This E.T. “exclusive footage of Nine” spot was posted on 9.18, and I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just another whirling smorgasbord of glamour cuts and black-and-white rehearsal footage. (I would be earnestly salivating right now if the entire film had been shot in monochrome.) Since I never watch E.T. the standout element is the Stepford Showbiz News delivery style of co-host Mark Steines. His plastic-complacent manner is a self-directed parody. Don’t copy-reading styles ever evolve?

Listen sometime to the way TV announcers sounded in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. It seems astonishing that copy-reading delivery this phony and artificial was actually the norm at one time. But all cultures gradually evolve, and with this the manner and verbal comnmunication techniques of TV performers. Except Mark Steines sounds exactly the way E.T. robot-announcers sounded in the late ’70s. Everything has changed — Jimmy Carter was president 30 years ago — but E.T. is frozen in amber.