which DIRECTOR'S CUT, EXTENDED or SPECIAL EDITION sucked?

[TheBaxter]

I hated 40 year old virgin. Stve Carrel was so unfunny in it. The scene where he gets waxed. Couldn't he have come up with better lines that a kid could say but better? 'Fuck me in the asshole', 'I hate you'. Is that the funniest you can say when being waxed? Is that a comedian's imagination? If people are going ot pay you millions to come up with something a child could say, you might as well not pay you this or pay a child to do your job. Cue some Struggling Background Artist who's going to disagree with me here and come up with some bonehead apologetic excuse. That makes you a Struggling Background Artist.

i don't see what any of this has to do with director's cuts or extended editions.

It's part of the Special Edition. Which is what this thread is entitled. Are we clear? ARE WE CLEAR????!!!!

since that scene is also in the original theatrical cut... no, you're not clear.

[Fievel]

Well, he was being genuinely waxed. Maybe the normal response is "Fuck me in the asshole."

Um, no. He's a comeian, an artist, he says things a bit more than just 'normal'. Neither was he playing the normal card here. If you remember correctly, he already had lines 'pre-written' on a card for that scene that he was using to formulate a response, a more clever response, something more imaginative and funny, less predicatable. So your argument holds no water. Thank you for playing, but no thank you.

Scottyspotty/Sir Shitstain Sr?

Sure sounds like it.

[caruso_stalker217]

Whoever he is, something sure seems to have climbed up his shit shaft.

[Docventure]

All I know is, when I see an "UNRATED" version, I steer clear of it. 2 extra seconds of Unrated footage isn't worth my time.

[EricG]

Has anybody brought up Alien 3 Special Edition? Haven't watched it in a while but from what I remember...

BALLS!


and the director's cut of the Chronicles of Riddick has some pretty pathetic scenes in it...... not only that, some of the original footage is MISSING! WTF!?!?

[caruso_stalker217]

This is usually the part where I go off on a long rant about how totally fucking awesome ALIEN³ is (Charles Dance, fucking represent) but you're new around here and that's no way to welcome a Zoner.

[Peven]

yeah, and then i would have to represent the Alien3 sucks shit camp and we don't want to have that go 'round again

[caruso_stalker217]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm sure we can find a middle ground with Charles Dance, though. Come on. Charles Dance. Charles fucking Dance, man.

[Peven]

who's Charles Dance?

[caruso_stalker217]

[tapehead]

Dude was in Space Truckers, fer Chrissakes!






(he's a little known actor realy, and despite being pretty fuckin' good in Alien Cubed, he's only notable in a dtv, OLEG kinda way)


No doubt you've seen him on an episode of Bleak House or something - he did an Ian Fleming biopic a while back that wasn't too bad.

[caruso_stalker217]

THE GOLDEN FUCKIN' CHILD.

"My dear brother Numsy!"

[CeeBeeUK]

Last Action Hero...

[tapehead]

THE GOLDEN CHILD.

Last Action Hero...

What was I thinking? of course, he's Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin wrapped in a smooth coating of David Niven.

[EricG]

This is usually the part where I go off on a long rant about how totally fucking awesome ALIEN³ is (Charles Dance, fucking represent) but you're new around here and that's no way to welcome a Zoner.

Dont worry about me mate, I'm a long lost zoner from way back before the zone went public.....I can take your your rants.

Don't get me wrong I liked Alien 3, but the director's cut/spec edition is just a waste of time....

[caruso_stalker217]

I believe that the special edition is the exact opposite of wasting time. I'm not sure what that would be, though. It sounds fairly productive.

[BlueHawaiiSurfer]

I believe that the special edition is the exact opposite of wasting time. I'm not sure what that would be, though. It sounds fairly productive.

I haven't seen the SE. What's different about it? I also liked the movie, but I haven't seen it since the theater.

[caruso_stalker217]

I'll let Wikipedia do the talking this time:

An alternate version of Alien³ (officially titled the "Assembly Cut") with over 30 minutes of additional footage was released on the 9-disc Alien Quadrilogy box-set in 2003. Nearly 3/4 of the scenes in this version contain footage not included in the 1992 theatrical release. Director David Fincher, although giving 20th Century Fox permission to release this enhanced version to DVD, was the one director from the entire franchise who declined to participate in the box-set, even to record a commentary track.

The Assembly Cut edition has several key plot elements that differ from the theatrical release. The alien gestates in an ox rather than a dog, and one of the inmates discovers a dead facehugger which is visually different from those seen in the previous films. Some scenes are extended to focus more on the religious views of the inmates. Most notably, in the Assembly Cut the inmates succeed in their attempt to trap the alien, but it is later released by the disturbed inmate Golic. Some differences in the final scene include the alien queen not bursting from Ripley's chest as she falls into the furnace.

Also of note in the Assembly Cut's opening foreword, and throughout the movie, are several pieces of audio that are of noticeably lower quality, which feature often during footage not included in the theatrical release. The lower quality is attributed to damaged audio which had not been used in years. These scenes are generally accompanied by subtitles due to some of them being so poor quality that what is being said is nearly inaudible.

This version also creates a few more plot holes and inconsistencies (because this movie just doesn't have enough) such as where the fuck did that Superfacehugger come from? You only see one egg at the beginning, one Facehugger Classic and then they throw this other Facehugger in there.

Also, Murphy calls out to his dog in one scene even though there is no dog in this version.

Anyway, despite that stuff I still think the assembly cut is the superior version. At least it doesn't have that goofy chestburster muppet with the Parkinson's.

[Spandau Belly]

Also of note in the Assembly Cut's opening foreword, and throughout the movie, are several pieces of audio that are of noticeably lower quality, which feature often during footage not included in the theatrical release. The lower quality is attributed to damaged audio which had not been used in years. These scenes are generally accompanied by subtitles due to some of them being so poor quality that what is being said is nearly inaudible.

I was really surprised they didn't just hire some voice actors to fill in those couple of moments. I mean, your standard Steven Seagal DTV movie seems to find the budget to loop in lines by a dude who is clearly not Seagal for the sake of clarity or something, so why not bust that out for Alien 3? I mean, I've worked as a voice actor, I'm pretty cheap, I could probably do a passable Lance Henkrikson, better than suddenly reading subtitles.

[tapehead]

Talk about Deja fucking vu...

I was sure there was another thread as well, just can't find it right now...

[sonnyboo]

I just saw the AMADEUS: THE DIRECTORS CUT, and I liked it. It didn't slow down or detract at all. I dug it lots.

[Spandau Belly]

I just saw the AMADEUS: THE DIRECTORS CUT, and I liked it. It didn't slow down or detract at all. I dug it lots.

It does change it though, especially the pacing. The focus goes a lot more off Salieri and onto Mozart and his wife.

It's not a bad cut, but I prefer the theatrical one. I have the theatrical cut on this old out-of-print DVD where I have to flip the disc halfway through. I know the theatrical cut went out of print on regular DVD, I don't know if the Blu-Ray gives you the choice of which cut you watch.

It should.

These bluray sons of bitches are already getting lazy. I remember when DVD first came out they really pushed the format by getting all sorts of extras. They dumped plenty of movies onto DVD without any touchup at all, but they at least went all out for most of the bigger titles. Then they started to scale back and eventually end up with this bullshit where you have to pay four more dollars to get the "special edition" which is released at the same time as the bare bones edition.

With bluray there should be even more of a push to make every disc a superspecial edition with everything they can put on it since the public at large doesn't really appreciate the jump in screen resolution as something worth upgrading to. With VHS to DVD it was an easier sell because the jump from analogue to digital was obvious to anybody.

I'm just saying I'd like the theatrical Amadeus cut all in one go, looking and sounding great. Is that too much to ask? I mean, that theatrical cut did sweep the fucking Oscars and all so somebody other than I liked it.

[TheButcher]

From AMAZON:

After almost a year of anticipation, the trumpeted "ultimate director's cut" of the beloved 1979 camp classic arrived - and it made George Lucas's belated Star Wars reeditions, with their already proverbially inane "Greedo shooting first" and "Hayden Christensen's head inserted over Sebastian Shaw" changes look like genuine improvements.

Walter Hill just managed to do what medicine previously thought unimaginable - he raped himself. He took a film loved by no less than four generations and murdered it, spat on it and desecrated its corpse.

The "ultimate cut" was turned into an imbecilic quasi-comic book film. Hill destroyed numerous legendary scenes by inserting awkward zooms, awkward cuts at pivotal moments, and - oh, heaven have mercy - freezes and transitions into "stylized" pseudo-comic book panels (actually seemingly made with the emboss filter of Photoshop), often complete with inane "thought bubble" comments.

Case in point - the scene in which the Warriors encounter the Furies. A powerful scene in which tension grows with every second, conveyed only through the actors' eyes and Barry de Vorzon's slowly creeping-up score. At least that is how it looked originally... because in the new version, at the second when the tension just began growing, the "new" film freezes and transforms into an idiotic comic book panel complete with - oh, God, why?!? - an imbecilic bubble comment stating "Holy sh..., the Baseball Furies!". That's how bad the new version is - and this isn't even the worst example.

He shattered the mystery of the ambient "Wonder Wheel" opening by inserting an absolutely unnecessary animate reference to Anabasis before it. And, worst of all, he obliterated the wonderful ending scene. You know it - it is the symbolic take showing the survivors as they walk away from the memory of the night of horror towards the - perhaps hopeful - fresh dawn. I called this scene "the walk to nowhere - somewhere - everywhere".

In the new version, the walk is frozen after a few seconds and spliced into four idiotic comic book panels which then remain on screen. That single change is so wretchedly disgraceful that it defies belief. It is akin to taking, say, the closing scene of "The Godfather" and cutting it at the moment when Michael Corleone sits and thinks, rolling end credits at that moment rather than following it to show the legendary "new don" conclusion.

As the final insult, the DVD does not offer any worthy extras. There are some standard featurettes, but not much beyond that. Hill "does not believe in commentaries", apparently, so this is absent, but doesn't he believe in viewers' rights to watch deleted scenes, either?

It's true that most deleted scenes, in any films, on any DVD, are usually worthless and epitomize drivel - yet even truly bad ones are often included, since any viewer devoted to any film is always interested in seeing extra footage from it. I understand that Walter Hill may feel ashamed of those scenes and does not want them to be viewed even as a curiosity. I would not be surprised if some of them had not even been shot by him (particularly the infamous, awful day opening) - that would make his objection against their inclusion perfectly justified. However, considering that deleted scenes that do make it to existing DVDs as extra features very rarely represent all material that was cut from the film, and taking into account the typical running time of most rough cuts and workprints from late 70s, I would suspect that there was well over half an hour of alternate or additional footage shot - and that would be enough to choose some interesting snippets for the disc. And, Mister Hill... however bad even the worst deleted scene was, it would be practically impossible for it to be worse than the comic book insertions in the Ultimately Disgraceful Cut.

If there is anything worth having in this disc, it's the new cover. It restores the original 1979 poster - the famous gang conclave in the park, with the tagline "They are the armies of the night". (The UK version has this cover, anyway. The US release apparently features an idiotic, oversaturated "Photochop" of a random scene from the film instead - identical to the previously available DVD's cover, but tinted in "angry" MTV red now...)

If that travesty is indeed representative of the concept that Walter Hill originally had in his mind in 1979, then I praise the studio board that changed it into the version that the audience knows and loves.

[so sorry]

what the fuck? Comic book paneling?

[Al Shut]

Leaving the actual movie (Director's Cut or not) aside for a moment, has anybody besides me a problem with taking someone seriously who believes in a right to watch deleted scenes?

[Fievel]

Leaving the actual movie (Director's Cut or not) aside for a moment, has anybody besides me a problem with taking someone seriously who believes in a right to watch deleted scenes?

Unless they were taken out from the Theatrical Cut, demanding deleted scenes from a 32 year old film is just silly.

[so sorry]

Leaving the actual movie (Director's Cut or not) aside for a moment, has anybody besides me a problem with taking someone seriously who believes in a right to watch deleted scenes?

Unless they were taken out from the Theatrical Cut, demanding deleted scenes from a 32 year old film is just silly.

Are we talking about deleted scenes in general? I like watching deleted scenes. They have yet to "ruin" a movie for me. Now splicing them into the theatrical cut...that's a different story. That changes things. And I have no problem with director's cuts or ultimate edition this or that, as long as the theatrical cut is made available as well.

[Al Shut]

As I understood it Mr Vess was talking deleted scenes in general

[The Vicar]

what the fuck? Comic book paneling?

Hill must have really hated this project for some reason, because not one of these changes make sense.
Disgusting treatment of a fairly well thought of flick, now re-imagined as a celluloid turd.
Thanks Walter. Thanks a lot.

[The Vicar]

Leaving the actual movie (Director's Cut or not) aside for a moment, has anybody besides me a problem with taking someone seriously who believes in a right to watch deleted scenes?

This dickhole would probably be pissed there were no directors commentary or deleted scenes for Birth of a Nation.

[Fievel]

Leaving the actual movie (Director's Cut or not) aside for a moment, has anybody besides me a problem with taking someone seriously who believes in a right to watch deleted scenes?

This dickhole would probably be pissed there were no directors commentary or deleted scenes for Birth of a Nation.

That was kind of the point I was making above. Keeping deleted scenes had no value until DVD really took off. Were they on laser discs?
I remember reading somewhere that there was a ton of deleted footage from The Blues Brothers that ended up on the cutting room floor, included some musical bits. Landis said that there was no reason to keep them at the time so he just threw them away. Sigh. It's no Birth of a Nation, or Battleship Potemkin for that matter.... but it's close.