John Woo is in the process of directing China's biggest feature ever, Red Cliff. This will be the epic to end all epics. The film is adapted from "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," a 14th century Chinese novel which is made up of 800,000 words, features over 1,000 characters, and is considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature. This will be the epic to end all epics. Too bad we won't be able to see it.
Asia (The Lucky Continent as will be referred to as from this point forward) gets to watch all 4+ hours of Red Cliff, albeit in two parts, but anyone not fortunate enough to live there only gets to watch 2 1/2 hours of the world's greatest epic. That's right, if you plop down your nine American dollars at a local picture house, you'd better make plans for the rest of your night because you'll be out on the streets one-hundred-and-fifty minutes later (give or take a couple minutes for previews) trying to decide if Denny's has better specials than IHOP and what sort of crowds you'll have to fight at this time of night. And no respectable filmgoer should be forced to make such a decision at this day in age.
Here's my question: what's the point of seeing the World's Most Epic Epic if you're only going to see half of it?
Asia (The Lucky Continent as will be referred to as from this point forward) gets to watch all 4+ hours of Red Cliff, albeit in two parts, but anyone not fortunate enough to live there only gets to watch 2 1/2 hours of the world's greatest epic. That's right, if you plop down your nine American dollars at a local picture house, you'd better make plans for the rest of your night because you'll be out on the streets one-hundred-and-fifty minutes later (give or take a couple minutes for previews) trying to decide if Denny's has better specials than IHOP and what sort of crowds you'll have to fight at this time of night. And no respectable filmgoer should be forced to make such a decision at this day in age.
Here's my question: what's the point of seeing the World's Most Epic Epic if you're only going to see half of it?
Posts
3 comments:
i'm usually not one to argue for the merits of long(er) movies, but in this case, i think that's bullshit.
A friend lent me the 2.5 hour version. I haven't watched it yet, because I don't want to miss 1.5 hours of the movie.
Tommy - Stick out for the full version! Damn the man!
Post a Comment