didn’t try to reinvent the classic story or give it a modern spin. Overall it was faithful to the Spider-Man we all know and love. Two gripes though… One, there was too much exposition during the first half… which is the biggest problem with most super hero movies – they have to explain all of the nuances to the moviegoers who might not be familiar with the comics. X-Men was particularly bad in this respect. Two, the ending with Mary Jane in the graveyard was just… off. The whole scene felt forced.
But all in all, a great movie – I can definitely understand why it did as well as it did at the box office. Can’t wait for the sequel!
Anyway, ‘dat’s all for now, folks.