NYFF. Blade Runner @ 25.

"Even as it deliberately harks back to 40s pulp fiction and many of its elements now appear creakily dated byproducts of the 80s (hello, Sean Young's hair!), the radiant image and sound clarity helps reconfirm Blade Runner (loosely based on Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) as a landmark achievement in inventive prognostication," writes Nick Schager at Slant. "Whether it be its narrative fatalism or its haunting evocation of its urban setting, a multicultural techno-grunge hellhole drenched in rain, infested with advertising and shrouded in mist, the film continues to be the mother of modern sci-fi, blending disparate genres with philosophical queries to produce a work that remains, 25 years and reams of critical analysis later, the style-over-substance [Ridley] Scott's only substantive text."

Updated through 10/6.

"For the new director's cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched," explains Fred Kaplan, who talks with Scott for the New York Times. "The results look almost 3-D. The film's theme of dehumanization has also been sharpened. What has been a matter of speculation and debate is now a certainty: Deckard, the replicant-hunting cop, is himself a replicant. Mr Scott confirmed this: 'Yes, he's a replicant. He was always a replicant.'" And there's an audio slide show that touches on Scott's visual influences.

"Let's face it: The re-release of the film in this new form has been occasioned by a desire for closure - Scott finally completes his masterpiece - but also money," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in Stop Smiling, reminding us, too, that a five-disc blow-out DVD set is due in November. Even so, "what can be said in favor of the final cut is that it gives one an excuse to return to Blade Runner at least one more time. Watching it yet again, it's nearly impossible not to appreciate its unique place in Hollywood filmmaking - a big-budget sci-fi epic molded in the cast of a Chandleresque noir, and more influenced in rhythm and atmosphere by the work of Kubrick than that of Lucas. Time has been very kind to Blade Runner."

"The latest revision is barely altered compared to the 1992 cut, which had been a remarkable change from the film's original release," explains Christopher Campbell at the Reeler. "Scott has erased some wires here, cleaned up some goofs there and updated some special effects - basically all the good things George Lucas did for the Star Wars special editions without attempting ill-conceived additions.... The true beauty of the cut, which the NYFF is showing in high-def video, is that it looks so perfect it's hard to believe the film is 25 years old."

"The new cut confirms Blade Runner's status as a major achievement and the high water mark of Ridley Scott's career," writes Jürgen Fauth.

Ted Greenwald talks with Scott for Wired; you can also read the full transcript or listen to the audio version. Via David Pescovitz at Boing Boing.

Updates: "Watching Blade Runner: The Final Cut, anyone who lives in Los Angeles today would be struck by how prescient the film was about the direction of society and culture," writes Geoff Boucher in the Los Angeles Times. "To Edward James Olmos, the film, set in 2019, amounted to a crystal ball in many of its details. 'What you see now is how unique this image of Los Angeles is and, in hindsight, how correctly it predicted so much, such as the mix of urban Latino and Asian cultural influences in the city,' said Olmos, who portrayed a taciturn cop in the movie. 'About the only thing in the film we haven't gotten yet is those flying cars.'"

Blade Runner comes in at #5 on Snakerati's list of the "Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time." Via Fimoculous.

Updates, 10/4: "It all plays more smoothly than the 1992 release, with the unicorn sequence and the ending now entirely organic to the picture, and every image with magnificent, tactile textures," writes Robert Cashill. "I still don't buy that Ford's Deckard is a replicant, which is more a case of director Ridley Scott trying to get the unicorn back in the barn once the door had shut than anything concrete in the film, but you can speculate more easily on the notion now."

In the L Magazine, Nicolas Rapold revels in the revival as well.

At the House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz rounds up a handful of linkage and Steven Boone lists "10 images, sounds and ideas from Blade Runner that stand out in 2007 and/or HD."

Update, 10/6: Geoffrey Macnab in the Independent:

One actor for whom the film has never lost its mystqiue is [Daryl] Hannah. While others in Venice recalled a difficult and sometimes fraught production, she spoke in openly nostalgic terms of her experiences as a teenage actress on Blade Runner. "It's my favourite film that I have ever been in. My inspiration to be in movies was to live in another reality, and in this case it was built for me to the most detailed, beautiful extent. The sets were exquisite, the costumes were exquisite," she said as she proudly displayed a scar on her elbow from one of the scenes in which she slipped on set fell through a window. "I didn't have to work at all to be transported to another reality."

Hannah's remark is instructive. The reason that Blade Runner is still being talked about 25 years after it was made is precisely that it takes viewers into a bewitching but highly unsettling futuristic world.

Posted by dwhudson at September 30, 2007 4:24 AM