Apr
29
Blade Runner has been called one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever, and with good reason. Directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Legend) and adapted from Philip K. Dick’s, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the movie goes straight to the heart of what most good science fiction is about: What defines the term “Human”?
The initial release in 1982 showcased Harrison Ford in a completely different role, which contributed dramatically to his leading-man status. Ford plays Deckard, a retired police detective/specialist who is dragged back into service to hunt down and “retire” a group of Replicants who have illegally made their way to Earth, genetically manufactured slaves who serve the off-world colonies. Rutger Hauer gives an Oscar-worthy performance as the leader of the escaped replicants, with strong supporting roles including Darryl Hannah, Joanna Cassidy, and Brion James. Ridley Scott has a knack for bringing out the best of his actors, and aptly demonstrates that a gesture or expression can speak volumes more than any dialogue could.
The original theatrical release met with moderate box-office success, because Scott was forced by the “suits” to add an overlay of narration and a happy ending. His original vision was thought to be too “brainy” and “dark” to be a box-office success. The film as it was released was not the smash hit that was hoped for, but the movie gained a huge cult following that still persists today. The question of what pinnacle the movie might have reached, had it been released as Scott intended, would not be realized until 1992, when the Director’s Cut was released, and fans were able to see how much stronger and more dramatic the film truly was sans the narration and happy ending. The re-released version brought Ridley’s vision into crystal clear focus, and the results were sparkling.
And now, with the 25th Anniversary Collectors Edition, a NEW Director’s Cut has been released, and I have to give it an enthusiastic recommendation, both for what Ridley Scott did, and for what he could have but didn’t do.
One of the most striking visual aspects of Blade Runner was the art direction and cinematography. The contrasts between the settings and the look are remarkable in that the movie has the visual feel of a 1940’s Bogart-like detective film, but is encrusted with technological marvels. An old Chinese street vendor is just as likely to have an electron microscope (to check the serial number of an artificially grown animal scale) as she is to have napkins to hand out with the food she’s hawking. Earth has become a run-down hovel with pockets of manufacturing districts as the general populace has abandoned the planet for a better life on the off-world colonies, like people move from the big city to new condominium developments in the suburbs. It’s not out of the ordinary to find one individual occupying an entire grand hotel that has fallen into disrepair. Earth has basically devolved into the armpit of society to the point where the common language is “City-Speak”, a mixture of German, Spanish, Japanese, and English. It’s not pretty, yet it is visually stunning, and many of the concepts introduced in Blade Runner remain just as jaw dropping today as they did 25 years ago, and Ridley Scott’s ultimate final cut has taken all of that and polished it to a gleam.
It would have been easy to visually update the film ala George Lucas with computer generated enhancements. For example, many of the devices in the movie utilize cathode ray tube screens instead of the LCD screens we now accept as bulky televisions and computer monitors go the way of vinyl records. It would have been tempting to remedy this, but thankfully, Scott maintains his original vision and instead uses computer enhancement to add subtle detail that enhances the reality in ways that just weren’t possible when the original was made. Fans of Blade Runner will notice these things and appreciate them for what they are and what they do. The other primary difference is a very slight remixing of certain scenes, as well as some lingering moments of unspoken dialogue which serve to portray the message, mood, or moment more clearly. The best way to describe the difference in the three versions would be to portray the original as a Hollywood commercial release for the masses, the second as a tribute to the legions of worldwide fans that still to this day debate many of the questions and analyses raised by the original, and the third as a legacy that completely stands upon its own for new generations of fans to love and appreciate. If you haven’t seen Blade Runner before, the Final Director’s Cut is the version to see. It is hands down still superior to 99% of the movies being made with today’s technology. The Four Disc Set includes 9 hours of bonus commentary, outtakes, deleted scenes, plus the original 1982 U.S. theatrical release, the 1982 Foreign release, the 1992 Director’s Cut, and the piece de resistance, tour de force of the Final Director’s Cut.
With a remastered soundtrack in digital 5.1 surround taken from the original 6 track soundtrack, a remastered, digitally enhanced picture taken from the master reel, the amazing music score by Vangelis, and the visual art of Mobius (probably the most celebrated Heavy Metal artist ever), the Blade Runner Collector’s Edition is not an exaggeration… it truly is worthy of being in your collection.
Apr
8
Next to the economy, the Iraq War is the biggest issue in our upcoming elections. The general perception among the American populace is that the whole affair is not worth the price, in terms of lives, money, and hardship. We all sense what the powers-that-be do not want to admit to themselves, or perhaps to put it bluntly, the elitist power brokers in Washington do understand the cost, but some how see the cost of not seeing through what we started to be far greater, at least to themselves, the companies that stand to benefit, and maybe our economic and national interests.
Regardless of what the driving forces are for leaving or remaining in Iraq, the reality is that, no matter what we do, the situation is doomed to failure, and the reason is that we are culturally trying to pound a round peg into a square hole, which leads to both the peg and hole being badly damaged or outright ruined in the process. In other words, what we stand to gain is far less than we could possibly understand. No matter what we do, both sides will come out far worse than before this whole mess started.
Let’s look at our own fairly recent history. As early as 20 years ago, our country still faced a vast divide in terms of race relations. As early as 40 years ago, equal rights among women, blacks, and other minorities was in its infancy. There is still a noticable gap in terms of the perception between races today, as so elequently pointed out by Obama in his recent address on race and equality in America.
Only since the 1990s have we truly been able to say that organized crime did not have tremendous influence in politics, lawlessness, and business and government corruption. In the 1920s, Chicago truly was ruled by Al Capone, and the government’s Prohibition laws were a farce, at least until the government could figure out a way to regulate the industry well enough to assure their slice of the pie.
We have had assassinations, internal terrorism, major riots in large cities (over things ranging from percieved unjust police shootings to the outcome of major sporting events), questionable and illegal activities by both big business and government departments and officials, and a score of other problems that really don’t take a whole lot of brain power to remember quite clearly.
These things have happened in our own country, where culturally we have been raised and conditioned to our form of government in every generation since the United States gained independence in 1776. And yet we expect a totally different set of cultures to embrace a form of government (with its own set of ills and shortcomings) that has no cultural basis for acceptance? We expect that the diverse set of peoples who have tribal and sectional differences to embrace democracy and make it work? Not just Iraq, but the majority of the Middle East has hundreds, if not thousands of years of racial, religious, and even regional prejudices, injustices, and blood oaths to deal with. Iraq is a microcosm that gives us a fairly decent cross section of the wide disparities that exist in the Middle East, with the Kurds, Shiites, Sunis, Baaths, moderates, fanatics, extremists, fascists, dictators, shiekdoms, kingdoms, etc.
All that we can hope to accomplish in Iraq is perhaps to reach a deeper understanding of their own internal struggles, gain respect by giving respect and try and provide as much humanitarian effort as we can to ease the suffering of the innocents who are caught in the crossfire of what will inevitably be a huge mess no matter what we do, for we cannot hope to establish a foriegn type of government in a region that cannot culturally accept it, especially when the “model” for that form of government still has its own ills to deal with.
I think that’s what the American people have sensed about the Iraq War, and why the majority of Americans oppose it, for collectively we know too well from our own examples and history that our democracy, while perhaps the best form of bad governance in the world, is still a difficult form of government, even for the country that exemplifies it.