So, there's this site where they do screencaps to compare various dvd and blu-ray releases. His image capture software is horrible and none of his caps ever actually look like the film. But at least when he "reviews" a transfer it's quick and to the point because he's not the brightest bulb on the planet. But he's got this other guy there also "reviewing" - one Leonard Norwitz. This guy is perhaps the biggest nincompoop I've ever had the displeasure of reading on these sites. Note to nincompoop: We want to read about the transfer and sound, not your inane thoughts on film. He pontificates, he cannot put a sentence together, he is just in love with the sound of his own thoughts. In the following "review" of Red Cliff, he repeatedly calls the film Red Bluff. I print it here as an example of everything I loathe on these sites:
The Film: 7
So, the question is: Is John Woo's four and a half-hour, two-part original version of Red Bluff unnecessarily long or have sufficient padding that it not only could stand some cutting here and there, but perhaps benefit from it? I can't say I feel I know the film well enough to comment definitively – not after a single viewing of both the original "International" and the American Theatrical cuts. But I have never felt that Woo's ideas about pacing are gospel, though they are his. I feel he is more in love with the beauty of a scene than its place in the overall arc of his movie. His finales seem to have an inertia of their own, almost in defiance of the needs to resolve things of everything up to that moment. I have always felt the lengthy motorboat chase at the end of Face/Off to be destructive of the tension. Excitement should not devolve into exhaustion, but Woo worries the question more than most.
Cutting internally is another matter. Subplots, fleshing out of characters, extended metaphors for this or that relationship – these have special cumulative power in a film, as does the intercutting between scenes. If you pare away at scenes A & B, and cut between them, as he does with Cao Cao's invasion of the village where Liu Bei's wife and child are trying to escape, the effect on the audience will have to be different. In the truncated version, for example, wife and child aborted escape are abbreviated to a few gasps; we don't even see how she dies. And we are proportionally cheated out of General Zhao Yun's heroic attempts to rescue both wife and child, just as his sudden appearance on the battlefield wreaks havoc with our sense of time and space. There are risks and dangers with cutting. Enough said.
While the case of the old truncated American cut of Seven Samurai immediately comes to mind, my impression (for now) is that it had a better chance of making sense and standing on its own. While Red Bluff is no Seven Samurai, what hopes it has of offering a completely satisfying dramatic experience is trashed by such evisceration that would make even RKO blush. You think The Magnificent Ambersons had it rough! Whatever we feel about Red Bluff in its American version, it is clear that the International Version takes time to reflect and develop stories within stories and relationships that enhance our sympathy for what is at stake for both sides of the war.
One more thing: The home theatre experience is different from the Cineplex experience in a way that doesn't get much play in these columns: At home, we can stop and start a movie as we do reading a novel. A five-hour movie isn't likely to be watched in five hours of real time, and it might not even be seen over only two uninterrupted sittings. Even Wagner's Ring cycle is performed over four nights, and each act is separated by a substantial intermission. We can watch the movie again and again, replaying scenes - as encores or for clarification - in the middle of things. We might even openly engage in discussion with others in the room – something we are expected not to do in the theater on pain of raspberries. So, even though I make noises about tension and arc and all, I know that everyone's actual mileage is likely to be different, as it will be every time we see it.
The story pf Red Cliff (named for the fortress held by Yu Zhou) takes place in the early part of the third century and centers around a legendary battle that would bring about the end of the Han Dynasty (and eventually spawn Luo Guanzhong's classic 14th century novel "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.") Power hungry Prime Minster (now "General") Cao Cao (Zhang Feng Yi) has convinced the young and easily intimidated emperor that two southern warlords, Liu Bei (Yu Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen) represent potential insurgencies and a threat to the throne. To add some spice to the hunt, Cao Cao also has designs on the beautiful Xiao Qiao (Lin Chi Ling), the wife of Viceroy Zhou Yu (Tony Leung Chui Wai.) Kong Ming (aka: Zhuge Liang, played by Takeshi Kaneshiro), the brilliant military strategist to Liu Bei, attempts to unite the southern forces with those of Zhou Yu in a defense against Cao Cao, who armies and navy greatly outnumbers the combined armies of the south.
