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2 articles from 2002

22 March 2002 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

The critics, by and large, are welcoming E.T.: The Extraterrestrial back to the big screen with open arms. Jami Bernard in the New York Daily News is one of several who note that the film "holds up spectacularly well" after 20 years. "It's one modern film worthy of being called a contemporary classic," writes Jay Carr in the Boston Globe.Calling it "Spielberg's first masterpiece," Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune observes that "it deserved all the hearts it won -- and wins still, 20 years later." And although much has been made about the slight changes director Steven Spielberg made in the new release, Jay Carr in the Boston Globe comments: "The important thing about E.T. is not what's been changed, but rather what remains the same. Now as then, it's a big pop myth that combines affirmation and lyricism with surprising potency." To be sure, some critics have singled out the changes for condemnation. Steven Rosen in the Denver Post writes that one of the scenes, omitted from the first film but restored here "should have stayed out." Rosen adds: "This is the downside to these 'special edition' re-releases of auteurist movies. They too often put back scenes wisely omitted the first time around." And Joe Leydon in the San Francisco Examiner seems positively outraged by the P.C. retouching. "What drove Spielberg to desecrate his own movie?" he asks. Angered particularly about the director's decision to digitally replace cops' guns with walkie-talkies, Leydon remarks: "Spielberg's vandalism places him in the same camp with those folks who always enraged the late, great [animator] Chuck Jones -- that is, the uptight moralists who, in the name of 'protecting' children, wanted to erase comic violence from Bugs Bunny cartoons."

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25 February 2002 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Chuck Jones, who helped create the Looney Tunes characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig and was solely responsible for creating Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin the Martian, and Pepe le Pew, died of congestive heart failure in Corona del Mar, CA Friday at the age of 89. In a commentary, the Washington Post's TV critic Tom Shales wrote in today's editions that Jones's death "ends not just a career but the journey of a rollickingly restless mind, the kind of mind that never stopped searching for the humorous possibilities in people, situations, objects and facts of life that could just as easily have inspired bitterness or depression." Shales recalled that Jones refused to take anything seriously -- even himself, remarking at one tribute, "The nice thing to remember about me is that deep down, I'm shallow."

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2 articles from 2002