The long overdue _Blade Runner_ thread

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best time i ever had in a movie theater was a midnight screening of starship troopers at cornell university

gear (gear), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:51 (eighteen years ago) link

close encounters of the third kind is complete trash. it's the forrest gump of sci-fi. any two seconds of bladerunner shits all over it.

fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:54 (eighteen years ago) link

it's a fun movie but a little OTT. i was just thinking of it, when i saw "thank you for smoking", which was like "starship troopers" minus the fun.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:55 (eighteen years ago) link

including the two seconds where deckard has the dream about the unicorn?

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:55 (eighteen years ago) link

also what's wrong with forrest gump?

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:56 (eighteen years ago) link

i think i'm gonna rent back to the future though.

fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:56 (eighteen years ago) link

"it's the forrest gump of sci-fi."

no thats contact

are you one of those people who hates spielberg just because? isn't that kind of like hating on starbucks and midwest?

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:57 (eighteen years ago) link

well starship troopers is a satire!

gear (gear), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:57 (eighteen years ago) link

etc etc etc

gear (gear), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:57 (eighteen years ago) link

yeah, an OTT satire.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:58 (eighteen years ago) link

are you one of those people who hates spielberg just because? isn't that kind of like hating on starbucks and midwest?

-- vahid (vfoz...), April 17th, 2006.

no no!

how can you say "two seconds of bladerunner shits all over" forrest gump? is "feel-bad shtick" any better than "feel-good shtick".

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:59 (eighteen years ago) link

as a friend outlined for me so succinctly re: forrest gump

1. romanticizing stupidity
2. trivializing history
3. too much bullshit

fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 17 April 2006 06:59 (eighteen years ago) link

sounds like ilx

gear (gear), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:00 (eighteen years ago) link

;-)

gear (gear), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:00 (eighteen years ago) link

yeah and 1 + 3 are certainly applicable to bladerunner.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:00 (eighteen years ago) link

#2 is not really a bad thing is it? i mean, it's good when certain people do it but bad when spielberg does it?

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:01 (eighteen years ago) link

like you could say #1 + #2 about "bridge on the river kwai" but that doesn't make it a bad movie.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:02 (eighteen years ago) link

how can you say "two seconds of bladerunner shits all over" forrest gump? is "feel-bad shtick" any better than "feel-good shtick".

-- vahid (vfoz...)

dude, blade runner isn't "feel bad schtick"! that would be Alien 3 or Seven or anything Fincher's done.

I think you're seeing the movie through its importance to you as an adolescent and not how it actually is.

how it actually is = rather adolescent, like everything else attached to philip k dick

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:03 (eighteen years ago) link

sure, but thats 99.999999999999999999% of all science fiction!
anyway i am hardly the first person on this thread to frame their feelings re: bladerunner in terms of their adolescent feelings toward it!

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:04 (eighteen years ago) link

xpost i gotta disagree with that.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:05 (eighteen years ago) link

and i thought you were a fellow Lovecraft aficianado...like that ain't adolescent!
i'm cool with spielberg, just not his 1977 new age crapfest of a movie.

fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:06 (eighteen years ago) link

god i hate film threads. always people with different opinions showing up.
:-D
Vahid does not speak a language that I even remotely understand. Seriously, it's just a pile of crap.

Gilbert O'Sullivan (kenan), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:07 (eighteen years ago) link

which pile of crap are you referring to?

fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:09 (eighteen years ago) link

i like vahid just fine, i just can't agree with him at all on this one!
i feel like an infocom parser.

fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:10 (eighteen years ago) link

lovecraft is childish, you're right. my feelings toward blade runner are about the same as my feelings toward lovecraft. it's pretty, i appreciate it for the atmosphere, but it doesn't really live and breathe, there's not enough space in it, every single fucking thing is there to make a point and i get tired of that after a while.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:10 (eighteen years ago) link

that's sort of also my problem with "starship troopers", i guess.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:11 (eighteen years ago) link

i quite liked minority report.

fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:12 (eighteen years ago) link

there's not really a moment in blade runner that's like when the NASA dude runs to the bathroom when the UFOs are landing, he practically falls on his face because he can't look away but he's gotta take a shit. or all of the "dudes in a cabin" humor and tension from "the thing", or just the little snippets of sleazy city living from "videodrome" (1000x more dystopic and prescient than bladerunner) or all the random CGI asides from "tron". that's what blade runner's missing.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:13 (eighteen years ago) link

and i guess when i say "adolescent" i don't really mean childish, because i can't really shit on "childish wonder", there's nothing wrong with that. more like "teenage goth coffeshop pseudo-intellectual BIG IDEAS HERE PEOPLE" sort of adolescent thinking behind bladerunner.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:15 (eighteen years ago) link

my feelings toward blade runner are about the same as my feelings toward lovecraft. it's pretty, i appreciate it for the atmosphere, but it doesn't really live and breathe, there's not enough space in it, every single fucking thing is there to make a point and i get tired of that after a while.

I kind of agree and ALL OF SCIENCE FICTION MOVIEMAKING TO THREAD EXCEPT FOR BLADERUNNER BECAUSE IT'S REALLY GREAT AND BRILLIANT.

See, you're trying to apply the rule to the exception. No sir.

Gilbert O'Sullivan (kenan), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:16 (eighteen years ago) link

"teenage goth coffeshop pseudo-intellectual BIG IDEAS HERE PEOPLE" sort of adolescent thinking behind bladerunner.

-- vahid (vfoz...)

haha i think you're talking about the Matrix, not Blade Runner.

"everything is there to make a point"

!?

i dont really think so, plotwise the film isn't as that concious of its intent, in fact it's rather all over the place (in that sense it is kind of shallow). reading the making of book shows you how much was come up with at the last minute or improvised by the actors. the main thing the movie is fully concious of is the look, the music, the atmosphere, the mise-en-scene. sure its pretentious, but it's beautiful.

IT'S TOO BAD SHE WON'T LIVE. BUT THEN AGAIN, WHO DOES?

fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:19 (eighteen years ago) link

more like "teenage goth coffeshop pseudo-intellectual BIG IDEAS HERE PEOPLE" sort of adolescent thinking behind bladerunner.

I will not accept shitting on ideas just because they're ideas. It's just anti-intellectualism in its purest form. You can throw a lot of stupid stereotypical labels as anything, but that doesn't make it a valid or smart thing to do.

Gilbert O'Sullivan (kenan), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:20 (eighteen years ago) link

x-post

yeah, exactly! its all kind of nonsensical but it sounds profound! in the best possible way.

yeah the soundtrack is obviously immortal and awesome. the look and atmosphere is good. i guess the big thing about my list upthread is that there's 21 movies (sorry gear, i draw the line at ST) where i actually gave a shit what happened to the characters. i had a lot of trouble feeling concerned for anybody in blade runner because, well, stuff gets in the way. here's where MY film buff language breaks down, i just never really understood where i'm supposed to go from thinking roy was creepy to sympathy for roy, except there was a beautifully shot scene of roy releasing birds into sunlight with nice vangelis music. and i still didn't give a shit about deckard and his girlfriend (except for wincing when he got beat up and thinking it would be creepy to find origami on the porch).

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:23 (eighteen years ago) link

hey, kenan, if you're not paying attention here, i'm actually giving reasons why i don't like the movie and examples of what i think are "spaces" in the other movies and why i have problems with the ideas in blade runner. i think they're shallow ideas, dude! shallower than forrest gump, even!

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:25 (eighteen years ago) link

and anyway forrest gump's message isn't particularly shallow, it's just wrapped in a saccharine coating that makes it hard to swallow.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:25 (eighteen years ago) link

hmmm ... i wonder if we had a t/s: ET vs bladerunner which would win??

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:27 (eighteen years ago) link

When did "caring" become the ultimate movie virtue? Yuck.

Gilbert O'Sullivan (kenan), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:27 (eighteen years ago) link

you don't like "caring"? maybe that's why people think you're a creep?

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:29 (eighteen years ago) link

anyway, one more cheap crack before i go to bed: no electric sheep, no credibility.

vahid (vahid), Monday, 17 April 2006 07:29 (eighteen years ago) link

xxxxxx-post

that actually is the weakest part of the film: the characters are mostly undersketched and the love story is somewhat forced and unconvincing. i think the replicants and the JR Sebastian character are the most 'human' and sympasthetic elements in the film. i think Roy is kinda supposed to be a creepy/ambiguous character while the other replicants are more childlike and innocent. (even Brion James as Leon is more like an angry toddler in a man's body than anything else)


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