A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE UNICORN: Interesting article in today's NYT about fights between director Julie Taymor and the studio on the upcoming surreal Beatles musical Across The Universe, which studio head and sometime-director Joe Roth is apparently recutting the film to take out about 30 minutes, over Taymor's strenuous objections. This leads to an interesting question--has there ever been a film that a later "director's cut" actually improved? For instance, the first time I saw Blade Runner was the Ridley Scott "director's cut," and I found it almost completely incomprehensible. Also, giving a director "final cut" is frequently a bad idea--for instance, I recall reading somewhere a while back (can't find the link now, sorry)--that while Robert DeNiro was given final cut on Good Shepherd in the U.S., the studio was likely going to recut and shorten the film overseas, which would have improved it.