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The Executioner's Song
Director's Cut
1982
Do NOT buy this.
REPEAT: do NOT buy this.
There are two very good reasons to watch The Executioner's Song: (1) Norman
Mailer's screenplay, which is adapted from his own interesting non-fiction
book about a double murderer who asked to be executed; (2) great nudity
from a very young Rosanna Arquette.
This so-called "director's cut" ruins both of those assets. It is 135
minutes long. The longest version is 185-188 minutes long, so a full third
of the film is missing, which makes Mailer's screenplay choppy. That's bad
news. Now we come to the really bad news. The warning on the DVD box says:
"Recommended for mature audiences only. It contains adult language and
adult situations."
Notice anything missing from that warning?
You guessed it. The deleted footage includes EVERY BIT of the nudity.
Sex scenes: gone. Tommy Lee's butt: gone. Rosanna stark naked while being
examined before a prison visit: gone. There were some parts of those
scenes that could not be cut while maintaining clarity, but those have
been re-cropped to show only head-and-shoulders shots.
If this is a director's cut, it is a cut he prepared for BROADCAST TV.
There are still two things I liked about the expurgated version of the
film: a good performance by Tommy Lee Jones as Gary Gilmore, and a C&W
score featuring the low voices of Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash.
But this DVD is a total, absolute rip-off. Wait until the uncensored
version is available.
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe
version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles,
here.
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Never Forever
(2007)
Vera Farmiga plays the wife of a prominent Korean-American attorney who was
born into an affluent and deeply Catholic family. His parents are pressuring
him to have children, but testing shows him to be infertile. When his father
dies, he is overcome by his inability to reproduce, and attempts suicide.
As a loving wife, Vera is torn apart to stand by helpless and watch him in
this self-destructive state. She tries for artificial insemination, and when
they turn her down, and also turn down an attractive Korean man as a donor,
she has a brainstorm. She will pay the man, an illegal, $300 each time he has
sex with her, and a $30,000 bonus if she ends up pregnant. What starts off as
all business for her turns into something much more as they get to know each
other better, and real intimacy replaces mechanical sex.
This is a South Korean film, although most of the film is in English with
minor lapses into Korean which are subtitled in English. It went straight to
DVD in the US after minor festival success, but I found it well worth the
watch. Gina Kim's direction and Matthew Clark's cinematography are perfect,
and the entire cast is up to the material, especially Farmiga, who is superb.
IMDb readers say 5.8.
Vera Farmiga
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Notes and collages
Tales from the Crypt
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Mariel Hemingway
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Starship Troopers Three
2008
The bugs are back again, and the bugs are better than ever, in this
additional sequel to the 1997 Sci-Fi that many, including me, consider a
classic. This one brings back the political statements and personal
connections of the original, all of which was missing from the second one.
Casper Van Dien reprises his role from the original movie as Johnny
Rico, hero from the original bug invasion, and now a colonel busy fighting
bugs. A Federation ship carrying a beloved Sky Marshal crashes on a
distant planet held by the bugs, and because of Federation politics,
rescue is in doubt, but Rico is enlisted by certain forces within the
Federation to try to pull off an impossible rescue, with just six other
troopers to help him.
This effort is much closer to the original, and much better than the
second, by bringing back the anti-war and anti-big-government sentiment of
the original, and like the original, it's silly but yet a lot of fun; very
enjoyable with plenty of high velocity action.
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