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Cotton Club: Encore
Amongst film fans, the story goes that “The Cotton Club” was undone by the studio and its meddlesome editing. It’s been circulated that the original cut was “too Black” and not “The Godfather” enough. Rumors aside, the fact stands that “The Cotton Club” released to theatres in December 1984 was a financial failure: after world-wide box office was totaled, the movie was still $10 million in the red.
Fast-forward 30 years, director Coppola has been re-cutting his movies so as to leave for posterity the versions he wants left e.g. the recent edits to “The Godfather.” “The Cotton Club” has been the latest beneficiary of Coppola’s time and wealth (he reportedly sank a half-million into this edit) and “Encore” was the result.
The new cut is still a damn mess. But scenes and passages of brilliance and beauty – some entirely new – have been restored or are more clearly showcased through the edit. The result doesn’t transcend confused direction, leaden acting, pointless arcs, and a dearth of romantic chemistry between Lane and Gere to be a masterpiece. Nevertheless…there is greatness in it, despite it not being great.
It’s a recommend, with some caveats.
Newsletter: 2022-09-16
Looking West from Midtown East
Contents
- Update
-
Blog Posts
- Forgotten Albums: Shape by Frente!
- Movie Review: Village of the Damned
- Around the Internet
- Rachel and Lou: A reflection about the relationship between Lou Reed and Rachel Humphreys. Author S.I. Rosenbaum’s (true) story has a really moving tone about the confusions of love in down and out 70’s NYC East Side
- QAnon-Addled Dad Killed by Cops After Shooting Wife, Daughter: ‘This Is Out of Control’: The tolerance of the Q movement as a booster for right-wing candidates was implicitly started in 2016 and 2020. With its reality-deranging and apocalyptic rhetoric paired with its high incidence of firearm ownership, it’s unsurprising it’s developing a body count
- Podcast Raves
- Sam Harris and Jonah Goldberg: Goldberg was a writer at National Review and was a fixture on Fox news. Nevertheless when Trump came, he made a principled rejection of the candidate. As violence and anti-Semitism came at him from Trumpist blood-and-soil masses, those who erstwhile friends did nothing for the expedience proving that movement, intellectual conservatism had fallen in thrall to Trumpism for its ability to deliver votes. Goldberg and Harris try to identify the value of conservatism from first principles.
- Into It: “On Black Hobbits”: Recently, some have complained that the works of Tolkien (“Rings of Power” on Amazon) or Hans C. Andersen (“The Little Mermaid”) including actors with melanin in their skin is “woke” or something. Author Ebony Elizabeth Thomas talks about this question in a tender way, and my heart broke a little bit for her when a woman who could name multiple hobbits had to acknowledge that author (J.R.R. Tolkien) would have probably not considered her worth his attention because of her skin color. It’s really good. It’s the second segment. It’s hard being a sci-fantasy nerd, imagine how much harder it is being a Black sci-fantasy nerd. Which, incidentally, is kinda weird since Black Americans and Indigenous people actually lived the things that we fear the fantastic (aliens, monsters) for: being kidnapped from our families or having our kind exterminated. It’s not very academic for them.