Article-I.D.: ucbvax.7899
Posted: Sat Jul  3 04:08:27 1982
Received: Sun Jul  4 00:48:00 1982

>From JPM@Mit-Ai Sat Jul  3 03:49:05 1982

SF-LOVERS Digest         Saturday, 3 Jul 1982       Volume 6 : Issue 2

Today's Topics:
                 Administrivia - MisNumbered Digest,
                       SF Movies - Blade Runner
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Date: Saturday, July 3, 1982 12:17AM
From: Jim McGrath (The Moderator) 
Reply-to: SF-LOVERS-REQUEST at MIT-AI
Subject: MisNumbered Digest

Yesterday's issue was numbered volume 7, issue 1.  Naturally, it
should read volume 6, issue 1.  Apoligies.

Jim

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Date: 27 Jun 1982 2216-EDT
From: Steven H. Gutfreund 
Subject: Blade Runner


For a while this summer I was worried that Hollywood was redefining 
what was good SF. People were saying that Star Wars, Star Drek, and ET
was good SF, and not juvenile sentimentalism targeted for the amassed
TV escapeees. I was afraid that "real" SF could never be a movie.

Blade Runner is a superb execution of a Phil K. Dick story. I was 
utterly amazed to see the instatiation of a society/world that
previously only haunted the further corners of my SF collection.
Perhaps I don't read enough Dick, but I felt that here was a real
"Brunneresqe" society, and a "serious" SF plot, not a space-opera.

The special effects were stunning. I was only too glad that turnbull 
turned them down as the film progressed or I would have been unable to
concentrate on the plot.

While my enthusiasm for this film (I stick it up there with the better
Kurosowa's I have seen - thought not as deep) may be a reflection on 
my SF tastes. I heartily recommend it to all who have been in search 
of serious SF on the screen.

Queries:

What is it about the Baader-Meinhoff that is so spooky? Is it
something about German terrorists that make them more evil than Sauron
himself?

What were the opening scene explosions in the city supposed to
signify?  or were they explosions?

What is the status of Earth vis-a-vie the colonies in this film? is it
only replicants that inhabit the stars? Is earth a backwaters home for
human types? Who is fighting out around orion?

                        - Steven Gutfreund

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Date: 28 Jun 1982 15:29:39-PDT
From: decvax!minow at Berkeley
Subject:  Blade Runner -- mini review, no spoiler

Nano review:  wierd.

Micro review: very wierd.

Review:  The file is well worth seeing for its sense of demented 
atmosphere.  It gave the viewer the disquieting feeling of having been
dropped into a foreign country; somewhat like Bergman's "Silence."
But although it fit well with the overall atmosphere, I was annoyed by
the obscenly detailed violence and sexless sexism as well as by the
unmotivated ending [I said, no spoiler].

In all, see the film for the atmosphere (someone described it as Los
Angeles after all the rich people left), for the satiric references to
Star Wars, and for the feeling of madness; but don't expect an 
"ordinary" SF movie or a happy evening.

Martin Minow
decvax!minow @ Berkeley

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Date: 22 Jun 82 20:56-PDT
From: mclure at SRI-UNIX
Subject: Review: Blade Runner

                             BLADE RUNNER
                         By Richard Freedman
                        Newhouse News Service

    (UNDATED) According to ''Blade Runner,'' Los Angeles 40 years in
the future will be even more depressing than it is now.
    True, the people will have neon-handled umbrellas so they don't 
crash into each other on the overcrowded streets. But they'll need 
them, because the rain never stops.
    Worse, there are rogue ''replicants'' - large, synthetic human 
beings created by a genetic engineering company to do the dirty work 
of the cosmos. They look just the way you and I would look if we were 
movie actors, but they're immensely powerful and emotionally immature.
    Four of them have escaped when the film begins, so Blade Runner 
Deckard (Harrison Ford in his first movie role since ''Raiders of the 
Lost Ark'') is assigned to track them down and eliminate them.
    A blade runner, it seems, is not an ice-skating champion but a 
detective who knows a replicant when he sees one, and can terminate 
him - more usually her - with extreme prejudice.
    Deckard is coaxed out of retirement to deal with this quartet of 
reclusant replicants, of whom the meanest is Batty (Rutger Hauer) and 
the sexiest is Rachael (Sean Young).
    Batty is extra mean because he resents the fact that replicants
are programmed to have a four-year lifespan and his time is nearly up.
Rachael is so sexy that Deckard can't believe she's a full-fledged 
replicant.
    But meanwhile he must stalk his prey down the mean streets of a 
modernistic city with towering skyscrapers but apparently no air 
conditioning, and in which it is alway either foggy or pouring.
    ''Blade Runner'' tries to do for the futuristic private eye
picture what ''Outland'' did for the futuristic Western. Sean Young
wears the sort of puffy-shouldered jackets affected by the late Joan
Crawford, with a hairstyle to match, while Harrison Ford imitates the
Sam Spade-Philip Marlowe shamus of the 1940s film noir, right down to
the laconic voiceover narration and the gunning-down of dubious
females.
    Unfortunately, Ford lacks the acting authority Sean Connery
brought to his space age cowboy hero in ''Outland,'' making it very
difficult to care if he gets the replicants before they get him.
    So his big love scene with Rachael, for instance, makes them both 
look like robots. If it weren't for the haunting, bluesy score of 
Vangelis (whose music for ''Chariots of Fire'' won a deserved Oscar), 
this would be the least stimulating moment of passion ever to appear 
in an R-rated movie.
    And for long stretches at a time, both are forgotten in favor of
an equally baffling subplot involving Sebastian (William Sanderson), a
hayseed genius at genetic engineering, and Pris (Daryl Hannah), a 
blonde waif with evil designs on him and his midget factory.
    ''Blade Runner'' was directed by Ridley Scott, who also directed 
''Alien.'' But the only thing the two pictures have in common is a 
fascination with electronic gadgetry. The real hero here is production
designer Lawrence G. Paull, who has given this essentially empty film
a far snazzier look than it deserves.

    ''BLADE RUNNER.'' A gloomily futuristic tough-guy detective flick 
with Harrison Ford as the iron-jawed shamus in charge of ridding Los 
Angeles of some rogue ''replicants,'' or clone-like robots. A robot 
could have directed as well. Rated R. Two stars.

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Date: 24 Jun 82 16:16-PDT
From: mclure at SRI-UNIX
Subject: Review: Bladerunner

                             BLADE RUNNER
                           By Janet Maslin
                   c. 1982 N.Y. Times News Service

    NEW YORK - The view of the future offered by Ridley Scott's
muddled yet fascinating ''Blade Runner'' is as intricately detailed as
anything a science-fiction film has yet envisioned. The year is 2019, 
the place Los Angeles, the landscape garish but bleak. The city is a 
canyon bounded by industrial towers, some of which belch fire.  
Advertising billboards, which are everywhere, now feature lifelike 
electronic people who are the size of giants. The police cruise both 
horizontally and vertically on their patrol routes, but there is 
seldom anyone to arrest because the place is much emptier than it used
to be. In an age of space travel, anyone with the wherewithal has
presumably gone away. Only the dregs remain.
    ''Blade Runner'' begins with a stunning shot of this futuristic 
city, accompanied by the rumbling of Vangelis's eerie, highly 
effective score. It proceeds to tell the story of Rick Deckard and his
battle with the replicants, a story based on Philip K. Dick's novel
''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'' In brief: replicants are
manmade creatures that possess all human attributes except feelings.
They have been built to serve as slaves in Earth colonies that are Off
World, i.e. elsewhere. Whenever the replicants rebel, the job of
eliminating them is given to a special, skilled hunter.  This expert
is called a blade runner.
    Rick Deckard is the best of the blade runners, now retired. He is
as hard-boiled as any film noir detective, with much the same world 
view. But when he is told, at the beginning of ''Blade Runner,'' that 
an especially dangerous group of replicants is on the loose, and is 
offered the job of hunting them, he can't say no. Even in the murkiest
reaches of science-fiction lore, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta
do.
    ''Blade Runner'' follows Deckard's love affair with a beautiful
replicant named Rachael, who is special assistant to the high-level
industrialist who created her. It also follows Deckard's tracking down
of the runaways, most notably their white-haired, demonic-looking
leader, Batty (Rutger Hauer). These events involve quite a bit of
plot, but they're nothing in the movie's excessively busy overall
scheme. ''Blade Runner'' is crammed to the gills with much more
information than it can hold.
    Science-fiction aficionados may find ''Blade Runner'' a
wonderfully meticulous movie and marvel at the comprehensiveness of
its vision.  Even those without a taste for gadgetry cannot fail to
appreciate the degree of effort that has gone into constructing a film
this ambitious and idiosyncratic. The special effects are by Douglas 
Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer, and they are superb. So is
Laurence G. Paull's production design. The ''Blade Runner'' is a film
that special effects could have easily run away with, and run away
with it they have.
    It's also a mess, at least as far as its narrative is concerned.  
Almost nothing is explained coherently, and the plot has great lapses,
from the changeable nature of one key character to the frequent
disappearances of another. The story lurches along awkwardly, helped
not at all by some ponderous stabs at developing Deckard's character.
As an old-fashioned detective cruising his way through the space age,
Deckard is both tedious and outre.
    At several points in the story, Deckard is called on to wonder 
whether Rachael has feelings. This seems peculiar, because the icy, 
poised Rachael, played by Sean Young as a 40's heroine with space-age 
trimmings, seems a lot more expressive than Deckard, who is played by 
Harrison Ford. Ford is, for a movie this darkly fanciful, rather a 
colorless hero, fading too easily into the bleak background. And he is
often upstaged by Rutger Hauer, who in this film and in ''Night 
Hawks'' appears to be specializing in fiendish roles. He is properly 
cold-blooded here, but there is something almost humorous behind his 
nastiness. In any case, he is by far the most animated performer in a 
film intentionally populated by automatons.
    Scott, who made his mark in ''Alien'' by showing a creature
bursting forth from the body of one of its victims, tries hard to hit
the same note here. One scene takes place in an eyeball factory. Two
others show Deckard in vicious, sadistic fights with women. One of
these fights features strange calisthenics and unearthly shrieks.
    The end of the film is both a bloodbath and a sentimental
shambles.  Scott can't have it both ways, any more than he can
successfully overdecorate a film that lacks strong characters or a
strong story.  That hasn't stopped him from trying, even if perhaps it
should have.

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End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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