From USAtoday, As DVD shows, there's always a way to reinvent (or repackage) a classic. Two more are coming around again:Blade Runner (1982)
Dec. 18
Details:Blade Runner: Ultimate Collector's Edition, $79, five standard DVDs. (Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD versions planned; no price yet.) Four versions of the film, plus a remastered "work print."
Why it's important: Though Scott re-edited the film for a 1992 release, he has tinkered further, creating his "final cut" for the 25th anniversary. Scott says it "now is in its purest form."
Among changes: A longer "unicorn" scene. During the commentary, Scott explains that it's pivotal because the symbolism re-enforces Scott's thinking that Deckard (Harrison Ford) is not human, but a replicant. Plus: enhanced special effects, a new surround soundtrack. Bonuses include a new making-of documentary.
Also: The "final cut" will be shown in New York and L.A. theaters this fall and at film festivals in Venice (Aug. 29-Sept. 8) and New York (Sept. 28-Oct. 14).
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Nov. 13
Details: Close Encounters of the Third Kind: 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition (DVD, $40; Blu-ray Disc, $50). Includes three versions of the film: the 1977 original theatrical cut, the re-edited 1980 theatrical special edition, and Steven Spielberg's director's cut, released in 1998.
Why it's important: It's the first time a Spielberg movie has been issued on high-definition disc, and it's the first home video release of all three versions
What's new: An interview with Spielberg created especially for this release and a retrospective documentary.
Plus: Only on the 50 GB Blu-ray edition are new "storyboard-to-scene" comparisons and the original 1977 "Watch the Skies" featurette. Blu-ray, says David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, "will add yet another new and thrilling dimension to this timeless film."
4 comments:
I HATE THIS STUPID "DECKARD IS A REPLICANT" BULLSHIT!
Allow me to elaborate: First, I don't care what Ridley Scott says because he doesn't know, any more than Quentin Tarantino knows what's in that glowing briefcase. And Tarantino has a better chance of knowing that (in other words, I would listen to his answer) because he, um, wrote the movie script, whereas Ridley Scott is merely the (brilliant, visionary) director of Blade Runner. It's like trying to figure out the Queen Alien's life cycle, and asking Ridley Scott. He DOESN'T KNOW, because James Cameron (unlike Ridley Scott) actually wrote the script to his movie and can begin to answer the question. Here's where I should bring in Susan Sontag and her idea of "the Intentional Fallacy" but I won't bother. Except I just did, so here goes: the artist is not an authority on his own work. He or she is merely an authority on the creation of the work.
But never mind all that. This is the stupidest idea in the history of sci-fi speculations, for the following reasons:
1) Replicants are illegal on Earth, so Deckard wouldn't be allowed there.
2) Deckard works as a Blade Runner, which means he spends his working days surrounded by an entire police force dedicated to revealing, chasing and retiring Replicants. And they never noticed him? What are they, completely incompetent? (Remember that all they'd have to do is detect him and shoot him; no trial necessary.)
3) Replicants only live four years, and yet Bryant and Gaf clearly have memories of Deckard that are older than that. (There's some wiggle room on this one, but not much. "I need you, Dec. I need the old Blade Runner; I need your magic.")
4) Let me return to point one. Having four "skin jobs" in Los Angeles -- just HAVING THEM THERE -- is such a police emergency that Deckard is called out of retirement to solve it. But nobody cares about Deckard walking around? The only Replicant legitimately walking around on Earth is Rachel, an experimental model (in that she's got the new Nexus VI memory implants and DOESN'T KNOW IT). I'm sure Tyrell gets some kind of special dispensation allowing him to keep Rachel on Earth. Never mind the bullshit about how she doesn't have the four-year-lifespan, either: that's part of the studio-added narration and isn't really part of the story.
5) Replicants have superhuman strength. (Even Pris; she practically kills him with her bare hands, and she's just Daryll Hannah while he's Harrison Ford a year after developing his "Indy" physique.)
6) His eyes don't glow. Nobody's eyes fucking glow in this movie; it's called cinematography and Ridley Scott and Jordan Cronenweth are very good at it.
7) I re-iterate the extreme stupidness of hiring a non-self-aware Replicant to kill Replicants. How is this anywhere close to a good plan? Are you telling me there wouldn't be background checks, Voigt-Kampf tests, data going back MORE THAN FOUR YEARS?
8) Let's ignore everything I just said and pretend he is a Replicant after all. (It's some kind of "deep plotting" in which surface details of the photography carry more weight than the entire screenplay.) Is this supposed to "mean" something? It doesn't do anything to the story except screw it up -- unless you're stuck at the same tenth-grade level of literacy in which you think the end of "The Player" is profound because all you know how to do is detect when something is refering to itself; e.g. first-level irony. But since first-level irony is just about the weakest form of meaning you can find in art (although it's the easiest to detect and "analyize") this reduces Blade Runner to some kind of symbolic parable, when it's really far more than that. If David Bowman turned out to be a computer himself, would 2001 suddenly "mean" more? More like the opposite.
9) I re-iterate that Ridley Scott doesn't know the answer. Come to think of it, he says some awfully dumb things on the Alien commentary track, too.
"Is this supposed to "mean" something? It doesn't do anything to the story except screw it up" I think that's always been the key point for me. Do they really want the viewer to alter their entire experience with the character at the very end by giving us this detail? It's why I never liked that Kevin Costner movie, No Way Out. The entire movie we're rooting for him to escape and then at the very end we learn that he's a spy and we're then supposed to hate him. It totally ruined the movie for me.
Also, if this is such an important point, why does it have to be so cryptic?
Exactly! And I agree about No Way Out also. The whole trick to twist endings is not that they reverse an assumption you've made but that they do it cleverly so that the entire fabric of the story is revealed to make an alternate sense to the sense you think it's made.
The Sixth Sense remains my favorite example (since I really think it's the most perfect "twist ending I've ever seen, including all the Twilight Zone stuff I've watched): at the moment of the twist, the movie immediately takes you through everything you've seen to SHOW you how much sense it makes and how you've been fooled.
Wild Things does this too: under the closing credits the movie takes you back through and shows you exactly how their double-twist worked, in chronological order. It's pretty intense, but it all makes sense.
With Blade Runner, it's just idiocy. How could he even... Never mind; I've said it above.
I associate this idea with a type of person I can't stand: the all-knowing fanboy types who solemnly tell you "what it really is" in this smug voice and then back it up by insisting that their information source is somebody "better connected" or more "on the inside" than you are. "The briefcase [in Pulp Fiction contains the Holy Grail...really, because I know a guy who has the other draft of the script." I'm not making this up: someone really "pulled rank" on me over the Pulp Fiction briefcase. My follow-up question -- what two low-level Burbank mobsters were doing with the Holy Grail, and what this has to do with anything else in the movie -- went unanswered. I was just solemnly told that this was "the truth."
Agreed, agreed, agreed. Deckard As Replicant reminds me of the prevailing "whoah" moment that the movie Existenz keeps hitting you over the head with, namely "how do we know this isn't the simulated reality?" Boooooring.
I've always thought the little "hints" of DAR in Blade Runner were meant to evoke the idea that the creatures he's tracking and the "good guys," aka humans like our hero, aren't that different from each other. Blade Runner has the wonderfully murky morality of a film noir, and there are deft strokes that circle the theme of human identity in an increasingly complex future.
Among the ideas thrown out there are whether Deckard has taken the VK test and whether he's ever retired a human by mistake, both questions asked by Rachel. We get no answers, and we're not meant to, because this is a good movie that knows what it's doing. At no point are these artistic flourishes meant to invade the plot and provide the "real" answers.
I was going to say that this question is the venue of 10th grade fanboys just learning their chops, but then I remembered that at no point in my life, 10th grade or otherwise, have I given DAR any level of regard. Nor will I.
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