Mondays call for Blade Runner, too. 🎶

More on the soundtrack composer: wikipedia.org/wiki/Vangelis →

#nowplaying #bladerunner #vangelis

Rainy Sundays call for Blade Runner.

#videos #bladerunner

Are Audiences Too Lazy to Appreciate Blade Runner 2049?

“A lot of today’s Hollywood films don’t have a lot of patience,” he says. “They sort of expect the audience to get bored really quickly, so they’re like, ‘We’ve got to have an explosion every 10 minutes.’”

But the slow pace of Blade Runner 2049 is proving a challenge for many viewers, and so far the movie hasn’t attracted an audience that extends much beyond fans of the original. Michener thinks it’s appropriate that the film, like its predecessor, is a box office disappointment. “They made a sequel to a cult classic,” she says. “It was not designed to work with the Fast & Furious crowd.”

Now that you’ve had time to see it here’s a little commentary.

Establishing Ryan Gosling’s character as a replicant straight away was nice. Take that whole debate off the table and focus on the new story. Then again, I cared about Ford as Rick Deckard and I struggled with caring about K. He’s a skinned robot, maybe a few levels up from Alexa. And he’s gotten along just fine without a soul. I did enjoy his “I have to be quiet and do my job like a good toy soldier” persona. Even if he knew something bigger was going on, something bigger was out there.

And then Jared Leto in the movie. I hated him — but the more I’ve thought about it, I really just hated the snobby kimono-wearing weirdo that he was. “Shhh…” he says to the replicant who just dropped outta a body bag, one who’s cold and covered in goop. I’m not of them richly self-consumed types and I suppose Wallace was intended to revolt us common peasants.

I’m happy that they didn’t pretty Robin Wright up. She’s beautiful here in the real world but her character’s appearance reflected the trashed future they all lived in. That’s minor but it’s all too easy to make stars shine more than they should.

I seriously hope nobody expected it to be a blockbuster. It’s slow and brooding, just like the bubbling pot in the beginning. The heavy black cast iron boiling garlic on the stove. Humid and pungent when you lift the lid. Quietly clanging, simmering in its heaviness.

That early scene and visual kinda set the pace, the tone for me.

The soundtrack also closely mirrors the movie’s overall feel. I’ve listened to it more than anything else while doing my 9-5’s.

It lingered there to touch your hair.

Mixing Sinatra and Elvis with Zimmer and Wallfisch is pure brilliance. Ebb and flow of loss-full melancholy.

Audio bonus points: the latter also did the soundtrack for Hidden Figures. You should really see that, too, if you haven’t already. Here’s Katherine to get you started.

#movies #bladerunner

Audio (MP3): 20171007 - Blade Runner 2049 ticket

You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down and you see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you.

First time I’ve been to a movie by myself since The Phantom Menace. No weirdness so that’s good news.

And the movie was good. I went in thinking it’d be just okay, went in with a beef against Gosling but he fit the character well. I can see why they chose him for the part.

Be aware: the background music and sound effects were the loudest I’d ever heard in a theater. Everybody was going to be paying attention to Blade Runner 2049, no dazing off.

I’ll let you watch the movie without spoiling it. Well, one negative thing I will say is that if a character lights a cigarette then there should be smoke in that scene. Until he puts it out. Ya, this is minor but as an ex-smoker it bugs me.

Now I’ll talk about the original Blade Runner and one of my pet peeves with that.

Okay, so Deckard is a replicant. You can see his eyes light up briefly when he and Rachael go back to his apartment after Leon roughed him up, threw him around, etc-ry. All the replicants have the shiny eyes now and then, that’s the visual giveaway. And I like it. But I don’t like that Leon did in fact kick Deckard’s ass up and down the street just minutes before.

If Deckard was a replicant, what the hell? Ya, he may not have known he was an android and therefore wouldn’t have known about his physical abilities, ie. strength, agility, and so on.

But…survival seems to be pretty key to replicants. The whole movie is about them not wanting to die, them wanting to live. And if Deckard was a replicant, why didn’t that kick in during his fight with Leon? Or Zhora? When one is about to die our instincts take over. Unless you’re a boob.

#movienews #bladerunner #diariespodcast

This Future Looks Familiar: Watching Blade Runner in 2017

I watched Blade Runner for the first time this week. Since I have apparently been living in a cave for the past few decades, I thought that Blade Runner was kind of like Tron but with more Harrison Ford, and less neon, and maybe a few more tricky questions about What Is The Nature Of Man.

That is the movie I was expecting.

That is not the movie I saw.

I mostly enjoyed this writeup from a person who’d never see Blade Runner. Mostly.

You should go read what Sarah Gailey wrote before reading what I wrote below.

Go now, back up… ↑

So what I didn’t like is how she used the words human and murder. Over and over again. To drill home how cruel Deckard’s character was. How almost inhumane and devoid of caring after shooting Pris in the back. The author all but begged for me to feel my own empathy for the “slaves.”

But the thing is they weren’t slaves. Not in the human sense anyway. They were robots who lived beyond their slated life span and came to Earth after an off-world bloodbath. These guys were far more dangerous than your average Jetson Rosie. All the Nexus 6s that Deckard needed to retire were combat models. More or less.

Watch them in the movie. They’re not fragile and frail slaves just wanting to escape the plantation and “live.” They’ll snap you in two. Without skipping a beat.

I did enjoy the article though, very well written. And it also made me wonder when artificial life begins to have its own rights.

#movies #bladerunner

New trailer for Blade Runner 2049 is pretty dang alluring

The original Blade Runner from 1982 is deliberately claustrophic, keeping our point of view tightly encased in the rainy, polluted urban landscape of Los Angeles. We only see broad vistas when we ascend the gleaming pyramid occupied by Tyrell Corporation founder Eldon Tyrell.

Immediately, the trailer for Blade Runner 2049 gives us a much different view of the world. Yes, there are the cityscapes with holographic ladies, as well as a giant Atari logo that looks like it’s about to eat the universe. But there are also dramatic deserts, perhaps signs of profound climate change. We even see Officer K (Ryan Gosling) uncovering a date inscribed on a buried tree branch, and later he’s in some kind of forest gunfight (though that forest might be a hologram). Director Villeneuve made excellent use of landscape in Arrival, so it’s great to see that he’s doing that here, too.

We also get a clear signal that Blade Runner 2049 is going to take up an issue that ultimately fell by the wayside in the first film: the political horror that is replicant slavery. Though this is a big issue in Blade Runner, the film wound up focusing more on philosophical issues of what it means to be human. But Blade Runner 2049 puts slavery front and center, at least in this trailer.

I’m still not sold on Ryan Gosling and Jared Leto but I do trust Ridley Scott. Mostly. Harrison’s looks to be channeling the same basic pass-the-torch vibe as in The Force Awakens.

Trailer music is good though and Hampton Fancher is credited with the story and shares screenplay with Michael Green. Green also worked on Alien: Covenant.

Crossing my fingers Hollywood won’t pump out another Ghost in the Shell.

#movies #bladerunner

I just went to put the Blade Runner 2049 movie’s premier date (October 6th) on my calendar and lo and behold it was already there. I guess I was looking out for me.

#bladerunner

Leon was a good replicant… if he were alive I’d give him a bday high five. Maybe a kiss.

Source: @luisnostromo on instagram.com

#bladerunner #bdays

Peeps, speaking of Joan Jett here’s your dont-hardly-know-her Thursday jam.

How can you not love her with her total Mad Max crazy leather look? She’s got that somewhere-else look in the closeup around 30 seconds in, almost like she’s sinisterly in love.

Kindas reminds me of Priz from Blade Runner…

…or Furiosa from Fury Road.

Well, I guess none of them look similar but whatever, eyeballs make me nutty.

#musicvideos #joanjett #bladerunner #madmax

I don’t know what to make of Ryan Gosling being in the movie. He’s not hard enough, not gritty enough. He was in the Mickey Mouse Club and most recently La La Land. 🙄

To quote Dr. Eldon Tyrell…

A coding sequence cannot be revised once it’s been established.

I would’ve went with Tom Hardy even if he was just in the Mad Max reboot. No peek at Robin Wright in the trailer either.

Seriously, some movie franchises are sacred to me. Mad Max, Indiana Jones, Blade Runner. I don’t like it when people mess with them.

We’ll see what happens on October 6, 2017 I guess.

#movies #bladerunner