Merry Christmas July 31, 2007
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , add a commentWell the internet has been in meltdown over the past weekend as Blade Runner-related sites and forums, as well as those more devoted to DVD and film in general, as Warner Bros has confirmed that Blade Runner is going to finally get the treatment it deserves with several editions of a DVD release a week before Christmas. For a fan like me who first saw the film in September 1982 and immediately fell under it’s spell, this is fantastic, somewhat unbelievable news. We’ve been teased like this before of course- back in 1992 when the workprint was unearthed at a theatrical airing by accident we were promised a ‘directors cut’ that never really happened (although it was great to see the film at the cinema again). After that fiasco I didn’t believe we would ever see a ‘proper’ cut for the film, but here we are, with a ‘final cut’ (really, the machinations of modern Hollywood boggles the mind, when are films actually ‘finished’ these days?) that really looks like it might be the real deal.
In some ways the new cut is almost incidental- the big news, for me, is the 3 hour doc, the 45 mins of deleted scenes that are said to be extraordinary, the remastered release of the flawed 1982 edition and of course the fabled workprint. I mean really, I’ve been pinching myself everytime I read all this stuff on the ‘net.
How on earth am I going to have time for family and freinds over Christmas with that lot to devour? Well here’s the sting in the tail, kids; Warner UK better issue a press release announcing the UK R2 sets for that same week, ‘cos if the release over here gets bumped to 2008 and we have to rely on imports so late in the Christmas season… there will be riots, I swear. The next problem is going to be which boxset to go for- the DVD briefcase or do I go the hi-def route? I mean, this is Blade Runner for goodness sake, remastered in hi-def? Crikey! In which case, do I go HD-DVD (I have the Xbox 360 drive) or do I finally take the plunge for a shiny Blu-Ray player? And as the release is so late into the Christmas season, can we really risk the postal service at it’s busiest, slowest period, while saving money online? Do we camp out at the shops paying extra but being certain of our sweaty hands getting a copy on release day? Oh man, I may need therapy before all this is over. Either that or my wife will- ever since the Comic-con annoncements last week she’s felt like a Blade Runner-widow.
I still find all this hard to believe. Maybe I’ve slipped into some kind of alternate, Dick-ian universe. Yeah, PKD saw all this kind of weird stuff coming, anybody who read his book Valis will know what I mean. I’ll wake up one morning back in the ‘real’ world, but crikey, it’s great while all this lasts…