The Michael Mann poll

The recut Blackhat is much better than what was released in theaters, even on the level of sound mixing, which muffled so much Hemsworth dialogue originally.

I love how the Collateral technology (and even the cab itself, pre-Uber) are so specifically mid-2000s, especially the phone battery quitting. Also love the whole office shootout in complete darkness except for the city lights.

The last time I saw "Last of the Mohicans" I liked it better than I remembered it. At this point I have no idea what cut it was, but I assume it was the "extended" cut. This time I think I saw the director's cut, which might be a little shorter than the extended cut but a hair longer than the theatrical cut; none of them are radically longer or shorter than the other. Anyway, I don't think anyone ever thinks of this as one of his best films, but this time I was more let down than the others. It's really got not much to offer beyond the spectacle, and for all the fiddling over one cut here or one cut there, 112 minutes vs. 114 minutes vs. 117 minutes, this is the movie that might have benefitted more by being three hours, not "Heat." It would have given the characters and their relationships more weight, fleshed out the melodrama and balanced out the 20 minutes of people running through the woods. Speaking of woods, why did Mann, master of authentic details and verisimilitude, film in North Carolina for upstate New York?

And speaking of "Heat," recently rewatched that, too, and while it remains probably his best looking film, and still strong, it felt a little shaggy to me this time. "Heat" actually would probably be a bit better if it were *shorter*, possibly if it lost all of the Pacino at home stuff with his wife and daughter, which doesn't really add anything to the story, especially since the movie already explicitly highlights the married to their jobs nature of lonely loners Pacino and DeNiro. Pacino, btw, was better than I remembered him, or at least his ott-ness was less ott than I remembered, even if he still seemed too chic to be a down and dirty LA detective. As opposed to Mark Ruffalo as the same in "Collateral."

Think I'll give "Thief" another watch. Did Mann do anything more than re-color correct it?

Speaking of woods, why did Mann, master of authentic details and verisimilitude, film in North Carolina for upstate New York?

Tax breaks would be my first guess.

i watched LOTM for the first time this year and enjoyed it. DDL felt like the weak link to me, honestly, though it's almost an impossible role to pull off for a modern viewer. mann can't really do romance but it's more of an action movie than a romance anyways, and all the action was really impressive. wes studi is amazing in it.

Iirc, Thief gained a couple short scenes.

tbh, if DDL is your weak link you've probably messed up somehow.

The ‘Movie Censorship’ site is your go-to for comparisons between various different cuts of films. I really love the brief extra scene in Thief between Caan and an old man fishing.

https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=665044

there are lots of sites that seem to list what's different, but there are also some things seem to be really subjective, like the different color correcting of new Thief or new Heat, or the inclusion of certain scenes over others. Something I read about Mohicans said that sometimes he chooses alternate camera angles even.

manhunter is up on criterion this month. not my favorite mann but it looks amazing and william petersen does the tortured cop thing better than anyone else has ever done it.

which cut? that one has something like four different cuts.

it is almost certainly whatever's on the scream factory release

Unclear. Looks like Scream Factory included the theatrical and director's cut, but this one on Criterion runs about 2:02, while the director's cut runs 2:04 or so (and the theatrical 2 hrs flat). The one you can rent on Amazon right now runs 2:01.

Heh, I guess there are actually 7 or 8 different cuts!

http://manhunter1986.com/miss00.html

Looking into it a bit more, it seems the Scream release was the theatrical in HD with stuff from the erstwhile DC spliced in. At this point I doubt many can tell one from the other.

Blackhat just popped up on HBO Max, so I guess I'll finally get to see it. It's the theatrical cut.

it's really awesome enjoy

Last time it was on HBO (a few years back) it was Mann's revised cut. Much better sound mix and a few things shuffled around.

It’s the recut/improved version on HBO Max. Instead of opening purely inside the electronic world, it establishes the nuclear reactor and the hacker in the opening minutes, as well as the breach itself — the first of many improvements.

I'm about 45 minutes in now and the goofy inside-the-computer animation is really the only part I don't like so far. He's really a master of shooting digital. The contrast between a fight scene inside a restaurant (extremely close, hand-held, lots of quick cuts) and the long beautiful landscape shots is just stunning. I'm watching on a laptop with headphones, so some of the ADR-ed dialogue is really obvious, but whaddya gonna do. I'm also kind of pleasantly surprised by Hemsworth's accent work in this.

blackhat is pretty fucking good. some quibbles (mostly the unlikeliness of hemsworth's character and stuff like thousands of malaysians being treated as background in the climax instead of doing anything when one dude stabs another dude through the head with a screwdriver right in front of them) but way more positives - looks amazing, strong cast (i like that the big baddie is some actor i didn't recognize instead of a big star), very visceral action (that shootout that goes wrong in the second act, amazing). kind of felt like a grimmer, more realistic version of bourne/mission:impossible.

it's kind of a cosmic gumbo

it almost moves to the beat of jazz

thousands of malaysians being treated as background in the climax instead of doing anything when one dude stabs another dude through the head with a screwdriver right in front of them

It’s funny how Blackhat, Collateral, and Miami Vice all have scenes where limbs are being broken in a crowd (in nightclubs in the latter two) and no one really notices or cares.

Watched Miami Vice (2006) for the 10th or 15th time tonight, and it still makes more sense with each viewing, on a pure story level.

Heat is a western

watched blackhat for the first time and am mad at how bad the rating is on review aggregator sites for it.

looking forward to watching "the keep" and "the insider" to complete the Mann filmography

The Insider is perfect. The Keep ... is not. Not as bad as is reputation has it, and some intriguing stuff, but a real mess all the same. I think there is a fan edit somewhere that is supposedly better?

blackhat underrated yeah

btw I'm still a fiend for mojitos

how odd

pic.twitter.com/mgcMlPwHA0

— Michael Mann (@MichaelMann) January 19, 2022

Weird that this is a big “new development,” since Mann has been talking for a while about how the books would be stories of before and after the movie’s timeline.

I do wish they’d do some kind of chapter-by-chapter audio release. Could be as gripping as a Sunday-night HBO series.

Also, Mann’s 78 now, so it makes sense that he would construct stories this way instead of going through the multi-year studio process.

Just saw Blackhat. How was this not a hit?

The original cut didn’t work as well, and the dialogue was buried in the mix. Mann’s recut version (I’m assuming it’s what Netflix is offering) is better.

No, pretty sure Netflix has the theatrical cut.

On the other hand, after months/years of off and on searching, I did finally find a copy of the director's cut!

https://m***.nz/folder/fTpywAKR#4O0np-7qEKjR1upGA9YD5A

(Where of course m*** is mega)

Blackhat is good and maybe up in my hacking movie top five with Sneakers and Hackers

Thanks for the link JiC. I haven't seen Blackhat since it was new in the theaters - can't believe I haven't rewatched already.

Yeah, me either, not since theatres, because I didn't particularly like it and struggled to find the DC (which screened only once or twice and sometimes shows up on Deep Cable but is otherwise inexplicably hard to come by). Mann's director's cuts aren't always better, or at least are not always clear improvements, but this one seems to right a couple of glaring wrongs. Like, if you start your movie about hackers taking out a nuclear power plant, then hackers targeting the stock market or whatever seems a step down. Also, if I read correctly, there are all sorts of much more subtle dialogue tweaks (which I will surely miss because I don't remember much about the movie period, let alone the dialogue).

The other Mann movie I've only ever seen once is "Public Enemies," I wonder how that one holds up?

OK, I just watched the director's cut and I liked the theatrical version, but holy crap, the director's cut is miles better. It's ridiculous that it's just been allowed to fall into a crack in the earth. Release that version on Blu-Ray!

I get why they shuffled things around, even if it makes little sense plot-wise

The DC (I'm a half hour in, thanks Josh) is more of a slow burn, which makes the escalation of stakes/violence clear. I can see where the beginning hack wouldn't play with audiences initially -- a quick spike in commodity prices that probably stabilized fairly quickly before consumers ever noticed -- but it's exactly the sort of structural financial and logistical threat that's a more familiar concept now. I remember reading about the huge Maersk shipping hack in 2017 and rewatching the movie.

Another interesting point of information: The Chicago stock exchange (which handled a lot of agriculture futures) that is hacked in the movie, resulting in soybean prices being spiked, ceased to exist in 2019 and was rolled into the NYSE

Whoops, my bad -- I was thinking of the Chicago stock exchange. They probably hacked the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which has absorbed the Chicago Board of Trade

I watched Thief recently, my first Mann, and it was different from the expectations I had from reviews and the impression I've developed of his work. I anticipated something that was a very slick, flashy, image-obsessed thriller with existential pretensions, and while this isn't an incorrect description, the actual film came closer to a muted, downbeat late 70s demimonde character study (though it was by no means amateurish).
I didn't love it, but probably liked it more than the film I thought it would be. I guess "slick" and "flashy" both underwent exponential growth over the course of 80s filmmaking and TV; I guess I thought I would be seeing the Lexicon of Love of crime films.

aside from his involvement in the miami vice tv show i would describe no mann project as slick or flashy

Colin Farrell's hair is very slick in Miami Vice

his shirts are flashy

omigod @ "the Lexicon of Love of crime films -- what a phrase and aspiration!

What about Diva?

>> the Lexicon of Love of crime films

The Thomas Crown Affair (original)

I prefer the '99 remake.

I would too (I'm a McQueen agnostic-at-best) if it weren't for Denis Leary.

aw yeah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3oWrNQo_Ng

i’m a fiend for sake

looks like a TV show. visually a little dull?

it is a tv show?