Movie

Blade Runner- The Final Cut

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Twenty five years after its initial release Ridley Scott has returnd to Blade Runner. He’s tidied it up and re-edited scenes to bring it closer to his original vision, producing a 5 dvd “Final Cut”.

Wired has an interview with Ridley Scott about the new release and making the original movie.

Wired: Part of your work in making the new version was eliminating visible wires. Given your legendary attention to detail, how did flaws like that get into the original print?

Scott:Because you can’t make a spinner fly without a crank. That’s why it was raining in the shot, to hide the cables. Today we assume it’s all digital. It’s not — it’s a 2-ton spinner being hoisted around the corner by a large crank that literally brought it down, landed it, and took it off again. Bloody good crane driver, right? You have four points on the cable that keep it steady. When I watched the movie, I always used to sit there staring at the cables. Then eventually one or two of the geeks spotted them. So we took them out.

Coming Soon

This entry was posted in List Movie Preview sex on by

I’ve just watched a bunch of movie trailers, courtesy of Timo’s Movie trailers. Here are a few that I like the look of-

Resident Evil: Extinction The original Resident Evil movie and Resident Evil: Apocalypse are simple pleasures, good looking, fast moving and featuring Milla Jovovich in a red dress. Sure the first one felt a lot like a video game (cut scen- fight- cut scene- fight etc. with ever tougher baddies), but it was far better than Doom. In this third part Alice, cloned and left for dead by the Umbrella Corporation must fight her way through a post apocalypse Las Vegas to find a cure for the zombie plague and get revenge.

Appleseed Ex Machina. I read the original manga years ago and have just added the first Appleseed movie to my Amazon rental list. This is obviously a cgi film, but it doesn’t make the mistake of trying for photo realism. Instead, the slightly flattened colours give each frame the look of having been painted. Absolutely stunning. The soundtrack to the trailer is annoying, but just ignore it and enjoy the pictures.

Beowulf Another cgi film based on the epic tale, co-scripted by Neil Gaiman. Buy Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf at Amazon.)

The Darjeeling Limited Typically oddball looking comedy from the guy who directed The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tenenbaums. Three dysfunctional brothers go on what should be a journey of discovery to India.

Right At Your Door. This is already available on DVD. I don’t know if it’s been re-released or just cropped up at random, but it’s been added to my rental list.

No End In Sight A documentary about the failed reconstruction of Iraq told through interviews with those involved.

The Last Legion This has the look of another King Arthur, right down to the British character actors and a sex bomb warrior played by Aishwarya Rai. The last emperor of Rome, a child who ruled for only a day, goes in search of Excalibur. High jinks ensue. (Alex and Damian have alerted me to the original novel the film is based on.)

Death at a Funeral Promising looking britcom.

2 Days in Paris American boyfriend and French girlfriend spend two days in Paris. The apartment looks a lot like the one from the end of Before Sunset, I swear.

F-35

This entry was posted in Die Hard F-35 Movie Review on by

Because we were arguing about the F-35’s abilities after watching Die Hard 4.0 last night.

Wikipedia on the F-35. (It even notes the plane’s part in the film.)


F-35 vertical taking off and hovering.

The film’s great fun, not letting up much and only presenting a few bits that looked wrong (surely when your truck’s leaning so hard the left hand side’s in the air you’d steer right, into the lean, not left, much like steering into a skid). It’ll probably be trounced by Transformers as brainless action movie of the summer, but recommended as two hours of simple fun.

If you want to see what went before, you can get the Die Hard trilogy at Amazon. 4.0 is easily as good as Die Hard 3, and definitely better than 2, but the original, with its inventive use of the office tower location, is still the best.

Gone in 60 Seconds

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Forget the Cage/ Jolie/ Jones remake, this is the real deal.

H B “Toby” Halicki wrote, directed, starred in and did many of the stunts for this classic car heist/ chase movie. For $400,000 his character and a team of insurance investigators with a sideline in Grand Theft Auto have to steal 48 cars to order. Most of the thefts go smoothly, bar the occasional wild animal or trunkfull of heroin, but it’s the final car, Eleanor- a Mach 1 Mustang, that causes all the trouble and sets up a forty minute car chase across California.

The acting’s a little ropey, but in a charming way, and the film doesn’t slow down long enough for anyone to embarrass themselves with excessive emoting. The chase is the heart of the film, some of it shot on open roads and with genuine accidents incorporated into it. There’s none of the more-is-less feeling you get with car chases in so many recent movies. You know that half the stuff in Matrix Reloaded is done on a computer, so you’re not really excited by it (impressed, yes, but not excited). Plus it serves as a time capsule, holding the same sort of fascination as an episode of the Sweeney or similar, with all the 70’s hardware, cars and fashions.

Halicki died whilst making Gone in 60 Seconds 2, but also made Junkman, the trailer for which is one of the special features on this disc.

This is one of those cases where Amazon’s rental service has done its job.  I definitely want a copy of this film. As you can see from the list in the left hand column, we’ve got a varied selection of movies lined up for the coming months, all of which interest me, but none of which I’d just go ahead and buy without seeing them first. It’s a great system and I highly recommend it.