THE MOVIE

ET is yet another one of the classic stories from my childhood. ET and his fellow aliens have landed on earth collecting plants and when startled they take off in a rush, leaving ET behind. Lost and alone he hides out in the back shed where he is found by a young boy named Elliott. Elliott, his sister and brother then take it upon themselves to befriend ET and help him get home.

Steven Spielberg makes great movies, and ET is no exception. Not only do we get a brilliant film created by one of the best, if not the best, directors, we also get a fantastic score by the master John Williams.

I do have a couple little nit-pickings to make about this 20th Anniversary edition of the film. Firstly the effects have been updated to the modern CGI standards, which I guess can be considered a good thing, it makes ET and things seem a bit more real, but just like the Star Wars re-releases, its just not the same. The other thing that is really frustrating is the fact that Mr Spielberg saw fit to remove 'violence' from the film, this means that all guns carried by the Government agents have been replaced by walkies-talkies. If you look closely you can see hands that still look like they are holding handguns or shotguns, but instead there is a small walkie talkie in its place. This is probably the only thing that really spoilt the film, thus im going to dock half a point.

Also I will just point out that when I was a kid I never realised that ET was so ugly! Or that he sounded so strange when moving, its sort of a combination of a moist and rustling noise.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

For a film that is 20 years old this is of pretty decent quality. There is a slightly annoying problem with aliasing, especially on blinds but overall it isnt anything that is going to prevent you from enjoying the movie unless you accept nothing less than perfection and when you get as engrossed in the film as most people will you really wont mind.

We are presented with a 1.78:1 transfer that has been 16x9 enhanced. Overall they have done a good job of the transfer, colours are good and as parts of the film are dark they have managed to pull it off very well.

Audio:

I listened to the DTS soundtrack in full and the Dolby Digital 5.1 in parts to compare. There does not seem to be a whole lot of difference between the two and those who are not equiped with a DTS capable setup will not be left out.

With a John Williams score its hard to go wrong in the audio department, it will always sound great. The dialogue is crisp and clear in general and as I said the sounds that ET makes when moving are very detailed and well.. a bit weird.

E.T doesnt require a whole lot of wow factor in the surround sound of sub usage mainly as its not that kind of movie, but when it is used it works well, but this definately is not an audio track that you will be using to show off your brand new speakers.

THE EXTRAS

On disc one we are treated to a small introduction by Stephen Spielberg about what is new and improved in this 20th Anniversary Edition of E.T. This intro then allows the viewer to select if they wish to watch the film using the live ochestra score conducted by John Williams. This sort of reminded me of watching some of those dodgy Star Wars copies that had been taped in the theatre due to the fact that you can hear the audience clapping and cheering. Its a pretty cool thing.

The second disc is where the meat of the extra's are. We have about 2 hours of material to view. Firstly there is the Evolution and Creation of ET. This runs for almost an hour and gives a great background into the history of the film, how it was made and also gives us a glimps at the stars of the film as they are now. We also have The Reunion which is basically the cast all sitting together talking and looking back at the film.

The Music of John Williams is a short featurette about probably the best composer in the business. With interviews with John 'the man' Williams and Stephen Spielberg its definately a good watch.

Next we have a featurette about the 20th Anniversary Premiere. This is where the orcestral soundtrack that is on the DVD was recorded. This shows how complicated and demanding it was to do something on this scale.

There is also the Space Exploration featurette. Im not sure really how this fits in, but basically its just a small education feature about the solar system.

Lastly we have the usual assortment of Designs, Photographs and Marketing pictures, a bunch of trailers and some DVD-ROM Features, unfortunately with no DVD-ROM drive I could not check these out.

The only thing that could have improved this extra's package is once again a commentry by Mr Spielberg himself. Now that is something I would really love to listen to.

SUMMARY

E.T is a classic that has aged very nicely. Sure, its not the best quality DVD for audio or visual that you will ever see, but great films make great DVD's and I find it hard to do anything but strongly recommend this DVD to anyone. If you have kids get this for them, it is much better than the Pokemon and other similar junk films they make for kids these days.