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PS : Alexander Ultimate Cut sort demain. On se le fait sur le projo dès que je trouve un BDrip?

"To me, Snowden is a hero," Stone said in July

a committed Republican who found his libertarian values increasingly at odds with his government's surveillance programme.

Je savais pas que c'était un libertarian.

PS : Alexander Ultimate Cut sort demain.

Good trial attorneys never say to a witness, "I just have one more question", because they may have to go back on their word. What if something else important occurs to them during the witness' answer? Similarly, Oliver Stone probably shouldn't have called his 2007 extended version of Alexander "The Final Cut", especially given Stone's well-established penchant for tinkering with his films. He also should have left himself some wiggle room in the note included with the two-disc DVD set, where he said: "[R]est assured this is my last pass, as there is no more footage to be found" (emphasis added). Sure enough, seven years later, here comes the writer/director, on Alexander's tenth anniversary, with yet another "pass". This one is entitled Alexander, The Ultimate Cut, presumably because the word "final" was already taken, but maybe filmmakers and studios should quit using such definitive names for these works-in-progress. Who knows whether this is the last Alexander? Think of this as The 2014 Special Edition.

In total, Stone has released four versions of a project that was his life-long ambition. His biographical portrait of the enigmatic Greek hero known as Alexander the Great now exists in:

a Theatrical Cut released in 2004;
a Director's Cut released on DVD simultaneously with the Theatrical Cut in 2005;
the so-called Final Cut from 2007; and
the Ultimate Cut.

Until now, only the Final Cut was available on Blu-ray, but with this two-disc set, both the Ultimate Cut and the Theatrical Cut make their Blu-ray debut. The Ultimate Cut is being released simultaneously as a separate disc. For reasons discussed at greater length in the Feature section of this review, I don't recommend it. The Theatrical Cut of Alexander has its share of problems, but it's Stone's best version of the film, assembled in the heat of the creative process. Ever since then, Stone has been second-guessing himself, and the film has suffered for it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I note that I have only watched the Theatrical Cut and the Ultimate Cut to completion. I'm generally a fan of Stone, but not of Alexander. Watching the film in two versions for this review gave me a new appreciation of what Stone was attempting to do, as well as some understanding of why he failed. As the film's narrator, Ptolemy, says of his former king and commander, some men's failure towers over others' successes. Even when Stone's films don't work as a whole, they are interesting for their aspirations and for individual elements. But the fact that Stone keeps re-cutting Alexander amounts to a public confession that the film remains problematic. It's striking that the Blu-ray's half-hour documentary, which features a group of talking heads enthusing over the historical figure that Stone tried to bring to life on screen, makes him seem more vibrant and vital than three-plus hours of an Oscar-winning director's labors using all the resources that modern cinema has to offer.