from msn.com:
http://movies.msn.com/movies/hitlist/01-08-08_2 It wasn't supposed to be like this for "Zodiac." Last February, David Fincher's thriller depicting the hunt for the infamous San Francisco-area serial killer was hailed by critics as a masterpiece. Yet, despite an inspired marketing campaign, the movie tanked at the box office. But, still, by the end of the year, a nationwide ranking of more than 250 critics' lists on MovieCityNews.com found "Zodiac" as the overall No. 3 movie of the year, just behind Oscar favorites "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood." When I informed Fincher of this during a telephone interview last week, he seemed genuinely surprised, but admitted, "There is satisfaction in knowing that people who watch movies for a living say this is one that's worth noting."
Fincher continues, "There are movies that I look back on and go, 'Y'know, it didn't turn out being what I thought it was going to be, but everyone tried really hard.' And then there are movies that people seem to like after all these years. 'Fight Club' is a movie that's had a long life after the opening weekend."
Like "Fight Club," "Zodiac" may find new fans on DVD. A new two-disc set featuring in-depth documentaries and
commentary by Fincher and stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. is set for release this week. More importantly, it features the original cut Fincher intended to release until he screened it in front of an audience in New Orleans, where he was working on his next film, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." The results weren't exactly what he hoped for.
"There were three or four periods where palpably, I mean, if the audience didn't outright groan there were things about the scenes that made people fidget," Fincher recalls. "Nobody twisted my arm, I just felt [those cuts were] a concession I was willing to make to length. Seven plus minutes, this is where we ended up. That is what became the theatrical version."
The filmmaker admits he doesn't really believe in revisiting films, but hopes the new director's cut will be the version of the picture that screens in perpetuity.
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an excerpt from NYTimes movie critic Manohla Dargis' Top Ten list:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/movies/23darg.html?scp=7&sq=zodiac...
Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” which I will write about in detail when it opens on Wednesday, and David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” which I wrote about when it was released in March, together constitute my 1 through 10. These aren’t necessarily the year’s best (impossible to determine given the glut of films), just the two that matter most to me, that dug in the deepest and rearranged my own givens. They made me feel like the woman in the start of Orson Welles’s film “Touch of Evil” who says, “I’ve got this ticking noise in my head,” just before she’s blown to smithereens by a time bomb. I’m still intact (more or less), but these films shook up my world in the best possible way.
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and her most recent article on Zodiac: (don't read this one unless you've already seen the movie)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/movies/awardsseason/06darg.html?scp=1&sq=zodiac