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Features
Front Row The director’s cut
Waiting for Godot Images www.flickr.com
When the biggest-grossing movie of all time, Avatar, was released on DVD a few months back, I was shocked to discover that there was only a one-disc edition available. There were no special features to cover the making of this incredible film. Of course, this is not a new ploy by studios to milk customers for more money. Often they will release a single-disc edition of a movie, which everyone runs out and buys, only to find a “special edition” on shelves a little later. However, with the global success of Avatar, rumours abounded that an extended version would soon follow, and I cannot describe the joy I felt the other day when I learned that the rumours were true! Not only that, but this new, longer Avatar would be screened at cinemas, again in 3D, for fans to enjoy a second (or third, etc.) time, and for those few people who haven’t seen it yet to experience the eye-popping CGI on the big screen. It will release here on Friday 27 August.
Confusing - At times, the play is lacking in clarity.
Aimee Dyamond As a fairly new addition to Cape Town’s arena of theatre sports, The Fugard Theatre has established itself as host to a number of top-class productions over the past few months. The internationally acclaimed Waiting for Godot is no exception. Like many curious audience members I was drawn to the big names thrown around in the hype generated by this play. Sir Ian McKellen, who most of our generation knows as Gandalf, delivered a skillful performance that was both blundering and articulate, alongside charismatic Roger Rees in what is considered one of the most prominent works in the Theatre of the Absurd. The pair of celebrated actors took to our local stage in an eccentric rendition of Samuel Beckett’s play under the fine-tuned direction of Sean Mathias. In what reminds me of a melancholic Laurel and Hardy episode, Rees and McKellen provide empathy within their misplacement. With childlike delight and ironic moments, these characters unravel a “tragicomedy” that extends beyond their clowning around in a stark, elementary landscape. They remain in perpetual waiting, of human consciousness and of
time, and delayed in any true understanding of the meaning of love. Instead this fringed pair of vagrants wanders the timeless space that is staged by the play’s raw naturalism. As soon as the interval lights went on I wandered out of the first half of Godot feeling perplexed and a little frustrated. It was enough having seen Sir Ian McKellen in the flesh, but the play itself had also just about enough existential pondering to last any intellectual or critic a lifetime, let alone the average theatre-goer looking for a good piece of weekend entertainment. By the end I had questions. Many. As a play conceived so essentially and stripped down to its purest theatrical elements, it is no wonder that it can be interpreted in a myriad of social, political and religious takes.
Imagine my disappointment when, after a bit more research, I read that the length of the new, extended scenes in Avatar would amount to only eight minutes! Now, there have been a number of films re-released with a similar amount of new footage edited in – like Black Hawk Down and Peter Jackson’s King Kong – but this has always been done straight through the medium of DVD. I know that Avatar is a special case, but it seems more like greed than good filmmaking to me.
Waiting for Godot was famously described as “a play in which nothing happens, twice”. That’s the point: there barely is one. The true “point” of Godot is to make you feel uncomfortable in your cushiony seat of being, to challenge your existence and to ask things. There is so much room for interpretation, but maybe a degree in English Literature or Philosophy might help you to leave more satisfied with your understanding of Waiting of Godot’s crafty philosophic innuendos.
There has only ever been, as far as I know, one other time that an alternative version of a film was re-released at the cinema, and even then it was a limited release. That was on the eve of 17 December 2003, the night before The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King came out. A handful of cinemas worldwide screened extended versions of the first two films in the trilogy, which had previously been released on DVD. The extended Return was never shown in theatres. The extended versions of all three Lord of the Rings films are, for me,
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‘Kisses’: a sweet tale of two lovers
Roy Borole Kisses is a sweet, edgy coming of age film set on a tough housing estate in Dublin. The narrative follows two youths, Kylie and Dylan, in their ambitions to escape their abusive, caustic, foulmouthed domestic environments. Aided by Dylan’s furious and
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Calvin Scholtz
abusive father, the two escape the slums to find Dylan’s brother and run away to the city with no plans, no direction and a wad of money. Their reasoning – like their appearance – is sweet and met by the colourful smorgasbord that is Dublin. They set off on a magical, dark journey, but the magic is short-lived as Uncle Tickles and the gang arrive and the rainbow goes dark blue; the money runs out
and it gets a wee bit cold – forcing Dylan and Kylie to rely on each other and suck face. The film is very dark and sweet – kind of like a pitbull in a Dior coat. The city of Dublin pulsates against the innocence and naiveté of Dylan and Kylie, making their journey more fascinating and terrifying. It’s a sweet romance decorated with the harsh realities of postmodern Dublin sprawling with disturbing characters, spaces and consequences; yet there’s a sincerity to it which makes it wholly enjoyable and engrossing. Lance Daly does a superb job as director and uses a colour saturation motif which works phenomenally to colour the two different worlds of the housing estate and Dublin, making for a cinematic delight which pulls at both your hearts strings and testicles.
Film reel - Often, a director’s cut does nothing more than prolong an otherwise unpleasant experience. the Holy Grail of what some call “directors’ cuts”. The first two films had an additional half an hour each, and the third around 45 minutes, which pushed the running time of the whole trilogy to a nice round 11 hours. The films were also greatly enhanced, but without taking anything away from the original three theatrical cuts. The extended cut of Troy, on the other hand, spoiled my memories of the original one.
“...extended scenes bring nothing new to an already enjoyable film.” The idea of directors’ cuts is not by any means a new one. There have been extended versions of classic
films like Spartacus, Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner. British director Ridley Scott is especially fond of these special editions. If anyone was disappointed by his 2005 epic Kingdom of Heaven, I highly recommend that you see the extended cut, which makes it a far better film. There are also excellent extended versions of The Patriot and A Knight’s Tale available on DVD. However, as Avatar may prove, there are instances where the “extended scenes” bring nothing new to an already enjoyable film. Last year, there was a special edition of Spider Man 2 on the shelves. How many minutes of extra footage did it have? That’s right: two! A similar thing was done with the first Narnia film. Sometimes, these additional scenes are better off left on the cutting room floor, in the “deleted scenes” section of the DVD or, worse, on the bloopers reel!