The Golden Age of Fantastic Film Magazines January 30, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 4 commentsIt has occurred to me that one of the negative effects of the internet and DVD special features has been the demise of quality fantastic film magazines, the likes of Cinefantastique, Starlog, Fantastic Films, Starburst, Cinefex. While some magazines are still being published, most have gone and those that remain are pale shadows of their past incarnations.
The Golden Age was really back in the late ’seventies, early ‘eighties. Back then, Cinefantastique, the grandest of them all, was in its prime. This was an astonishing magazine, with luxurious presentation for its day, and some of the finest specialist journalism. It was a truly authoritative publication- some of its articles have been unmatched to this day. Its in-depth, 40+page articles on the likes of FORBIDDEN PLANET, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, DUNE, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, remain the definitive accounts of the making of the films. Paul Sammon’s article about BLADE RUNNER remained unsurpassed until he himself wrote the book FUTURE NOIR many years later, and it can be argued that the magazines presentation, with rare, never-again published photos, still make that article superior to the later book.
In truth it was an exciting time to be a sci-fi fan, as Hollywood tried to capitalize on the success of STAR WARS in 1977. Genre films were breaking barriers, and special effects artists were becoming as famous as the directors and actors. Fantastic Films entered publication riding the wave of the sci-fi boom, and while early issues were inferior to Cinefantasique, later it began to catch up in quality. A series of issues of Fantastic Films in 1979 that centered on ALIEN were equal to anything in Cinefantastique- detailed interviews with Dan O’Bannon, Ron Cobb, and, in particular, one with Ridley Scott that was so lengthy it was spread across two issues, were fascinating. These were the days when interviewees were surprisingly honest and candid, and there was little evidence of the stale publicity-junkets that dominate proceedings today. An interview with Robert Wise, while he was making STAR TREK:TMP, that covered his career from film to film was a serious and honest appraisal of the master craftsman’s work on genre pictures, with a detail lacking in magazines today.
The British magazine Starburst launched in 1977, and while it never ever matched it’s American cousins for graphic quality, it nevertheless had some fine writers working for it, and commissioned some fine interviews. Some of the interviews about BLADE RUNNER actually matched those of Cinefantastique, and a fine review by John Brosnan was quite perceptive and pre-dated some of the critical revaluation that would follow years later. John Brosnan was a guy who vexed many fans who would never forgive him for scathing reviews (I recall one for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK in particular, and I’m sure he wrote his reviews deliberately to wind up the fanboys), so to read him praising my favourite film was a real treat back when most reviews were extremely critical.
It’s tempting to think that the magazines were better back then simply because the films themselves were. Cinefex remains a quality periodical, with serious and detailed articles on special effects, but it isn’t a shadow of it’s old self from the late ’seventies and ‘eighties, mostly because of how films have changed. In its early years Cinefex had great behind-the-scenes photos of gorgeous miniatures being built and photographed, matte paintings being skillfully painted on glass - nowadays the best you can usually get is some guy sitting at a workstation. Interviews used to dwell in detail about optical processes and the design and photography of models and mattes, while today it tends to be dominated by dry anecdotes about software applications. Times have certainly changed, and the marketing and publicity departments for modern blockbusters have, I suspect, far more control of what gets printed these days. Likewise the internet and in particular the special features on DVD special editions make in-depth journalism redundant, unfortunately. But I still maintain that there is a magic to reading an in-depth article in a magazine you physically hold that is superior to what a DVD doc might manage.
But alas the Golden Age has passed. The likes of Cinefantastique, Fantastic Films and the glory days of those magazines still in print today have gone and will never be seen again. The internet is a powerful and rewarding library of knowledge, and I enjoy watching the special features on DVDs, but for some fans like myself, neither the internet or DVD will ever replace what we have lost with the demise of those magazines of my youth. Reading them again today is like taking a sad journey on a time machine to better, more exciting days.
I must be getting old…!
The Eye of the Beholder: Blade Runner January 27, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 2 commentsThe beauty of BLADE RUNNER is that, by either omission or design, so much is left unsaid, so many hints and clues unexplained. On casual viewing much of this is missed, and I believe this is why the film was so ill-received back in 1982. Over the years since, and the inevitable repeated screenings on television and home video formats, these hidden hints etc. become easier to see. ‘See’ being a very interesting word here, because sight and vision is the very heart of the BLADE RUNNER experience.
It is no accident that one of the very first shots in the film is that of a giant disembodied eye staring back at the viewer, as if the film itself is confronting the viewer, demanding some kind of subjective response, an echo of the end of 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY where the gaze of the Starchild confronts the audience, announcing, as it were, (and again, like 2001) that only by looking will the viewer really seewhat the film is and what it has to say. This is not a film that rewards if only watched passively, letting the film do all the work of entertaining the audience as mainstream films usually do. Instead, BLADE RUNNER only truly rewards when you work at it. It engages and even demands your own input, your subjectivity. BLADE RUNNER is a cinematic Pandoras Box, and also perhaps a Voight-Kampff machine in itself. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so it is with BLADE RUNNER.
And here is the power of the film, the reason why so many fans are still watching it, still discussng it. More than twenty years since first watching the film during its initial cinema release, even now it still has something different to offer each time, not because the film has changed but because I have. Experience of BLADE RUNNER is so subjective that over time as we change so too does our interpretation of the film. Get five fans of the film in a room discussing it and chances are that all five see it differently, as if they have all seen a slightly different movie. Not something that happens with STAR WARS. BLADE RUNNER is not just a piece of Hollywood entertainment, it is, I believe, inspite or perhaps even because of its flaws, a major work of art.
You carry BLADE RUNNER around with you, you see echoes of it around you in the world you live in. LA 2019 is not “..a galaxy far, far away…”it is just around the corner. Back in 1982 when I first saw the film, its future seemed far more distant, but now it seems to be closer everyday. As an infrequent part of this site, I’d like to begin a series of observations of BLADE RUNNER, my favorite film.
Is Deckard a Replicant? Its funny how that question has dominated so much attention towards the film. In many ways its the least interesting question concerning the film. Indeed, I often think that Deckard is a far more interesting character if we consider him to be human, no matter what Ridley Scott might say on the subject. Who is he? Why is he still on Earth and not Offworld? In the original release-print of the film, we learn that Deckard was once married: “Sushi, that’s what my ex-wife called me. Cold fish.”But his wife is gone, presumably for a better life Offworld. A broken marriage, the resulting disappointments, unrealised hopes and dreams, further clues to his morose, life-weary demeanor in the film. Perhaps she left simply because she couldn’t bear to live on a decaying Earth anymore, wanted something more, but Deckard wouldn’t go. Was his wife leaving for Offworld the ultimate act of betrayal? After all, are ex-Blade Runners likely to emigrate Offworld and be surrounded by Replicant slaves, permanent reminders of the job they left behind?
In my mind I feel that Blade Runners would gradually burn themselves out as the Replicants became more and more human with each successive Nexus model. It would become less destroying a rogue machine and more like murdering a person. An unfilmed prologue for the film depicted Deckard hunting down and retiring a runaway Nexus 2 or 3 out in some remote farmscape outside the city. The Replicant would be a very basic model, huge, bulky, awkward, primitive, clearly not human. But as the Nexus models were improved and became more human then the job of retiring them would become increasingly repellent, so that when the main proceedings of the film begins, Deckard has quit.
It is fascinating to consider this background to Deckard, to picture him spending months in the decaying megalopolis of LA 2019 with the rejected remnants of humanity deemed unfit for Offworld. He doesn’t go Offworld because he doesn’t want to. He spends his nights in his increasingly untidy apartment, the many photos within reminders of a life lost to him (family, freinds, now all dead from whatever pestilence has struck the world, or left for Offworld?) drinking his booze, sinking ever deeper into despair. Perhaps enjoying the anonymity of the faceless, neon-drenched crowds. Until of course one evening when Gaff taps him on the shoulder at The White Dragon Noodle Bar, pulling him back to that life he thought he had left behind. I often think that the reason why he sympathizes and eventually falls in love with Rachel is simply because he can empathize with the Replicants- he did before, the reason he quit his abhorrent job and lived a lost life in the nighted city.
One can’t forget, however, that the appeal of Deckard as an unlikely hero lies as much with Harrison Fords performance as the script. Perhaps one of the most undervalued performances of his entire career, Ford’s Deckard is complex and understated, at odds with the trademark screen presence of likeable hero that he cultivated in the STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES films. Deckard is at times selfish, cold, bitter, as much a loser and victim as anybody else in the film. Ultimately Ford is very convincing in the role, and how much this is due to Ford’s growing disinterest in the role and the film itself during the production is a matter of conjecture. As far as the sci-fi genre in 1982 was concerned, Deckard was one of the most human and convincing heroes ever seen- he ate, slept, drank, bled… in essence he was an everyman in an extraordinary world. A Replicant? Not a chance, not in my eyes.
But I’ll return to that human or Replicant debate at a later time, because there are other reasons why Deckard being a Replicant undermines the very reasoning of the film.
Blade Runners don’t exist. Officially, there is no need of them. Replicants are perfect slaves, they don’t go rogue, turn on thier masters. It is part of the Big Lie that is Offworld. In order to encourage the public, Offworld portrayed as a New World, a paradise. Blade Runner departments (presumably there are variants world-wide, or whatever is left of the world in 2019) are essentially clandestine government-sponsored death squads. Bryants office, modest and unassuming, is almost hidden in gloomy corner of the Police HQ. Blade Runners don’t wear uniforms. Note that after Deckard has retired Zhora, no police question Deckards actions once they realize what he is- all they seem concerned about is clearing up the mess before any onlookers realise that Zhora was a Replicant. No-one will ever learn what happened to the crew and passengers of the Offworld shuttle that the Replicants used to get to earth. Deckard is reading a newspaper at the beginning of the film, and there is no mention of a missing shuttle and massacre which would, presumably, be headline news. Another question raised by the film- are there Blade Runners Offworld to keep the Replicant slaves under control? A scenario for a sequel perhaps?
Bryant informs Deckard that the Replicants “..slaughtered twenty-three people and jumped a shuttle.” I have mental pictures of the Replicants bloodily murdering civilian Offworlders, colonists, innocent people. It is not an image that sits well with how Ridley Scott ultimately wants us to feel sympathy for the Replicants. Bryant’s line is almost throwaway; I don’t believe we are intended to dwell on it. Replicants are a threat, that is clear from the start of the film where Leon almost kills Holden, but throughout the film Scott encourages our sympathy for them (or empathy, a case for the film to be viewed as a V-K test itself?). Zhora is shot in the back in slow motion in a deliberate attempt to elicit our sympathy (indeed, few heroes in a mainstream film are seen shooting protagonists in the back, especially a woman, human or not). When Leon attacks Deckard soon after, it is an act of revenge for Zhora’s murder. When Batty preys on Deckard at the end of the film, it is orchestrated again as an act of revenge, this time for Pris’ murder… we are intended to feel sympathy for Batty as he grieves over Pris’ corpse. The film seems to portray the Replicants as victims, their four-year lifespan an injustice inflicted on them by Tyrell. In some ways this is a triumph of the film, in that there is no black & white portrayal of Good and Evil; in a sense every character of the film can be seen as a victim. But I still find myself considering the fate of the people on that shuttle, clearly a terrible attrocity was commited by the same four Replicants we are meant to feel sympathy for.
Well, thats enough for now. If you can stomach it, I’ll return to this assessment of my favorite film at a later date.
Population 436 January 26, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , add a commentWell, after suffering through THE WICKER MAN remake, this film was a surprise.
Oddly enough it shares many similar themes to that film, with an outsider-protagonist becoming stranded in a strange and foreign society remote from the ‘normal’ world. But unlike THE WICKER MAN remake, this film actually works. Jeremy Sisto gives a fine performance as Steve Kady, a government census-agent who arrives in the remote town of Rockwell Falls to update the government records, to find that in the town records and on every census return the population of the town is reported as 436. For over a hundred years the population has remained the same. The town itself is a quaint slice of rural Americana, the people who live there are nice and homely, but there’s also something odd about it, something just left-of-center, it’s like something out of the Twilight Zone. Everyday seems like Sunday, just a little too easy and perfect. Of course Kady has to learn what the secret of this bizarre place is, and like THE WICKER MAN it involves rituals and a deal with the Devil, and again like THE WICKER MAN, our hero is pulled toward a grisly fate. But I really quite enjoyed this film, and found it a very pleasant surprise having been so annoyed by THE WICKER MAN remake.
The cast are terrific, infact the film demonstrates remarkably successful casting - it shows that good casting can really elevate a picture. Every actor fits his or her character like a glove, and their work benefits the script. Location photography is excellent, it reminded me of WITNESS, blue skies, summer clouds, the grass in the wind. Yeah, it is a rewarding film. The script may not scream originality - there is a distinct sense of deja-vu when watching it - but it is, dare I say it, a nice old-fashioned kind of thriller. There, I said it. Ghostof82 makes no apologies for it, this is a nice 70’s-era kind of film and that’s probably why I enjoyed it so much. Slow-paced, pleasant, a character-based film without need of gore and shocks. It gets a thumbs-up from me. Well worth a rental…
The Wicker Man (2006) January 25, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , add a commentOh dear, horror films are supposed to be scary, aren’t they? And what’s the point of a remake that has nothing at all new to say? This film was so utterly pointless. The original film had a haunting quality to it that stays with you for years, but this remake, well, the only thing that haunts me from this mess is the waste of 90+mins of my life. I can’t find much else to say about it. An utterly baffling experience. The hero is a pill-popping idiot. Were the bees supposed to be a terrifying threat? The scene where the hero punches a woman in the face for her bear costume sums it up nicely. What on Earth were these people thinking?
It’s the nearest thing I’ve ever seen to LIFEFORCE. Horror films so bad they mutate into bizarre comedies are a genre of their very own. I remember hearing a story that Tobe Hooper was in tears at the LIFEFORCE premiere when he realised the audience was howling in laughter instead of fear. I wonder if the director of THE WICKER MAN even dared turn up at the premier at all.
THE THING (2008) January 19, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 4 commentsAs a special treat for readers of this blog, a review of a future classic from 2008.
This film is a work of supreme insight and a canny re-imagining of a sadly dated piece of ’80s cinema. Set in a remote High School on the Canadian border, it depicts the struggles of a geek teenager who watches his schoolmates being systematically taken over by The Thing while his school is cut off from the nearby town by a blizzard. He is helped by his science tutor who, in a neat nod to fans of the John Carpenter effort, is played by none other than Kurt Russell. The horror has been unknowingly triggered by a class science project which was digging for ore samples in the school playing fields before disappearing in the snow storm. Two days later the only survivor of the doomed field class is a ginger cat that is chased back to the school by the school gardener who knows that the cat is infected by The Thing.
Alas the school security guard, startled by the sight of the fork-welding mad gardener, shoots him dead and gives the sinister moggy to the school janitor who is the first to die in a horribly unique cgi-fest. Indeed the twenty-six deaths in the film are all grotesquely imaginative uses of huge amounts of cgi while still achieving that all-important PG-13 rating.
The biggest change from the original is perhaps the doomed love story that has all the female cinema-goers weeping in their popcorn. Recognising the opportunity to start a franchise Universal have already greenlit a sequel, VERY BAD THINGS FOR SALE set in a shopping mall isolated by yet another freakishly bad snowstorm.
Does the world really need INDY 4? January 18, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 2 commentsI must confess to surprisingly mixed feelings about Indy 4, and the news that production is scheduled to commence in June/July this year for a 2008 release. That’ll be 19 years since the last Indiana Jones film, THE LAST CRUSADE from 1989. Rumors about Indy 4 have been circulating for many years, and it has been close to production a number of times, ultimately being held back because Lucas had reservations about the various scripts and didn’t think they were good enough. If only he’d given as much consideration and care to the STAR WARS prequels, the world would be a happier place.
While the idea of a fourth Indy fills me with misgivings, I read with some dismay today an article in The Times which many of you may also have read, an excellent piece about the summer ‘hits’ due later this year- SPIDERMAN 3, SHREK 3, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3, RUSH HOUR 3… do you see the nauseating pattern? Apparently X-MEN 3 was the most successful of the franchise. Good grief, I hated it- no doubt the $445 million earnings will result in an X-MEN 4 getting geenlit. What with that film’s big business and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 2 becoming the sixth biggest-grossing movie of all time, it makes me wonder if the movie-going public has any sense or critical taste at all.
As if threequels and fourquels aren’t enough to ruin Ghostof82’s mood, remakes really set the blood boiling. THE WICKER MAN, THE OMEN, THE FOG, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13… more of my movie memories sullied by modern Hollywood’s madness. The news that Universal intends to remake John Carpenter’s THE THING is the final straw. I may never visit a cinema again if such a celluloid turd ever sees my multiplex.
My biggest fear for 2007 is that the special edition DVD of BLADE RUNNER due later this year has great success and some young turk at Warners decides that a remake or sequel to my beloved favorite film would be a pretty neat idea. Agh. It’s almost an inevitability. Abandon all hope, everyone.
Crazy budgets January 9, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 2 commentsWhile not my favorite film of last year, THE NEW WORLD is certainly in my top ten. I believe the film was budgeted at somewhere around $30 million. Its remarkable film-making to get a film like that made for that kind of money these days. I nearly choked when I read that the MIAMI VICE remake cost $135 million. I can remember when $100 million was a figure reserved for a massive epic. It’s a wonder studios don’t crash and burn, wasting money like that. I liked MIAMI VICE very much, but $135 million? That’s just crazy money. How much did the two stars get, and the director, the producers? I thought that digital film-making was supposed to be cheaper than celluloid and herald the return of lower-budget movies.
As for SUPERMAN RETURNS costing a purported $270 million, I can only presume a lot of that was the ten-year development costs of all the previously aborted versions. You’d think you could make a trilogy of SUPERMAN films for nearly $300 million. CHILDREN OF MEN, possibly my favorite film of 2006, cost something around $70 million, which seems more respectable, but still boggles the mind. I just wonder where all the money goes on these films, I’m not at all sure it ends up on the screen. Still, it’s a strange world when you can pick up a DVD for £13 in the local supermarket, when the film that DVD contains cost over $200 million to make.
OUTLAND-ish good fun January 7, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 3 commentsIt was, I think, early 1983, and I was looking through my local paper’s cinema listings to see if anything was on. To my great surprise I noticed that there was a matinee double-bill at the ABC cinema in town, of OUTLAND followed by BLADE RUNNER. Well, the chance to see my favorite film again was just too much to pass up. You must remember, this was back when video was just starting out, and the amazing days of actually owning your own copy of a movie was (besides being undreamed of) still many years away. Back then a very few films had appeared on video and they cost a small fortune (of course the video market would be responsible for resurrecting the fortunes of BLADE RUNNER, but that was still a few years off). So anyway, BLADE RUNNER being back on at my local cinema was a big deal, and offered a chance to see OUTLAND for the first time as a bonus.
So me and my mate Andy caught a bus into town and walked into our ABC cinema. The double-bill was showing on one of the smaller screens, a dark, dingy, auditorium with old, tattered and worn, red-cloth seats that creaked and groaned with old age, and seemed haunted by the ghosts of decades of old films and the smells they had left behind. I’m sure the whole cinema was haunted, it was a wonderful old place and of course it closed years ago, put out of business by a soul-less multiplex built out of town in 1989, but that’s another story.
I hadn’t seen OUTLAND before, so it was new to me. Now I realise it wasn’t a sequel to ALIEN but by God it should have been, it was closer to Ridley Scott’s film than any of it’s actual sequels, all it lacked was an actual alien. In just the same way that SUPERMAN RETURNS displays a love and affection for Donner’s 1978 movie, so OUTLAND displays an absolute conviction that blatantly ripping-off ALIEN was the only way to do ‘proper’ science fiction. Well it made a change from ripping-off STAR WARS I suppose. Yes the days of STAR WARS clones like THE BLACK HOLE, STARCRASH, FLASH GORDON, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS etc were numbered, at least until Lucas would decide to do it himself and make the prequels decades later…
But back to OUTLAND. Boy, what a movie. The titles have an air of deja-vu that warns you of what is coming. As the cast credits appear on-screen over a starry background (just like ALIEN), the ‘OUTLAND’ logo slowly begins to form behind them (just like ALIEN), while a moody ambient score by Jerry Goldsmith drones on like an out-take of his own ALIEN score. I don’t know why, but nowadays I find it hard to believe that Pete Hyams could get away with it. After the title coalesces into view and disappears in a blaze of light, we are shown fx-shots of Jupiter and the Con-Am Mining station, while an on-screen text tells us where we are, what we are seeing, much the same way as the text-card in ALIEN described the Nostromo and it’s mission. Funnily enough the models were built by Martin Bower, who I believe also made the miniatures for ALIEN. The costumes were designed by John Mollo, who had designed the costumes for ALIEN… the production design wasn’t by anyone related to ALIEN but might as well have been. I always watch OUTLAND and think that it’s actually a prequel to ALIEN, at least set in the same universe, half-expecting the Nostromo to turn up in one of the exterior space shots or John Hurt to make a cameo in one of the bar-room scenes.
I probably seem very scathing about OUTLAND being some bastard love-child of ALIEN, but I don’t really intend to. I really quite like OUTLAND, it’s dirty, lived-in future with normal joes working in space is great, and there’s a real charm to it’s nods to ALIEN. It reminds me now of a kind of science-fiction cinema resigned to history (although it was temporarily resurrected in EVENT HORIZON, ‘homage’-fans). What doesn’t help OUTLAND is that while it was remaking much of ALIEN visuals-wise, it was of course remaking a western, HIGH NOON, at the same time. It’s as if Hyams had read reviews of STAR WARS describing it as a western in space and decided that if he remade HIGH NOON and it looked like ALIEN then he couldn’t lose. Hyams was no hack, and OUTLAND is probably his best film, it’s just unfortunate that he seemed to follow trends rather than set them himself. His later 2010, while naturally borrowing from 2001, also shared design credentials with BLADE RUNNER (‘visual futurist’ Syd Mead). I suppose you could argue that Hyams remaking HIGH NOON in space was indeed trendsetting, as it pre-figured by some twenty years the methods of modern Hollywood.
The cast works very well, Sean Connery is reliable as ever, back when he was still trying to shake off the ghost of Bond. The late, great Peter Boyle is excellent, and James B. Sikking and Frances Sternhagen are good support. This was back in the days when a cast could be over the age of 30, still headline a film and not all look stunningly beautiful thanks to surgery. The score is vintage Jerry Goldsmith (he had a fantastic habit of elevating average films with his scores) and the photography (by Hyams himself) is suitably atmospheric, showing off the sets very well. The fx are very good, pre-cgi.
Watching it as a warm-up film before BLADE RUNNER, I really enjoyed it, pleasantly surprised by the quality of its production design and it’s refreshingly ‘adult’ themes about narcotics and crime and it’s lived-in future. The film has actually aged quite well over the years, probably much better than other minor sci-fi films of the period, and I often wonder wistfully at what a ‘proper’ sequel to ALIEN directed by Hyams might have been like, the guy certainly had the eye for it.
So anyhow, the auditorium was pretty much deserted, just a handful of shadowy figures in there with me and Andy watching these science-fiction films on a wintry afternoon. OUTLAND ended and after a short break BLADE RUNNER started and I was in heaven. And then about thirty minutes into BLADE RUNNER one of those shadowy figures a few rows infront stood up and shuffled out and never came back. He had watched OUTLAND and then walked out during the greatest science-fiction film yet made. Gob-smacked, I couldn’t believe it, distracted for the rest of the film wondering why the guy left, and never came back. It’s funny as you get older, the things you just don’t forget, and that guy, whoever he was, I’ve never forgotten. Maybe he got mugged walking back from the gents. I mean, he had to have a good excuse, yes? I’ve seen some bloody bad films at the cinema but I never walked out of a movie, I always stayed until the bitter end. Hell, I saw SLIPSTREAM right up to those bloody balloons at the end. I wear that fact like a badge of courage.
So anyway, I bought OUTLAND on DVD in a sale the other day. Might watch it tonight, can’t wait.
The summer of ‘82… January 1, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 2 commentsI read an interesting review of the HD-DVD of DUNE over Christmas, by Joshua Zyber over at Dvdtalk, in which he confessed that DUNE was his favorite movie. Now I’ve never heard of anyone admitting to that film being their favourite before, but it did set me thinking about what makes our favorite films the objects of our obsession.
I’ll be honest. It’s probably a predictable and boring choice now, but BLADE RUNNER is my favourite film, and it’s why my blog has the title it has. BLADE RUNNER is a popular film nowadays, always in top-ten lists of sci-fi films in magazines and books, but it must be remembered that back when BLADE RUNNER was first released, it died at the box-office and disappeared. It was nothing, it was like the best-kept secret. Nobody saw it. Few films ever failed at the box-office as BLADE RUNNER did- something like $28 million worldwide.
I was 16 back in 1982, bit of a sci-fi geek, entering sixth-form, an avid devourer of genre books and comics. I loved STAR WARS, all that stuff. I went to my local ABC cinema in September when BLADE RUNNER opened, knowing very little about the film other than it starred Harrison Ford and was directed by Ridley Scott. For once I had managed to avoid much info about the film, so I went in with a clear head, few expectations.
The film blew me away. I remember the music of Vangelis during the titles, heavy synths, dark and threatening. It seemed an usual way to begin a summer sci-fi adventure. Then with a Vangelis crash like thunder my jaw dropped at the opening vista of the cityscape, refinery towers belching fire like some futuristic image of hell on Earth. Here was a vision of the future like nothing before it - BLADE RUNNER looked and sounded like nothing I had ever seen. It’s impossible now to describe to people what power the film had back then, it has been so copied and mimicked that it’s look has almost become a genre in itself. But my love of BLADE RUNNER is really about more than the visuals, the effects. There is a poety to the film beyond its famous production design. No doubt I shall return to waxing lyrical about my favourite film in future blogging, but for now, here’s an observation…
It’s no secret that the making of the film was troubled. Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott fell out, Ford and Sean Young never got on, the crew got pissed off at Scott, the producers even fired Scott at one point. Vangelis was so furious trying to create his hand-made music to a constantly changing, re-edited film that he withdrew the soundtrack release so late in the day it was still advertised at the end of the film’s credits. But Harrison Ford’s performance is one of his finest. The friction between Ford and Young in their love scene is a tangible thing. The crew created a film that looked like no other. The producers had to back off from firing Scott because they realised no-one else could finish it. Vangelis created a soundtrack that still sounds fresh and unique and created a belated soundtrack album ten years late. All the angst and frustration and loathing between actors, crew, director and producers created a bold and magnificent film.
So BLADE RUNNER. Sure, it’s not the finest film ever made, but hell, I love it with a passion. It’s the one film I can return to time and again. There is no CGI, the cast aren’t all beautiful twenty-somethings, the film isn’t edited so fast it makes you dizzy, it isn’t a remake or based on a tv show. Everytime I revisit 2019 it’s like the summer of 1982, and everything is new again.