JamesGifford
PITA Bred
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2008 12:17 pm Posts: 2402 Location: The Quiet Earth
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Watchmen - DVD director's cut
I was eagerly awaiting the Watchmen DVD, which adds in 24 minutes of footage trimmed to keep the film within theatrical-release limits.
The good: the additions are, with only two exceptions, from a few seconds to perhaps 30 seconds long, so there are a LOT of them, and each one serves to smooth out both the visual and story narratives. Some nice touches, all through the film.
The longest addition is the sequence where the Knot-Tops break in and kill Hollis Mason. It's shot with almost tender faithfulness to the book, with Mason reliving his heroic past punch by punch, until...
The other long addition is the postscript to that scene, when Dan hears of Mason's murder while in Happy Harry's.
The bad: I had hoped they'd flesh out a couple of the tightly-pinched side plots, like the newspaper vendor and the kid. There's one short insert, more about Rorschach than them. Maybe it's just a case of "one more chapter, Dad, and then I'll go right to sleep!"
The title sequence is still amazing. I believe this is the first film to use the "flying" titles interwoven with the visuals, and it's stunning. (This has now become almost standard, especially for the 3D films. Moon did it simply and brilliantly - most of the opening titles look like stencils on the wall and equipment. I'm not sure what rules apply to require titles to stand out from the visuals - I'm sure there are some, complex as the credits rules and regs are.)
_________________ "Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders." - Luther In the end, I found Heinlein is finite. Thus, finite analysis is needed.
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