Bored at 3AM

21C Peasant said:

Also, I am trying to send you a DM in Reddit about Andor Season 1 edit and I am not able. I don’t understand why. When I finally succeeded sending a message, it was removed just after because, apparently, it does not allow new accounts to send messages or comments. Anyway, could I also get the link of Andor too please?

Reddit might have blocked you from contacting me because they had banned my account for a few days claiming that I was spamming people when, in fact, all I was doing was responding to an overload of link requests. Anyway, it’s back up and running now!

Check your DMs here.

The same thing happened to me, twice. The trick is that the other person has to start the chat. If you do it and post the link, you’ll be flagged for spam. It’s why I shout at people in all-caps to PM me instead of the usual ‘Lnks plz’ bullshit in the thread.

BTW, I’m looking forward to seeing how you figure out a movie length cut of Andor s2 after you miracled up one from s1. 😉

This is a companion piece of a kind with my edit of The Shadow, another story predicated upon the very outdated idea of white guys gaining superpowers from Eastern mumbo-jumbo. However, I loved this film as a kid so I decided to give it a fresh coat of paint after someone suggested this movie to me as potentially being ripe for an edit.

Due to the yellowface and our heroes being of a secret death squad answerable only to the President of the United States, this movie is very much a product of its time. That said, the relationship between Remo and Chiun is still great. As outrageously racist as Chiun is, both in the character’s disgust towards any other people on Earth but Koreans and the unfortunate decision to cast a white actor in ‘slanty-eyed’ make-up, Chiun remains adorable.

It’s highly unlikely this film will be given a critical reappraisal but I do think there’s some fun stuff in here, particularly once you strip away a lot of the stuff that doesn’t work–namely, the dull set-up of the underwhelming villains.

The best parts of this film are undeniably the scenes with Remo and Chiun and the always stellar work by Kate Mulgrew as a military officer trying to nail a corrupt weapons manufacturer.

I’d originally played with the idea of speeding up the hilariously slow ‘martial arts’ bits, but decided against it. The lack of believability is part of their charm.

The theatrical cut was 2 hours and change. My cut is about 1 hour and 50 minutes. No English subtitles this time around, but I might make a version with hardcoded subtitles if I receive enough polite requests.

The link is the same as all my other edits but, if you don’t have the link yet, please send me a PM. As always, suggestions are welcome.

I’ve made some minor tweaks to the ending to remove the Obi-Wan Kenobi bit at the end in which Clint remembers to ‘think in Russian’

This is a companion peice of a sort to my similarly-minded edit of Stealth. Like most people who watched Clint Eastwood’s first attempt at a big budget VFX action blockbuster, I was disappointed in how long it took to get to the actual stuff with the jet. I think the cat and mouse stuff in the first two acts is fun, but it simply drags on for far too long and there are multiple exposition dumps that are just unnecessary. I’ve cut about 20 minutes of plate-spinning to keep the pace moving as quickly as I can without losing too much of the Robert Ludlum-esque spy thriller vibe of the first hour of the film. Once Eastwood is in the cockpit, I’ve let the film play out as it did theatrically. I think it might be possible to trim it a bit more, but I’m happy enough with it is now to release it publicly.

It will be in the same folder as all my other edits. If you don’t already have the link, please send me a Private Message. No English subtitles this time, however, as this edit wasn’t made for my ESL students. It was made for 10 year old me who was bored silly waiting for the jet to show up 😉

Any suggestions, as always, are welcome.

This is a very simple edit of a stand alone episode of Criminal Minds from the 11th season. I was looking for a nice twisty-turny short story for my students and this episode, featuring a great performance by Aubrey Plaza fits the bill perfectly.

The cuts are relatively simple. I’ve trimmed everything out that doesn’t relate to the main plot invovling the ‘dinner date’ between Plaza and Mathew Gray Gubler. The total running time now is 38 minutes and requires absolutely no previous knowledge of Criminal Minds or its characters.

In fact, I’d never really watched the show myself, but my wife absolutely loves the show and I’m a fan of Plaza and heard this was a good episode, so I checked out this episode from my wife’s collection and thought it’d make for a fun one-and-done episode with a few trims.

The episode has handcoded English subtitles, as it was created for my ESL students, in addition to an ESL reader adaptation of the episode.

The edit has actually been in my folder of edits for a little while, but I’d forgotten to make a post about it. If you need a link, send me a PM.

I’ve added a new reader based loosely on elements from the Legend of Herakles edit to the folder if anyone is curious.

I’ve added another version with hardcoded subtitles for anyone who was waiting for it.

Stealth is a very silly movie that thinks it’s much smarter than it actually is. But that shouldn’t stop us from enjoying it and this edit aims to do that by stripping out a lot of the fluff added in order for it to satisfy the 4-quadrant blockbuster checklist the studio likely thought the movie needed.

First off, the romance subplot is not what anyone interested in this movie came for. I’ve kept some of it (don’t worry, I would never think of cutting that utterly gratuitous scene of Jessica Biel in a bikini by the waterfall) but most of it is completely unnecessary and slows things down when all we want is to get to the action.

I’ve also trimmed down Jamie Fox’s scenes that were clearly kept in because he’d just won an Oscar and they wanted to use every last scrap of footage with him in the film.

The original running time was 2 hours, but I’ve got it down to a more streamlined 1 hour 47 minutes and I sincerely doubt you’ll miss anything that’s been cut.

Currently, the only version available is without subtitles, but I’ll be making one with hardcoded English subtitles and an ESL adaptation of the film early next week.

As always, any suggestions you may have are welcome. Please contact me through PM if you don’t already have the link to my edits.

Okay, both versions are uploaded now. Sorry for the delay.

Walter Hill’s Prohibition-era remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo is another film that has a lot to love, but is held back by a saggy 2nd act. So, I’ve cut a half hour of fairly uninteresting back and forth between the Irish and Italian gangs to get us to the good stuff a whole lot faster.

Two versions are included, one with hardcoded English subtitles and one without, in addition to a quick ESL reader adaptation of the film as a short story.

You’ll find them in the same folder as all my other edits. If you need a link, please send me a PM. As always, please let me know if you have suggestions.

The Shadow is a character that’s very hit or miss for me. I love the concept of an evil man forced to atone for his crimes by Eastern mysticism, despite how dated that kind of Orientalist nonsense is. The 1994 movie has some great elements, but it’s held back by some pretty mediocre stuff that keeps the whole thing from ever getting going. There have been two previous fan edits to this film that have done great job of reworking a lot of the elements that didn’t work, so I’m using Lapis Molari’s ‘The Shadow Knows’ edit, which was heavily indebted to BionicBob’s earlier edit, as my starting point, but I’ve gone even further with the cutting.

The most damaging to the overall film is that The Shadow is never as cool, powerful, or mysterious as he is in the opening scene on the Manhattan Bridge. Everything after that is a pretty big letdown, so I’ve kept the two middle scenes with The Shadow himself mostly in… well shadow. We see the aftermath of his exploits, but the action itself is better left to the imagination because the reality is extremely underwhelming. As a result, The Shadow only appears twice, at the beginning and at the end of the film for the climax. This significant reduction in the film’s action might seem like it would make the film less thrilling, but I honestly think most people were bored by those dull sequences anyways.

I’ve also cut a lot of the plate-spinning to set up the nuclear bomb threat. We don’t need half of it and the audience doesn’t need the mechanics of how an atomic bomb is built in the 1930s spelled out for us, particularly if we’re already willing to buy into the idea of Tibetan monks handing out superpowers to a Westerner who’d somehow become the most powerful opium warlords in Asia.

All this leaves the film a much more streamlined 1 hour and 15 minutes of what I do think works about the film–the actors, the snappy dialogue, and the story of a man struggling with the darkness of his own past.

There are no English subtitles this time around as I am unsure whether or not I would ever be able to use this edit in my ESL classes. However, if there are enough polite requests, I might be able to make one with subtitles. The folder is the same as all my other edits, but you can send me a PM if you don’t already have the link. As always, any suggestions you may have are welcome.

I’d love to see the female pilots reinserted or, at the very least, a woman’s voice used to redub Red 3

Sorry, I deleted them last week. The students I was using them for wanted to do something else after we finished RotJ.

I’ll likely remake them, but better at some point.

I remember reading that there was a female pilot as well in that battle, but they were edited out because Lucas didn’t think America was ready to see women die in battle. Is there any footage of that available?

I’ve added an edit of the same scenes from the 1956 adaptation of the film with Robert Wagner as the killer. Considering the speculation surrounding him in regards to the death of Natalie Wood, his performance has a little extra layer of menace now.

This will likely be an edit with a microscopic audience, but I continue to be surprised by how much interest these odd duck projects end up getting compared to my more ‘normal’ ones.

Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying is a classic in the murder mystery genre for a reason, but it’s a story that can really only work in prose, yet Hollywood has still tried to adapt it twice for reasons I fail to understand.

For anyone unfamiliar with the story, the first part of the novel follows the plans of an unnamed ‘handsome young man’ to murder the daughter of a wealthy copper magnate. Then the next part follows her sister’s investigation into the murder to find him.

In prose, this works wonderfully as the reader has no idea which of the sister’s suspects is the real murderer.

There are even more twists and turns to the story, but the movie adaptations simply don’t work for me because the audience already knows who the killer is because they’ve seen the guy do it.

As usual with my edits, this was created for my students to enjoy as they read an ESL adaptation of the novel. Since the first 10 minutes of the 1991 adaptation with Matt Dillion and Sean Young is very faithful to the first part book and the killer’s name is different, it works perfectly for my purposes. So you can read Part 1 of the book, then watch this edit, before returning to the book for an exciting murdered mystery with none of the twists and turns ruined for you.

This edit also includes the end of 1991 adaptation, which is completely different from the ending of the book. So, if you just want to enjoy this as a 15 minute short film of murder and mayhem, you can, although I certainly think it’ll be more satisfying if done with the reader, which will of course be included.

The link is the same as all my other edits, or you can PM me for one if you don’t have it yet. As always, suggestions are welcome.

2017’s King Arthur Legend of the Sword was clearly the result of a studio frantically editing and re-editing a film that simply didn’t work in the hopes of salvaging the potential franchise they were hoping for. It’s a mish-mash of ideas that unfortunately never gell into something more compelling. That said, there are a lot of things about it that I like. This is easily my favorite depiction of how powerful a weapon Excalibur is supposed to be.

The biggest problem for me is recasting Arthur as a more Batman-esque character with a healthy dose of Guy Ritche’s Brit gangster shtick poured all over it. I prefer my Arthur more wide-eyed Luke Skywalker than a streetwise punk with a chip on his shoulder, but I respect that they were trying to do something different with the character. However, this depiction of Arthur is not particularly endearing. He’s too much of a self-satisfied prick for far too much of the film. This edit aims to eliminate as much of that as possible while also getting the character from point A to point B much, much quicker so that we don’t have to suffer through half an hour of Arthur trying to decide if he wants to be a leader to the collection of forgettable side character whom the previous editiors have already largely excised from the movie.

The film starts much the same as the theatrical cut, but the cuts begin when the film tries to become Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels: Camelot Edition. Then the film proceeds as we go from Arthur’s capture, a less douche version of him taking the Sword from Stone, his first meeting with Vortigern, his rescue by the rebels and his ‘training’ to master Excalibur.

Then we have another big jump to Vortigern’s army attack on the rebels, Arthur’s rejection and final acceptance of Excalibur, the big conclusion, then we cut straight to Arthur holding up Excalibur as the new King of Britain. Credits. My guess is the original cut of this movie was likely two and half hours or more, which was widdled down to 2 hours by the studio in their attempts to salvage it. My cut is a mere hour and twenty-five minutes.

I wasn’t sure if this edit was even going to work, so I was editing a version without subtitles, but I’m happy enough with it that a version with hardcoded English subtitles for my ESL students will be added later today. I’ll also include an ESL reader adaptation of the Arthurian myths that incorporates elements of Boorman’s Excalibur, TH White’s Once and Future King, and this film’s version of Vortigern.

The link is the same as all my previous edits, but, if you don’t have one already, please send me a PM and I’ve give you the link. As always, any suggestions you may have are welcome.

Of all the various 80s Star Wars knock-offs, I always had a soft-spot for this one. It’s got a great premise, some creepy baddies, and some fun action sequences and story beats that set it apart from the rest. Thanks to some rights issues, we’ve been spared the inevitably disappointing remake… although I’m sure it’ll come at some point.

The original film is not without its flaws, of course, and this edits aims to fix one of them. Alex’s refusal of the call stretches out much too long to the point that he goes from relatable to unlikeable. So, with a few trims after Alex’s first space battle, I’ve hopefully kept his understandable reluctance at being thrust into a life or death battle for the fate of the galaxy without him slipping into a whiney brat who constantly needs to talked into taking action.

There’s nothing I can do about the outdated CGI, which was cutting edge at the time, but I think that’s also part of the movie’s charm. I’d also planned to remove Centauri’s sudden resurrection at the end, but Nick Cave’s fondness for long takes makes trimming that out far beyond my current editing skill.

At 1 hour and 39 minutes, the movie is now a mere minute and change shorter. There are no English subtitles as this one isn’t for my students… yet. At some point, I’ll make a version of this with subs, perhaps when I can figure out how to remove Centauri from the end. However, I will include the ESL reader adapatation of the movie just because I already have that ready.

It’ll be in the same folder as all my other edits. If you haven’t got the link yet, please contact me through PM.

I think BBC’s Sherlock was a bit hit and miss, but I do think Cumberbatch and Freeman were always great in their roles. I actually think the first episode, ‘A Study in Pink’, is a much better introduction to the character than Arthur Conan Doyle’s original story. As a result, I made a new ESL reader adaptation of ‘A Study in Scarlet’ for my students that uses that episode as its basis, but set in 1886 instead of 2010. I’ve also taken the prologue and epilogue from the retro ‘Abominable Bride’ and blended them in with ‘A Study in Scarlet’ to create a new experience that begins and ends in the story’s original time period. The edit runs about an hour and a half.

As usual, this is for ESL students so there are hardcoded English subtitles and PDFs of all my Sherlock Holmes readers included if you’re interested. ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ reader is adapted to work with the Cushing/Lee Hammer film, the ‘Blackwood’ reader is an adaptation of the RDJ/Law film, and ‘The Final Problem’ has been tweaked to work better with ‘A Game of Shadows’ and serve as the last story (no resurrections in my version).

I’d originally planned to edit ‘A Game of Shadows’ to be closer to ‘The Final Problem’, but that film’s plot and editing style is too frenetic for me to cut anything without it all falling apart. Better editors than me will have to take a crack at that one.

The link is the same as all my other edits, but, if you don’t already have one, please send me a PM.

A 1 hour 8 minute version without subtitles is being uploaded now. If you want it, you better grab it fast because I’m only going to keep it there until I need space on my Google Drive.

G.I. Joe is a franchise near and dear to my Gen X heart, but it’s one that honestly hasn’t been very well served in animation… and the less said about the pitiful attempts to adapt it into live-action, the better.

Larry Hama’s comic is, to me, the best version of G.I.Joe and the cartoons have always been a mixed bag hampered by the restrictions of 80s cartoons and some ill-advised departures from what the comic established. There was no good reason to change Hawk into Duke and make him Scarlett’s love interest instead of Snake-Eyes. That said, the cartoon was not without its goofy charms, which guys like Seanbaby gleefully spun gold from.

However, in 2009, they released a series of animated shorts called G.I.Joe Resolute, written by comics writer Warren Ellis and directed by Joaquim Aranha dos Santos. It successfully merged the best of the cartoons with Hama’s comic and created what is, in the eyes of many G.I. Joe fans, the best animated depiction of the characters.

What I’ve done is turned Resolute into a quasi-sequel to the original cartoons by giving it the prologue from G.I.Joe The Movie and a “5 years later” tag before going straight into Resolute. I haven’t trimmed much beyond that other than a few minor things here and there.

As usual, this is for my ESL students so it has hardcoded English subtitles and an ESL reader adaptation with file cards for all the relevant characters. If that bothers you, the prologue to G.I.Joe The Movie and all of Resolute all freely available on YouTube for you to make your own edit without subtitles.

Please send me a PM for the link or, if I’ve given you one before, it’s the same folder as all my other edits.

Legend of Zorro has the misfortune of trying and failing to recapture whatever magic made Mask of Zorro a straight-up classic of swashbuckling movies. That said, the actors are still great, a lot of the action is fun, and the film has a pretty good set-up and finale, but the second act is just a slog of Alejandro and Elena endlessly bickering with one another because the plot requires them to be apart for another hour. So, I’ve chopped out that hour of pointless plate-spinning, leaving us with a movie that gets to the good stuff much faster.

It will be in the same folder as my other edits, or if you don’t have the link already, please send me a PM. As usual, this was created for my ESL students so there are hardcoded English subtitles and an ESL reader adaptation of both Mask of Zorro and Legend of Zorro is also included.

I’d only made these shorts as a fun little bonus for my students but, when I mentioned them as part of my edit of The Rock’s Hercules, these two ended up getting much more interest than the movie-length edit did.

So I figured I’ll just release these as their own thing. Be aware that neither of these short films are complete narratives on their own. They’re just supplemental material meant to go with the ESL reader adaptations of Andromeda & Perseus, Crimes of Alcmena, and Hercules that are included with the videos.

Clash of the Titans: Andromeda and Perseus is a mere 20 minutes, covering the broad strokes of that myth from King Acrisius’ attempted murder of his daughter Danae and her infant son, the catastrophic destruction caused by the Kraken, the battle with Medusa, and the climactic rescue of Andromeda. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about an Ethiopian princess consistently being portrayed as a blonde white girl by Hollywood. She’s absolutely African in the book though and Ethiopia is depicted as the proto-Wakanda the ancient Greeks believed it was.

The Legend of Herakles is a half hour cut of the best bits of Renny Harlin’s movie, with much of the weak sauce 300/Gladiator/Troy rehashes removed. It’s got very little to do with the myths themselves, but Scott Adkins is clearly having a ball and Kellan Lutz is suitably Herculean as long as he isn’t asked to do more than look cool in action scenes.

Please send me a PM for the link or, if I’ve given you one before, it’s the same folder as all my other edits.

No, it’s still very much not a PG-13 movie 😉

Troy may not be the best adaptation of the Trojan War myth, but it’s certainly the best movie version of it that we’ve got so far. Let’s hope that Nolan’s Odyssey gives us something great, but presumably the story of Achilles, Hector, Helen and Paris won’t take up too much screen time.

I think most of this film works pretty well and the choice to keep the gods off-screen was a smart way to ground the story and helped keep an already sprawling epic short enough to be a movie. Removing characters like Diomedes, Penthesilea, and Memnon was probably for the best, although I do miss Cassandra.

This edit makes two small, but important changes that I think benefit Helen and Menelaus greatly. The first is removing the notion that Helen was sent to Sparta when she was 16 and sold as a bride. In the original Greek myths, Helen was the Queen of Sparta and everyone was competing for her because they would inherit one of the strongest armies of Greece. The cut isn’t as elegant as I’d like, but it’s the best I can do with my meager skills and the available footage. The second change is the quick bit of dialogue where Menelaus tells his brother that he can attack the Trojans after he kills Paris. He’s not supposed to be a great guy, or a great husband, but he is meant to be a man of honor. That pushes him too far into mustache-twirling villainy for my tastes.

As usual, this is for my ESL students so it has hardcoded English subtitles. If that bothers you, you’re welcome to enjoy the Director’s Cut and plug your ears at those two specific scenes.

Please send me a PM for the link or, if I’ve given you one before, it’s the same folder as all my other edits.