Cut, Chop, Re-release: Director’s Cuts

Cinema may face a far less foreboding fate than, say, our country’s print journalism, but the medium still seems to be undergoing a transformation. In Slate Magazine’s “Death by a Thousand Director’s Cuts,” Jonathan Rosenbaum reflects on the state of cinema in an age where people seem unsatisfied by original editions of material. Blade Runner, for instance, has been released eight times, each with different edits and revisions. Though Orson Welles once claimed about his own style: “editing is not an aspect, it is the aspect,” Rosenbaum seems to question whether the term “director’s cut” rightfully applies to many of edited versions of films, and whether creating more versions is necessarily better in the first place.