19 Aug 2009, 6:34 am
19 Aug 2009, 7:14 am
ET was my first trip to the cinema, my mum took me for a treat. around the middle i started sobbing & wailing inconsolably & very loudly, echoing round the whole auditorium. My mum obviously felt very awkward socially & concerned for my emotional health but decided to stay to the end, hoping id settle down in a minute and enjoy the rest of the film. I didnt.
I cant remember much of the plot of ET at all or exactly whats so heart-wrenchingly sad (& im sure ive seen it since) but i still feel pangs of grief whenever its mentioned 
19 Aug 2009, 7:47 am
19 Aug 2009, 7:52 am
19 Aug 2009, 8:25 am
Seen it once a few years ago and loved it. I have been known to watch films up to 14 times (maybe more 
) in a few months, may have been case here if I had a copy of ET.
I like sci-fi, probably along with comedy, my favourite genre. Among my favourites are the Alien films, 2001 (and some other Kubrick films which sometimes seem to be listed under sci fi but I'm not so sure e.g. Clockwork Orange) - HAL seems to be kinda AS-like, Star Wars, Star Trek - Spock, Galaxy Quest - some of the aliens seem to have traits, and there are others but I have actually gone blank :O
19 Aug 2009, 11:32 am
19 Aug 2009, 12:02 pm
19 Aug 2009, 12:33 pm
19 Aug 2009, 1:16 pm
19 Aug 2009, 1:37 pm
19 Aug 2009, 2:34 pm
I love E.T. and have seen it many times over the years. The first time I saw it was when it was in the theaters. I was taking a movie class in college. Our assignment was to go see a movie currently playing and write a paper on what it was an allegory of. I chose E.T. I took a notebook and pen and went into the theater for the first showing, an early afternoon matinee. After the first show I had the plot and the feeling. I sat through the second showing looking for allegory and decided by the end that it was an allegory for the death and resurrection of Christ (no, I'm not religious but it's hard NOT to know this stuff). I made an outline while waiting for the next showing. After the 3rd showing, I had a feel for how the paper should be written and started writing it waiting for the next showing. By then it was evening and the theater was filling up. I continued writing between and during showings and by the time the last showing had ended near midnight, the paper was done.
And that's how my fondness for the movie was born. I've watched it many, many times in the 25 years or so since then and love it all over again each time.
19 Aug 2009, 2:37 pm
19 Aug 2009, 2:52 pm
Once, K-Pax was much better
_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man ! Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.
19 Aug 2009, 3:00 pm
Janissy,
That sounds like an Aspie obsession 
Yes, it's clear to me that Spielberg tried to give a certain Jesus apparance to ET, though I've read on Wikipedia that Spielberg strongly denies it, claiming that he couldn't do that to his (Jewish) mom. I hadn't thought about the death and resurrection thing, you're right. But Elliot with the white blanket does look like an apostle or something.
Elliot, like you, acts like a bridge in the understanding between the humans and the aliens That's the part I like best in the movie - the learning to understand each other, from scratch. No assumptions are possible at all. Everything has to be learned from zero, actions that look the same have different motivations behind them. It takes enormeous mind openness to understand the mistakes Eg: it's not ET's intention to be "naughty" and get drunk, but the reason he discards the white cheese and chooses the beer is that it's the only thing that Elliot taught him how to ingest (when he demonstrated how to drink from the can of coke to him.)
As a Linguist and English teacher, I love the way that ET learns English in the so-called "Direct Approach" (not in use anymore, but needed when there's no known language to translate the new words to). He applies the rules of what's called "distribution": he hears the word and infers its meaning from the situation (context), so at the end he says "come", because that's the word he knows humans use when they want someone to join them somewhere.
The two important things I learned from the movie are: when I've no idea how to communicate with an NT at all - pace and mimic. That always works. ET seems to me like he was not a child but a grown-up alien who knew a thing or two about communication. The first thing he does in order to create a relationship with Elliot is to MIMIC Elliot's actions (deposit the candy on a surface). Then immediately, he starts pacing Elliot (I forget now how).
The reason a movie becomes a classic is when it trascends the entertainment relevance and has so many quality elements in it that you can watch it a hundred times and still learn something new from it. This is one of those movies. Spielberg's success secret, imo, is that he gets the best professionals for each job. Among many others, the movie has Linguistics, Language learning and Sociology research relevance behind it (the writer of the story did high level homework, it's evident). Those are the fields that interest me in particular, but I imagine there's research relevance in many other fields too.
19 Aug 2009, 3:15 pm
