Fallout Shelter

"If you could see what I've seen with your eyes...."

The (supposedly) final cut of Blade Runner will be at the Carolina Theater in Durham, NC on 18 January 2008.  I think this will make like the 8th version of BR.  There's also a 5-disk re-release in a cute little briefcase. 

She Lives Again

Cats supposedly have nine lives, right?  I'd heard that yet another cut (the 8th, I think) of Blade Runner was going to be released in a "final," 3 DVD edition.  Then I heard it was held up by the completion bond company for the original production (which went over budget; they attempted to fire Ridley Scott, but it didn't stick).  Now it seems like BR will really be re-re-released.    Maybe they can put the voiceover on a separate soundtrack, and you can switch back and forth depending on whether you want to hear it.  :) 

Links: 

• BRMovie.com's Special Edition News/rumor control page
• Paul Sammon's really good book
  Sammon also wrote an article entitled something like "The Seven Faces of Blade Runner" for Video Watchdog a long time ago.  I wish I still had that.
• Google search for "Blade Runner special edition DVD release" (in case you're search-impaired or something)

I'm getting hits for people looking for information, so I might as well post something, right?  :)

Blade Runner Blues II

More Blade Runner stuff: 

I've seen things... you people wouldn't believe:

Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion
I watched Sea-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser gate

All those moments... will be lost... in time, like tears... in the rain.

Time... to die....

This past weekend, I was trying to get the exact words to the speech by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner -- Roy Batty's final words during the penultimate scene of the "Director's Cut" (the antepenultimate scene in the original theatrical release).  I have the Director's Cut on DVD, and a VHS copy of what Paul Sammon has labeled the "International Cut."  I also have Vangelis's release of what's more-or-less the soundtrack.  So, I have what people said in many different ways, with closed captions and subtitles on the videos.  I noticed something I'd never caught before: Vangelis dropped the final words "time to die" from Batty's speech.  Also, one set of captions said "in the rain," and another said "in rain"; after watching that section of the film a few times, I think either is possible. Anyway, a couple of surprises for someone who's watched the movie and listened to the soundtrack more times than he can count.

I've included all "optional" words above, and used whatever spellings took my fancy.  :)

By the way, Wikipedia now has a huge article on Blade Runner.

"The Glass"

Special double-plus geek points to whomever can tell me where this glass acquired its 15 minutes of fame: 

Blade Runner Blues

This blog gets a lot of hits for people looking for the phrase "It's too bad she won't live!  But then again who does?"  I took the line from the movie Blade Runner.  It's first uttered by Gaff, played by Edward James Olmos.  It's repeated twice, once when Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) remembers Gaff's saying it, then again when Deckard (partially) repeats it in a voiceover. 

There's a lot of BR information on the WWW, but the best print book I know of about the movie is Paul M. Sammon's Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner.  I've also enjoyed Vangelis's release of the soundtrack.

Oh, read Philip K. Dick's source novel too.  :)

Now you know. 

It's too bad she won't live! But then again who does?

When I was a tortured young child, my private hell was that others were actually robots put on earth to abuse me and drive me crazy.  But I didn't know how to tell for sure that someone else was a robot.  So using the Voigt-Kampff test to tell humans from replicants in San Francisco's mayoral race seems like a good idea to me.  :)

By the way, the putative author of the article has the same last name as the Blade Runner character blown away at the beginning of the movie.  Coincidence?