Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 312: Thu Nov 14

 E.T. the Extraterrestrial (Spielberg, 1982): Cinema Museum, 7pm


Cinema Museum introduction to the event:
Wonder Reels return to the Cinema Museum with their unique events featuring live performances from outstanding London musicians followed by a 35mm screening of a full feature film chosen with the artist in mind. The event will start with a live performance by British multi instrumentalist producer Forest Law who crafts a slice of Balearic funk and urban Tropicalia. Centred around his adept, Bossa Nova-influenced guitar playing, old school sampling, and UK-styled beats, played alongside his mellow, yet sombre vocal work.

Time Out review:
Returning to the rich pastures of American suburbia, Steven Spielberg takes the utterly commonplace story of a lonely kid befriending an alien from outer space, and invests it with exactly the same kind of fierce and naive magic that pushed Disney's major masterpieces like Pinocchio into a central place in 20th century popular culture. Moreover, with its Nativity-like opening and its final revelation, the plot of E.T. has parallels in religious mythology that help to explain its electric effect on audiences. But although conclusively demonstrating Spielberg's preeminence as the popular artist of his time, E.T. finally seems a less impressive film than Close Encounters. This is partly because its first half contains a couple of comedy sequences as vulgar as a Brooke Bond TV chimps commercial, but more because in reducing the unknowable to the easily loveable, the film sacrifices a little too much truth in favour of its huge emotional punch.
David Pirie

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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