My problem was that it concentrated on the part of Marie Antoinette's life I didn't find all that interesting, and ended, deliberately, at the point at which the royal court moves to Paris. That's pretty early in the French Revolution.

I kinda like the idea of a movie in which, when the Revolution occurs, the viewer is taken by surprise and wonders "Where did this come from?"

Watched the restored version of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One last night. At almost three hours, it should be exhausting, but instead it's absorbing. I really needed to go to sleep in order to wake up early this morning, but I kept telling myself "another half hour, another half hour." The movie pulled me in and held me.

I remember trying to watch the shorter version sometime back in the early 90's, but never getting passed the first half hour or so. Don't know why. Maybe the cuts really hurt it. But this version is amazing, and the sequence in the concentration camp is more powerful to me than all of Schindler's List.

Watched the restored version of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One last night. At almost three hours, it should be exhausting, but instead it's absorbing. I really needed to go to sleep in order to wake up early this morning, but I kept telling myself "another half hour, another half hour." The movie pulled me in and held me.

I remember trying to watch the shorter version sometime back in the early 90's, but never getting passed the first half hour or so. Don't know why. Maybe the cuts really hurt it. But this version is amazing, and the sequence in the concentration camp is more powerful to me than all of Schindler's List.

Sometimes if you hear a lot of people heap praise on a film, just pour it on, it can kind of downgrade the actual experience when you watch it yourself. That happend to me with Crumb 15 years ago -- everybody and his dog and Roger Ebert were just peeing their pants over it, so I finally see it and, ok, it's a bio-doc about an interesting guy and his fucked-up family and how he draws the dark subconscious of America and obsesses over legs and butts. What's the BFD? Artists are peculiar and individualistics -- read the biography of Joseph Cornell and it makes Crumb sound well-adjusted.

OK, long story short, I see it again a decade later, minus all the attendant fuss, and I was much more impressed, walked away from the viewing really liking Crumb and his passion for getting past the shallow bullshit and his great sense of humor about himself and his life.

I hope somebody is looking in on Max.