As our 2nd Critic on the Spot, we welcome Carrie Rickey, film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer for 21 years. Her reviews are syndicated nationwide and she is a regular contributor
to Entertainment Weekly, MSNBC and NPR. Rickey’s essays appear in
numerous anthologies, including “The Rolling Stone History of Rock
& Roll,” “The American Century,” and the Library of America’s
“American Movie Critics.” Carrie also hosts a spirited blog, Flickgrrl.
Every few days, we've posted a new Q&A between Carrie and one of us. Here's #5—our penultimate—this one from Andrew Altenburg.
Q:
How does a viewer know which are the 'real' versions of a film and which aren't? I'm thinking of the trend nowadays for directors to re-edit their movies for DVD release.. there can be seemingly subtle edits that change the entire meaning of a film... so how does one say that this or that is the 'real' version?
A:
Another unanswerable question, Andrew! I consider the original-release version of a film the canonical version, and don’t even like watching director’s cuts for this reason. (This said, I think I’ve seen three different director’s cuts of “Blade Runner,” and methinks Ridley Scott keeps going to that well when he needs a cash infusion, as Francis Coppola has different cuts of “The Godfather.”) One director’s cut I’m glad I did see: The “Training Day” DVD has the screenwriter David Ayers’ original ending, which is much better than the movie-release version. So I’ve completely contradicted myself.
