--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Yesterday I attended an opening day showing of "Babylon AD" at the local > theater. I thought the film seemed a little truncated and doing some > searches after I got home turns out the scummy 20th Century Fox made the > director cut 70 minutes of footage from the film apparently to make it > PG-13 and the made 90 minute number for dumbed down Americans. This > scuttled the intent of the film which is based on a French novel > /Babylon Babies/ by Maurice Georges Dantec. The film was a French > Studio Canal production in English starring Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, > Melanie Thierry, Gerard Depardieu and Charlotte Rampling. The intent of > the movie was to focus on the importance of education of our children > but after 20th Century whacked it winds up like a mindless episode of > "24." I guess Rupert didn't want the masses to get any such ideas. So > if you want to see the Readers Digest version it should be at one of > your local theaters. I hope we get a director's cut on BluRay. I'm > getting tired of these corporate monsters destroying the arts. > > Interview with the director about what happened to the film: > http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/2008/08/babylon-ad-mathieu- kassovitz.php >
Without the so-called "corporate monsters" you wouldn't have had the product in the first place. Look, I'm with you; I want the director's cut, too...and we'll get it in the secondary market when the DVD comes out. But don't badmouth the people who are putting up the money 'cause without them you wouldn't have the product in the first place. Indeed, if the director wanted ONLY his version to be shown, he could have financed it himself, just like Mel Gibson did with "Passion" (a film I've never seen and don't intend to). Think what you will about Mel, he never compromised on his artistic integrity...but it cost him to do it. He was willing to put up 10s of millions of his own money and, in his case, it paid off (he made over $200 million on it). No studio wanted to touch a film that was 100% in Aramaic. But Mel said "the hell with you" and mortgaged the house to do it. More power to him! Apparently, your Babylon guy wasn't able or willing to do what Mel did. Tough shit for him...and you. This reminds me of about 20 years ago when Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen were yapping about artistic integrity because studios were considering colorizing black and white films that were on video. They yelled and screamed about it and even appeared before a congressional committee about it. But whomever did the original Black and White version of films at some point sold their rights to the studios. So the studios could bloody well do what they wanted to them. And it was all a silly debate anyway. No technology existed then and to this day it doesn't exist to colorize films; only a technology to colorize VIDEOS of films existed, an entirely different medium from the original films anyway. And, Bhairitu, who are you to say that Rupert Murdoch, being the owner of the rights of a film, isn't any LESS creative and LESS artistic if it is his choice -- from even a purely commerical consideration -- to cut a film? Just because he sits in some executive office somewhere makes him LESS of an artist than, say, Bernardo Bertulucci? That's YOUR subjective call. Probably one I agree with you on but he owns it, he can do what he wants to to the film.
