I had an odd experience with rewatching Part 3 this weekend...I settled down to watch it at 2 pm, knowing I had to pick up the missus at 5 pm. Since the dvd gave the running time as 169 minutes, I knew this would give me time to watch it.

But a few things came up, and by the end of the first hour it became obvious that if I was to see the film in one sitting, I would have to gain a few minutes by missing something out. And since the scene with Mary visiting Vincent at the club was coming up, I bliped past it. Thus I avoided all that rubbishy cod-love talk.

This had an odd effect, for as the film wore on I found Mary/Sophia less irritating than previous viewings. Moreover, I was eqully comfortable with Andy garcia - who previously I had never been terriblt enthusiastic about.

The result was that the film was immensely strengthened for the absence of these scenes.

Then I decided to experiment a little further - later that same evening I watched those club scenes in isolation. And I noticed that whilst Sophia comes in for a lot of fairly justified crticism for her performance, Garcia in these scenes is no better. Notice when rolling the pasta how his eyes are all over the place, rather than locked on the girl he's supposedly obsessively in love with ( although I do have a lot of time for the argument that Vincent is actually manipulating Mary in some way so perhaps Garcia is playing to that version of his character ). His confession of love is played in a a manner so inane that it rivals Hayden Christensen in " Attack of the Clones ".

Have a look yourselves - and next time, if you have the dvd, try flipping straight onto chapter 12 - that way you get straight on with the Joey Zasza hit.

Warmest regards

dave