Merrick here...

This should've been posted yesterday, but I got distracted when I learned my kitchen sink had been leaking & water had oozed under the floorboards of my place. The wood floor in my hovel was oozing water every time I stepped on it...liquid blobbed up between the seams like blood from a wound that just had a salty scab picked off of it.

Half my house is now shrink wrapped and condomized...looks like Elliot's home at the end of E.T. There are these big fans...the size of small refrigerators...which are pushing air through the entire house in an effort to dry it out, creating strange vacuums and pressure changes through the structure of my place (is this the world's biggest blow job?)

So, sorry this one's late.

Twitch has an interesting article about shenanigans swirling around Vin Diesel's forthcoming Sci Fi thriller BABYLON AD. In short, there's been talk for some time that two distinct versions of the film would exist: a longer European cut, and a more ADD friendly American cut. This differential isn't altogether uncommon, but it usually isn't too extreme. You know, maybe five, ten, or fifteen minutes difference in running time...if that.

Such is not the case with BABYLON AD - and Twitch has the numbers. One cut of the film is said to clock in at 2hrs and 40 minutes (160 minutes). This is the director's intended iteration of the project, which was supposed to be released in mainland Europe. The second version of the film will run 90 minutes when released in many other parts of the world. This is courtesy of the film's global distributor, Fox.

Now, for all I know, the film is legitimately long or boring or top-heavy - losing 70 minutes might only help the thing. Still, that's a lot of story to lose...a lot of character moments that'll go unseen...a lot of atmosphere that won't be experienced. It's inconceivable abolishing so much time won't affect the end product adversely. If this were being done by any company but Fox, I'd be a little less concerned (but still worried). However, they haven't shown stellar awareness or common sense of late (see our review of their DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL remake HERE), so...

You can find Twitch's article...

HERE!!!