I just watched my nice DVD of Leon that I purcha­sed after watching the ori­gi­nal on my com­pu­ter. It’s sat on my shelf for a good 5 months, but today I deci­ded to watch it. I saw it with my friend and noted to myself that the film see­med to be mis­sing things and was shor­ter. My favou­rite sce­nes weren’t there either.

So I chec­ked it out on IMDB:
Run­time: 110 min / France:136 min (uncut ver­sion) / 133 min (Inter­na­tio­nal ver­sion)
On the back of my offi­cial UK DVD it sta­tes, “Run­time: 109 min”.

So I go through my Ame­ri­can ver­sion (which is 133 minu­tes long) quickly, skip­ping sce­nes to find out what they cut. To find out what 26 minu­tes of the movie they thought was legi­ti­mate to cut. If you haven’t seen the movie then don’t read the spoilers.

The sce­nes that were cut:
- When Matilda (port­man) learns how to become a hit­man, so all the sce­nes where she sticks bub­ble­gum on the doors of the peo­ple they’re killing and then tempts them to open, the scene where leon teaches her to hit a guy in the right pla­ces — chest and sto­mach, which she does with a paint­ball gun and then toasts the coke. Also some gun loa­ding sce­nes and the ring trick with the gre­nade.
- The scene where matilda tries to kill her­self rus­sian rou­lette style but Leon stops her
- The scene where they have a meal together and matilda laughs at leon really loudly after get­ting drunk on Cham­pagne.
- The scene where matilda dec­la­res her love to leon and he talks about why he cant have a girl­friend cause he shot his first gf when he was 19 and then the later moments about sha­ring the bed and the impli­ca­tions of sex. Also inc­lu­ding the part where she wore the dress Leon bought her.
- They cut the bit where leon and matilda go to see Tony (the guy that looks after the money) together.
- The scene where matilda is at home by her­self, pre­pa­ring to go into the police depart­ment to kill Oldman’s cha­rac­ter. She’s smo­king, clea­ning the house and the plant, drin­king milk, sit­ting outside, tal­king to some kids and giving them money to go away

They pretty much cut the middle half an hour of the movie, the bit that really dee­pens their rela­tionship and makes it more than just a casual shoo­ter action thri­ller. Without these moments, final parts don’t have their full affect and are not fully explai­ned. I’m ange­red so much by the extent of this cen­sorship — the com­mon theme seems to be “things a little girl should not be doing”, which is one of the pre­mi­ses for the movie in the first place. I’ve been rob­bed and want a refund. This will fore­ver scar a top ten movie of mine.

I have a new house. I live in a stu­dent house with my six other stu­dent friends. The boy-girl ratio is 5:2 in their favour. We’re paying £220 a month for a large appro­xi­ma­tely 1850’s house. It has seven bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen a large bath­room, a sepa­rate sho­wer and a sepa­rate toi­let and high cei­lings. There’s also a base­ment but it needs work done to it. My ado­rably beau­ti­ful and won­der­ful girl­friend, who will undoub­tedly be rea­ding this, has bles­sed me with the lar­gest room in the house. A 14x15 ft ex-lounge, pic­tu­res doth follow.

We first loo­ked at the house in January – it was the last of the hou­ses we loo­ked at and the day had been exhaus­ting. We’d been to a run down old miner’s house in Coventry that half of our group wan­ted us to get, while being pres­su­red by the land­lord. We’d been to two flats on the parade in Lea­ming­ton Spa, each above a pub or res­tau­rant. The first was very nice des­pite its locale, yet it was expen­sive, split into three sec­tions and lots of peo­ple were inte­res­ted in it. The second was small, cram­ped, had a nice living room yet had NO CENTRAL HEATING. Seriously, wtf. So we pas­sed on those two. On we went to the last house. To be frank, it was a dump – the peo­ple living there at the time were slobs, untidy. They’d been there for two years and the house was rot­ting. But under­neath the mess there was actually a NICE house, it felt like a home, it loo­ked like a home, it had room to breathe, it func­tio­ned and the rooms were of a decent size. The main pro­blem was the lack of decent fur­nishing in the two bac­krooms, which were tiny – and one even had a dou­ble bed stuf­fed into it. We deci­ded to take the house, much to the dis­com­fort of one of my hou­se­ma­tes. We pic­ked rooms out of the hat.

Those mucky stu­dents have left now. In the con­tract we asked that we get a decent dining table, pro­per fur­nishings in the back rooms and a lot of clea­ning. Over the sum­mer the land­lord repain­ted some rooms, re-carpeted the stairs and hall­ways and fit­ted rooms with tall war­dro­bes and nice desks. We also had our kitchen redone to pro­vide us with a new gas oven, a new work­top, new cup­boards and various other little perks. Now the house is near per­fect (des­pite a wee­kend of clea­ning in Sep­tem­ber). We got the gas sor­ted, the elec­tri­city sor­ted, the phone and inter­net sor­ted, the rent sor­ted, the TV license sor­ted and now we just have to pay bills. We have yet to get the Xbox Live sor­ted, but that story will be coming in an all new jour­nal instalment.

I am now sett­led in but I still need things to fill up my room. It seems sparse. I have bought a 6ft indoor tree plant that I enjo­yed carr­ying home on the bus, but it did cost only £20. I have also bought a lamp from ikea and some other small things. But it is still lac­king, my pri­mary hope is to get a pool table – a six foot one with 48mm balls. There’s one at argos for £200 but the pro­blem that ari­ses is, “How do I move it from A to B?”

Pho­tos:

This is it unfur­nished (no pos­ters, few deco­ra­tive fea­tu­res) and lac­king pool table!!!. The room is 14x15ft. My tv is nicely lin­ked to the PS2, VCR, Aerial + Boos­ter and PC + soon to be Xbox Live. All anten­nas on top of the war­drobe, inc­lu­ding wire­less. Surround sound also installed.

Other Rooms in the house

It seems to have been fore­ver since I added anything remo­tely worthwhile to this site. My jour­nal has lac­ked and I have yet to even men­tion my new house and its con­ti­nuing chro­nic­les. I have been rea­ding over my past entries for just over a year now, crin­ging at the lite­rary skills I pos­sess. I guess I am fore­ver critical.

Right now I am in my second year of uni­ver­sity (War­wick, UK) stud­ying elec­tro­nic engi­nee­ring. Last year was easy and I was uncha­llen­ged, the exams were trouble-free and my ave­rage 81% mark that I achie­ved without chec­king through my exam papers clearly illus­tra­tes this. This year’s course seems to be follo­wing in the same vein. I am not being cha­llen­ged and I really feel like I am was­ting time. I’m stud­ying 4 out of 10 modu­les this term; “Soft­ware Deve­lop­ment” (aka C++, something I have spent eve­ning clas­ses lear­ning prior to uni­ver­sity), “Ana­lo­gue Design” – the inner wor­kings of semi­con­duc­tors and such, “Applied Linear Alge­bra” – math’s and lots of com­pli­ca­ted matrix work and finally, “Star­ting a Busi­ness” which is pro­ving quite interesting.

My time­ta­ble has sche­du­led me with a whop­ping nine hours a week, com­pa­red to my girlfriend’s bioche­mistry 22 hours and a mate’s 24 hours of math’s plus hor­des of assess­ments. Life is awfully hard. I don’t know, maybe they will pile on the work next term. The most idio­tic part of my time­ta­ble are the lec­ture times – on Mon­day I have a 9–10 lec­ture, a 10–11 and then a 5–6 in the eve­ning. That’s a 6 hour gap. On Thurs­day I have a 9 o clock and I finish the day with a 6–7 lec­ture. Mea­ning I leave for uni at 8 in the mor­ning and get home at 8 in the eve­ning, pro­vi­ding I don’t go to the stu­dent cinema or various society groups.

I now live off cam­pus, so I tra­vel in each day by bus. It takes about an hour each way and the bus is usually full and stuffy. Howe­ver this time does give me a moment to sam­ple new music on my iPod, two albums a day. I paid £190 for my three term bus pass that entit­les me to unli­mi­ted tra­vel on Sta­ge­coach buses.