I vowed a long time ago never to refer to the "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" with a straight face until the Academy graduates its first class of cadets. But maybe sometimes all that solemn self-regard about Oscar® has its value.

Last week I got a chance to attend a 25th-anniversary screening of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. As I regard E.T. not only as a fine movie but as an essential weapon in America's Cold War soft power arsenal, I was bracing for the worst from this screening to a nearly full house (stocked with parents like me in various stages of disappointment, denial and bargaining at their children's insufficient enchantment with one of the great warhorses of our own youth). The film has been famously modified by its own creator, who in 2002 released a remix filled with bad improvements, including but not limited to some additional footage (in a movie that is not terribly fast-paced to begin with), the obligatory CGI version of the eponymous alien (seamless, flawless and charmless from what I've seen in the trailer) and most notoriously, digital hoodoo that removes the firearms from the hands of the federal-agent characters at the climax.

This last has always struck me as a crucial error in a drama that flirts throughout with tweeness and needs at least a hint of danger to work, but I've never wanted to find out. On the principle that you don't have to smell a whole egg to know it's rotten, I've avoided the re-edited version, but figured I'd swallow that scruple in the spirit of the occasion.

What a pleasant surprise to find I didn't have to do that. In the version screened the other night the feds were armed and dangerous the way God and Steven Spielberg made them. There was no additional footage or digital E.T. either. (I didn't pay attention to whether the word "terrorist" had been undisappeared from one line of dialogue.) And it turns out I have the Academy to thank. All official screenings must be of the version that was originally eligible for Academy Award consideration, which made it necessary to strike a brand new print of the undesecrated E.T. for this screening.

Sure, we could carp about the presumptiousness of honoring a film for its handful of technical awards without mentioning that the movie itself was beaten out for Best Picture by Richard Attenborough's Ghandi (a picture Ben Kingsley himself is unlikely to want to sit through again). But at least the Academy's strict adherence to its own rules resulted, in this case, in a small stumbling block on the path to universal mediocrity.

This also leaves me curious about this whole new-prints-of-old-versions business. It costs between $6,000 and $10,000 to strike a new print from existing materials, and according to a representative of the Academy, studios frequently make new prints for the organization's screenings, then donate them to the Academy's archives. In this case, however, the person I spoke with at the Academy says Universal did not donate the print after the screening. So where did it go? Seems like a simple question, but after a week of trying to find out from spokespeople for Universal and Dreamworks, I have no answer.

That doesn't mean there's anything fishy; the Academy representative I talked with noted that the organization already has several copies of the film in its archive and thus didn't particularly need to keep a new print. A spokesperson for Dreamworks says she believes the print will in fact be donated to the Academy (though for two days now she has been unable to confirm that) so it could just be a miscommunication. And of course, 10 grand is a drop in the bucket to these behemoths. But the rule of thumb is that when people can't get you information, there's something wrong with the information. And you'd think that having re-edited your old work, you'd keep a close watch on 35mm copies of what is now your rough draft.

So I'm positing or hoping that Spielberg has seen the error of his later years and is planning a New Coke/Classic Coke bait and switch, in which the original version of this Hollywood classic will sneak back into circulation, and the 2002 disimprovement will be quietly retired. Maybe this will even build into a groundswell, and all those director's cuts, definitive editions and other misguided remasterings will begin to recede in favor of the versions that actually pleased audiences in the first place. Then again, maybe not. But I'm still happy that the real E.T., rather than a post-9/11 impostor, got one more chance to phone home.

Not since Frank Gorshin and some other guy played the black/white, white/black haters on Star Trek have space people been as fired-up as they are over Paul Thornton's Opinion Daily "Space program lunacy." And some of the rage is warranted: Our gaffe in the original story about the connections and lack thereof between NOAA, NASA and the QuikSCAT satellite has been corrected, and we apologize for the error. Paul knows he's made some very poor decisions recently, but he can give you his complete assurance that his work will be back to normal. He's still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.

Wendy Dunham gives Paul a Gopher State whuppin':

Yeah, and I can write an article that reports what NASA actually HAS done for the Earth that would blow this article out of the water. Obviously, a good word smith can spin a story like this any way you like, talk about the million dollar toilet, etc, focus on the seeming  wastes, but if you dug down into the facts and saw all the stuff that HAS come from NASA that is improving the real world (and it's a lot more than pens that write upside down or Tang), that list that would eclipse any further "what have they done" articles. Dig, people, dig, The truth is out there.

Wendy Dunham
Minneapolis, MN

Eric LP notes that the budget for NASA is even smaller than Eric LP's last name:

But NASA's idealism is seriously endangering the world's ability to track its own changing and more dangerous climate. Indeed, one of the most popular complaints about space exploration is that it wastes billions of dollars that could be better spent on problems here. With global warming an increasing threat, NASA has a chance to prove what it has long asserted — that a space program provides practical benefits to Earth-bound humanoids.

Yeah, we could spend it here on earth, like in Iraq!  you know the money would be going towards Iraq if any was available.   Global Warming?   GET REAL!!!!!!!!   Bush doesn't even think Global Warming is man made.   What the hell?   We do need to address GW.  But, the budget for NASA compared to Iraq is like a drop in the bucket.  The whitehouse doesn't even have GW in it's vocabulary....

Meanwhile we are at 9 TRILLION with a "T" in debt... Housing market is taking a dump....  Uh.......  We are still sending bush blank checks so that he can do what he wants.   Let's pull this into perspective a bit eh?   I'd much rather see money spent on Science and Research...  It's gonna take a lot of it to fix the GW problem. Problem is where are going to find the scientist?  I guess you didn't get the memo... Science and Math is uncool...  No one wants to look like a dork / geek in school anymore...  They all want to be football hero's and lawyers....   Who has time to be scientist or a computer programmer / engineer?  Those are low paying jobs and get you no where fast.

So back to your dream... While I think we should have a moon base... I think we should be spending the money on a shuttle replacement.... Lets just be happy they don't take all the $$ away and send it to Iraq...

Bruce Bales says Mars ain't the kinda place to raise your kids:

YES! Get NASA back on track toward important things, like Earth.

If Mars and deep space need to be explored, it can be  done much more economically with robots like the Rovers.  A one-way ticket costs only a fraction of a round-trip ticket.  Spend the money on understanding weather and global warming.

Bruce Bales
Andover, KS

Dr. Irv Loh uses the old blame-Ryan-Seacrest trick:

Opinion LA:

As a product of the Sputnik era who educationally benefited from the paranoia that resulted, I could not agree more with Mr. Thornton's assessment.  The cost of redundancy in manned space exploration multiplies the cost to achieve similar benefit with unmanned vehicles, and results in the unavailability of those finite resources for the other projects to which he referred.  Planet earth and all of her inhabitants are in dire shape, and although there is little drama to match manned exploration, we need to refocus our attention to things that truly matter.

Similarly, the tax dollars going out of this country on folly could be so much better spent on obtaining healthcare for our citizens and refurbishing our transportation infrastructure.  Yet none of this will occur until Americans wake up and start to pay more attention to who's at the helm of this country than who's winning on American Idol.

Irv Loh MD
Thousand Oaks, CA

C.P. Shields turns on the light on his miner's helmet and finds some of the overlooked riches of space:

Where to start; A lot of good has come out of the space program, that being said we need to spend our money a little better.

1) I would take 50% of the NASA budget and contract with scaled composites for a new lift vehicle. 

2) More probe work (Remote probes are producing valuable scientific data and it is the part of NASA worth keeping and funding).

3) Partnerships with other nations (except France, I just hate the French) in manned missions.

Justification:

Well here's one: Ore processing and off planet mining, we can do unsafe processes that would contaminate our  atmosphere but not in the vacuum of space and ship processed metal and zero G products earth side and another Medical research  drug production in sterile zero G environment. and last why not reach for the stars?

CPSHIELDS1@aol.com

And speaking of out-of-this-world riches, Brian Topping writes to us from that great city to the north, with greetings for all earth people:

Greetings,

I just read Paul Thronton's opinion about the space program and noted his observation of the apparently misguided trip back to the moon.  I also used to think this was lunacy until I saw something on PBS that was talking about the Helium-3 content of moon rocks.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3 has a pretty good spread of the information.

What bothers me immensely is that Bush didn't say anything about this when he was signing all that crap with so much fanfare.  What was he thinking?  That people were too stupid to understand that the moon might be an excellent fuel source?  Or was he hiding something about the program so it could be privatized once the government got the program set up?

This latter point may be the bigger story.

Peace,

Brian Topping
San Francisco, CA

Thanks to many readers for informing us that the [Republican Rep. Ron Paul] link in Ronald Brownstein's Friday Opinion Daily column "YouWho?" was actually a repeat-link to the Obama Girl video. The fault is entirely mine, both for incautious pasting and for the crush on Obama Girl my typing slip revealed. Ron had no part in the snafu, but he still takes a shellacking from readers. Read the results:

Nay, nay Mr. Brownstein.  The "uninformed voter" doesn't exist.  He's the one who has been ass-kickin' liberal extemism to death ... including that of the L.A. Times.  He is the one of common sense thought, but why do I continue; you wouldn't understand.

Reg Laite

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