Todd Garbarini
Entries from November 2012
By Todd Garbarini
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial:
From Concept to Classic is a 30th anniversary paperback reprint of the
book that was originally published in hardcover for the film’s 20th
anniversary in 2002 that accompanied the special edition DVD Ultimate Gift Set of
Steven Spielberg’s classic story of a young boy, the product of a divorced
home, who befriends an extra-terrestrial who is mistakenly left behind by his spaceship
following a hasty exit from earth. If
you own the 2002 edition, the new book is identical except for the fact that it
is paperback and its dimensions measure 9†x 0.4†x 10.8â€, a little larger than
its predecessor. The introduction to the
new printing by Steven Spielberg is also updated and does not retain his
introduction to the 2002 edition.
The
book is essentially separated into three sections. Section one covers the origins and the
overall development of the film from concept (as a story called Night Skies which was originally very
malevolent in tone) to the first draft which was penned by Melissa Mathison,
whose work on Carroll Ballard’s 1979 film The
Black Stallion impressed Mr. Spielberg so much that he hand-picked her to
write the script. Mr. Spielberg’s idea
for E.T., which originated while on
location in the summer of 1980 during the shooting of Raiders of the Lost Ark, came from his thoughts about the alien at
the end of his own Close Encounters of
the Third Kind (1977) and what it would be like for him if he were to be
inadvertently stranded on earth. There
are also comments from producer Kathleen Kennedy (now the president of
Lucasfilm), E.T. designer and creator Carlo Rambaldi, actor Henry Thomas, actress
Drew Barrymore, actor Robert MacNaughton, actor Peter Coyote, actress Dee
Wallace-Stone, composer John Williams, cinematographer Allen Daviau, editor
Carol Littleton, sound designer Ben Burtt, visual effects supervisor Dennis
Muren, and production designer James D. Bissell.
Section
two contains the film’s complete screenplay, which was the first draft that
Mrs. Mathison wrote and was so good that the director decided to shoot it as-is
with very little, if any, changes. The
screenplay is complemented by illustrations by Ed Verraux and production notes the
give further insight into the original ideas that the crew had in mind but had
to be abandoned or altered due to time constraints or logistics. It also includes the sequence with the school
principal (played by Harrison Ford) that was cut from the film, in addition to
other shots/scenes that were cut.
Section
three concerns itself with the film’s post-production (the models of the
children on their bikes, E.T.’s spaceship) and its impact on the movie-going
public (the E.T. phenomenon and merchandising), and the 2002 restoration.
It
is interesting to note that E.T.,
which was originally entitled A Boy’s
Life, was conceived of as a small, personal film. Although the director was by this time a
household name due to the success of Jaws
and the aforementioned Close Encounters
and Raiders, no one could have
expected the film to do the sort of business that it ended up doing, easily
propelling it to the top spot as the year’s most financially successful
film. This book does an excellent job of
giving the reader great insight into not only the making of the film but into
the thoughts of those involved in its creation. What is most evident is that everyone on the set (cast and crew alike) treated
the creature of E.T. with dignity and respect as if he was a real, live
creature. Itself the brainchild of designer
and creator Carlo Rambaldi, who also created the aliens in Close Encounters,
the mechanical head effects of the alien in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), and the entacled creature in Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (1981) to name a few, E.T.
rarely looks like an animatronic puppet even in the behind-the-scenes shots. You would really swear that he was a real
creature. Mr. Rambaldi passed away in
August of this year at the age of 86, and E.T. stands as one of his greatest
(and certainly most emotional) achievements.
For
fans of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, this
book is a must-have.
Click here to order from Amazon
By Todd Garbarini
One of the strangest G-rated “family
films†that I have ever seen is Al Adamson’s 1982 effort Carnival Magic, released by HD Cinema Classics by way of Film Chest
Media Group. As a fan of the best genre efforts
that were afforded by what is arguably the last truly great summer for movies
in the United States, 1982 gave us Conan
the Barbarian, Star Trek II: The
Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, The Thing, The Beastmaster and The Road Warrior. I must
admit that I was stunned to learn of this film as I had not heard of it prior
to its 2010 release on home video.
Filmed over three weeks in Gaffney,
South Carolina and Shelby, North Carolina, Carnival
Magic is, in the words of producer Elvin Feltner, “the story of a magician
and a traveling carnival and his pet monkey, who just happens to be a talking
monkey.†It is also a film that cannot
make up its mind if it wants to be a slapstick comedy or a family film with
dramatic adult themes. Starring a cluster of soap opera actors and actresses,
producer Feltner does what any good producer does when faced with the rising
costs of a film budget. He thinks
outside the box and delivers a film that can easily be categorized as a cult
favorite.
The
carnival’s magician, Markov (played nicely by Don Stewart), can read people’s
thoughts and levitate objects. Armed
with his talking chimp Alex, they are the top crowd pleaser, easily making the
wild animal trainer second banana and very jealous in the process. Hoping to regain his former glory, the
trainer attempts to kidnap the chimp and give him to a medical laboratory for
experimentation in the hopes of displacing his competition and making a good
deal of money. Among this plot are a
bevy of carnival beauties who dance, and a young adult romance that blossoms
innocently.
I couldn’t help but think of Tobe Hooper’s
The Funhouse (1981) while watching
this film, as the carnival atmosphere always intrigued me since I saw the
“Levitation†episode of Tales from the
Darkside in May 1985.
The video transfer of the film is done
from a recently unearthed 35mm theatrical print discovered lying in a warehouse
(the original negative apparently was not among the finds unfortunately), but HD
Cinema, a terrific company in their own right, has done a wonderful job of cleaning
up the print with their restoration transfer. I honestly cannot wait to see what this company has up its sleeve in the
months to come. If they can get their
hands on low-budget, independently made films and do high definition transfers
of them for new audiences, their future is surely bright.
There are a host of extras in this
collection. A running audio commentary with cult film historian Joel Rubin and
producer Feltner reveals a great deal of information regarding the making of
the film. Although Carnival Magic was
copyrighted in 1982, most people did not see the film until roughly a year
later in select screenings, as it was difficult to find theaters willing to
book the film. Mr. Feltner makes mention that the film was shot in 1981 in the
video interview introduction, however historian Reuben points out that according
to lab documents it was filmed in the previous year. When Mr. Feltner mentions that it was shot in
1982 on the audio commentary and become fairly adamant, it leads the audience to
wondering why the discussion is up for debate when such information is easily
verifiable. The subject is eventually
put to bed when the outtakes that appear in the supplementary section clearly
reveal the date of July 1980 on the film slate.
The remaining extras consist of twenty
minutes of outtakes sans audio and a
short “ before†and “after†restoration demo. What is most interesting is the
inclusion of both the original television trailer and the theatrical trailer,
wherein the former presents the film as a non-stop riot and the latter gives
one the impression that they should expect something along the lines of Smokey and the Bandit. Rounding out the extras
is an interesting slideshow which consists of newspaper clippings illustrating
when the movie came to the respective filming locations, looking for extras to
appear in the carnival scenes.
Regardless of one's opinion of the
film's narrative, the movie stands as a time capsule of a more innocent era in
American life, of small-town folks enjoying the summer with family and friends. The carnival sequences almost serve as a
documentary of what life was like in 1980 for these people.
HD Cinema Classics gets it right by
releasing this as a DVD and Blu-ray combo package, something that too few
companies are doing even now. They are
to be commended for offering the film in both formats, though Blu-ray is really
the way to go due to the increased sharpness and definition. The colors really pop out in this
format.
Click here to order from Amazon
By Todd Garbarini
The
Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass production team are best known to millions of
television audiences as Rankin & Bass for their unforgettable holiday-themed,
stop-motion animation outings such as Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), Santa
Claus is Coming to Town (1970), Here
Comes Peter Cottontail (1971), and The
Year Without a Santa Claus (1974). Christmas
and Easter would not be the same without a viewing of these specials on either
television or home video. Though the
bulk of their work is comprised of television movies and specials, they also collaborated
on theatrically-released films like The
Daydreamer (1966), Mad Monster Party?
(1967), Wacky World of Mother Goose (1967),
and The Last Unicorn (1982). This prolific producing and directing team
assembled a crew of talented sculptors, writers, editors, photographers and
musicians to create some of the most memorable family entertainment.
Warner
Archive is continuing their extraordinary work in bringing more of the Rankin
& Bass catalog to their burn-on-demand library. Thus far they have released a double feature
of Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey
(1977) & The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985) and the long-desired,
beloved made-for-TV movie The Bermuda
Depths (1978). Just prior to the
latter, Rankin & Bass made The Last
Dinosaur (1977), a low-budget film that was originally intended for
theatrical release, but was shortened by eleven minutes to a 95-minute running
time and aired on ABC television instead on February 11, 1977, which is good
because the film has a TV-movie feel to it. Warner Archive has recently released the full, uncut 106-minute theatrical
cut on DVD-R. Written by William
Overgard, scored by Maury Laws, and directed by Tsugunobu Kotani (listed in the
credits as Tom Kotani) who all repeated their roles for The Bermuda Depths (also released theatrically in Europe), The Last Dinosaur is a fun movie for the
twelve year-old set and under, though I am sure that Rankin and Bass
completists will find much to enjoy here. Mason Thrust, Jr. (Richard Boone) is a cantankerous and misogynistic safarist
who meets the sole survivor of an expedition who witnessed the existence of a
Tyrannosaurus Rex. Intrigued, Thrust puts
together a team that includes the sole survivor, some experts, and, against his
wishes, photographer Francesca Banks (Joan Van Ark), just because she’s a woman. They travel to the jungle locale and have a
few close encounters with beasts that should have been dead millions of years
ago, one of which is the T-Rex who roars a little like Godzilla. Along the way, they run into some Neanderthal
dwellers, one of whom resembles Nova from Planet
of the Apes (1968) who runs off with Francesca’s purse. It’s a fairly straightforward tale involving
the usual Rankin & Bass special effects which, at times, look just like
that. The cheesiness is part of the
film’s charm, though it is slow-moving by today’s standards. The
nighttime scenes are all shot day-for-night, and the film begins and ends with
the Nancy Wilson tune “The Last Dinosaur.â€
Previous
Warner Archive titles featured non-descript DVD covers that were comprised of a
publicity shot from a particular film superimposed over a blue background. The company’s subsequent success has allowed
Warner Archive to invest in providing a film’s original artwork on the DVD-R
cover, and The Last Dinosaur boasts
the exciting painting that was originally intended for the film’s theatrical one-sheet;
this image also appeared on the French poster when the film was distributed
theatrically as Le Derniere Dinosaure.
Click here to order from Warner Archive
|
|