I tried to time the new Zodiac Directors’ Cut screener that I was sent a couple of days ago, and I failed. What happens is that you get so caught up in watching it that you forget about the damn running time. An extra five or six or seven minutes…what does it matter? I know that the extras don’t seem to stand out in a “whoa!…look at this!” sort of way. They just seem to belong, like they should have been there from the start.

That said, I have two favorites: (a) a new scene in which the San Francisco detectives on the Zodiac case (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards) orally explain all the incriminating evidence and indications against Arthur Leigh Allen to a superior officer over a voicebox, and (b) the five-year passage-of-time sequence in which various TV news reports and songs of the era are heard over a black screen.

Here’s an mp3 of the evidence recitation scene.

I love these sequences — they definitely add significantly to the whole — and they don’t take up very much time so why the hell weren’t they included in the original theatrical cut? It makes no sense to have cut them out…none.