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Have I posted about Blade Runner before?
Jan. 9th, 2016 12:21 pmI feel like I must have. One of my favorite blog subjects seems to be "movies that everyone likes except me." I have attempted to watch Blade Runner at least 3 maybe 4 times. I finally succeeded last night, only falling asleep in the last 8 minutes, in which (like so much of the movie), nothing happens. I watched the "Final Cut" version that director Ridley Scott endorses and over which had complete artistic control. Apparently the early DVD transfer was muddy--a serious problem in a movie that is rainy and dark for 2 solid hours--and this was fixed, and the sound was restored as well.
I get the artistic importance of this movie. I get that it was also a technical achievement. In fact, without the painfully dated Vangelis soundtrack it is amazingly ahead of its time. The art movie pacing is a serious problem; I'm surprised as many sci-fi fans worship this movie as they do. I realize that in previous attempts to watch it I had a really hard time figuring out which details were important and which were things that the camera just lingered on for no detectable reason. By now I know the backbone of the story, last night I didn't have to expend as much energy sifting plot points from atmosphere.
My current fear is that the fellow who is choosing the next zookeeper movie night is going to pick Blade Runner. He is on record as declaring it his favorite film, but is he the kind of person who will drag a whole room full of people through the soup of 2019 Los Angeles for two hours? We shall see. And I should talk: I made the same group of people watch my favorite movie, Repo Man.
I get the artistic importance of this movie. I get that it was also a technical achievement. In fact, without the painfully dated Vangelis soundtrack it is amazingly ahead of its time. The art movie pacing is a serious problem; I'm surprised as many sci-fi fans worship this movie as they do. I realize that in previous attempts to watch it I had a really hard time figuring out which details were important and which were things that the camera just lingered on for no detectable reason. By now I know the backbone of the story, last night I didn't have to expend as much energy sifting plot points from atmosphere.
My current fear is that the fellow who is choosing the next zookeeper movie night is going to pick Blade Runner. He is on record as declaring it his favorite film, but is he the kind of person who will drag a whole room full of people through the soup of 2019 Los Angeles for two hours? We shall see. And I should talk: I made the same group of people watch my favorite movie, Repo Man.
