¡Hola! Savant's new reviews today are
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Paramount),
WAR PHOTOGRAPHER (First Run Features),
THE WORLD OF APU (Columbia TriStar),
and two Region 2 releases reviewed by Lee Broughton,
MOUNTAIN: SEA OF FIRE and
OZZY OSBOURNE: THE PRINCE OF F****** DARKNESS
I'm getting a lot of mail from people excited about the release of the third instalment of the LORD OF THE RINGS series, especially the marathon screening dates already booked across the country that will preface the new show with the earlier two. I'm with you in spirit - in my twenties I attended plenty of Marathons and loved the experience - but I'll sit this one out. We'll be repeating a family ritual from '01 and '02 - I arrange a fancy evening with my kids home for the holidays, we all see it together, and then they tell me how they already saw it a week before back in their college town.
I like the idea of serialized epics. I loved the grim cliffhanger of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, that we had to wait two years to find out what would happen next. KILL BILL VOLUMES ONE and TWO? Great idea. I wouldn't mind if 3 or 4 hour movies were broken into pieces and released like this more often, as Fritz Lang did in 1920s Germany, until UFA's foreign partners put the Kaibosh on such extravagance. Maybe METROPOLIS could have survived intact had it been broken into two parts (gee, where would the intermission be?). Is it too much to ask for David Lynch to come back and assemble a gargantuan 2 film version of DUNE? UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD is finally coming out in Wim Wenders' three-film version this spring, and you can bet it's going to be the highlight of this writer's season.
My idea of heaven would be a five-hour DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS or MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, and if it weren't for the flurry of those astral collision movies six years ago, I had the perfect solution to format WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: two two-hour features. Part one would tell the story of the destruction of Earth, concentrating on characters who aren't selected to go on the Space Ark to the new planet. We stay with them, watching the Ark leave, not knowing if it will get where it's going, and whammo, the world ends with a bang. Part two restarts a day earlier, and shows the final prep and launch of the Space Ark, but this time following people chosen to go, who before were seen only peripherally. The losers are shunted aside. The launch occurs again, this time experienced from entirely new perspectives than the apocalyptic vision of film one. The rest of the second movie details the Arkian's adventures on their new planet. I like it. Sounds good, huh? It's registered, so don't get any ideas.
The nice thing about the idea of releasing serialized features is that when the inital fru-fru of the release dies down, you're left with a natural double bill, like the two Three Musketeers movies, or Fritz Lang's latter-day The Tiger of Eschnapur & The Indian Tomb. The obvious trick is not to experience a production melt-down as happened on SUPERMAN, and screwed up the number 2 of that split-script. There was an earlier two-part German film that failed so badly it's almost totally forgotten: the 1959 Mistress of the World - what a find that would be for some DVD company now.
DVDTalk is changing servers, with the hopeful result of better service and faster downloads. Let's wish Fearless Leader Geoffrey Kleinman luck with it all. He knows what he's doing and sure seems to work hard. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at November 09, 2003 07:08 PM