Recently I hired a couple of DVDs from our library’s fine collection (4164titles and going strong). They were good movies and everyone was verily pleased, until we made the mistake of watching the “Alternate Endings”. Hmm…One was described as “thought-provoking” and the other as “mind-blowing”. The only problem was that they were EXACTLY the same as the original ending, sure, one added a voice over and another had a different location but the changes were cosmetic to say the least.
Seems to me like an example of the back cover hyperbole that we were talking about a few weeks ago. Do people who write the descriptions think we don’t notice? To me, a true alternate ending is like this Simpsons ending for Gone With The Wind (re-edited for seniors) :
Scarlett : “Oh Rhett! Where will I go, what’ll I do?”
Rhett: “Frankly my dea-I love you, lets remarry!”
20 January 2009 at 2:50 pm
Ha! I think the world is divided between those who watch all those bleeding DVD extras and those who don’t. I am firmly in the latter camp (unless someone tells me there is something in the extras that must be watched).
Best ending for a movie I’ve seen recently … Stephen King’s The Mist. I’ll say no more. Except the music playing over the closing titles was The host of Seraphim by Dead can dance. Very cool.
20 January 2009 at 4:01 pm
Sounds cool, it’s already on my TBW list – we should be thankful that SK doesn’t write his own music for his movies a la John Carpenter. He did get it right once though – the music over the final shots of Halloween terrified me.
20 January 2009 at 4:36 pm
Hello, my name is Mo-mo and I am a DVD extra-aholic.
I always watch deleted scenes, alternate endings and gag reels. I sometimes watch “making ofs” as well.
I am a very sad person
20 January 2009 at 5:05 pm
I’m with you, Mo. In fact, sometimes I ONLY watch the extras. Best so far – Shaun of the Dead, and (believe it or not) the remake of Starsky and Hutch with the mock interviews.
20 January 2009 at 5:18 pm
I like the extra bits and the blurb “now with 30 seconds of unseen footage”. I once watched one of these and found that some poor actor’s whole appearance had been nixed from the studio release.
21 January 2009 at 10:51 am
If you really like a movie, the added extras are a goldmine, all the more reason why promised features should be as “mind-blowing’ as they purport to be. My fav additional scenes are from the Metallica doco – Some kind of monster. (The library has the book Metallica – this monster lives) The lead singer at a ballet class and group therapy sessions with their ‘official therapist’ crack me up.