Another diss for 20th Century Fox’s marketing team: Ridley Scott has criticized them for selling last May’s Kingdom Of Heaven as a romantic actioner instead of a religious and political piece, which he argued for but didn’t get. Fox marketers were seemingly afraid of playing up the Islamic-vs.-Christian conflict element in the film’s advertising because this would reflect on the U.S. presence in Iraq and other political issues of the day. Okay, but the running-time issue is a bit more interesting. I read two or three posts last spring claiming that Scott’s three-hour Kingdom cut, which was test-screened before being trimmed, was a somewhat better film that the 2-hour, 25-minute version that went into theatres. So why wasn’t the three-hour cut offered on the recently issued DVD? Because they intend to wait a year and get a second revenue stream out of “Director’s Cut” sometime in ’06, I imagine.