DTW: Snowpiercer - Ice Cold in Iowa?

I was recently fortunate enough to have been able to preview the film Snowpiercer, due out in the U.S. in July. It's a case of good news-bad news. The bad news is that the movie may not be available in your local movie-theater because the release will be limited. The good news is that the film will not be cut as a recent controversy presumed.. 

The months in between its debut in South Korea (last year) and the finalization of a release date in the Western world is something of a story in itself...

Screenplay author and director Bong Joon-ho’s dystopian science fiction drama Snowpiercer stars Chris Evans, Kang-Ho Song, Ah-sung Ko, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell and John Hurt and takes place on a train that runs continually around the world. Those aboard the train are the only apparent survivors of our planet, which has become a global frozen tundra. An attempt to solve the global warming crisis went terribly wonky, resulting in a new 'ice age' of sorts. Inside the train, the action-filled piece involves a clear storyline about class hierarchy. Lower class citizens are in the back of the train barely surviving, while the rich enjoy luxurious surroundings and a debauchery-filled  and comfortably fabulous lifestyle at the front of the train.

The Weinstein Company purchased the rights to release it in the United States. The problem? TWC’s Harvey Weinstein wanted to cut twenty minutes from the film. According to film critic Tony Rayns, the TWC folks wanted to turn the flick into a pure action film. They allegedly wanted to make the cuts so that it could be “understood by people in Iowa… and Oklahoma”. The compromise finally reached between TWC and Bong Joon-ho was that the film would be left at the director’s cut, without any minutes shaved, but that the film would not be released everywhere.

Weinstein is known for controversial cuts, especially foreign films. His nickname, Harvey Scissorhands, seems to say it all. He seems to have a proclivity to simplifying movies for Western audiences. But blaming it on MY part of the United States? I’m pretty sure that I speak for most of us in the Central United States when I say that I refuse to be anyone’s shoe...

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