I heard that Hitler based his facial hair on Chaplin's. If so, it's almost poetic justice that Chaplin made The Great Dictator. I never said that Chaplin was a superior filmmaker to Keaton (though he is my personal preference).

I'v always said that Spielberg is one of the hardest directors to fully understand, because it's so easy to take his work at face value. I think you're being very dissmisive of ET and Jurassic Park. Spielberg often makes films which do have deeper meanings but which can also be enjoyed on a superficial level.

ET: Spielberg's primary objective was certainly not to make us cry. He has stated many times that it is his most personal film, and that it revolves around the way he felt following his parents' devorce. ET represents a way for Elliot to releive himself of the greif left by his brocken home. The film also holds more than a passing resemblence with the Christ story - whereas Christ took the sins of the world away with him, ET takes away Elliot's regrets. I also think that the film's representation of suburbia is amazing. He paints such a nostalgic image in the film that the sci-fi element seems completely down to earth. Francois Truffaut is the only other director I can think of who can evoke a feeling of nostalgia in a viewer like that. I don't think it's fair to call the film munipulative. My idea of a munipulative film is the sort of TV historical dramas you see where the film's only message seems to be "you're going to like this because it's aserious film!". I don't think you can call a film munipulative just because it makes people cry. Spielberg was just trying to make a film that had emotion in it. The fact that everyone cried at the end is irrelevant. I'm a cynic too, but I have a very high toerance level when it comes to films.

Jurassic Park: This is Spielberg's greatest film in my opinion. It's about a lot more than just dinosaures, belive it or not. The whole structure of the film is basicaly a metaphore for the relationship between man and nature. Spielberg paralels this by creating a constant conflict between the part of the film that is fatasy and the part of the film that is horror. In the film's second half, nearly every scene complements the last in it's tone. We have on one side the dark interiors of the controll room which are full of computers, representing man, and on the others side the scenes shot on location which represent nature because all we see is err...trees. It's great that the interiors are all set inside the controll room, because one of the observations the film makes is that we are only the dominant speices on Earth because of our technological advances, and when they fail us we are at the mearcy of nature so to speak. Obviously, nature wins at the end of the film, and the penultimate scene really epitomises the balance of nature (big fish eating little fish). Another aspect that has been overlooked is that the film can be seen as a warning about the moral and practical dangers of genetic enginearing (and technology in general). The film came only a few years befor the creation of Dolly the sheep. 

In all fairness, this is possibly the easiest of his films to look at in a superficial way. When it first came out, it was a summer blockbuster and all the critics could think to talk about were the special effects. Every review I've ever read of Jurassic Park goes along the lines of "the special effect cost $2 million, and that dinosaur cost $5 million". They completely ignore the deeper side of the film. 

I'd really appriciate it if you don't get sarcastic in that way with me, because to be honest, if I hadn't had a good day today, I'd be going crazy right now. Like I said befor I can't help leting the little things get on top of me.

Grades and intellegence: Who was that really stupid kid who failed all his maths exams at school? What was his name?...err...Albert Einstein. Yeah, that was his name. I don't know what kind of school you went to, but at my school, getting good grades meant working hard to remember lots of facts. Don't get me started on the British education system. As far as I'm concerned it should burn in Hell. I'd better not get into that subject.