December 12, 2002

For those of you who are big Oscar fans, I’ve started a weekly column at www.moviecitynews.com that will be my primary outlet for non-event Oscar coverage.  Included in that column, which launches today, are my rankings in the top eight categories, which will be updated each week.  I also wrote a small piece about the Independent Spirit Awards yesterday, which you can read here. In other words, if you want the entire THB experience, you need to try and check out MCN at least once every day (the site is updated more than a dozen times a day during the week). 

In any case, it’s 1:27 a.m. and I’m too tired and used up to write a proper column.  Looks like Wednesday’s are going to be a challenge for the next few months.

And so, I’m handing the column over to you guys for the day.  Put on your seat belt, keep your eyes on the road and don’t forget to use condoms.  You don’t know where these ideas have been…

DAY OF THE READERS

NOT THE ESPN GUY writes:  “Most of George Lucas's new Star Wars Borefest films (Phantom Menace anyone?) could use a strong need of cutting. Case in point, IMAX's Clones movie was a far more rewarding experience (narratively better driven, better paced) than the overexhaulted 'talking heads' scenes, Lucas feels it's all so necessary to include.

Other examples of films to cut:

- Vanilla Sky.

I think what made so people misunderstand this film, was the use of choppy flashback. If we could trim most of those 'jail scenes', and concentrate on the unrequited love/tragedy story, we could perhaps create a more linear, more narrative journey, leaving the surprise ending to be more of a surprise and less of a cliched 'given'.”

THE QUEBEQUA writes:  “I know it`s a given that studio will put their claws on their movies because it`s business and they want the movie to do well, to generate money. But i find the concept weird of helping finance independent movies but then changing elements in it during production or after production like Miramax is doing. If someone would do that to one of my movies i would probably kill him or kill myself. 

Anyway, about Blade Runner, I’m a die-hard defender of the Harrison Ford`s voice over. The comments he makes will stay with me forever particularly when the Rutger Hauer character dies. It emphasizes the "crime-noir" element that makes Blade Runner such a nice sci-fi/noir hybrid. Actually, I bought the director’s cut a couple of years ago and wanted to pull the my eye-lids out because the voice-over was not there (i bought this version out of curiosity, not knowing what was different about it).

From cutting films, to cutting or not cutting a smart sci-fi film to bar-none the smartest sci-fi film you’re gonna to get: SOLARIS. It`s a crime!!! People should be out in the streets for the response it got from movie-goers. I know it`s unusual material, but it has George Clooney a BIG STAR for crying-out-loud, what’s the excuse? The sci-fans should have least show their faces in the damn theatres, at least to peak at how much science-fiction it is. Proving that all in all there are no sci-fi fans, just geeks addicts to their own little franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek and LOTR. After all, the Twilight Zone episodes were more science-fiction than Star Wars. Genuine sci-fi should be smart, it is technology gone wrong. People being victim of probable futures. "Aaaahh!" This is an unspecified super-technological object probing you, fanboy.

If it were only the Box Office. The critics have been fairly absent from it all. Here we have a film that should be trumpeted like the great piece that it is, and there’s not a blimp on the radars of the "know-it-all" of Cinema. It’s one thing to say it’s good...or special. But here we have one truly great film from the first time in the year, so the fact that it’s being ignored by the public should be a wake-up call by the critics to make the World knows that it deserves more attention. It should be screamed, painted to the walls. What i mean to say is that Solaris is a great film, the best I’ve seen this year, perhaps even the best of the last few years. Where is the campaign?”

UELBOB writes:  “Heat - Michael Mann

That was an excellent movie that could have been really great had it lost about 20 minutes.  I think it would've been possible to lose some of the drama with Al Pacino's personal life that really drags the story momentum down without diminishing the character development value.  I think there was no need to so heavily hammer home how De Niro and Pacino were basically the same type of guy (ie.: so career focused that their personal lives will inevitably suffer), just on opposite sides of the fence.  Both actors were more than skilled enough to bring that out in their performances without the added weight of all the time spent on Al's philandering wife and suicidal daughter.  As a matter of fact, it might have worked better to bring Al's neglect of his personal relationships into sharper focus by cutting some of his interaction with them and therefore showing how his family self-destructs while he's busy obsessing about his job.

That being said, the length of a movie will have no effect whatsoever on my decision to view it.  I'll just as happily sit through The Two Towers (clocking in at just under 3 hours iirc) as I will the 1 hour and 47 minute Equilibrium.  The important thing to me is not how long the movie actually is, but how long it feels.  Take the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies.  According to their DVD details, Harry Potter clocks in at 152 minutes while LOTR ran 178, but to me, Harry Potter feels like the longer movie when viewed.”

HANK YOU writes:  “Not something I'd cut--something I'd restore.

I get a lot of DVD's, and I enjoy looking at the deleted scenes. In all of them, I've seen exactly ONE that I thought they were nuts for cutting it, and it should be put back.

In "High Fidelity," there's a scene where John Cusack goes to talk to a woman who's selling her husband's collections of 45's. The woman was played by Beverly D'Angelo, who's never looked better. The scene is funny and memorable, and although it doesn't directly address the plot, it adds an incremental amount our understanding of the central character, and is wonderful in its own right.

What on earth were they thinking?”

NORTHERN SHADOWS writes:  “Yes, I'd cut off Harvey Weinstein. I know that sounds very easy, but your interrogation practically begged for that phrase. Clearly, the Miramax chairman has lost his way. During a couple of years he made significant innovations in the American film scenario, but now he has become a fairly ordinary and gruesomely-mannered home appliances salesman, with all due respect to this latter profession. When I read about how this greedy, dictatorial, dollar-obsessed, ego-inflated pantomime of a man has ruined a masterpiece, I can't help but reflect about how obstinate his way of "thinking" must be. But what bothers me the most is his double discourse. On one level, he stands, and has always stood, for quality filmmaking. This is evidenced mostly in his company’s pickups and in the selection of directors that have worked and are working at Miramax. On the other, he rules not just the financial side of his feud with the strictest of rules, he has also crossed over to the artistic department and tried to establish that same regime. This procedure has resulted in a string of films that have been standardized to meet a mold, Harvey Weinstein's mold, and which have been deprived of any personal characteristic they must have had until some point in the hard road from completion to theatrical release. To mess with Julie Taymor was unwise, but to apply his obvious and unwelcome brushstroke to a Martin Scorsese film is simply a rude, ghastly and unforgivable attitude. Because one thing is evident. If you decide to greenlight a picture from one of the greatest contemporary artists you have made a decision. You have dedicated some of the material resources at your disposition to the creation of Art. So, once you have signed the contact, it is logical to step off and let the man work. Just imagine what would have happened if the Pope had decided that he wanted to try out his amateurish hobby of painting in  Michelangelo's creations, which by the way he didn't think they looked all that great in his church.

Clearly, the time has come for Harvey Weinstein to step down from his throne and let Miramax be the fertile land it once was.”

J-LE writes:  “How about The Abyss for a movie that was really hurt by the cuts. Almost all the cuts were in the climax when Ed Harris finds the aliens. In the theatrical version, he just says he loves his wife and then they bring him to the surface, but in the director's cut, it shows the aliens are about to destroy Earth b/c of all the bad dealings going on and it's Ed Harris' love for his wife that causes them to change their mind. A pretty drastic change, and another instance where 20 minutes would only make the movie better.”

DO FREIS GO WITH THAT? writes: “If there was one movie I would make cuts to, it would be Steven Spielberg's maddening A.I. I distinctly remember sitting in the theatre watching David and Teddy sink to the bottom of the ocean and discover the Blue Fairy. I remember watching as the camera pulled away from David and Teddy sitting there looking at the Blue Fairy and figuring it was the end. I went to get up only to see that the credits weren't coming up, rather a completely unnecessary epilogue showing us that robots 2000 years into the future discover David and grant him his wish in his mind. If Spielberg had ended it on the ocean floor, it would have shown that David was ultimately fruitless in his quest to be a real boy. The ending Spielberg forced on us was sentimental, forced, and subscribed to the theory in Hollywood that audiences need every ending wrapped up in a neat happy finale.

I agree with you on Almost Famous. The theatrical version was my favorite film of 2000. I remember when I sat down with the longer version and being blown away by how much more texture and depth the longer cut added to the characters, especially Penny and the two guys in the band not name Jeff and Russell. Despite 30 extra minutes, the longer cut made the movie flow even faster. The examples of Almost Famous, The Abyss, and Terminator 2 of the longer versions being superior to the theatrical version should be proof enough that a director should be trusted to deliver the best movie possible, not executives or screen testing audiences. Interesting that the three movies I just mentioned were directed by men with Cameron in their name.”

PIERCED BUT NOT BEATED writes: “(Last week,) REST IN PIERCE wrote in saying that to build on your ideas, he thinks Haynes (with his work in Far From Heaven) is frying bigger fish than Sirk in the '50s.  I have to respectfully disagree, and I'm not speaking as any big admirer of Sirk's work.  I do think, however, that he was using his films as subtle exposes of an America that was soon to reveal itself in its post-war condition, i.e rampant, mundane, materialistic conformity, a banality of

life which oppressed bubbling passions in both sex and politics that would spill over, of course, in the '60s.

I find his work quite astute for the time he was working in, and fail to see what Haynes' point really is...is he comparing our times to the 50s? If so, I don't see the evidence.  Yes, Haynes can explore the ideas more fully, but that's as a product of freer times; Sirk's work did more to expose a contemporary malaise, I think, than Far From Heaven does.  I'm more inclined to simply see it as an intelligent exercise in style and character transposition rather than as a comment on contemporary times.  In those regards, I do see Sirk as frying bigger fish.”

E ME:  Add to the pile….