Ratings for Week 8 of the XFL: They got a 1.8, which was up a hair from the previous week's 1.6. Given that it was still the lowest rate prime-time show of the week — even below everything on the WB network — I doubt anyone is uncorking the bubbly. To the surprise of no one, NBC execs seem now to be floating the idea that they will soon bail.
Turner Classic Movies has been running It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World lately, in part as a tribute to its director, the recently deceased Stanley Kramer. Unfortunately, the version they persist in running is what is often passed off as the "restored" version, but it really isn't. The original release ran 192 minutes, not counting overture, entr'acte and exit music. It was then cut to 162 minutes and then 154 minutes. For years, it was the shortest of these that was shown on TV and released on videotape. Then, a few years ago, a 186 minute edition was released, first on Laserdisc, then on VHS.
This incarnation incorporates some lost footage that was found…but it is not footage that was in the original release. It's scenes and trims that Kramer threw away before the film opened…in Los Angeles, at the Pacific Cinerama Dome, which is itself being restored at the moment. The result is that we now have this "restored" version which includes a lot of scenes that Kramer rightly discarded as boring and needless. I'm all for restoring lost footage and I love what was done for the Laserdisc of 1776, putting back vital material.
But longer is not always better and, in the case of Mad4 World, it's certainly not more faithful to what the filmmakers had in mind. The lost footage remains lost and is, sadly, likely to remain that way. Until and unless it is found, I think they oughta go back to the longest available version which actually ran in a theater. (You can read an article I have here about my fondness for this film by clicking here.)