Month: July 2010

“Blade Runner” (’92 Director’s Cut)

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I need to write up a column about All About Eve for the Examiner website, but as a professional dawdler, it’s simply not close enough to the deadline for me to get my ass into gear.  So, I figured I’d blog about a film I’ve never seen.  Thanks to a stroke of luck and a couple of trade-ins at the used book store, I was able to get the 4-DVD ultimate set of Blade Runner for free. God bless McKay’s.

It’s true.  I’d never seen Blade Runner.  I saw bits and pieces on television, but I still didn’t have any idea what the movie was about.  I figured it was a hard-boiled whodunit with robots, and while that element is present, the tone was much more introspective than I expected, and elevates a standard film into something a bit more special.

The special effects and set design are legendary, and their influence on Metropolis will be interesting to compare when I post about the restored version of Metropolis coming soon to Belcourt.   This was also back when Harrison Ford still kinda gave a damn, and a motivated Ford is an interesting one.  I miss the good Harrison Ford.

My wife recommended I watch the ’92 director’s cut first, but the edition also includes the 1982 U.S. and International theatrical cuts, as well as a 2007 “Final Cut” with additional footage and special effects.  I figured I’d write about each version and note the differences here, so stay tuned.  Here’s some vidjer of the original theatrical trailer, and just by watching this, I’m grateful that the voiceover was removed in later versions:

Blade Runner (Five-Disc Complete Collector’s Edition) [Blu-ray]

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Some Residual Thoughts On “Inception”

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I talked about Inception earlier, but it’s sticking with me, so I figured I’d blather some more blahbity-blah:

  1. Smartest summer action movie ever made?  Considering my memory sucks, YES!
  2. This film makes Joseph Gordon-Levitt a leading man.  I really like the guy, even as he starred in blech like (500) Days Of Summer.   Anybody that does the “Make ‘Em Laugh” number from Singin’ In The Rain live on SNL immediately enters my good graces, and he reaches his full potential as an actor and action film star here.
  3. Speaking of me praising actors, I think it’s time to give Leonardo DiCaprio his due.  The guy has been in some fantastic films the last few years:  Catch Me If You Can, The Aviattor, The Departed, Shutter Island (okay maybe not fantastic but sure as hell fascinating) and now this.
  4. What does that final scene mean?

That’s all for now.  I just posted a column about “Laura” at Examiner.com.  Enjoy, or don’t!

“Inception”

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Best movie of the year.  Granted, that doesn’t mean much this year, but it’s a surefire Best Picture nominee, as well as one of the best screenplays written in the last decade.  Complex and multi-layered, but I never found it confusing.  The way the (multiple) worlds are set up is clean and concise, and the execution of the last half of the film is damn near perfect, a masterclass in editing.  Inception is like James Bond meets geometry and they have a 3-way with Freud.

As I left, I heard a couple people say they were lost.  If you have ADD, forget it, just run outside and eat sugar.  If you can pay attention to things, AND you like guns and ‘splosions, this is the movie for you.  If you like intelligent, well-crafted storytelling, this is the film for you.  If you like people running around in M.C. Escheresque dreamscapes while dodging machine gun fire, THIS IS THE FILM FOR YOU.

The theater was hot as hell, and we were in the second row, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.  Inception is much better than Cats.  I’ll see it again and again.