Director's Cuts

Stanley Kubrick is known as one of the greatest directors ever and one of his most famous works was The Shining, hailed by some as "the scariest movie ever." Jack Nicholson starred as Jack Torrance, in one of his finest roles, who takes care of a hotel for the winter and is turned mad and psychotic by strange occurrences. The BFI (The British Film Institute) is re-releasing this work of art with previews on October 31 before opening nationwide a few days later. The film is now 24 minutes longer and contains the footage that Kubrick originally cut from the European release after it had been poorly received by critics. 

This is essentially a director's cut. This is where the director releases his edit of the film before it was cut down. Famous examples of this include Blade Runner, The Exorcist, Star Wars and Alien. The first has had many different versions but Ridley Scott's Final Cut (2007) is considered the definitive edition and is 1 hour 57 minutes long. Arguably the greatest director's cut is Apocalypse Now Redux. Francis Ford Coppola's epic was recut and extended to almost three and a half hours. One of the longest cuts that I have found is The Last Emperor which weighs in at 219 minutes which is a staggering 3 hours and 39 minutes! 

Thanks for reading and please leave a comment! My twitter is @RobertSalusbury and my email is r.salusbury@btopenworld.com.