The Mediatwin Blog

Over at the Super Deluxe Edition website, there’s a fascinating interview with music producer Stephen Street about the upcoming reissue of VIVA HATE - Morrissey’s classic debut solo album. Street has been remastering the album for the reissue but in the interview, he notes that it’s now not the same version as released back in 1988. For reasons known only to himself, Morrissey has taken the shears to one track (LATE NIGHT, MAUDLIN STREET), considerably editing it down in length by omitting the atmospheric intro and outro. He’s also dropped another song (THE ORDINARY BOYS) from the track list completely, replacing it with a four-track demo of TREAT ME LIKE A HUMAN BEING. “I’m not happy about [this],” says Street, “But then again, what can I do? It’s not my album - it’s his.”

Morrissey isn’t alone in revisiting and re-editing his creative past. In one of his excellent Cinefex magazine retrospectives, Graham Edwards makes passing reference to George Lucas’ obsessive and ongoing tinkering with the STAR WARS series. “I’m going to stick my head above the parapet and say I’m on George’s side.” he writes, “Do I agree with all the changes he’s made? Of course not. Do I defend his right to make them? Absolutely.”

If only George had restricted himself to making changes on films he personally had directed. For subsequent theatrical and home video releases, Lucas has messed around with both THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI - neither film, remember, crediting him as director. Fiddling around with movies is nothing new to Lucas - both THX-1138 and AMERICAN GRAFFITI had CGI-assisted facelifts for their debuts on DVD. In fact, it goes back as far as the ’81 theatrical reissue of STAR WARS. Back then, it was just an innocuous subtitle - “Episode IV - A New Hope” - added to the opening crawl. Since then, however, the changes have been far more significant - from Jabba The Hutt’s house band changing both personnel and song, to the more controversial subjects of Greedo shooting first and actors being digitally replaced.

Frustratingly, Lucas’ peers in the film world have shown him how it can - and should - be done. Steven Spielberg made a huge number of changes to the reissues of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and E.T. - but ensured the original cuts were available for purchase alongside them. As well as Ridley Scott’s ’07 “Final Cut”, BLADE RUNNER can be seen in no less than four other different versions on Blu-ray and DVD - including the ’82 theatrical cut. James Cameron routinely re-edits and extends his films for home viewing but the theatrical cuts are still kept in print.

The issue here isn’t actually Morrissey’s or Lucas’ desire to revise their works - they’re perfectly entitled to do that. What rankles is that these new versions will soon become the only ones available. Both the original ’88 CD release and the ’97 expanded versions of VIVA HATE are now out of print, destined to be replaced by the upcoming remaster. If you want to see what STAR WARS looked like before the ’97 “Special Editions”, then you’ll need to be quick. Lucas grudgingly released unremastered, non-anamorphic copies of the original trilogy films on DVD a few years ago and the clock is counting down on their availability.

For better or worse, a line is crossed when the work is made available to the public. Whether it’s STAR WARS in ’77 or VIVA HATE in ’88, there’s an incarnation of the film or CD - or any kind of creative work, in fact - that people get emotionally attached to. I personally dislike imagining a butchered version of LATE NIGHT, MAUDLIN STREET being the de facto standard in the future or Han Solo never again shooting Greedo first. I’m not advocating that an artist should slavishly follow their audience’s wishes but respecting their admiration for a released version should always be taken into account.

At the heart of this is the eternal dilemma of the artist - at what point do you stop? Leonardo Da Vinci said “art is never finished, only abandoned”. The temptation to keep on fiddling, trying to further improve work already ostensibly completed is understandable. The reasons behind Morrissey messing around with VIVA HATE’s track listing aren’t known and probably never will be. Lucas, however, has defended his position by saying “my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.”. Will he ever be completely satisfied? It’s highly unlikely - a retrofitted 3D conversion of Episode IV has already been announced, although the disappointing box-office returns of THE PHANTOM MENACE in 3D may result in the project being scuppered.

Ironically, the final word on the subject goes to George Lucas himself. Back in 1988, he testified to Congress about the then growing threat of colorisation - classic black & white films being transformed by computer into limp colour. “In the future, it will become even easier for old [film] negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives.” he stated, “This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten”.

Quite right, George. Now how about putting your money where your mouth is and restoring the Original Trilogy to its former glories?

A tender story of boy meets horse, boy loses horse, as his steed is despatched to France for service during the First World War. Steven Spielberg directing a screenplay co-written by Richard Curtis - itself adapted from Michael Morpurgo’s hugely successful children’s book and stage play. A cast showcasing some of the finest British acting talent around today.

So - er - why the long face?

Regrettably, the blame for WAR HORSE not being as effective as it could have been lies squarely with Spielberg and his directorial choices. The first third of the film, set in a pre-war farming village, sinks under a thick Hollywood glaze - Devon, as if recreated on a Hollywood backlot . No pastoral cliche is left unploughed, as Joey the foal gambols under Technicolor GONE WITH THE WIND skies to the cloying sounds of John Williams’ over-lush score.

Fortunately, the film does improve once Joey the horse is transported across the Channel and thrust into the nightmares of battle. There’s a welcome return of Spielberg’s grittier side, as the horrors of the First World War are superbly realised. One sequence - set in a battlefield’s No Man’s Land and bringing together two soldiers from different sides of the conflict - is dramatically stripped to the bone, tautly directed and is arguably the highlight of the film.

Steven Spielberg has proved himself at knowing - most of the time - exactly how to handle his audience. Whether it’s Indiana Jones chasing after Nazis, cute aliens promising “I’ll be right here” or sharks terrorising summer towns, he has masterfully demonstrated that he knows exactly which buttons he needs to push . Here, however, his manipulative tricks are clumsy and obvious. It’s the same kind of wrong-handed approach he brought to THE COLOR PURPLE and ALWAYS - suffocating the film under unnecessarily glossy visuals. At times, it feels more like somebody trying to imitate his style, rather than Spielberg himself.

Tellingly, as a contender for Oscar glory, WAR HORSE has gone from morning line favourite a few months ago to extreme long-shot. I suspect Spielberg’s next film - a biography of Abraham Lincoln - will prove more to the Academy’s taste. Still, let’s not be uncharitable - WAR HORSE isn’t a bad film and hardly destined for the knacker’s yard. It’s just that, with such a high pedigree of talent before and behind the camera, you’d expect more than what’s been trotted out.

It's unusual for a movie to have a custom-filmed trailer made for it; it's even rarer for it to get the honour of having two. Then again, 1941 is no ordinary film.

Back in the late '70s, director Steven Spielberg was hot property, having just directed two successive blockbusters in Jaws and Close Encounters. The cast boasted several rising comedy stars, such as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and John Candy. And in another unusual move, two studios - Universal and Columbia - joined forces to make the multi-million dollar action comedy.

The first of 1941's custom trailers came out well in advance of its release - a year before, during the Christmas of 1978. It's so premature, they even had time to change the name of Belushi's character to what he says it is in the trailer (it's Capt Wild Bill Kelso in the finished film):

As well as brief footage from the movie and some of Williams' score, the second teaser also made use of the production's model shop skills, with the film's title tearing up through a miniature Los Angeles cityscape:

This image of a camera dolly towards a nighttime California city is something of a Spielberg trademark, with similar shots appearing in both Close Encounters and, particularly, E.T. 

Whilst it's fair to say the resulting movie isn't exactly a career highlight for Spielberg , it's not a complete dud either. The miniature work is spectacular, there's a beautifully choreographed jitterbug setpiece and John Williams contributes a rousing score. It's also wrong, as many critics have, to call 1941 a financial flop - whilst the film didn't rack up huge box-office numbers as expected, it did end up turning a small profit for the studios. 

I'd recommend searching out the film on DVD, if only for the extensive and surprisingly candid "making of" documentary.

It's June '79 in a small Ohio town. School's out and the summer holiday stretches ahead. A group of young filmmakers are working hard on completing their magnum opus - an ambitious zombie movie, shot on the eponymous super 8mm. Whilst doing a late night shoot, they - and crucially, their camera - witness a catastrophic train wreck. Soon the area is swarming with military types, packing the latest in hi-tech hardware and assuring the locals that, hey - everything's fine, it's just a standard clean-up operation. Hardly standard - something very important to the military was on that train and it's gone missing. That something is an alien, discovered in a crashed spaceship, and now free to prowl the nighttime streets of the town, frantically searching for the components it needs to rebuild his ship.

SUPER 8 starts promisingly. The young cast are great (particularly Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning) and their clunky attempts at making a homebrew horror epic are comically, yet affectionately portrayed. SUPER 8 is in 2D (hurrah!), plus it's one of those rare animals this summer - a movie that isn't a sequel or a gross-out comedy or a superhero adventure. 

It's just a shame that after an entertaining first half hour, things start to go off the rails around the time the train does. The dual storylines that follow - "coming of age in smalltown America" and "alien nasty on the loose" - don't sit easily with each other. The teenagers' storyline would have made a great film by itself and really didn't need the crowbarred introduction of an evil ET into the mix. 

Talking of ETs, writer/director J J Abrams works hard at crafting SUPER 8 as a cinematic valentine to Steven Spielberg (who also acts as executive producer on the flick). All those Spielberg trademarks - smalltown milieu to dollying camera to extreme backlighting - are present and correct. The trap that Abrams falls into, however, is the same one descended into by Bryan Singer with SUPERMAN RETURNS. Abrams rapidly moves beyond SUPER 8 being just a homage to Steve, with scenes not lightly referencing but virtually restaging those by The Bearded One. It's cinematic karaoke - superficially enjoyable, yes, but ultimately unsatisfying. With MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 and STAR TREK, Abrams proved that he could identify the key elements from a previous work and produce something unique from them. Not so here. Abrams appears to be too close to the original material, too enamoured with the Spielberg back catalogue to create anything different from it.

(As a separate point, the placing of the film in the summer of 1979 is an interesting choice. At that time, Spielberg was riding high off his back-to-back blockbusters JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, plus there was the critical acclaim awarded to DUEL and SUGARLAND EXPRESS. His next film - 1941, released later in '79 - was torn apart by the critics and flopped at the box-office. The golden boy was considered not to be as infalliable as previously thought. Of course, he rose to new heights of acclaim and box-office success later.)    

Anyway, let me be clear on one thing - SUPER 8 may be heavily flawed but it's still a cut above recent cinematic blockbusters like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4 or TRANSFORMERS 3. Although the characters are not as developed as they should have been, you do find yourself caring about what will happen to them. The climax - which regrettably goes down the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS/ET route, when it should have done a JAWS - does at least have a very effective and emotional kick at one point, which whilst not completely salvaging the ending, does go a little way towards redeeming it.

A final point - be patient and wait a minute into the end credits. There's a bonus sequence that's well worth staying around for.

SUPER 8 has a 12A certificate and opens across the UK this Friday.

Following up on Wednesday’s post, all six of the Star Wars films were formally announced as coming to Blu-ray in September. There are three choices of boxset - the “Original Trilogy”, the “Prequel Trilogy” and “The Complete Saga”, which has all 6 films, plus 3 additional Blu-rays of behind-the-scenes featurettes. 

(download)

Click here to download:

star-wars-saga-goes-blu-in-september-rlmjlljvvzmznjDnCdBh.zip (63 KB)

Although it’s not made clear, these are almost guaranteed to be the “Special Editions” - Lucas’ preferred versions. However, even the 1997 “Special Editions” have been altered and tweaked considerably on home video - if you’re into that kind of thing, here’s a list of the many changes made over the years.

Many fans - particularly those old enough to have seen Star Wars when it arrived in UK cinemas way back in 1978 - have been upset about the constant revisions and changes made to the “Original Trilogy”. Others say that they’re Lucas’ property - he can do with them as he wishes. Personally, I think that Steven Spielberg got it right when he tinkered with “ET” for its 2002 rerelease. As well as his amended version, with its walkie-talkies instead of rifles and post-9/11 dialogue cuts), Spielberg ensured that the original was also available to buy on DVD; the best of both worlds. Regrettably, Lucas doesn’t subscribe to this...which is why, if you haven’t done so already, you should quickly snap up the “Original Trilogy” DVD box set that grudgingly included both original and special editions.