Apocalypse Now Redux Openings (1 Viewer)

[Jim Rykel]

I believe APR opens tomorrow in LA and NY, then top 10 cities next Friday, top 20 the Friday after that.
New dye transfer prints are due for the top 20 cities.
Anyone planning to see it tomorrow? Anyone know the cities included the next 2 weeks?

 

[Richard Kim]

Holy shit! I totally forgot that NY and LA gets the earlier screenings.
I'm there tomorrow!

 

[Rich Malloy]

Is Boston top-10 or top-20? Anyone?

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Top 12 Markets:
New York
Los Angeles
Boston
Chicago
Denver
Detroit
Philadelphia
Portland
San Diego
San Francisco
Seattle
Washington, DC
Next 19:
Ann Arbor
Atlanta
Austin
Baltimore
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Columbus
Dallas
Houston
Kansas City
Memphis
Miami
Milwaukee
Minneapolis
Phoenix
Sacramento
San Jose
St. Louis
Santa Cruz
~Edwin
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http://www.hometheaterforum.com/uub/Forum9/HTML/005780.html#8

 

[teapot2001]

I'll try to go see it tomorrow.
~T

 

[Jim Rykel]

Ann Arbor? Where's that list from?
Ann Arbor is a good place to see films (saw Manhattan and DOA back-to-back on shrooms 20 yrs ago), but I can't believe it's in the top 20 markets.

 

[Sebastian_M]

Where is Toronto on that list?!?!!?!?
Usually the big opening are in NYC, LA, and Toronto at the same time.
Seb
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All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

 

[JonZ]

At first I was very nervous about this. Apocalypse Now is my second favorite movie.
The results have been mostly bad I think, when directors go back and mess around with movies they did years ago-but the reviews have been very favorable so far.
I saw this on the big screen in 79, but was like 9 years old-I'm really looking foward to seeing this in the theater.
------------------
Visit My Pathetic WebPage
"....With that in mind,I humbly add my own prophecy of
what the dawn of the new millennium shall bring forth-
one thousand more years of the same old crap" Jose Chung

 

[Rich Malloy]

JonZ - I hear you and I agree. I do not think this will be an improvement and I'm really glad the DVD has come out with the original cut already.
That said, I'm curious to finally see these scenes we've heard about over the years and seen snippets from. But my gut tells me it won't be a better film... and it just might be a travesty.

 

[LarryDavenport]

That list has to be alphabetical. There is no way Seattle is a smaller market than Portland.
Most of the critics who have seen the longer version have had positive reviews. I don't think it will be a travesty. Don't get rid of your old DVD/LD/VHS or Beta copy if you are worried.
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These chicks know how to party! - MoJo JoJo
[Edited last by LarryDavenport on August 03, 2001 at 11:01 AM]
[Edited last by LarryDavenport on August 03, 2001 at 11:01 AM]

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Yes, other than NY and LA, the list is alphabetical from then on.
~Edwin

 

[LarryDavenport]

Salon has a great article about ANR. The other article by Allen Barra is from the perspective of someone who didn't like the film in the first place.
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These chicks know how to party! - MoJo JoJo

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

I am also looking forward to this one. So far, it has a 90% consensus over at Rotten Tomatoes .
~Edwin
[Edited last by Edwin Pereyra on August 03, 2001 at 11:21 AM]

 

[Richard Kim]

Does anyone know if they will present in 70mm? In NYC, it's playing at the Loews Astor Plaza, which I believe showed Titanic in 70mm.

 

[Jon_W]

Redux opens on August 10th in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal and than in Edmonton, Halifax and Calgary on the 17th of August. It plays at the Paramount Imax in Toronto.
Does anyone know how long Redux is likely to be playing at theatres?

 

[teapot2001]

Allergies have kept me from going to see the movie today.

~T

 

[Rich Malloy]

quote: So far, it has a 90% consensus over at Rotten Tomatoes.[/quote]
True, but that's misleading if your using it to bolster the notion that the new footage is an improvement over the original cut. Many of the so-called positive reviews cited on Rotten Tomatoes actually don't consider the new footage an improvement, and others aren't even positive reviews to begin with, and still others are by reviewers who have either never seen the original cut or claim to have seen it so long ago that they don't remember it:
1. RT says Thor Thorsen's review is a positive one, but regarding the new cut and the additional footage, Thorsen writes: "When is a classic not a classic? When it's weighed down with "new" material that deservedly ended up on the cutting-room floor the first time around."
2. RT says the E!Online review is a positive one, and then quotes the following from the review: "53 minutes longer, but it can't improve on the original cut."
3. RT says Allen Berra's review is a positive one, and pulls out the single positive quote from the entire review. But any fair reading of his review would conclude that it's negative and, regarding this issue in particular, suggests that the added footage only points up the inadequacies of the original. Berra's review is far more negative than positive, and should have been given a 'spoiled' tomato.
4. RT says Hoberman's review is a positive one, but it's decidedly mixed and ends with the following: "Nothing can redeem the movie's final 40 minutes. That may not be an ultimate horror, but it is a real one. The two major restored sequences — the reencounter with the Bunny chopper, evidently shot during a typhoon on a rain-demolished set, and the so-called French Plantation scene — are welcome mainly in that they serve to forestall the movie's inevitable collapse."
5. RT says the IFilm review is a positive one, but that review reads "The movie didn't "need" to be lengthened, but it's great to see the cut footage." Of course, I wanna see the cut footage, too, but is it a better film with it? I read this review as saying 'No'.
6. RT rightly calls the Flick Filosopher's review a positive one, but I think one would have to take into account the reviewer's admitted ignorance: "There are some serious gaps in my film education, I'm sorry to admit, but one of those gaps was recently filled when I saw APOCALYPSE NOW for the first time. Actually, I saw APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX, Francis Ford Coppola's expanded version of the film that the American Film Institute named one of its one hundred greatest films in the universe for all time now and forever. But I feel totally comfortable placing this review in my AFI 100 section because, frankly, ANR was one of the most profoundly amazing film experiences of my life, and even if the AFI wouldn't put this new cut among their top 100, I'd put it in my personal top 100. Probably my personal top 10."
7. Steve Rhodes' review is along the lines of the Flick Filosophers: "The question for reviewers is whether to evaluate APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX on its own or compare it to the original. Since it has been too long since I've seen the original, I'll evaluate it on its own. It's an incredible film and a classic, but it's not quite perfect...."
8. John Popick's rather ambivalent "positive" review reads: "Are the additions necessary? Probably not to us, but they were to Coppola, who originally scrambled to get Now ready for Cannes (it won the Golden Palm). If anything, it's an excuse to see the film on the big screen, and that's good enough for me...."
In addition to these, there were two flat-out negative reviews:
Eric Lurio writes: "Coppola has completely re-edited the film, adding the better part of an hour to it. The question does the added material add or detract from the experience? Sadly, for the most part, it detracts."
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-10000535/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=2&rid=240195
Al's DVD Collection
Al's Criterion Collection
[Edited last by Al Brown on August 03, 2001 at 01:52 PM]

 

[LarryDavenport]

It comes down to people who didn't like the movie before, like Allen Barra, are not going to change their minds, and people who loved it before will still love it, whether they think the new footage should have been put in or not. It's called Apocalypse Now Redux, not Apocalypse Now: The Directors Cut. They're two different films using the same footage.
George Lucas should get a clue and do The Phantom Menace Redux, the one without Jar Jar Binks.
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These chicks know how to party! - MoJo JoJo

 

[Rich Malloy]

But the most depressing review I've read is by far the most in-depth. Glenn Erickson, aka the DVD Savant, is one of the few reviewers who had ever seen the 'rough-cut' version and has written about it previously on his site. He's quite the AN scholar (and fan), and his thoughts certainly carry more weight with me than any of those mentioned earlier. He writes:
__________________________________________________ __________
"No new review today (shame), but a report on last night's screening of APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX.
"I'm afraid that this is indeed another case of the deplorable trend to go back and create new marketable items out of established hits, by adding scenes and details that the filmmakers never intended to be included. Francis Coppola has joined his pals Lucas and Spielberg by pulling his pretty-darn-amazing Vietnam War movie out and retooling it. According to all the hype, this is the 'expanded version' that fully expresses the filmmaker's intentions, etc. A few days ago the LA TIMES had a big John Milius article on the subject, falling all over itself in hommage to these great artists.
"That this is just so much hooey isn't making too much news. The added 'redux' word hangs over the new APOCALYPSE poster like the 'now with Bleach' sticker on a box of detergent. Coppola could have edited together a bunch of trims and outs in 1979 and UA would have released it - he had total control and spent years figuring out the best final form for the movie. This recut is just commercial opportunism ... did somebody in Zooetrope-Land see the need for some extra cash ...?
"The added scenes are very damaging to the film. For curiosity value, plenty of us will want to see this - several nice things from the famous work-in-progress rough cut (link) are there, such as the stealing of Robert Duvall's surfboard. But all are unnecessary. The original cut, which savagely ejected major scenes left and right, has been a model of editorial genius for 22 years. Coppola and his editors truly fashioned a diamond out of a lot of discordant material, and gave it a consistent through-line.
All of the new material either breaks this through-line, or slows what used to be a deliberate picture into a static one.
"The surfboard theft business is cute, but breaks Coppola's sombre tone. A few more details of the Duvall character show him being 'compassionate', which works against his character. There is not a single frame more of the mysterious Scott Glenn character or his fight with Willard. No massive chanting rituals. The added scene with Marlon Brando does exactly nothing but dissipate Kurtz's mystery.
"The two major breaks, the visit with the Playboy Bunnies and the French Plantation, are simply all wrong. Coppola himself has been vocal, on several occasions, about the wisdom of not using them. The Bunnies had made their impact already in the concert scene, and the footage with the sailors hopping in the sack with them always had the 'whatever' look of stuff improvised to keep the actors happy while sets were being repaired from a hurricane.
"The French Plantation scene really kicks the movie into a bucket, introducing a new tone and a 'romantic' subplot that goes nowhere. I got ZERO feel for any idea of the movie tracing a reverse evolution of Vietnam history, as claimed by Coppola. Worse, the scene is wall-to-wall exposition with Frenchmen at a table haranguing Willard about Viet history ... just the kind of specific, literal chatter that the original movie avoided, choosing instead to remain a kind of violent and dreamlike poem about Vietnam. It also reminds me too much of John Milius' screaming right-wing harangues in real life, when he was upset that Carter had decided to give Panama back the canal.
"The funeral scene at the French plantation was very nice, especially for the Albert Hall character, but its feeling of military reverence also goes against the grain of what was once subversive and surreal.
"The presentation of the new film is nothing to write home about. APOCALYPSE NOW used to be revived at the Cinerama Dome every few years or so, whenever a hole popped up in the booking schedule, and they always trotted out some terrific (70mm?) one-of-a-kind print . The new 35 I saw last night was very uneven, with rich blacks but a yellow haze on lots of scenes. These weren't Vittorio Storaro color effects, either, just printing troubles from mass-producing prints from such an old source. I saw the picture in a screening at one of the best theaters in town, but the sound was not good either. Walter Murch has decided to bury the dialog lines even deeper under his audio montages. The Wagner music in the heli attack sequence now jumps around the screen directionally depending on what the camera angle is. In the new scenes, I only got about half of the dialog that was spoken. It's simply unintelligible. I often couldn't tell if Christian Marquand was speaking French or English.
"So that's the skinny. Had I not seen APOCALYPSE NOW 30+ times, I'm sure I'd have a different opinion. These scenes would have made an excellent addendum to a special DVD or something. It's a shame that the promoter Coppola was able to overcome the artist Coppola. All the artistry of APOCALYPSE NOW, one of the monuments of the '70s, now seems like more grist for a moneymaker's mill.
"I don't recommend the movie."
-Glenn
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/spec.html

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Yet, a different point of view from Mike Clark of USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lphoto.htm