The Movie Empress

Bidin' My Time

Awards season is officially upon us, counting down to that glorious day in February when the Oscars are handed out.  This year, Ellen DeGeneres is hosting, bringing comedy "able to be enjoyed by everybody" to a show that producer Laura Ziskin promises will be "sparkly, up and fun."  (Producers are always promising a new Oscar broadcast, which is the sort of statement that belies the joy of watching the damned thing.)

Now, I like Ellen.  She was classy and warm and amusing when she hosted the Emmys after September 11th, and brought just the right note to the proceedings.  I would infinitely prefer a sparkly, fun Ellen to a dreary, vulgar Whoopi Goldberg.  Chris Rock didn't seem to "get" the evening.  Steve Martin was okay, but also out of his depth, and let's not even discuss poor Dave Letterman.  Perhaps it's all in who you're used to -- my first Oscar broadcast, birth of my obsession, was in 1990.  But for my money, any other host is just a placeholder until Billy Crystal decides to return to the Kodak Theatre. 

Cut This

The phrase I care least about in filmdom (other than "horror movie," "thumbs up," and "Adam Sandler") is "director's cut."  I like "deleted scenes," I love "blooper reel," but do not talk to me about the "director's cut."  I do not care that there are 11, 26, or, so help me, 45 minutes of "never-before-seen footage!"  I do not give the tiniest rat's ass that "the director's original vision has been restored!"  I do not have 53 hours to watch the undiluted Lord of the Rings.

95% of the time (and I'm being charitable with that extra 5%,) "director's cut" just means, "We put stuff back in that made the movie pant-itchingly long so we could sacrifice a succinct narrative in favor of an egotistic vision."  I don't mind so much when a short scene or two is added to a film of reasonable length, but anything that is already over two hours doesn't need bulking up for the dvd.

I'll admit it.  I'm a sucker for the "remix edition" of Empire Records, and I wish they'd left in the scene where Jack Sparrow ruminates on the darker side of piracy in Curse of the Black Pearl.  But most movies, even purely light-hearted offerings, need paring down more than anything.  The second Bridget Jones movie would have been far better as a live action short showing the rematch sissy brawl between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.

It's even more confusing when scenes are added to the dvd without any hyperbole or announcement at all.  I've probably only seen Witness sixty or so times, so I was a little taken aback to buy the dvd and find a brand new scene with Patti LuPone a third of the way through.  It didn't add a damned thing at all.