God, the director's cut sucks
So I finally picked up the director's cut of Catacombs on DVD today.
When it said "director's cut" I didn't know it was going to be this drastically different, yeesh. So far, the intro is worse. Way worse. In the first version I saw, the audio mixing was so spot on with switching back and forth between the girl screaming and the sound of party and how the reverb from the song echoed even after it went mute. It was more about showcasing the song ("Blue Butterfly") in the first version, and now it just seems more like a cheesy horror scene :.. Ultimately, the music is heavily downplayed in the intro.
I was hoping for animorphic or 1:85 widescreen but this is presented in letterbox style (like a rectangle inside your TV surrounded by black.) Not sure how I feel about the image quality. Of course, the detail looks better than the rip I watched on my computer, but it brings out a sort of cheapness to the video. It does have a sort of creepy vibe to it, but then there's this thin blue line on the corner of the frame the whole time. Who printed this DVD?
The scenes with Shannyn are extended though, and you can see a lot more improv in her role, showing off her non trained freestyle like way of acting. The timing between scenes is just off though, it goes on longer than it should. It would have been nice if they included both versions (was the original I saw the french version?).
The shopping scene was RUINED. They completely cut out the song!!! I'm starting to wonder WHAT THE *beep* IS GOING ON HERE? Did Hybrid only do the music for the foreign version? They're completely ignoring the best part of this movie and that was the music. That's why I loved this movie.
I think the voices were dubbed over too. If anyone says this movie sucked, they much have watched this version. The more and more I watch this, it's like there were two different director's with two different cameras, seriously. It's so sad because now I want to immediately eject this DVD and watch the french version in headphones. I'm so dissappointed. If any of my friends ask to watch this, let me play you the ORIGINAL VERSION.
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"Knightley is a poor man's Portman." -monkeypunks