Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Dune: Alan Smithee 3 Hour Cut; What a Load of ....
Some edits of a film should never, ever exist. When the studios forced David Lynch to get his epic take on Frank Herbert's Dune down to a normal cinema release of around 2 hours, he made an amazingly visual film which, in all fairness, was almost incomprehensible to those poor people who have never read the brilliant novel. When TV producers got their hands on it and wanted to make an "accessible" film, they recut, using a lot of never-before-seen footage, but also reinserting some terrible scenes and, worse than that, adding a patronising "explanatory" voice-over that would annoy any living thing on this wet planet of ours. Not suprisingly, David Lynch was so horrified, he removed his name from the film and the credit went to "Alan Smithee" (the directorial name used when a director no longer wants to be associated with a film)! And, if ever an edit of a film deserved a Smithee, this is the one. I LOVE the original (ie cinema release) cut of this Lynch film and have just sat through half of the 3 hour release on DVD and am, in all honesty, close to sticking the DVD in the bloody microwave and melting the thing! It sucks. I recommend no one ever sees, buys or even wastes another thought on this edit. So I'm going to take my own adivce and stop. Right now.
Some edits of a film should never, ever exist. When the studios forced David Lynch to get his epic take on Frank Herbert's Dune down to a normal cinema release of around 2 hours, he made an amazingly visual film which, in all fairness, was almost incomprehensible to those poor people who have never read the brilliant novel. When TV producers got their hands on it and wanted to make an "accessible" film, they recut, using a lot of never-before-seen footage, but also reinserting some terrible scenes and, worse than that, adding a patronising "explanatory" voice-over that would annoy any living thing on this wet planet of ours. Not suprisingly, David Lynch was so horrified, he removed his name from the film and the credit went to "Alan Smithee" (the directorial name used when a director no longer wants to be associated with a film)! And, if ever an edit of a film deserved a Smithee, this is the one. I LOVE the original (ie cinema release) cut of this Lynch film and have just sat through half of the 3 hour release on DVD and am, in all honesty, close to sticking the DVD in the bloody microwave and melting the thing! It sucks. I recommend no one ever sees, buys or even wastes another thought on this edit. So I'm going to take my own adivce and stop. Right now.
[Posted by Unknown] [9:40 pm]
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home