The Thursday Mysterious Emptyness

Photo Credit: Some guy on Flickr

The Great Movies: "E.T."

E.T.
Steven Spielburg, 1982

Previous Contact: I have seen E.T. once before, on the big screen on its original release. I found it treacly, sentimental, and unlikable. But then, I was, what, sixteen? Based on that viewing, I have always questioned its status as a critically acclaimed movie, and have more or less dreaded having to watch it again for this project.

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Let me tell you the plot of E.T. the way you remember it: An alien creature is befriended and nurtured by some California children, but sinister authoritarian forces kidnap it and very nearly kill it for their own dark purposes. Fortunately, the plucky children are able to free the alien and arrange for it to rendezvous with its mothership.

Now, here's what actually happens in the movie: an alien creature is befriended and nurtured by some well-meaning California children. They are well intentioned, but in completely over their heads. Federal authorities are eventually, as you would earnestly hope, able to discover and intervene in this potentially civilization-destroying public health (not to say xenodiplomatic) scenario. They are alarming but unfailingly kind and courteous to the children and their mother, and perform admirably in trying to save the life of the alien after the children literally leave him abandoned in a ditch overnight. When the creature revives due to the presence of its mothership, it is able to utilize the children in order to make a rendezvous.

So, why do we misremember it the first way? Because that is the impression that Stephen Spielberg builds, very intentionally I would have to suppose, by the way the movie is crafted. When the Federal doctors, scientists, and marshals appear onscreen, they are in unnaturally arranged block phalanxes, in faceless hazmat suits, in dark lurking vehicles, and so on. Moreover, overwrought music (by John Williams) signifying danger and threat make sure that we know these are the bad guys. The impression that the alien must be kept out of their clutches at all costs is firmly conveyed, despite that there is nothing in the story, the script, or common sense to suggest that this would be anything but the best outcome for all concerned.

I object to this on two levels. On one hand, although it's not quite right to say I don't like to have my emotions manipulated -- after all, in a sense the whole reason we GO to the movies is to have our emotions manipulated -- I nevertheless don't like to have my emotions blatantly manipulated. I want to decide for myself how I feel about events in a narrative, not have my response scripted by crude visual effects or especially by swelling, bombastic music. And on the other hand, E.T. is a forerunner of the knee-jerk anti-guvment paranoia that blossomed so spectacularly in the 1990s, rendering so many of our fellow citizens vulnerable to the most slack-jawed of conspiracy theories and, on happily rare occasions, inciting them to extremes of pathological behavior.

Having said this, E.T. is better than I remembered it. Its middle third, in particular, manages a entertaining blend of highish drama, lowish comedy, and suspense. The single best thing about E.T. is E.T. itself, a wonderfully realized character who is not a great alien leader, but merely an alien working joe trying to get itself out of a jam. The movie creates for him a complete personality; not only do you not notice when watching the film that he is, of course, made out of latex, but it is almost impossible to disbelieve in him while he is on the screen.

There remain, however, an uncomfortably long list of annoyances for a film that is usually held in such high regard. These include the very unsubtle use of techniques that have since E.T. become thought of as Spielberg’s signatures. There is hardly a scene in the first reel that doesn't feature light shining through steam, fog, or inexplicable haze. People point their flashlights in unison at bright, glowing objects – strange behavior, to be sure, but it sure does create an arresting visual effect. The bad guys -- you know, NASA scientists -- move in a highly mannered fashion so that we can tell they are dangerous. In an early scene, the booted feet of a group of men running down a trail are all shown splashing one after another into the center of a small puddle, in exactly the way that people never run down paths. Even evil NASA scientists instinctively avoid mud puddles.

The product placement of a popular candy was much remarked on at the time, and for good reason: it is blatant and nonsensical enough to distract an adult viewer. And key moments, finally -- including the famous flying bicycle scenes -- are again marred by intrusive, manipulative syrup on the soundtrack. A flying bicycle ride should be able to seem wondrous enough without that big of a crutch.

Visuals: A mix. Spielberg does an amazing job with his title character, and captures the habitat of his human community pretty nicely. His portrayal of the science and public health authorities is foolish, but effective enough. Natural behavior is sometimes trumped by Spielberg’s drive for the Big Visual, which is distracting if you pay attention to such things. And, surprisingly, the movie takes a small but very palpable hit from featuring the Least Convincing Alien Spacecraft Ever in its opening and final scenes.

Dialog: With the exception of an especially implausible schoolteacher (whose face is never seen), the characters are given expressive, interesting, and fairly natural lines. The lead character's little sister, in particular, is a smart and vivid character, played by a dynamite child actress. [Oh, hey! It was Drew Barrymore, who I believe continues to be a brand-name actress! It says here that "In the wake of... sudden stardom, Barrymore endured a notoriously troubled childhood," but now she's apparently an Ambassador Against Hunger for the United Nations World Food Programme, so maybe things ended up OK after all.]

Prognosis: I've been a bit hard on E.T. here, because I feel it to be a flawed and overrated picture. But I also confess that it is an entertaining picture, likely to enjoyed by anyone who can stand being jerked around by bombastic production. With a strong premise and a great script, it had all of the ingredients for a really Great Movie, but instead became an adequate movie and a really Great Consumer Product. I'm sure Spielberg’s investors did not complain.

The Monday

Two years ago, I thought that it would be fun to make up an is-it-or-isn't-it quiz about Shakepeare plays. In order to have a reason to do this, I created the Thursday Quiz. That turned out to be so much fun that I came up with the Monday Quiz a few months later.

Having the Quizzes quickly changed the nature of keeping a blog. Not only did I have to make sure that I had material ready for every Monday and Thursday, but I had to have something ready for every Tuesday and Friday as well -- new content that would mark the end of the Quizzes. Throw in a little something on Wednesdays and most Saturdays, and I had committed myself to daily publication.

Which has been great! Obviously I don't mind shooting my mouth off, and a surprising number of y'all have been willing to read my material, or at least skim it, or at least click through to boost my number of hits and make me feel like the time spent has not been completely ridiculous.

The problem with blogging, though, is much like the problem of college. You meet all of these brilliant and engaging people, you develop a big crush on the sheer quality of their prose, you get all excited when you realize they are reading you too -- but then they move on, their life in the biospace gets more interesting or more stable or more demanding, and suddenly you realize that they haven't posted since April. You make new friends, but often lose the old.

And now I feel like I'm more or less running into the biospace problem myself. I've noticed myself neglecting some of the responsibilities of the middle-class, middle-aged dude -- the house, the yard, the bland conformity -- because I "have to" make sure there's something ready for the blog. Which would be fine, if the spring that runs the blog -- the Quizzes -- was something fresh, new, and innovative. But you and I know that I've long since used up the best topics; to a certain extent, I've been in reruns since about TQXL.

So here it is Monday, but without a Monday Quiz. I'm sure this bugs me more than it bugs you, but if there's any letdown, we apologize for the inconvenience. Perhaps I should also apologize, though, that tomorrow -- Tuesday -- will bring yet another of the unpopular Great Movies reviews. And a long one. E.T. Because I'm not going for the clean break and just shutting this puppy down. No, I'm just trying to shut down my feeling of obligation to it. In particular, the ongoing projects -- Great Movies, The Reading List -- will continue. The Bible blog and the Shakespeare blog will keep plodding along, too.

The only other change to business as usual is that you'll have to do a robot check when entering comments now. I'm sick to death of weeding out the cretinous Taiwanese spam. Have a great Monday!

Name That Baby!: The Results

The Life & Times of Michael5000 welcomes potential future reader Nora Claire Boone to the City of Roses.



Little Ms. Boone will forever bear the distinction of the first human to have been named by the collective L&TM5K readership!

Also, she's all healthy, etc.

Maddy Expresses Her Feelings

I recently looked out the front window of Castle5000 of a Saturday afternoon and noticed two attractive people in their early twenties having a heated discussion out on the sidewalk. That seemed a little unusual, but I didn't give it another thought until I went out on the porch five or ten minutes later to check the mail. There they were, still, now more or less in the driveway. They didn't seem notice me there, standing right over them, for the next 20 or so seconds of conversation.

Him (hurt, heated): "...and you're saying these things, and I just don't understand!"

long pause

Her (through tears): "Why can't you just come to me and say 'Maddy, I love you, but I need some time to be by myself.' But instead you come at me so oppressive and..."

And then I was back inside with the mail.

Notes:

1. I am probably a bad person, in that I found this exchange extremely funny. Really, I was lucky I could get the door closed before I burst out laughing.

2. It's funnier because her name is "Maddy." That, also, probably makes me a bad person.

3. To be sure, I am all for partners communicating their emotions and working through their difficult issues together. But it's just that they seemed really, really.... young.

4. So I'm probably jealous of them, in a way.

The Happy Ending

A while later, Mrs.5000 called down the hall, "Good news! They're hugging!"

Yay!

The Thursday Quiz C

The Thursday Quiz!

The Thursday Quiz has been a twelve item is-it-or-isn't-it test of your knowledge, reasoning, stamina, and moxie!

Remember always the Fundamental Rules of the Thursday Quiz:

1. The Thursday Quiz is a POP quiz. No research, Googling, Wikiing, or use of reference books. Violators will never be able to look at themselves in the mirror again.

2. Don't get all stressed out about it! It's supposed to be fun!

How Things End.

IS IT or ISN'T it The End, my beautiful friend, The End?

1. The Beatles' "White Album" ends with the short song "Her Majesty."

2. Beethoven's 6th Symphony ends with what was at the time a highly unusual 5th movement, titled "Shepherds' song; cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm."

3. Benjamin Harrison’s administration ended when he was voted out of office in a landslide due to public outrage over conduct of the Mexican War.

4. Britain's War of the Roses ended with the elimination of the Plantagenet dynasty and its replacement by the Tudors, who would rule for the following century.

5. Edward VIII's reign as King of England ended in 1936 when he abdicated so that he could marry an American divorcee.

6. Hamlet ends with Prince Fortinbras of Norway suddenly becoming the King of Denmark.

7. Interstate 70 ends at San Francisco, California on the west, and Miami, Florida on the east.

8. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit ends with the short sentence "'Well, I'm back,' he said."

9. The movie Citizen Kane ends with a shot of a dying man uttering the word "Rosebud," then dropping a snow globe on the floor.

10. The Nirvana song "All Apologies" ends with Kurt Cobain repeating the phrase "All in all is all we are."

11. The Oklahoma panhandle ends, to the west, at a short border with New Mexico.

12. The Rio Grande River ends where it meets the Gulf of Mexico in the harbor of Houston, Texas.

Submit your answers in the comments.

Vacation5000: More Than Just Counties

I fly into Newark airport a little before six in the morning, claim my suitcase, and head toward the rental car claim area, several stops down the "SkyTrain." There I discover that my off-brand car rental company isn't located in the rental car area, but rather operates out of a hotel way the hell over yonder. So, it's all the way across the airport again on the SkyTrain, and then a wait for the airport shuttle, and then several minutes of careening through what seems like a completely random series of loopy roads, and then I arrive at the sketchy rental car company, which has a big sign in its entrance explaining that you can't take their cars any of the places that I plan on going. Sooo, it's back to the shuttle, back to the now very familiar SkyTrain, and back across the airport megaplex to where the real rental car companies are.

Finally blessed with wheels, I drove under the water to a city I had long heard of, a mystical, magical place called Manhattan. Then I drove around for a while, enjoying the general vibe and the density of landmarks. Without too much ado, though, I made my way north to

The Cloisters

In a park near the northern tip of Manhattan, The Cloisters is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annex medieval collection. It is housed in an absurd and wonderful faux monastery into which various chunks of actual real European monasteries have been lovingly reassembled and inset.

There, I saw stuff like this:

and this:

...and of course this:

A few days later, I met up with the Monday Quiz at

Fallingwater

I was really impressed with the art inside of Fallingwater, but it turns out not to be especially well known, and there aren't good images available. The main deal, in any event, is the building itself:

So then, a few days go by, I visit some cherished friends and blow by others as if intentionally setting out to insult them, yadda yadda yadda, and I end up at:

Dia: Beacon

This museum of modern and contemporary art is the most striking exhibition space I've yet seen. It's a converted factory with lots of natural light and truly immense gallary space, the perfect place for larger-than-life exhibits. Regretably, much of the collection focuses on particularly arid strands of contemporary art, the schools that are forever questioning what exactly art is anyway. It was almost embarassing to enter a room filled with carefully prepared blank white canvases; that sort of gambit was fresh and interesting when Duchamps scrawled his signature on the toilet, but that was 92 years ago.

One of the highlights were some Sol Lewitt line drawings, which were not (in this case anyway) a big aesthetic thrill but always intellectually interesting.

For my money, though, nothing could compare to Zoe Leonard's You see I am here after all, a collage of about six zillion historical postcards of Nigara Falls sorted by perspective and arranged in a great horizontal series of rectangles. I was enchanted.

But none of this museum-goin' -- none of my life up to this point, really -- could prepare me for:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Don't try to see it all at once," Mrs.5000 quipped in an Email to my Yonkers base camp. Indeed. Let me put it this way: the Met could give a priceless, important work of art to every man, woman, and child of Hometown5000 -- indeed, probably of Homecounty5000 -- and still be able to put on a damn fine show. It is so vast and filled with wonders that I have been sad ever since, and I suspect will forever after be a little sad, that I am here and not there.

I mean, there's a medieval statue in there called "Virgin and Child with Bird," and it was just so beautiful that I thought I was going to start crying right there. It was sublime. And I took careful notes on it, took its accession number and everything, but it's not even significant enough to make the website. The fairly comprehensive website. See what I'm saying? The place is so ridiculously abundant that its afterthoughts would be the reason to build a museum in another town.

It was not unlike, but yet more sublime, than this one.

Anyway, I saw... everything. Like this:

And this:

And this:

And so on. I recommend it highly, the next time you want to look at art in New York City.