Your pal, George Lucas, had a pretty acute observation a while back that went something along the lines of “they used to be called director’s cuts, now they’re called DVDs.”
While the flannelled one is just as much a part of that as anybody else, I do think it’s amusing how something that started as a resistance against studio involvement has effectively been co-opted as a marketing gimmick. Where once Blade Runner and Brazil were legitimately different movies on account of what was removed from them, you’re now pretty much guaranteed deleted and extended scenes on a DVD of anything.
And if you watch said scenes, more often than not, you'll see there's a good reason they were cut...17 minutes of “lost” footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey have recently resurfaced (as according to Film Stage by way of Blastr.) I put “lost” in quotations because Kubrick intentionally removed them after the first screening when he deemed them extraneous. And when Kubrick deems material to be slow, you know it's got to be positively glacial, so I'm honestly not expecting any of it to be interesting.
Speaking of Kubrick material that never made it to screen, I’ll point you all to Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made, which is another gi-normous book from Taschen (much like their recent 16lbs 75 Years of DC Comics History coffee table book.) It's an extensive collection of the scripts, correspondence, location photos, production art and research that would've went into the never-realized biopic of Emperor Bonaparte. The price went from $1,500 (!?!??!) to a much more reasonable $44.99 on Amazon , and it provides a fascinating, extensive look into the creative process of one of the most enigmatic filmmakers ever.
