Thanks, AMC Network, for advertising your Thanksgiving Day marathon of John Wayne movies. Excellent!
But I hope you’ll forgive me for telling you right now that there is zero chance of watching any of them on your channel.
You happen to be a great outlet for original programming, but your treatment of movies is Philistine and I have no intention of watching any film, especially not any classic, in a showcase where they are not only cut to shreds to accommodate commercials but where this is done with such sloppiness that load-bearing story elements are among those excised.
Seriously, that one time where you took a movie that was pretty much a three-character play and cut out the highly dramatic death of one so that anyone encountering the movie for the first time on your network pretty much saw him vanish without explanation was the last time I saw any movie because you were airing it.
Pretty much, what I do when I see that you’re showing any movie I love is wince at the prospect of the damage you’ll do to it.
“Oh, great, AMC is showing all three GODFATHER movies. It’s kind of like throwing Van Gogh’s STARRY NIGHT into a paper shredder.”
Comment By: Debra Wallace Day
November 4th, 2016 at 10:18 am
Ugh. I remember when AMC didn’t have commercial breaks during movies. Now it’s like watching TNT.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
November 4th, 2016 at 10:18 am
TCM is still holding firm, at least.
Comment By: David Alexander McDonald
November 4th, 2016 at 11:18 am
Except TCM is applying a price to their streaming service now. Which becomes worth it if you add the Criterion tier, I think. And then worth nothing if you’re a Roku user.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
November 4th, 2016 at 11:18 am
I don’t stream TCM. It’s just part of my cable package.
Comment By: David Alexander McDonald
November 4th, 2016 at 11:18 am
I’m one of those referred to (laughably, I think) as a cord-cutter.
Comment By: Joella Berkner
November 4th, 2016 at 1:18 pm
David Alexander McDonald why do you say laughably?
Comment By: David Alexander McDonald
November 4th, 2016 at 1:18 pm
Because one reason for dropping cable television is to save money on the increasingly outrageous costs. However, doing so by switching to service by service streaming can, coupled with the increasing prices for Internet service, result in a total cost as high, or higher. Ten dollars here, five dollars there, and at some point you realize that you’ve committed to spending that same $100 to $200 in a more fragmented way.
Comment By: Joella Berkner
November 4th, 2016 at 10:18 pm
Fair enough. I cut the cord myself years back and do still feel like I’m saving money. I can see how all the bills could start adding up the same though.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
November 4th, 2016 at 10:18 am
The three-character play in question was David Mamet’s THE EDGE– not a great film, but an effective-enough thriller — and I was additionally offended by the fact that the character whose exit they excised was a black man, Harold Perrineau. Once they made space for the selling of paper towels, in one scene there are two white men and a black man lost in the woods; in the next, the black man is gone, without mention.
Were you in a sinister frame of mind you could almost infer that Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin had eaten him.
Comment By: Reed Andrus
November 4th, 2016 at 10:18 am
Good survival film, with a very good Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack that would also be chopped up. No thanks.
Comment By: Tim Lieder
November 4th, 2016 at 11:18 am
Especially baldwin.
Comment By: David Vineyard
November 4th, 2016 at 10:18 am
AMC is.useless for movies. If not for their originals I wouldn’t watch the channel at all.
Comment By: Greg Cox
November 4th, 2016 at 10:18 am
I’ve pretty much given up on Comet TV as well. They tempt me with obscure old sci-fi and horror movies, then cut then into literal incoherence . . ..
Comment By: Michael Rapoport
November 4th, 2016 at 11:18 am
Absent some special circumstance (like a movie I can only see on commercial TV, or a family movie night where my kids pick the movie), I simply will not watch movies that are edited or interrupted by commercials anymore. I wouldn’t read a book with twenty pages torn out, either.
Comment By: Scott James Magner
November 4th, 2016 at 11:18 am
TCM gets my eye time these days, and even they have succumbed to the evil of commercials. But so far, I haven’t seen any cut scenes.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
November 4th, 2016 at 11:18 am
They have commercials…for their own DVDs, and they are *BETWEEN MOVIES*, not during them.
Comment By: Jennifer Lynn Schillig
November 4th, 2016 at 12:17 pm
What?! No Godfather movies this year?!
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
November 4th, 2016 at 12:17 pm
I mention them in the blog post, above. The chances of me seeing them on AMC are about equal to me setting fire to a book so I can read it while it’s burning.
Comment By: Jennifer Lynn Schillig
November 4th, 2016 at 12:17 pm
Adam-Troy Castro It’s just kind of weird that for years, Godfather was an AMC tradition (censored though it was), and now it’s a toss-up as to whether they’ll show them or not. (And hey…for me, even a censored, slightly-cut Godfather is worth seeing. But the REAL motherlode is the “Godfather Saga” that some cable channels show–I and II recut in chronological order with scenes that weren’t in the theatrical version.)
Comment By: Josh Olson
November 4th, 2016 at 12:17 pm
Jennifer Lynn Schillig I mean….. No. Godfather Saga is a fascinating curio, worth seeing once, but it demolishes the power of the movies in favor of pedestrian narrative.
Also, I don’t get how, if seeing even a censored and cut Godfather is worth seeing, why not watch an uncensored and uncut version? It’s not like it’s hard to find…
Comment By: Jennifer Lynn Schillig
November 4th, 2016 at 12:17 pm
Josh Olson Well, it’s nice background to have on while you’re helping with slicing potatoes and mushrooms and getting the living room clean enough for 8+ guests while wondering if you can sneak a bite of your sister’s sausage stuffing without her noticing. 🙂 And as for Godfather Saga, it’s interesting to see what got cut.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
November 4th, 2016 at 12:17 pm
Even the chronological “saga” was unable to bring itself to put the fight the brothers have about Michael joining the army anywhere but its rightful place, a flashback at the end of the events of GODFATHER II.
Comment By: Jennifer Lynn Schillig
November 4th, 2016 at 12:17 pm
Adam-Troy Castro Wish they’d gotten Brando into that scene like they were supposed to. But one thing that jumped out at me while watching the Saga…the first scene was the funeral of Vito’s father, at which his brother was murdered and his mother weeps over the body. I was struck by the realization that once you count III into it, the Godfather saga begins and ends with…
.
.
.
.
…a parent weeping over a murdered child.
Comment By: Matthew B. Tepper
November 4th, 2016 at 1:18 pm
I remember when I sat down and was all excited to watch “Fahrenheit 451” on Bravo. Then twenty minutes in, they cut to commercial, a policy they had just then added. I have never watched Bravo again. Sad to see AMC go the same route.
Comment By: Jennifer Lynn Schillig
November 4th, 2016 at 1:18 pm
Commercials or none, I miss the old Bravo, the one which showed classic movies and Shakespeare plays and such. That’s where I gained an interest in Anne Boleyn’s story–from stumbling across Anne Of The Thousand Days on Bravo one night.
Comment By: Craig Shaw Gardner
November 4th, 2016 at 1:18 pm
AMC and Bravo were once owned by the same parent company, and showed just about everything uncut and commercial free. I still fondly remember Bravo’s Samurai Saturdays. Tons of Toshiro Mifune with a fair amount of Zatoichi besides.
Comment By: Dave Creek
November 4th, 2016 at 1:43 pm
I’d say the worst cut to commercial I ever saw was years ago on TBS during 2001: A Space Odyssey. The ape throws the bone into the air, it spins and spins, and — fade to commercial!
Back from the break — fade in on the spaceship.
Someone thought that was a good idea.