E.T. Cameo in 1941!
Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2025 4:59 pm
Had a great time watching 1941 with Theo last night -- and just seeing it again for the first time in years too. It was highly enjoyable not just revisiting it but having Theo laugh at most of the same things I always found funny about this movie as a kid. (He said it was in the "top 10" of "movies I've shown him").
And not only that -- I still like it! Anyone who thinks this is Spielberg's worst movie is (sorry) out to lunch and/or has never seen it. It successfully maintains a level of "comic paranoia" that's seldom laugh out loud funny but is always amusing, with every scene packed with some production detail and/or performance that I find entertaining every time. The score is phenomenal too, and the Jitterbug sequence can hold its own with the best of Spielberg's standalone set pieces.
Anyway, I was posting this because we were watching the original 146 minute cut of the movie, which had been (re) assembled for ABC back in the early '80s. I'm sure someone, somewhere along the line has mentioned this before, but I noticed for the first time an E.T. cameo -- that had to have been an insert shot specifically FOR ABC, obviously (I assume the movie premiered on network TV in late '82 or early '83?). It's still there too, plain as day when you watch it (the previously discarded bit where Wally stages a fake air raid in a department store early in the movie):
And not only that -- I still like it! Anyone who thinks this is Spielberg's worst movie is (sorry) out to lunch and/or has never seen it. It successfully maintains a level of "comic paranoia" that's seldom laugh out loud funny but is always amusing, with every scene packed with some production detail and/or performance that I find entertaining every time. The score is phenomenal too, and the Jitterbug sequence can hold its own with the best of Spielberg's standalone set pieces.
Anyway, I was posting this because we were watching the original 146 minute cut of the movie, which had been (re) assembled for ABC back in the early '80s. I'm sure someone, somewhere along the line has mentioned this before, but I noticed for the first time an E.T. cameo -- that had to have been an insert shot specifically FOR ABC, obviously (I assume the movie premiered on network TV in late '82 or early '83?). It's still there too, plain as day when you watch it (the previously discarded bit where Wally stages a fake air raid in a department store early in the movie):
Inside Out 2 became the highest-grossing animated film of all time in large part BECAUSE Disney announced it wouldn't be available to watch on D+ for 100 days. Studios think that the rush to streaming is a good thing, but gutting the physical media template and giving even hIt movies the bum's rush to VOD is killing the business. Nosferatu had a shot at hitting $200 million worldwide, but now that it's been on VOD for almost two weeks (with people pirating it and throwing lengthy clips on social media), that's gonna kill any potential repeat business, or people just getting around to it now because it received some (well-deserved) tech nominations at the Oscars.