From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!sf-lovers Newsgroups: fa.sf-lovers Title: SF-LOVERS Digest V6 #8 Article-I.D.: ucbvax.7955 Posted: Thu Jul 8 11:22:29 1982 Received: Fri Jul 9 03:34:20 1982 >From JPM@Mit-Ai Thu Jul 8 11:20:09 1982 SF-LOVERS Digest Thursday, 8 Jul 1982 Volume 6 : Issue 8 Today's Topics: SF Music - Star Trek: The Motion Picture, SF Movies - TRON & Blade Runner ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 Jul 1982 12:41:46-EDT From: Lee.Schumacher at CMU-750X at CMU-10A Subject: bladerunner, etc First, A minor flame : Would people please stop posting canned movie reviews! I'm tired of having to sit through three reviews of a movie that I'm not interested in. Besides, movie reviews usually reveal more plot than I like to know going into a movie. [ See volume 5, issue 66 for a general discussion of this point. We'll continue to distribute newswire stories as long as they (like anything else) are submitted. Please also note that long messages are usually distributed over the weekends, and that many recent issues have been "one topic" digests (such as this one), enabling you to read or ignore material about a particular movie with relative ease. -- Jim ] Second, I saw a rerun of the pbs show 'Sneak Preview' and what they said about BladeRunner seemed to jibe with everything I've heard. One of the two hosts commented that it was visually a stunning movie, but that he just couldn't get involved with the characters. This seems like a good point, as I don't think that P. K. Dick is a very interesting, or competent writer. I personally am tired of Showcase films for the special effects wizards. Third, Speaking of showcase films, has anyone heard anything about 'TRON' ?? The was an article about the computer animation in TRON in the Smithsonian this month. It seemed quite interesting. [ See volume 5, issues 45, 46, 48, and 55; volume 6, issue 5 -- Jim ] --Lee Schumacher. ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jul 1982 1005-PDT From: Robert AmslerSubject: Query about Blade Runner What were the first (two?) origami figures which the other detective created. I didn't realize until the end of the movie that they were being offered almost as "tarot" interpretations of the events. The last one was a unicorn! A beautiful mythical (i.e. synthetic) creature. Caught the TV Sneak Previews reviews of "Blade Runner". As bad as any I've seen. As someone else mentioned to me, it would be as though someone reviewed a Civil War drama about slavery and only noted the special effects. None of the reviewers caught the plot apparently. How is Blade Runner doing at the Box Office? I'd hate to see this one not make good money--they will be that much more shy of trying other quality science-fiction. ------------------------------ Date: 03 Jul 1982 1300-PDT From: Richard Pattis Subject: Two Shorties BladeRunner : The movie was interesting visually; the plot was boring and shallow. At first I was dismayed that Dick's name was not presented during the opening credits -- as the movie progressed, I felt relieved. The plot of BladeRunner (below surface level) bears little resemblance to "Do Androids Dread of Electic Sheep". I suggest that all interested parties read the book. On TV yesterday I caught a promo for ABC's wide world of sports. The music they were playing was the theme song from ST-TMP. Has this been going on for a long time, or has it just started? rich ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jul 1982 0129-EDT From: Steven J. Zeve Subject: Those outside reviews, and my feelings about Blade Runner Hmm, just read all those reviews. For the record, I think Freedman slept through 30 seconds out of every minute; at least Maslin seems to have actually seen the film. I would say that Maslin's review is reasonably accurate in terms of details of the movie (although her review does read like she may have read the book before writing the review). I recommend that everyone read Dick's book even if you don't go to see the movie. Although major portions of the book have been discarded or rewritten, I believe that the movie does manage to raise the same questions as the book. Most of the changes seem to have been made because a two hour movie simply cannot do justice to a whole novel; this has resulted in some portions of the book being discarded and others being rewritten to eliminate references to the discarded sections. Although the film has some problems (it a tends to be somewhat confusing, I still wonder what happened to the fifth replicant that made it to Earth - Rachael doesn't count, she was already on Earth), I believe these problems are no worse than those of Dick's book (it is just as confusing, I still can't figure out which replicants came to Earth in which groups). Steve Z. ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jul 1982 14:05:50 EDT (Sunday) From: David Mankins Subject: Blade Runner I saw ``Blade Runner'' at the earliest opportunity, having been a Dick fan for some time, and having looked forward to what might have been a real science fiction film (the first one of recent times) in which people were faced with hard problems brought on by the advance of science--the first one since ``Dark Star''. ``Blade Runner'' sucks raw eggs through a straw. GREAT production designs, though. If you ignore the voice-overs, and the story, and just watch the scenery roll by, it's a damn fine movie (I might add that this same statement is true of ``Escape from New York'', which was a totally BEAUTIFUL film (who'd think that grungy, litter-strewn streets filmed under the glare of mercury-vapor lights could be beautiful? )). What you get are unmotivated characters doing totally objectionable things for 90 minutes in ``living'' color. Rick Deckard is an ex-blade runner--he has left it, having grown sick of the killing and violence. How do we know he's sick of the violence? He tells us at the beginning of the film. That's the last we hear of it, as he goes on a killing spree that makes the last ten minutes of ``Taxi Driver'' look tame by comparison. Why DOES Deckard go back to work? The lame excuse ``I'd rather be a killer than a victim'' seems pretty lame by the time he's finished. We're told that androids are bad because they lack emotions. Then we watch one go insane at viewing the mangled corpse of his mate, and evince very real emotions. Ridley Scott COULD have posed the interesting question "Who's human in this picture--the ruthless killers in the police force, or these androids confronted with their own mortality, with persecution and intolerance?" But he doesn't. He ducks the interesting questions to give us a lovingly-filmed splatter movie. I also found the romance between Deckard and Rachel Tyrrel to be totally objectionable. We're told Deckard loves her, but we're given no reason to believe it. In one scene Deckard practically rapes Rachel, telling her to "say you want more", "say you love me", with the sort of insensitivity that sends Andrea Dworkin reaching for her censorship scissors. I found myself wondering if Rachel really did love Deckard, or if she was just playing along because she was afraid that any minute now he would blow her head off (which is his job, after all). But its okay, the movie seems to say, 'cause deep down inside every woman wants to be raped. When is Hollywood going to give us a Science-Fiction movie that is more than just snazzy wrapping around an empty package? ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jul 1982 1749-PDT From: Robert Amsler Subject: Blade Runner Reviews As I am in artificial intelligence, I probably do see more merit in Blade Runner than say, a Shakespearian Literary Reviewer---but the published reviews I have seen so far have been so utterly oblivious to the issues which Blade Runner raised that I find it hard to believe these "movie critics" are qualified for their jobs. Above all, Blade Runner is a movie about the consequences to society of creating artificially intelligent machines which in virtually every regard are our equals and then using them as slaves. It is a profound statement about the morality of certain aspects of artificial intelligence and about the potential consequences of synthesizing a human mind complete with emotions and memories. I have seen reviewers comment about the fine special effects, about the violence, about the vision of L.A. in ruins (recall that Dick's original book was a bit of an eco-catastrophe satire)--- BUT they ignore what to me is the major moral dilemma which the movie tried to raise. Do we have the right to recreate slavery by manufacturing human machines. Some reviews have noted the excessive violence shown when replicants are "retired" by Harrison Ford. The point of that was to emphasize the similarity between killing human beings and what was in that society dealt with as simply stopping a machine that had gone wrong. Some reviews have noted that the "replicants" ran away--and stopped there! WHY did they run away? They ran away from slavery! They ran away from being used as machines although they had been built to understand and react, externally and internally, as human beings. They simply wanted freedom. Blade Runner is among the finest science fiction to ever make it to the screen. It deals with contemporary issues such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. It contains a good detective story. It raises issues of the morality of science. It is superbly executed. The plot is intricate but eminently well connected (provided you don't ignore the basic point that "replicants" are not humans--but manufactured entities). It contains statements about ecological ruin, about a future in which virtually all animals are gone, apart from zoos. It may be a landmark. It is certain to become a classic that will be intelligently discussed in both cinema and science-fiction circles for decades to come--perhaps as classic to science-fiction as the Maltise Falcon has become to mystery films. More significantly, it probably augurs the beginning of an era in which science-fiction movies will be made from hit science-fiction books. And the prospects of finally getting beyond the TV-show plot is an event which will be historically significant. ------------------------------ Date: 4 Jul 1982 1913-PDT From: Craig W. Reynolds Reply-to: REYNOLDS at RAND-AI Subject: Blade Runner - Explosions SHG@MIT-OZ asked what the "explosions" at the start of Blade Runner where. They were just supposed to be flame-offs of the flameble chemicals coming out of those industrial plants. Each of the flames comes from the top of one of the stacks of the plants, along with a light effect to make the model look like it is being illuminated by the flames, which were matted in later. In fact, if you watch closely you will see that these flame elements were not really matted (which involves holding out the background image) but simply "added" in (by DX - double exposure). At one point there is a very large flame that covers most of the screen, as the bottom of the flame lifts away there is no smoke or soot holding out the background. In general I liked Blade Runner, there was a real story which was merely supported by the special effects. The effects, while good, were not the stars of the film. I did find it hard to believe that some of these interiors were THAT smokey, the air on the street level was better than inside some of the buildings. -c ------------------------------ Date: 6-Jul-82 16:31:21 PDT (Tuesday) From: Newman.es at PARC-MAXC Subject: That rain in "Blade Runner" According to a recent news article in LA, the constant rain in "Blade Runner" was put in so that the audience couldn't tell that the movie was shot entirely on a studio backlot. Without the rain, the edges of the set would have been visible. /Ron ------------------------------ End of SF-LOVERS Digest ***********************