Blade Runner
Pedro_Norte
84 Posts
After years of barebone editions & endless debates on which version is the best,BR fans are in for a wonderful Christmas. I can't wait.http://www.amazon.com/Blade-Runner-Five-...88190125&sr=1-1 
Comments
I can finally throw away my VHS and lame commentary-less DVD to make space for a 5 disc box set!
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die."
Finally I can cop this flick. I held off all these years 'cause of the suspect versions.
That Silver box shit is gonna stand out amoungst my collectron.A little overkill IMO.
Guys, a graemlin won??t do it. This might be the product and/or event I endorse most heartily to date.
I reread "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" not too long ago and was reminded of what an amazing job they did of basing the story upon it. In my opinion it??s one of the very best interpretations of a sci-fi novel evar. Why couldn??t they do something like this for that shitpile "I, robot" - movie?
- J
This is from today's NY Times. Some interesting insights into the reasoning behind the studio cut/director's cut differences. Oh, and this: For the new director???s cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched. The results look almost 3-D.
Too bad Scott confirms that Deckard was a replicant, thus doing away with some of the suspense. But then again if you had watched the director's cut you would have already known that.
Still, interesting that Scott was actually on-board for the voice-over...
A Cult Classic Restored, Again
September 30, 2007
A Cult Classic Restored, Again
By FRED KAPLAN
IT???S been 25 years since the release of ???Blade Runner,??? Ridley Scott???s science fiction cult film turned classic, but only now has his original vision reached the screen.
???Blade Runner: The Final Cut??? ??? as the definitive director???s cut is titled ??? was scheduled to play at the New York Film Festival Saturday night, opens at the Ziegfeld in New York and the Landmark in Los Angeles on Friday, and comes out in December in a five-disc set with scads of extra features.
An earlier director???s cut played in theaters 15 years ago to great fanfare and is still available on DVD. But the new one is something different: darker, bleaker, more beautifully immersive.
The film, based on Philip K. Dick???s novel ???Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,??? takes place in Los Angeles in 2019. It follows a cop named Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) who hunts down androids ??? or, in the film???s jargon, replicants??? that have escaped from their slave cells on outer-space colonies and are trying to blend in back on Earth.
What???s hypnotic about the film is its seamless portrait of the future, a sleek retro Deco glossed on neon-laced decay: overcrowded cities roamed by hustlers, strugglers and street gangs mumbling a multicultural argot, the sky lit by giant corporate logos and video billboards hyping exotic getaways on other planets, where most English-speaking white people seem to have fled.
Mr. Scott designed this world in minute detail and shot it at night, from oblique angles, mainly on Warner Brothers??? back lot in Burbank, Calif., pumping in smoke and drizzling in rain.
???I???ve never paid quite so much attention to a movie, ever,??? Mr. Scott said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he???s shooting a spy thriller. ???But we had to create a world that supported the story???s premise, made it believable. Why do you watch a film seven times? Because somebody???s done it right and transported you to its world.???
He created this world from what he saw around him. ???I was spending a lot of time in New York,??? he said. ???The city back then seemed to be dismantling itself. It was marginally out of control. I???d also shot some commercials in Hong Kong. This was before the skyscrapers. The streets seemed medieval. There were 4,000 junks in the harbor, and the harbor was filthy. You wouldn???t want to fall in; you???d never get out alive. I wanted to film ???Blade Runner??? in Hong Kong, but couldn???t afford to.
When ???Blade Runner??? came out in June 1982 it received mixed reviews and lost money. The summer???s big hit was ???E. T.,??? Steven Spielberg???s tale of a cute alien phoning home from the tidy suburbs. Few wanted to watch a movie that implied the world was about to go drastically downhill.
???Here we are 25 years on,??? Mr. Scott said, ???and we???re seriously discussing the possibility of the end of this world by the end of the century. This is no longer science fiction.???
The special effects that produced this vision were amazing for their day. Created with miniature models, optics and double exposures, they seemed less artificial than many computer effects of a decade later. But like film stock, they faded with time.
For the new director???s cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched. The results look almost 3-D.
The film???s theme of dehumanization has also been sharpened. What has been a matter of speculation and debate is now a certainty: Deckard, the replicant-hunting cop, is himself a replicant. Mr. Scott confirmed this: ???Yes, he???s a replicant. He was always a replicant.???
This may disappoint some viewers. Deckard is the film???s one person with a conscience. If he???s a replicant, it means that there are no more decent human beings.
???It???s a pretty dark world,??? Mr. Scott acknowledged. ???How many decent human beings do you meet these days????
The clue to Deckard???s true nature comes in a scene that was cut from the original release and only recently unearthed by Charles de Lauzirika, Mr. Scott???s assistant and the restoration???s producer, In the film, Deckard falls in love with Rachael (played by Sean Young), a secretary at the Tyrell Corporation, the conglomerate that makes replicants. She discovers that she???s a replicant too. Her memories of childhood were implanted by Tyrell to make her think she???s human.
In the last scene of Mr. Scott???s version, Deckard leads Rachael out of his apartment. He notices an origami figure of a unicorn on the floor. A fellow cop has often left such figures outside replicants??? rooms. In an earlier scene, Deckard was thinking about a unicorn. Looking at the cutout now, he realizes that the authorities know what???s in his mind, that the unicorn is a planted memory, that he???s a replicant and that he and Rachael are both now on the run. They get into the elevator. The door slams. The end.
Neither this scene nor any unicorn appeared in the 1982 release. That version ended with Deckard and Rachael escaping, driving through green countryside, Deckard telling us in his Philip Marlowe voice-over ??? which ran throughout the movie ??? that he had learned Rachael is a new type of replicant, built to live as long as humans. They smile. The end.
How to explain such a drastic change? The veteran television producers Bud Yorkin and Jerry Perenchio put up one third of the film???s $22 million budget and the completion bond, which stipulated that if the film went over budget they had to pay the overrun but would also take ownership of the movie. The film went $7 million over budget.
Preview screenings were disastrous. Crowds went to see the new Harrison Ford movie, thinking it would be like ???Raiders of the Lost Ark,??? and they were befuddled. Mr. Yorkin and Mr. Perenchio, whose relations with Mr. Scott were always tense, took over.
In some accounts, Mr. Scott was kicked off the picture and had nothing to do with the voice-over or the happy ending. This isn???t quite accurate.
???I was in a minor argument over it for about six hours,??? Mr. Scott recalled. ???Then I was fully on board.??? He had contemplated a voice-over early on, inspired by Martin Sheen???s in ???Apocalypse Now.??? When the previews bombed, he revived the idea and had his screenwriters, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, work on it. The new owners discarded that draft and hired Roland Kibbee, a frequent writer for the detective show ???Colombo,??? to do a rewrite.
Mr. Scott didn???t like the revision, but he edited it into the movie anyway. He also asked Stanley Kubrick for outtakes of rolling countryside that were shot for ???The Shining,??? and used them as backdrop for the desired happy ending.
???I went along with the idea that we had to do certain things to get audiences interested,??? Mr. Scott recalled. ???I later realized that once I adopted that line, I was selling my soul to the devil, inch by inch drifting from my original conception.???
???My original concept,??? he said, ???was almost operatic: the cadences, the deliberate pacing. I mean that in the sense of the best comic strips, the ones that adults read, which are very operatic. ???Batman??? ??? you can???t get more operatic than that.???
Afterward, Mr. Scott moved on to other films. In 1989 a Warner Brothers executive, going through the vaults, came across a 70-millimeter print of Mr. Scott???s original cut. In May 1990 the print was lent to a Los Angeles theater showing a festival of 70-millimeter films. Fans lined up around the block. The same thing happened when two art houses screened it in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Sensing a windfall, Warner Brothers announced the release of a director???s cut and brought in Mr. Scott. It was a rush job ??? much of the deleted footage couldn???t be found ??? but it was closer to what he had intended.
In 2000 Mr. Scott announced that he was working on a multidisc set that would include a polished director???s cut. But the project collapsed when the Mr. Yorkin and Mr. Perenchio wouldn???t transfer the rights.
This refusal was widely attributed to lingering bitterness. Mr. Yorkin, speaking by telephone from Los Angeles, denied that. ???It???s just there was no reason for another release,??? he said. ???We needed an idea that would make it an event.???
Last year they realized the film???s 25th anniversary was coming up. ???That was an idea we could hook it on,??? Mr. Yorkin said. A deal was struck with Warner Brothers. The project was revived.
Mr. de Lauzirika plowed through 977 boxes and cans of film, stored mainly in a Burbank warehouse, and found the missing pieces ??? including the complete unicorn scene ??? along with several discs??? worth of material for DVD special features. And the technical experts restored the picture to a level of detail that would have been impossible a few years earlier.
???In many ways,??? Mr. de Lauzirika said, ???the delay actually helped. So all headaches aside, it???s hard to be bitter. I???m actually quite grateful.???
i have it, and will watch it asap.
Someone gave me the DVD 3 years ago, too. Still have it.
Let's buy it for Dad and "borrow" it.
haha yes! but no way you are taking it back to SD!
- spidey
word. Blade Runner is so much more than a visual masterpiece; it's actually a damn good/exciting story.
They should do the Moebius Silver Surfer jawn.
anyways, the bradbury building now has a sprint cell phone store where daryl hannah ran into a wall. home again home again...
And agreed about how good a story the movie has going for it. Before I had watched it again a few year ago, I had this idea in my head: "oh, this is just some shit postmodern theorists nut over" but while I can see the attraction for people to look at the film's design, I was also pleasantly rebuked by how engaging the basic story is. I still could have done with less Sean Young but that goes for any movie.
imdb link
isn't that the title of Aceyalone's new album?
I sense a thread hijack in the works.....
The restoration was, to put it mildly, Frickin' AMAZING. Just pristine.
And it's been a while since I've seen the film and it's really held up. Some of the acting is more painful than I remember but Sean Young was better than I've typically given her credit for and Harrison Ford in the early '80s was The Man.
And the Soundtrack/Score? Re-Mastered as well or u couldnt tell?
That's a good question - I didn't think to listen for it. But the sound was really really good. That said, I could never get with that Vangelis soft-core-rock-instrumental wankery. I always felt like it was music better suited for a linen commercial or something.
Keep in mind: I've never seen the movie on the big screen before so this was a new experience, especially since it was on a 4K projection system (or whatever the f--- that means). The picture could have been from a film released yesterday (actually, come to think of it, a lot of the production/art direction looks a lot better than most of the CGI orgies we get these days).
And for real - watching this again made me realize how candy-ass the art direction in "5th Element" was. The latter has nice eye candy but Scott and his crew designed a completely believable world to inhabit and if you look at modern day L.A., it's remarkable how prescient some of their visions were (excluding the flying cars, 30 story billboards and Tyrell pyramid).
True, but in its defense it was drawn from a Heavy Metal comic from the late 70's right?
Be that as it may, the way it comes off in the film is just more cartoonish and I don't mean just b/c it's based on a comic book. It's just the visual style that the art director chose to use in the "Fifth Element." I'm not hating on it...but it just seems less impressive in comparison.
No doubt.