The question of which version can also be asked of Brazil. Did P-C watch the "happy ending" version, or the director's version?

jimi, AFAIK, there is no "happy ending" version. There was a lot of fuss because the studio (Universal, I think) wanted to release a happy ending version (leading to Gilliam's Variety ad - "Dear Sid Scheinberg, when are you going to release my film "Brazil"?), but Gilliam's vision prevailed and the director's cut was released at the time. The edited version may have been shown on US TV though.

Hah! Just got the following off IMDb:

Gilliam had trouble with studio producers over the black ending he wanted on the film. The producers wanted a "happy Hollywood" film which eliminated (among other things) the final transition and a critical line of dialogue which reveals the fate of Jill. These changes were made, and this "butchered" version was shown on US television at least once. Gilliam threatened to disown the film, and consequently the cinematic release and all videotape versions show the film essentially as he intended it to be seen (although the US cinematic release still omitted the line about Jill).

In case the line was missing in your version, P-C, the Jill line is something like: Jack or Helpmann says Jill is dead, and Sam thinks it's because he changed her records to make her appear dead, and then Helpmann says yes, but it's funny because according to our records she seems to have died twice .

I saw the happy ending version on TV once.

shudder

"Brazil: The Love Conquers All Version", with audio annotation by David Morgan, this 94 minute version of "Brazil", rearranged in the hope of making the film commercial, stands as a fascinating document of the power of editing to change a movie

This is what I was referring too and it can be found on the Brazil: Criterion Edition DVD.

Brazil: Criterion Edition DVD.

I've been meaning to get this. I'm not sure whether the inclusion of "Love Conquers All" is an incentive or a disincentive, though....

NYT article on the re-release of Donnie Darko and the films unusual history (Box-office bomb to cult favorite to theatrical release of director's cut).

I'm hoping it will come to Chicago. (If it does well in NY and LA, it will.) I haven't seen it, and I'm sure I'll like it, since I am all pretentious and stuff.

Thanks for the info, Beej. Doesn't sound like what Sci-Fi was doing with M Night at all, though.

Sci-Fi's thing with The Village was totally a "gotcha!" PJ never dreamed in a million years that anyone would take Forgotten Silver seriously -- there was no disclaimer because he didn't think he needed one. It wasn't a hoax, it was a misunderstood mockumentary. (I mean, part of the "set" that they find in the middle of the "forest" is the steps of a bank (city hall?) in the middle of Wellington that they'd thrown some leaves and branches on top of. They assumed everyone in their audience would recognize it right away.)

Why am I watching St. Elmo's Fire? How long before I can't take it anymore and turn it off?

(I saw it when it came it out and I don't remember much of any of it.)

eta: I forgot what a stalker Emilio Estevez's character is....

meara of epic proportions!

Hmm, I didn't think it mattered that the events that happened at Troy were pre-literate since the story survived via the oral tradition for centuries before anyone bothered to write it down.

Well, but oral tradition has gods and narrative coherence and all events happening in threes. Although oral tradition can be stable over time in some cases, I don't think it can be taken as proof of actual events, especially in the details. For that matter, look at what turning an event into a story does -- the loss of Titanic wasn't sexy enough by itself, so it got a love story to make it more interesting.

Earthsea:

And I'm not sure they'll let Ged make the mistake.

Right. Ultimately, Earthsea isn't a blow-shit-up, goodguys/badguys universe, and trying to make it so would erase it from existence.

Women's roles in movies had just started moving away from the helpless bystander/victim, but only in the non-genre movies. And then, the female characters were mostly portrayed as hysterical, neurotic, incapable. In sci-fi and horror, women were still the ones that screamed a lot and had to be protected.

Especially for horror films, Ripley is a complete departure from the existing methods of the time. Laurie Strode was the queen of the late 70s, early 80s screamers, and she is a young, frightened, hiding creature who grows over the course of the movie -- but the hiding is foregrounded, and what people remember. The Veronica Cartwright character in Alien always struck me as a twit of that type -- she was so irritatingly helpless, and shouting at her just made her more paralyzed. (I was glad when she died.) Ripley, by contrast, is capable, cautious, reads fools the riot act, and survives.

Not before prancing about in futuristic underpants, but it's a kind of progress.

In some ways Aliens is retrograde politics, because it turns Ripley's base reason for living/surviving/fighting into Mother Defending Her Child. I still think that movie could have been more interesting if there had been no child at all, or if it had been one of the other (male) survivors who had been cast into the parent-role.

He tried to explain to her that she was very mistaken, that they never actually show her head in the box (and they don't), but the woman was having none of that -- she knew what she'd seen.

I think this is protesting too much. Showing someone a closed box and saying "There's a woman's head in this box" is narratively different from showing a woman's head in a box how? Unless we're meant to disbelieve the former (IIRC, we're not), they differ only inasmuch as the latter will get you in more trouble with the ratings board. That's the same as Quentin Tarantino's defenders claiming that, because the stabbing of So-and-so doesn't actually show the sword entering the body, only slash! and the guy falling, that means it's not as violent. Fiddlesticks. Did the guy die? Is the woman's head in a box?

I disliked Seven for a lot of reasons (actually also Pulp Fiction ), but whether or not the implied violence was ever made explicit was not one of those reasons.

In re Blade Runner

As for the story itself, I felt rather McGuffined. I lost track of why anything was going on. And I thought the Is He or Isn't He issue would be a bigger deal, but it's never even addressed overtly. It's one of those movies that makes the audience do all the work in making the concept profound.

I think this movie relies a great deal on visuals, and on a good working knowledge of film history. Like, it doesn't say explicitly that height is wealth, only shows you the golden (sunny!) pyramid of Tyrell and Deckard's flat on the 100th floor, and then shows you a shot out the window of the replicants' first apartment, that proves they're only a few meters off the street. Seeing Rachael in Tyrell's home, and then seeing her on the street later -- she looks totally wrong on the street, out of place, and that's the point.

Also, the thing with the eye in the opening credits is just like in the movie Peeping Tom, and the visuals keep referring back to eyes again and again.

Also, the narration is totally bad and wrong and obvious and never helpful for sussing out the subtextual questions anyway.

Why am I watching St. Elmo's Fire?

cos you're a closet Brat Pack groupie? :)