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Director’s Cuts: Remastered by the Old Masters

The advent of incredibly flexibly home media has had an amazing impact on the world of film, right down to how the damn things are made. With producers carefully putting together additional content (or “bonus features”) for the eventual release of the film on home video (if that phrase means anything these days), and the temptation to “retouch” old films to bring them to the standard of the current format of entertainment system, it’s little surprise that we’ve seen the upswing that we have in the market for “Director’s Cuts” and “Extended Editions”. I’m kinda wondering if we’re entering a phase where all movies should be viewed in the same light as George Lucas views his own: they’re works in progress, never finished.

Screenshot from the mythic "Deckard is Keyzer Soze" ending to Blade Runner

Screenshot from the mythic "Deckard is Keyzer Soze" ending to Blade Runner

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What Kind of May Has it Been?

I’m off on holidays for the next few days, so you won’t hear from me until next weekend. I just thought I’d have a very quick look at how the “now arriving a month early” summer box office season is going so far. Back at the start of the month I predicted a massive summer, even by Hollywood’s standards. Would I care to revise my estimates, one month in?

Keep on Trekkin'

Keep on Trekkin'

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Is the Terminator Franchise Terminated?

In the knowledge that Terminator: Salvation has ‘only’ taken in $71m at the US Box Office, having cost over $200m to make and market, prognosticators are rushing to pronounce the Terminator franchise as dead. The facts don’t look good – so far it has earned less than the previous franchise killer (the disappointing-in-so-many-ways Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines), it is reviewing badly, and it got its ass handed to it by a Ben Stiller family comedy. This is surely bad news for Warner Brothers, the studio that produced the other $200m ‘dud’ of the year, Watchmen – but does it really signal the end for everyone’s favourite time-traveling robotic assassin?

No bones (or metallic endoskeleton) about it...

No bones (or metallic endoskeleton) about it...

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What is up with the Watchmen DVD?

What is up with the Watchmen DVD? As early as August last year, we were promised super-dooper, hyper-deluxe extra-classy DVD and Bluray release that had fans’ slobbering. A longer cut? You got it. A cut branching the Tale of the Black Freighter into the narrative? You got that too. Hell, there was even talk of a theatrical re-release of the film come August 2009.

However, since the movie opened to… divided critical and geek-based reception, and since it faded (rather than burnt) out of the Box Office, there has been next nothing. DVD sites are listing the disk as available for purchase, but no date is listed. The more experienced DVD/blu ray tea-leaf readers speculate that 28th July looks fortuitous for an American release, along with a raft of other geek-friendly titles.

Let the jokes about multiple blu(ray) packages commence...

Let the jokes about multiple blu(ray) packages commence...

I just find it curious that a date had yet to be set – I’m certain there are a whole host of geeks out there salivating at the prospect of the release. I plan on waiting for the extended cuts at the end of the year – I’d hope for a deluxe Blade Runner style release with a slew of disks and branching options available so I can watch the Watchmen anyway I want. I’m still not entirely sure what I make of the film, but I’d like to see it again a couple of times before I finally make up my mind – it’s certainly a different and daring film for a mainstream Hollywood production. Whether it was necessary is another discussion, but not one I’m going to have right now…

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Watchmen is an adaptation of Alan Moore’s (Swamp Thing, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta) landmark graphic novel, directed by Zach Snyder (300, Dawn of the Dead) and starring Billy Crudup (The Good Sheppard, Public Enemies), Patrick Wilson (Angels in America, Lakeview Terrace), Stephen McHattie (300, A History of Violence), Carla Gugino (Sin City, Spy Kids) and Patrick Earle Haley (Little Children, Bad News Bears). It was release worldwide on the 6th March 2009, which looks much cooler in American format: 03.06.09.