Best use of 3+ hours of film (other than Magnolia)?

[Thecowgoooesmooo]

Wow Bozo as a icon.....

Let's ask the man himself. So "Bozo", what do you think about your new fame?!




chris

[cine]

Theegogoescuckoo

[TheTourist]

Casino.

[Thecowgoooesmooo]

Yeah, that Bozo shit sure is funny, keep it up, you might win a prize.

Really...., since when have you been handing out prizes?


Also now that I've finally watched it, Barry Lyndon!


chris

[mogwai]

Really...., since when have you been handing out prizes?

we've been doing that off and on since the start of xixax. funnily enough, the members who were supposed to accept the prizes didn't show up. they just vanished or something. weird.

[cron]

Dogville
JFK
OUATIA
Godfathers une et deux
Dogville

[MacGuffin]

Long Flicks: to Cut or Not to Cut?

Director David Fincher knows some people may think his serial-killer saga "Zodiac" is too long at two hours, 40 minutes.

He's wondered the same thing himself but decided the film needed that much space to tell the story he wanted.

"Zodiac" and other recent epic-length films such as "The Good Shepherd" reflect an age-old Hollywood balancing act: satisfying filmmakers' artistic desires without causing audiences to squirm in their seats.

"I would have loved the movie to have been shorter. I just couldn't find a way to dramatically do that," said Fincher, whose previous films include "Fight Club" and "Se7en." "Nobody wants to wear out their welcome, but you want the audience to have a meaningful and varied experience.

"Sometimes, maybe filmmakers can fall in love with the story they're telling and maybe need to be more diligent in how they're telling it. In our case, you're talking about an investigation that took 35 years, and we just felt like there was no way to actually do what we wanted in any less time."

Opening Friday, the film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo in the convoluted, decades-long journey of police and newspaper men to crack the case of the "Zodiac Killer," who terrorized the San Francisco area in the 1970s with taunting letters taking credit for a string of killings and threatening more.

Long, long movies have been around since Hollywood moved beyond one-reel shorts in the early silent-film days. D.W. Griffith's historical epics "Intolerance" and "Birth of a Nation" ran three hours, and Cecil B. DeMille approached that length with his biblical pageant "King of Kings."

Few fans would gripe that three-hour masterpieces such as "The Best Years of Our Lives," "Schindler's List" or the first two chapters of "The Godfather" are too long. And cinema buffs reveled in the 1989 reconstruction of "Lawrence of Arabia" overseen by Steven Spielberg, which restored David Lean's epic close to its original length of three hours, 40 minutes.

Yet plenty of critics, studio bosses, theater owners, filmgoers and filmmakers themselves think too many movies run too long.

"`The Godfather' merits all that time and more," said critic Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times and TV's "Ebert and Roeper and the Movies." "But 80 to 90 percent of the films I see could benefit from 10 to 15 minutes in cuts."

Woody Allen's films generally come in well under two hours and often closer to 90 minutes. Stephen Frears similarly delivers tight films with little fat, including his rich portrait of British monarch Elizabeth II in "The Queen," for which Helen Mirren won the best-actress Academy Award. The film clocks in at a brisk 103 minutes.

"I do think that most films are too long. I've seen too many long films. I've learned to be sympathetic to the audience. If nothing else, keep it short," Frears said. "You just say, `Look, we've done this bit' or `They've said all this.' Get on with it. You learn not to draw things out. All you're ever learning is not to be boring."

Some critics thought Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" or Robert De Niro's "The Good Shepherd" both clocking in at about two hours, 40 minutes would have been greatly improved at closer to two hours.

But who's going to tell Scorsese or De Niro to chop 30 minutes?

Five of the 10 best-picture Academy Awards nominees the last two years have run around two and a half to three hours, among them Scorsese's Oscar champ "The Departed." That's not unusual, though, as Hollywood's prestige films often tend toward epic productions, from "Gone With the Wind" and "Ben-Hur" to "Gandhi" and "Titanic."

Yet, epic running times have become common for blockbusters, too, studios emboldened by such successes as "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and the "Harry Potter" films.

Recent thrillers and action flicks that far exceeded two hours include "Casino Royale," "Apocalypto," "Miami Vice," "Superman Returns," "The Da Vinci Code" and last year's box-office king, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

General Hollywood wisdom is that it's bad business to let a movie run on at the mouth because it limits the number of screenings that theaters can fit in each day, potentially undermining a film's profits.

Peter Jackson's mammoth remake of "King Kong" did big business but nowhere near the totals on his "Lord of the Rings" movies, some critics saying audiences were disinclined to spend more than three hours watching a giant ape.

With $1 billion worldwide at the box office, "Dead Man's Chest" clearly was not hurt by its two-and-a-half-hour length, nor was distributor Disney put off by the running time, said Jerry Bruckheimer, who produces the "Pirates" movies.

"They loved the film. They always would like things shorter to get more screenings in in a day, but they also recognized we made a very effective movie that held people's interest," Bruckheimer said. "When you walk out of that theater, you want to feel like you've had a complete meal."

David Yates, director of this summer's "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," said some of today's big popcorn flicks overwhelm audiences, throwing one-too-many action sequences or visual-effects shots up on the screen.

"Sometimes they overstay their welcome just by that little, tiny percent. There's a sweet spot for running length where the audience comes out feeling elated, feeling they actually want more. Reaching that sweet spot takes a lot of discipline," said Yates, who expects his "Harry Potter" film to run about as long as its predecessors.

"You just have to let things go, sometimes. It's amazing how you think you could never live without a scene or a moment, yet frankly, the movie's better off without it."

Fincher let plenty of moments go on "Zodiac," which ran three hours and eight minutes in an early version. Yet there were many more he felt the film could not live without.

Initial talks with Sony about backing the film fell through because the studio wanted to limit it to two hours and 15 minutes, Fincher said. Paramount and Warner Bros. came on board and agreed to give Fincher more breathing room on length.

"I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages," Fincher said.

For a movie such as "Zodiac," which is more about the killer's psychological victims than his physical victims, "there's stuff in the narrative that's not essential to the investigation, but if you start removing that stuff, it becomes even more of a dry police procedural," Fincher said.

"You need to have that characterization in there but not wear out its welcome. It's not my intention to be boring. The hope is you're able to walk a fine line."

[godardian]

[A Matter Of Chance]

I was lucky enough to see that in a theater last month and loved it. 

[godardian]

I was lucky enough to see that in a theater last month and loved it. 

It wasn't at NW Film Forum in Seattle, was it? That's where I saw it last December.

[samsong]

oh, if only i knew about the thread before.

just saw Satantango at BAM last weekend.  best 7.5 hours of my life, sort of.

others! (that haven't been mentioned yet)

Celine and Julie Go Boating
L'Amour fou
Out 1
La Belle noiseuse
Red Beard
The Best Years of Our Lives
Kings of the Road
The Thin Red Line
INLAND EMPIRE

last three aren't quite 3 hours but who gives a shit.

[MacGuffin]

Prestige pictures get super-sized
Studios, filmmakers clash over running times
By ANNE THOMPSON; Variety

"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" is certainly one of the longer monikers in recent memory. But the pic's running time is even longer, clocking in at a hefty 160 minutes. Critics are divided between those who think the length adds to the pic's impact and those who think it would have benefited from a shorter runtime.

Every film has its own shape and focus, to be sure, but figuring out a movie's ideal scale requires a delicate balance of art, commerce and talent relations.

Cut a would-be epic too slim, and you wind up with truncated frustrations like Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven," Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" or Oliver Stone's "Alexander," three forced edits that later blossomed in longer form on DVD.

Let a film run too long, and you limit its audience appeal. Think Martin Scorsese's meandering "Gangs of New York," Michael Bay's inflated "Pearl Harbor" or Peter Jackson's "King Kong," which added 1½ hours to the 1933 film's 100 minutes.

Since the dawn of Hollywood, studios have lavished money and length on sprawling epics such as "Ben- Hur" and "Intolerance" while wrestling other pics away from runaway cineastes like Orson Welles and Eric Von Stroheim.

The trick is knowing which kind of moviemaker you're dealing with. The risk-reward gamble is that big movies can deliver not only big returns but often Oscars as well. When everything lines up right, the results can be stunning, from "Gone With the Wind" (running time 238 minutes) to the spectacular "Lawrence of Arabia" (216 minutes), the lengthy "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "Titanic" (203 minutes).

Heading into awards season, this year's crop of fall entrants runs longer than ever. Filmmakers fought hard for their respective running times. And in the current "just-say-yes" climate in Hollywood --in which studio heads are loathe to say no to talent -- most got their way.

After tussling with Revolution topper Joe Roth, Julie Taymor skimmed just four minutes from "Across the Universe," which runs a relatively modest 131 minutes and is performing solidly in limited release.

Long and winding Westerns are a Hollywood tradition, from "How the West Was Won" (162 minutes) to the 183-minute Oscar-winning "Dances With Wolves." James Mangold's "3:10 to Yuma," with its two-hour running time, will likely reap more financial rewards than Andrew Dominik's "The Assassination of Jesse James," which uses the shorter version of the title even in the voiceover of TV promos. Behind the scenes at Warner Bros., Dominik's meticulously detailed examination of the myth of 19th-century gunslinger Jesse James languished for a year, stalled by editing-room battles. Studio production execs were tearing their hair out, because they saw a potential B.O. winner in a downsized version. But with Plan B producer-star Brad Pitt calling the shots, there was nothing they could do.

Stars often help get a great movie made, but sometimes a star prevents a studio from arm-wrestling a director into making worthwhile changes. In the case of "Jesse James," a year of tinkering finally yielded a 160-minute movie.

"Jesse James" might still see some awards attention, particularly for cinematographer Roger Deakins, but the pic's length may have seriously hurt its chances for success. Reviews ranged from Todd McCarthy's glowing one for Variety -- "This is one film whose length seems absolutely right for what it's doing." -- to pans from the likes of the New York Post's Lou Lumenick: "A gorgeous snooze."

Plenty of other fall movies are super-sized, as well.

At September's Toronto Film Fest, critics debated the 140-minute length of actor-director Sean Penn's $20 million adaptation of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild." The film, unlike Krakauer's lean 224-page non-fiction narrative, takes its time sending its young antihero to meet his fate in North Alaska. "Penn can't stop swirling around mountaintops, as if he were selling SUVs," wrote the New Yorker's David Denby. But the pic earned mostly positive reviews, and Paramount Vantage was not about to tell Penn to cut his movie.

Another fall fest entry, Ang Lee's erotic period spy drama "Lust, Caution," clocks in at 157 minutes. Coming after Oscar contender "Brokeback Mountain," Lee's Chinese-language labor of love falls in the category (like post-"Lord of the Rings" director Jackson's "King Kong") of a movie that no studio exec would tamper with -- especially when the studio (Focus Features) is run by Lee's long-time collaborator-screenwriter, James Schamus. Certain directors are untouchable at certain times in their careers. A disappointment or two usually returns things to status quo.

Also jumping into the awards race is Imagine-Universal and Ridley Scott's Nov. 7 release "American Gangster," a period gangster epic pitting kingpin Denzel Washington against honest cop Russell Crowe. Its running time: almost 2½ hours. In this case, Oscar-worthy predecessors include Scorsese's "Goodfellas" and "The Departed" and Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" trilogy. Back in 1972, in fact, when Paramount told Coppola to add 20 minutes to his cut of "The Godfather," the director couldn't believe his ears.

There are still more clock-defying epics on the way this kudos season, and it remains to seen whether bigger is better.

Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood," a Texas oil saga spanning three decades, clocked in at 158 minutes when it was unveiled at a sneak showing at Austin's Fantastic Fest recently. But response was rapturous.

In this case, producer Scott Rudin worked out a way for Paramount Vantage to partner on the ambitious film with Miramax, splitting the $30 million budget and its global returns 50/50. The pic has already been compared to George Stevens' "Giant," the 201-minute epic that was nommed for 10 Oscars. Stevens won the directing prize.

[godardian]

I'm going to see Lust, Caution tomorrow morning at 10:00; they've apparently added an extra-early show (or are at least starting the first show extra early) because of the length. I'm kinda excited to see it. I did an Ang Lee mini-fest recently, and I was surprised at how well everything's held up, including Ride with the Devil.

[Pubrick]

to all the freaks who recommended OUT 1: stop recommending OUT 1.

were you all stoned out of your pretentious minds? (samsong i'm looking at you). i saw the first 4 episodes today, that's a solid 7 hours on my ass with 5 other losers who made it the whole way through to the end of the day. tomoro are the last 4 episodes.

the film consists of three scenes on constant repeat - interminable rehearsals and bizarre acting exercises, a young girl hustling on the streets and occassionally being rough-handled (NOT as interesting as it sounds), and jean-pierre leaud being a completely ridiculous idiot and overacting every fucking thing he says. NO justification for the extreme length. its notoriety must be solely based on the mystique that surrounds anything that is rarely seen. it's the movie equivalent of an eccentric recluse. it doesn't want you around and you find it so oppressive that you want desperately to grant their wish. maybe the 4hr cut would be worth a look since it would excise a lot of the bullshit.

okay, let me say something else about it. i want to love it, obviously, i want to love every movie that comes out (some ppl actually do, god bless em).. but its extreme form just makes me lose respect for it. you know? i sit there thinking that it's just a big mess and so concerned with the actors having a wankfest (figuratively speaking) that it could not possibly be concerned with framing or lighting or anything that's remotely cinematic. on that front, there's nothing rivette does here that he didn't do better in L'amour Fou.

i think i'm good at caring. i find it easy to care about a movie when it WANTS to be cared for and doesn't do anything to shit on the attention i'm giving it. so can anyone tell me why i should see the rest of this? does it suddenly become a MOVIE? the second episode, with the expository explanation by Rohmer in cameo talking about the Thirteen, gave me hope that things would start coming together. 7 hours later i'm left with about as much insight as i had at the beginning. leaud's character summed it up in the last shot in the 4th episode (from sarah to colin) when he just kept repeating the same line over and over again until fade out. it's just not necessary or particularly interesting. it's too much filler.

i will probably go and see the last half of the last episode. i have a feeling i'll be the only one in the room.

[SoNowThen]

If it means anything to you, the last half is more narrative driven, less wank, and overall tighter than the first half. These words are of course relative, as Rivette movies can't really be described with "narrative driven" and "tighter", but anyways...

You made it through the hard parts, seriously, just see all of the rest of it. It's an experience, if nothing else.