antichrist

On Sunday night I saw the new Star Trek film with Sebastian. I don’t understand why people in the future put so many narrow bridges without hand rails over deep chasms in their spaceships. Yes, it can make for suspense, but there are limits, and I have to wonder why safety isn’t considered a little bit more.

The best thing about the movie was that before it started I saw for the first time the trailer for Lars Von Triers new film Antichrist. It looks like some pretty freaky shit happens in that film, and from what I’ve read the trailer only scratches the surface. It’s making a huge splash and dividing critics right now at Cannes (that bloated phony Roger Ebert said something about it being offensive to society), and it hits theatres June 3 in Paris—which is after I leave, much to my chagrin. I’m not sure if it’s going to get picked up for US distribution, and if it does chances are it will be recut to accommodate the MPAA.

A somewhat similar fate befell Bernard Tavernier’s In the Electric Mist. It didn’t have problems with the MPAA, but the American producer didn’t agree with Tavernier’s cut, so Tavernier left, found another editor, and released the version of the film I saw throughout Europe. In the US, an inferior version with little of the narration featured in the European cut was released directly to DVD. All of this makes me believe that as far as cinema goes, Europe and especially Paris are far ahead of the US.