The Screengrab : once upon a time in the west

Not a Review of Alex Cox's "Searchers 2.0"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

As you may have deduced from the title of this post, I had originally planned to bring you a review of Alex Cox’s latest film Searchers 2.0 in this space. That’s not going to happen for the very simple reason that the screening of the film I’d planned to attend last night never happened. The official reason for the cancellation was “circumstances beyond our control.” These circumstances are somewhat mysterious, yet very disappointing for any fan of the self-described “radical filmmaker” behind Repo Man and Sid and Nancy.

Cox was scheduled to appear at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin to present both Searchers 2.0 – which was actually inspired by one the Alamo’s Rolling Roadshow events, a screening of Once Upon a Time in the West in Monument Valley – as well as the 1966 spaghetti western Arizona Colt (Italian oaters being one of Cox’s passions; he appears prominently in the documentary The Spaghetti West and he authored a just-published book on the subject, 10,000 Ways to Die.) Tonight he was to introduce his cult classic Repo Man, a screening that will still go on without him. According to the Austin Chronicle blog Picture in Picture, “The word on Cox's sudden detour into Suck City comes from the Alamo's ever-reliable (and insanely hard-working) Zack Carlson, who rang us this past Wednesday with word that Cox, for whom the Alamo had already secured plane fare from his home in Los Angeles as well as local lodging -- as they do for all incoming cinema legends (yes, even the cast of Troll 2) had mysteriously balked at the layover times in his airline itinerary. Carlson emailed back to swap flights around until Cox was satisfied, but that gambit proved fruitless, netting only a final, bewildering email from one of Cox's associates which stated that, and we quote, ‘Alex feels he has been mistreated and has chosen to cancel his appearance.’”

I interviewed Cox in connection with his scheduled appearance (you can read it here), and found him good-humored and entertaining, as I always have in his talking head interviews and commentary tracks. Honestly, I’ve generally found him more interesting as a film fan than a filmmaker. Although Repo Man is one of my desert island discs, and I’m very fond of his little-seen Three Businessmen, a shaggy dog story that plays like a cross between Slacker and a Bunuel film. Most of his filmography is more fun to hear him talk about than it is to watch, but I was looking forward to Searchers 2.0, which looks to be right in my wheelhouse. Maybe there’s another side to this story that doesn’t make Cox look like a petty jerk. I sure hope he has a better reason for letting so many people down than inconvenient airport layovers. Not too radical.

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Nick Schager's Top Ten Best Movies Ever!

1) DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)
2) THE SHINING (1980)

With all due respect to Stephen King, who famously disliked this adaptation of his novel, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is horror cinema nirvana, an unsettling vision of paternal and spousal madness crafted with the director’s trademark icy precision. Jack Nicholson’s performance is deservedly iconic, yet it’s the disquietingly unnatural atmosphere – generated by, among other things, those little twin ghouls, the nude grandma specter in the bathtub, Looney Tunes cartoons, and subtle allusions to Native American history – that truly turns this haunted hotel tale into a nerve-jangling classic.

3) MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)
4) ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)
5) BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)
6) LE SAMOURAI (1967)
7) STALKER (1979)
8) AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972)

The production of Aguirre: The Wrath of God was so troubled that, as rumor has it, director Werner Herzog either threatened to shoot star Klaus Kinski, or plotted to have his indigenous cast members do the dirty deed once shooting was completed. Such insanity may be fantasy, but it’s in keeping with the spirit of Herzog’s mesmerizing 1972 feature about the titular Spanish conquistador, whose adventurous exploration of the wild unknown in search of greatness makes him a fitting surrogate for the mad genius director.

9) POINT BLANK (1967)
10) CRISS CROSS (1949)

Robert Siodmak is better remembered for 1946’s The Killers, a superb noir in its own right. Yet it’s this relatively unsung gem that stands as the director’s finest work in the genre, a beautifully constructed, sensual and tense thriller – about Burt Lancaster’s lovesick loner returning home to L.A. and becoming embroiled in a love triangle with his ex, Yvonne De Carlo, and her new gangster beau Dan Duryea – that expertly delivers all those things noir is famous for: love, obsession, betrayal, and a fatalism so potent that it leaves a lasting mark.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributor: Nick Schager

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

7. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)

I could go into (a little bit of) detail about how Leone simultaneously anticipates the "demythologized" Westerns of the 1970s and beyond and blows them all out of the water, but to do so would be pigeonholing the film's achievement. This film isn't just the greatest Western of all time -- it's one of the all-time great experiences one can have in a movie theatre. Sergio Leone's command of iconography is second to none, and his juxtaposition of pore-baring closeups and expansive landscapes is justifiably legendary. Many have called this film "operatic," and for good reason; this is an epic story told on a grand scale, with wonderfully archetypal characters who linger on and on in the mind. Much credit is due to the great Ennio Morricone, whose score defines the film's characters by their respective musical themes (love the way Henry Fonda's acid-guitar theme and Charles Bronson's guitar noodling mesh, suggesting their shared fate). One of the greatest pleasures for a filmgoer is finding a timeless scene -- a "Moment Out of Time," as it were. Once Upon a Time in the West is so assured and startling that it contains one Moment Out of Time after another, adding up to a peerless entertainment -- tense, moving, funny, artful, exciting as all hell, and above all the very cinematic definition of "iconic." (PC)

6. CITIZEN KANE (1941)

Yes, I know that including Citizen Kane on a “best movies ever” list is something of a cliché. But I’m not including it out of obligation -- I’m including it because it’s awesome. And while much of that has to do with the storytelling innovations of Orson Welles and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, the movie would feel like a cinematic bran muffin if not for the showman’s flair with which Welles infused every frame. Newly arrived in Hollywood after a stint as the wunderkind of stage and radio, Welles made the most of his shot at the big time, flush with the brashness of youth -- twenty-five years old, folks! -- while perhaps realizing he might never get a gig this sweet again (he didn’t, of course). So rather than playing it cool and keeping an eye on his long-term career, Welles poured every bit of inspiration he had into Kane, using every trick in the cinema’s arsenal, including some that were still in their infancy. But it’s Welles’ gusto -- and not incidentally, his genius -- that comes through most clearly, and even though his ideas have been co-opted and warmed over by thousands of films since, almost none has mustered up the same magic. (PC)

5. THE GODFATHER, PART II (1974)

Here’s the criteria I tried to abide by while picking the top ten best movies of all time: I wouldn’t list my ten favorite films, because I have a personal connection to some movies that I can’t possibly justify as all-time greats. And I didn’t want to go the "I've been told a thousand times that Grand Illusion is the best movie ever, so I better include it or I'll look like a schmuck" route, either. So I asked myself, “Self, gun to your head, no time to think, what is the greatest movie of all time?” The “gun to your head” part made it an easy choice – The Godfather, Part II. A bajillion gallons of ink have already been spilled praising its complex, large canvas storytelling, timeless themes, masterfully executed set pieces and brilliant performances, so I won’t pretend I have anything new to add. I’ll just mention a few images that come to mind: Robert De Niro running across a Depression-era New York rooftop, breaking a gun down into pieces and disposing of them as the sounds of a street festival waft up from below; Lee Strasberg dismissively passing a solid gold telephone around a table; Francis Coppola’s camera tracking through the Corleone compound as autumn leaves swirl around the yard. And if every masterpiece must have a flaw, well, we’ll always have Diane Keaton screaming “It was an ABORTION!” (Oh, and that first Godfather movie? That one’s pretty good, too.) (SVD)

4. THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939) & LA GRANDE ILLUSION (1937)

Two masterpieces in two years (with La Bête Humaine, a near masterpiece, in between). La Grande Illusion was the rarest of war movies, a film that never showed a battle but focused on the aftermath, a film that argued that war is inhuman in every sense of the word, which could devolve into a bumper sticker (such as the ubiquitous "war is bad for children and other living beings") but miraculously doesn't. Jean Renoir's humanism can never be underestimated. All of his characters are three-dimensional, and all -- even the sad, flawed German Captain von Rauffenstein (played by Erich Von Stroheim) -- are deserving of your sympathy. La Règle du jeu has the same commitment to the saving grace of underlying humanity, even as it explodes the Edwardian upstairs-downstairs upper-crust comedy of manners. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Hayden Childs

A Big Bowl of Spaghetti Westerns with Alex Cox

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:30:00 GMT

If you’ve ever seen the IFC documentary The Spaghetti West or the extras on the Once Upon a Time in the West DVD, you know Alex Cox loves him some Italian westerns. “My obsession with the spaghetti western started early,” Cox writes in The Financial Times. (Really, Commie Alex? The Financial Times? That just seems wrong, somehow.) “Mostly, I blame my schooling. While it’s thought that girls do better, academically and socially, if educated separately from boys, the awful corollary of this is that boys would be educated separately from girls. And that – as I discovered when attending a single-sex grammar on the Wirral in the mid-1960s, where arbitrary violence and crazed sadists ruled the playground – is a horrible thing.”

Cox theorizes that attending a mixed-sex school might have facilitated an appreciation for nuanced cinema, but as it turned out, “the world I knew best had more in common with the psychos and testosterone freaks depicted in the new Italian, or spaghetti, westerns that emerged during this period.” Since the American western was in serious decline in the mid-60s, it was up to the Italians to pick up the slack. “For them, westerns were a great fantasy world, something they had enjoyed in films or comic books. Yet their take on the wild west was something quite different. Hollywood had chosen to manufacture a certain type of product, pretending this was what the audience wanted: it was sentimental, propagandistic, authoritarian stuff. The Italian directors made cynical – ironic would be too mild a word – popular action films, sometimes about gladiators, sometimes about spies. All featured the kind of infantile male violence that greatly appealed to teenage boys such as me and my classmates. The fact that the Italian westerns tended to receive an X certificate – and were, therefore, banned to all under 16 – made the thrill even bigger to 13- and 14-year-old boys.”

After arriving at UCLA in the mid-70s, Cox finally tracked down his holy grail of spaghetti westerns, Django. He even wrote a book on his favorite genre, 10,000 Ways to Die. It was never published, but a new version of the book is due out soon, and you can download the original (re-titled Massacre Time) from Cox’s website.

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Yesterday marked the 100th day of the Obama presidency, which means I’m cautiously starting to believe that Bush is maybe really, actually gone and won’t suddenly pop up again for one last attack like Freddy Krueger at the end of Nightmare On Elm Street.

Cheney and Rove and the rest of the neo-conservative gang are still with us, of course, and the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world certainly didn’t need the full 100 days to determine they were right all along about Obama’s anarchist-fascist-abstract-impressionist agenda.

Most of the rest of America (and the world), meanwhile, thinks the new administration is actually off to a pretty good start -- and while great beginnings don’t always lead to happy endings, they at least give us some...what’s that word again? Oh yeah, HOPE...

...much like the opening sequences in the following movies, which hooked us right from the get-go and made us completely forget about sneaking out of the theater to see what was playing on the next screen over and/or changing channels.

Of course, your pals here at the Screengrab fully appreciate the irony of running this list in light of recent events here in our little corner of the cyber-verse...but, considering that every ending brings with it the possibility of a new beginning, what better time, really, to salute OUR FAVORITE OPENING SCENES OF ALL TIME!!!!!

TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)

The mother of all tracking shots opens with a bomb being set -- telling us right away that it will explode in three minutes -- and hidden in the trunk of a ludicrously long and garish vehicle. Then begins the long dance through the streets of Tijuana. The camera pulling ahead of the car, but the car always catching up or passing, always staying in frame. The sound (on the reconstructed version, at least) is disorienting, as passing through the streets of a busy nightlife district can be, with different noises blaring for attention. As soon as they appear, the camera is focused on Janet Leigh and Charlton Heston, paced by the car with the bomb, crossing the numerous obstacles in their path. As they arrive at the border crossing, the film reveals that they are just married, and he is a Mexican policeman (yes, yes, ha ha) known for taking down a drug ring. He laughs it off and, just as the car passes them, moves in to kiss his wife. BOOM! In the next couple of minutes, we'll meet Hank Quinlan, as much a power-mad racist as The Searchers' Ethan Edwards, but far more monstrous and strangely vulnerable. But the rest of the movie belongs to him. Here, at the beginning, the movie belongs to that single unbroken shot that defied the millions of things that could go wrong and introduced most of the major themes, all without breaking a sweat. Astonishing, even now. (HC)

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)

Three killers are waiting for a train. One of them, his craggy, weather-beaten face a dead ringer for the desert landscape that surrounds them, is distracted by an annoying fly. Water drips onto the hat of another, until enough has accumulated for him to tip the hat to his lips and take a cool drink. The buzzing of the fly and the dripping of the water and the creaky whine of a windmill are the only sounds we hear, until that whine fades into the whistle of the approaching train. Their intended victim has arrived. He plays a harmonica and looks like Charles Bronson. Extreme close-ups give way to the widest of widescreen vistas, the whole of the wild west in one deep focus shot of impending violence. This is how you build suspense, Sergio Leone style. (SVD)

RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

Even exposition can be thrilling when the Coen Brothers are operating at the peak of their powers. Accompanied by the spirited whistling and banjo-plucking of Carter Burwell, Nicolas Cage’s sleepy drawl narrates the tale of an unusual courtship. Recidivist H.I. McDunnough is such a regular at the mug shot station, he becomes smitten with the photographer, a spunky officer named Ed. (Short for Edwina.) Hilarious bite-size vignettes of small-time crime (“I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn’t easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House”), prison life (“When there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand”), parole hearings (“These doors gonna swing wide”) and pitching woo (“I’m walkin’ in here on my knees, Ed”) sketch the unfolding romance, which gives way to trailer park life, the daily grind and the yearning for a critter as the banjo plunges joyfully into Beethoven’s Ninth. Endlessly quotable, relentlessly rewatchable, kinetic as a Bugs Bunny cartoon, this opening sets the stage for one of the zippiest romps in the Coen catalogue. (SVD)

THE PLAYER (1992)

Robert Altman’s cutting Hollywood critique self-consciously strives for Wellesian grandeur in its impressive 8-minute single take opening shot, which makes its homage upfront by having a character overtly reference the Touch of Evil sequence (as well as Bernardo Bertolucci’s sustained tracking shot in The Sheltering Sky) upon which it’s based. Altman uses this bravura scene to firmly establish his major studio milieu and the various, cretinous industry clowns who populate it, mocking the agents, pitch-men and execs who manufacture the country’s celluloid dreams. The shot’s inquisitive, labyrinthine movements subtly suggest the probing survey to come. And Altman’s opening proves a hilariously caustic encapsulation of his story’s modus operandi – to scathingly ridicule the Hollywood machine via the type of dazzling, daring filmmaking that, as evidenced by comments made by the scene’s various dunderheaded players, has little place in a studio system where market-focused creativity-by-committee is the rule. (NS)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager

OST: "Once Upon a Time in the West"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Sergio Leone had to be talked into making Once Upon a Time in the West. He'd moved on; he wanted to make movies in America, and he'd already begun pre-production on a gangster epic he hoped would do to the golden age of crime pictures what he'd been doing to the golden age of westerns for a decade. But a lot of producers had made a lot of money off of his so-called 'spaghetti westerns', and they wanted to make more. So they dangled such a big paycheck in front of him that, in 1968, he agreed to go back to the well one more time. He was going to finally fulfill his threat to totally dismantle the western and rebuild it from the ground up; and he wasn't going to do it without Ennio Morricone.

Though he scored a number of Leone's best films and came to be associated with the 'sound of spaghetti', Morricone is largely still known to American audiences as the author of the memorable main theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And while that's a pretty strange piece of music in terms of traditional film scores, it doesn't even begin to give you an idea of what a truly wierd musician Morricone really is. Capable at any given moment of unleashing nearly cacaphonous serial music, floods of distorted, ultra-loud guitars, haunting minimalist refrains, bizarre and atonal free-jazz sounds, shrieking electronic tones, or simple and elegant variations on traditional folk music. Such wide and varied sounds are in ample evidence in the composer's vast catalogue; many of his best (and strangest) pieces of music were composed as soundtrack music for long-forgotten Italian movies, but put all together in one pot, a service performed by American avant-garde aficionado and punk vocalist Mike Patton on his indispensable Crime and Dissonance series, they represent one of the most restless imaginations of any contemporary musician. With Ennio Morricone, you knew you'd be getting something of quality, but you might not have any idea whatsoever what it was going to be. Such was the case with Once Upon a Time in the West.

Amazingly -- especially given what a total triumph the final product turned out to be -- Morricone's score for Once Upon a Time in the West almost didn't get used. He wrote its major pieces to fit an early version of the script, and by the time the memorably bleak western started filming, the plot -- as well as the cast and much of the action -- had changed and Morricone was no longer available to rewrite. But Sergio Leone, who was always a good judge of talent, knew what a winner he had on his hands with the stellar score, and did something nearly unprecedented in the history of motion picture production: he changed scenes and tailored the action on screen to fit the parts of the soundtrack that had already been recorded. This wasn't always easy, as Morricone's passion at the time was for incorporating ambient environmental sound into his music, and many of the tunes contained strange, if effective, bits of background noise that were hard to fit to the action on screen; but Leone kept at it, and the result is one of the most perfect blends of film and music of its decade.

BEST TRACKS: The soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West -- which, for all its perfection as a compliment to the film, works very well on its own as a listening experience -- starts out with three of the most powerful, precise and stunning pieces of music in all of motion picture scores. The opening theme, named for the film's title, is a glorious, majestic piece of symphonic music, evoking the wide-open spaces of the West and invoking pure Americana as it echoes the intertwining themes of Charles Ives. The second track, "As a Judgment", brings us some perfect gunfight music, ramped up to a maximum of chaotic tension with vibed-out, reverberating, echoey, feedback-driven guitars whose distortion carries in them a mood of hate. And the third, "Farewell to Cheyenne", is a pitch-perfect conjuration of traditional cowboy movie music, with its propulsive percussion and wailing harmonica. The whole score is simply fantastic -- other great tracks include the 12-tone masterpiece "The Transgression", the eerily heroic "Man with a Harmonica", and the subversively folksy "Jill's America" -- but it starts off with nine minutes of utter perfection.

Unwatchable #77: “BloodRayne 2: Deliverance”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Here’s a nice change of pace. In our last installment, we looked at the zombie western The Quick and the Undead. This time it’s the vampire western BloodRayne 2: Deliverance. If there are any mummy westerns awaiting further up the list, well, I’d just as soon be surprised.

BloodRayne 2 is the first Uwe Boll movie we’ve encountered on our journey up the Bottom 100 chart, but I’m confident it won’t be the last. Boll is, of course, the renowned videogame-to-movie schlockmeister and favored punching bag of internet movie geeks. And true to form, BloodRayne 2 is a videogame adaptation, although I must confess to being familiar neither with the game nor the first BloodRayne movie. Because I care, I did a little research before settling down to enjoy the film. Here are my findings: Rayne is a half-human, half-vampire hybrid known as a dhampir. Her father was the king of the vampires and was played by Ben Kingsley, and this sort of makes me wish I was watching the original rather than the sequel. Alas, there is no Kingsley (nor any other known actors) in BloodRayne 2, which was released directly to video.

I also gather that the first BloodRayne was set in 18th century Romania, whereas BloodRayne 2 is set in the Old West town of Deliverance. (Confusingly enough, the BloodRayne videogame was set during World War II, but we’ve got enough to worry about without getting into that.) Deliverance is a quiet little place that’s just now getting the railroad, and reporter Newton Pyles (Chris Coppola), who has been dispatched from the east coast to collect true tales of the wild, wild west, is having trouble finding anything wild to write about. That is, until a pack of vampires descends on the town to feed on the children of Deliverance. Their leader: Billy the Kid! Billy the Kid with a Romanian accent! Just like in all the stories.

Who can stop these fiends? Only the dhampir Rayne (Natassia Malthe, #53 on Maxim’s 100 Sexiest Women list). Sure, in her leather cowgirl outfit she looks like she should be pouring Jager shots and dancing on the bar at Coyote Ugly, but she’s handy with swords and guns that fire silver bullets rubbed in garlic and blessed with holy water. Her showdown with Billy the Kid is one for the ages, assuming the ages were between 9 and 9:30 last night.

I have to assume this is not close to Uwe Boll’s worst work, because it’s pretty much indistinguishable from any other straight-to-video genre junk. Boll rips off musical cues from Once Upon a Time in the West and Deadwood, so at least he steals from the good stuff. There is one scene that, while not particularly well executed, at least caught my attention. It involves a trap Billy the Kid sets, with the town’s children rigged up with nooses around their necks and Rayne struggling to balance a weight that will keep them from being hanged. But now that I think of it, Boll probably ripped that off from a better movie, too.

Previously on Unwatchable:
78. The Quick and the Undead
79. Anus Magillicutty
80. The Smokers
81. Soccer Dog: The Movie
82. American Soldiers

Video of the Day: Once Upon a Time in My Lounging Pyjamas

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:45:00 GMT

What did the great director Sergio Leone do between the conclusion of his great 'spaghetti western' trilogy and the debut of his American films, Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America? Apparently, he sat around in a tiki-themed auditorium in a goofy-looking robe, auditioning for the role of Tropical Santa Claus.

In this rare bit of interview footage from 1984, Leone discusses how American audiences are always willing to "punish success and reward failure", talks about how he never wanted to make another western again before he was pressured into making Once Upon a Time in the West, and uses the word 'totally' like a seasoned 15-year-old. Take a look.

The Top Ten Movies With Alternate Cuts, Part 1

Phil Nugent — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:00:00 GMT

What is it about alternate cuts? A cynical marketing tool to sell an old movie or the chance for the filmmakers to finally unveil their true vision of the film? In the old days, studios wouldn't bother with keeping trims and outtakes; better to dump them in the sea and save the space for something more worthwhile. Most of the great filmmakers suffered from this. Orson Welles couldn't reconstruct his version of The Magnificent Ambersons, and even more recently, William Friedkin couldn't find the footage to finally unleash his preferred cut of Cruising. In the old days, if you wanted to see the alternate cut of a movie, you had to go to another country. Graham Greene didn't dig the shortened version of Once Upon A Time In The West, so he told his readers to go to Paris to see the uncut version. Friedkin went apeshit when he found out that Sorcerer, his beloved remake of The Wages of Fear, had been completely re-cut by the European distributors, so that the opening character prologues instead appeared as flashbacks, usually whenever a character was just about to blow up. Here, though, is a list of ten alternate cuts that are well worth your time. — Faisal A. Qureshi

BLADE RUNNER (1982, Ridley Scott)

How many different versions of this film are there? Warner Brothers did everyone except eBay bootleggers a favor when they put all five on one platter. First there was the U.S. voice-over cut, then the international cut (for a few frames of ultra-violence that those decadent Europeans dig) and then the authorized director's cut. Hold on a minute though, Ridley Scott kept saying that actually wasn't his final cut, so he went back to the editing room and came out with his definitive final cut (and let's not forget the 70mm Workprint that kicked the whole thing off). Basically, film lovers wouldn't have alternate cuts of movies if it wasn't for Blade Runner. It was the film that showed that ten years after the first release and proved you could still make cash from your old films. Which version is the best though? Well, that's up to you. I thought changing Rutger Hauer's "I want more life, fucker" to "father" kind of sucked and spoiled an otherwise decent flick, but WB did the decent thing and actually made sure all of them are there for your perusal. Heck, maybe I should go into the editing room and cut my own personally approved cut of Blade Runner. I mean, they do give you everything in this package.

THE SHINING (1980, Stanley Kubrick)

How can a filmmaker allow two different cuts of a film in release? If you're Stanley Kubrick, you can do everything. Whilst US audiences had the pleasure of a 147-minute cut of the Stephen King adaptation, the rest of the world just had the pleasure of a two-hour cut of the film, both approved by the director. Sure, Eyes Wide Shut had CGI figures covering some naughty bits, and he trimmed twenty minutes from 2001 after its world premiere, but this is different: Kubrick allowed both cuts to co-exist. What's the difference between them? Well, it's mostly scene shortening and dialogue trims, including bits where Scatman Crothers' character is going back to the Overlook Hotel to see what the heck is going on there. At one point you could get both versions on DVD, but with the recent re-release of the longer cut of The Shining, expect to see the shorter cut to disappear from existence. And did you know that there's a third version that had an alternate ending that was trimmed from all prints a week after its US release?

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)

As far as I'm aware, there are four versions of this film lying around, the longest being a five hour workprint that you can probably bit torrent now from bad VHS dupes. But Coppola re-released the original theatrical and the Redux edition together. Which one's better? For my money, I prefer the theatrical release, as Sheen just comes out as a mean brooding muthafucka. Redux is good to have, but for me, that music in the French plantation scene just spoiled the entire mood of the flick and the film never recovered completely from that moment on. Currently available on DVD but without the excellent Hearts of Darkness documentary included, what really spoils the film is cinematographer Vittorio Storraro's insistence that the film be transferred at his preferred retrospective Univisium 2:1 aspect ratio instead of 2.35:1 of its original release. If you want to see it properly, best to record a HD broadcast straight onto your hard drive, cause Storraro ain't having you watch it any other way.

EXORCIST 4 (2005, Renny Harlin, Paul Schrader)

Orson Welles had his ending for The Magnificent Ambersons re-shot by a studio hack, but enough of the film survived to be eventually regarded as a butchered classic. When Paul Schrader was kicked off the Exorcist prequel by Morgan Creek, rumors started circulating of his cut being some horror classic that had been 99% re-shot by studio hack Renny Harlin. A vocal internet campaign and the disastrous reception of the Harlin version resulted in Schrader's film being released to re-coup some of Morgan Creek's investment in the film, but the response was indifferent. Harlin's cut is goofy fun, with OTT sequences that make no sense but do crank up some foley effect on the soundtrack. Schrader's is Bergmanesque in comparison, interesting to watch and with a great performance by French pop star Billy Crawford as the possessed boy in need of exorcism. Both prequels are interesting to see a study in rhythm: Harlin has the actors play it fast and cuts every couple of seconds, whilsts Schrader meditates on his scenes, trying to build the tension up slowly.

TOUCH OF EVIL (1958, Orson Welles)

Orson Welles' sleazy cop thriller was first known only in a ninety-minute version, then in an extended 108-min cut that was found and re-released in 1976, but cineastes had to wait until 1998, when Rick Schmidlin and Walter Murch did a re-cut of the film based on a fifty-eight-page memo that Welles had sent the studio. (Needless to say, the studio ignored him completely.) After the restoration was released, the 1976 cut was retired to the vault, and what a pity that was. I'm not a fan of the restored edition; the limitations of the picture restoration can be seen in the opening sequence, when the picture softens at each point where a title had originally appeared. But the worse aspect is the removal of the excellent Henry Mancini score. Universal has no plans to re-release both cuts on DVD so until then, compare both openings and see what you'd like.

Click here for Part 2!

The Rep Report (October 11 - 28)

Peter Smith — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: The Brooklyn Academy of Music gives the borough's literary poster boy a chance to display his wide-ranging taste in movies with the program Jonathan Lethem Selects (October 15 - November 19). Those looking for hard-to-find rough gems will be especially attracted to the "Hitman Double Feature" on October 22, with Don Siegel's The Hitman (1958) paired with the taut B classic Murder by Contract (1958), well directed by Irving Lerner and starring Vince Edwards as an icy fellow who's putting himself through college by performing mob hits on the side. On November 12, a screening of the gritty seventies Dustin Hoffman vehicle Straight Time will be followed by a discussion between Lethem and the movie's director, Ulu Grosbard.

LOS ANGELES: The Los Angeles County of Museum of Art presents Life and So Much More: The Films of Abbas Kiarostami (October 12 - 27), with ten features and three triple bills of shorts by the leading figure in Iranian cinema. A great opportunity for the curious or the benighted to catch up.

BERKELEY: Attention, Leone freaks: Once upon a Time in Widescreen: The Films of Sergio Leone (October 12 - 28) has everything you could want — the Dollars trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America, and the messed-up but lovable Duck, You Sucker, starring Rod Steiger as a Mexican bandit and James Coburn as a wayward IRA soldier — in the format you love, with many of them shown in restored prints.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: We may not have a labor movement in this country anymore, but that's no reason not to kick back and celebrate the 2007 DC Labor Filmfest (October 11 - 17) at the AFI Silver Theater. "Organized and presented by the Metropolitan Washington Council of the AFL-CIO, the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute and the American Film Institute," the festival presents "an array of new films and beloved classics about work and workers," including a mini-fest of works by the living soul of socially committed British kitchen-sink drama, Ken Loach. (The selection includes Loach's Los Angeles movie, Bread and Roses and his little-screened documentary on the 1980 British miners' strike, Which Side Are You On?) The program also includes the Japanese comedy Hula Girls, the German documentary Our Daily Bread, and that one American movie in a billion that says something about working for a living in a way that most people seem able to relate to: Mike Judge's Office Space.

— Phil Nugent