A beautiful new print of "Zabriskie Point" is playing in Paris and seems to be doing well in the Latin Quarter. It's time for a full evaluation of the film. Let's hope that the new print means that a DVD with some insightful "extras" will be out in the near future.
I remember watching ZP when it came out and thought it was a crashing bore. This time around I was totally awed and would classify it as a "near-miss" masterpiece. The first part of the movie is a time capsule of late '60's Los Angeles, I lived there then, and Antonioni did a masterful job of capturing the essence of the place. Kudos to production designer Dean Tavoularis who found some incredible locations and did outstanding work.
The print I saw runs 1 hour 50 minutes. It is forbidden to those under 16 (or 18, I can't remember). I suspect there is quite a bit of restored footage in this print. SPOILER -- I wonder how much of the desert sex scene was originally cut. What appears today seems rather tame by current standards.
There is no soundtrack music until almost 1 hour into the film. Before we hear extraneous noise such as radio broadcasts, etc. Antonioni was very daring to do this. I remember how much was made at the time of the lack of acting skills of non-actors Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin. This time Frechette did not bother me. Halprin is weaker but gradually improves as the film continues.
Much of the student riot footage looks like stock footage to me. One shot is in a different aspect ratio & distorted by the wide screen. Of course, there is actual staged footage, but not all that much.
I'm still trying to figure out how Antonioni did some of the shots of Frechette flying the plane. It looks like he really did some of the flying - there's no blue screen or double in some shots.
I hope to get back to see the film a second time. Recommended highly to all Antonioni fans.

I just got back from this free screening, and this "Osama Witch Project" is the hands-down worst film I've seen this year, worse than even "Catwoman" - which had the decency to at least pass itself off as fiction.
In "September Tapes," a "film crew" of "documentary journalists" heads to Afghanistan - despite being thoroughly unprepared for the trip, the conditions and, oh yeah, the psychotic and ridiculous vendetta of their filmmaker leader to avenge his wife's death on Sept. 11 - to track down Osama bin Laden.
They "made" eight tapes on their journey, which now "document" their travels and, of course, their attempts to kill the terrorist leader. (The eight tapes, thankfully, all end at points significant in the narrative, which is convenient for a "documentary.")
The psychotic, idiotic protagonist - who is given to long, significant speeches that he probably learned watching "MacGyver" - cares nothing for his own life or the life of his innocent crew as he gets them further and further into danger through a series of completely dumb mishaps. I don't know why he didn't just wear a sign on his back that said "Shoot me."
The crew's translator, supposedly their sensible voice-of-reason, does little more than whine and gets baffled as the idiot hero leads them into doom.
You wish they'd brought along someone on their trip to call them all morons.
Around "Tape 4," I began rooting for the terrorists to shoot the film crew.