District 9…Finally a film and not a product!

My last Film Journal was 21st December 2008, I reviewed the coming year in film that I was really looking forward to and here we go…phat!

Nothing really, nothing to bring my hands to the keyboard to say, “go see this, it is worth your money”, The Day The Earth Stood Still..Hummm Usual stuff, Watchmen fizzled, Wolverine, ho hum, same as… Star Trek was in parts excellent but some of the script jumps were just to unbelievable to stomach so in the end I passed as I really didn’t like it, Angels & Demons I enjoyed but it was nothing new, Terminator Salvation was quite simply the disaster of the summer, it was on story but so off story it went nowhere and has simply buried a franchise and the problem came down to a director (McG) who just stole bits from every film he could think of except the Terminator clones, Michael Bay’s Transformers 2 was another Bay crap of acting and over the top (and how to not use over the top CGI) too much unbelievable action, GI Joe, was another Hollywood 3rd rate action CGI film…in other words crap….and on and on it goes, If the McDonald, Blockbuster Game, Comic book tie-in is “So Cool’ the film is a real stinker, and we are so over another Icon in NewYork or Paris falling down (i.e. 2012), in other words Hollywood its not film making anymore its ….well crap, multi-million dollar crap, worse there was no Batman sequel or Ironman to fix anything either…so this is a worse year than last year and with so much promise.

Of the list there was one film (yes a film, not a movie) that was very discrete, most of the say in the know film people umped and erred and said $30 Million?, you can’t make a decent Rom-Com for 50 Million never mind a Si-Fi film as for that you need at least 200Million and with that you will use 12oMillion spent on the CGI, 70Million on bad acting and over priced stars, 8 dollars to photocopy the script and 15 Million for the catering!…

but there was a clever (the buzz word) viral advertising of posters declaring that “Humans Only” are not allowed into District 9…other wise it was all a bit low key, which meant it was worth watching..

Now before you grab your car keys and scream out to the Multi-Plex you will have to understand this is not the usual Hollywood Action Bash, yes there is action in it, and the best you will see for a long time and if if you have a problem with that sort of camera shooting were the operator is blind drunk and very real (It was filmed on the new RED camera format) you will loath this film, as will your mother and your father, and even your sister, your dog and even the cat will need psychiatric help as too where all its food has gone.

If you want Star Wars imagineering then you will hate it also as this what i would call guerrilla filmmaking, it is violent, real, outlandish, ugly, dirty, smelly, awful, but totally brilliant, its about as far away as you can get from the polished summer blockbuster as you can get, Its nothing like Blade Runner so you can forget about stylised sets, and you want the aliens to first and foremost to win and kill us because we deserve to be killed and and I was so deeply pleased when they did so, and do it as cruelly as possible, in fact i cheered them on all the damn way as signs meant to keep out the aliens should be really turned around to keep us out, as we are (humans) the real filth of the film.

The only real problem you will have is trying to understand the languages, the aliens are quite easy in fact, but the South Afrikaner accent is quite daunting to and hard to decipher, the only other quibble is why didn’t the aliens use their amazing hard core weaponry and just wipe us all out, I would have done so, otherwise…

the story is quite simple, an alien spaceship had appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa 28 years years ago, at first we welcomed the off world rag tag of starving space travellers that were stuck here because their ship simply ran out of fuel, they were set up in an area called District 9, and that is when the problems started, in the intervening years they became almost refugees and created a squalid camp of apartheid proportions, in fact the whole premise was based on these facts, a MNU (Multi-National United) field operative named Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is sent into the camp to evict the aliens and move them to a new set up camp 200 miles away in district 10, underlying his situation is that MNU is a commercial company recruited in to manage the alien refugees known in a derogatory term as “prawns”, but their real motive is to profit from the alien technology mainly in the arms and weapons and have set up a research laboratory to try and convert the weapons for human handling as they only work with alien biology, as only their own DNA will fire the weapons, things take a turn for the worse for both species when van der Merwe in cleaning out the camp comes upon a vital canister that one alien called Christopher Johnson and his cute son CJ has for many years in a secret laboratory within District 9 created the precious fuel needed to restart the mother ship, showing the canister to a film crew van der Merwe suddenly gets himself sprayed with the inky fuel and starts a chain reaction to his own DNA.

from here ver der Merwe becomes a vital part in the survival of the aliens plus now in trying to save his own life, a side story of Nigerian warlords set up inside district 9 to exploit the aliens for their food are also slowly brought into the situation of survival of everyone concerned, I will not go to far as to ruin the story but the last 3rd of the film is one of the best action sequences filmed for a long time, and here is the reason district 9 is far better than anything Hollywood can produce, without the over stylised glossy graphics with more and more non believable cartoon stunts,  as you know that such things are just simply not possible in real life, and yet it is here that district 9 has an excellent reality feel and its reality is so clearly defined is that you feel the effects are in the correct boundaries, in other words you are in the action and it is very composed, in fact you totally believe the aliens are in South Africa and accept the premise of the film,  media news and documentary interviews used throughout again draw you into this world of believability, that even any American film using this media angle approach has failed dismally in the past because again they look too faked and stylised and not in context.

It can be confronting and like mentioned many people will hate this sort of filmmaking, but it does make it a far better film and the best Si-Fi production this decade, district 9 will be a cornerstone movie, like Blade Runner was in the 80′s in the fact that the film will change Hollywood, not in the documentary style of the film as that has been around for a few years, but in the way the films are made.

Neill Blomkamp wrote and directed a short film “Alive in Joberg” that was released by Spy Films in South Africa 2005, It impressed New Zealander Film Maker Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings Trilogy fame, however Jackson’s first early features were such horror films as “Bad Taste” and “Braindead” so he could relate easily to such a concept, Jackson originally brought Blomkamp on board to make a Halo 3 film version of the video game called Halo: Chronicles which was then cancelled (finance probably), but then “Alive in Joberg” concept was broadened and rewrote to become the full feature that is now district 9, and it is here it get interesting.

Hollywood finance would certainly be not available even with Jackson’s record in the town, In most cases a film of this scale would cost 140 to 200 million, even Jackson would not be able to finance that sort of production, however a revolution has been created in the RED system by Jim Jannard of Oakley Sunglasses fame, he perfected a way to get 4096 horizontal by 2304 vertical pixels directly to flash or to hard disk storage and a HD picture that puts standard film cameras in the shade, and the cost US 17.500, in other words in adding a US$10.000 lens you can film better than a US$200.000 Panovision Film Camera plus the fact that there is no film processing to be done, it is instant from the camera to the edit suite, and if you need more then just shoot it at no extra cost..this technology combined with Jackson’s CGI Weta Digital unit in Wellington (Image Engine, Canada, Embassy Visual Effects and Zoic Studios also did CGI) created a $200Million+ Si-Fi Film for only $30Million, and in its first weekend release took $37Million and into profit, in other words this system (film) can and will break Hollywood’s tight financial grip on the industry and again put the power of the film making back into the hands of the film makers (directors).

With this sort of costing, cheap production costs will be affordable and give even light projects the chance of a profit, but it will be the move away from Hollywood and America that will be the biggest change, smaller film communities that have surrendered their film industries (UK, Australia, Japan, Canada) to just being locations will again be able to finance local product, even next to broke filmmakers could create projects that were only a few years ago unattainable, for that the product has to be better and more of it, there will be crap as there always is, but great film will come out too and a new generation of directors on the back of the technology.

Hollywood will survive of course but not with their current offerings, people are already more than tired of these photocopied scripts and stolen past iconic scenes, there is still more to come over the few years but slowly the high costs and losses will drown out the productions and consign the ultra expensive comic book product to history, as a point GI Joe as made to date US$104Million a good take on a good weekend, but it cost US$175Million to make it still has to make another US$71Million just to break even!, district 9 is already in profit and anything else now is in the bank, and no share of financing either, its all yours, money for nothing.

but for us now we all have only one question “what will Christopher Johnson do when he returns in 3 years time?”

Looks like its going to be a.. Si-Fi Year 2009..

The great thing about Hollywood which like the fashion business is you are always guaranteed it will all come around again, that poster child of the late 70s is back, Si-Fi, no not Comicbook, which has been the staple the last 5 years but Si-Fi as is in outer space, yes there was few popping up in the last few years like Sunshine, which was a mish mash of every other Science Fiction film you could point out, that made it so unsatisfying or even boring, even the two Mars films (Red Planet and Mission To Mars) were good ideas lost in very bad appalling endings… but 2009 will be a big year for those who love the genre.

I will put my bases front and centre in that I am a Si-Fi fan, and don’t go for Zombie, Vampire type scares, I come from the 2001, Alien, Star Wars, Bladerunner, CE3K route, machines and outer space adventures are my deal, and the strange thing is if you look at the all time best (Adjusted for Inflation), it is littered with Star Wars, Alien’s, Terminators and what have you, and every boxed set sold is either Star Trek, Star Wars (Again), Aliens…you getting my drift.

But the Si-Fi genre has been a little quiet for a while, the best only this last ten years was one that sadly slipped below the radar was FireFly, Mr Weldon’s brilliantly funny and brilliantly conceived outer space fantasy which was dumped (a la Star Trek) before its genius was watched, the film was a fatal mistake in that it lost the idea (and sets) of the original and killing off a well loved character was enough to lose any audience…Battlestar Galactica was brave, and the Sarah Conner Chronicles (Terminator), were good well and very made, but not the best on show, but i can’t seem to really love them like you did in the 70′s (except FireFly), even Star Wars has been strerched out to a galaxy too far, far away, the latest Clone Wars and TV show I couldn’t even be bothered watching…but back to 2009…

first off the rank is just released

The Day the World Stood Still, a remake…and sadly a poor one, why is it today that American Film Studios can’t help themselves to blowing up icons of the world, its either Big Ben or the Pyramid’s or the White House or anything iconic to show the Aliens or bad monsters are destroying a certain country, for TDtWSS, it is the Sydney Harbour Bridge, so watch out Australia the monsters have found you down under…and then we come to New York…its been frozen, washed away, rampaged by giant lizards and small lizards, burnt down, big and small meteorites, Giant Gorillas, wayward superheros, in fact any sort of doomsday senerio from empty streets to rampaging mobs or anything else you can think of has happened here in the last few decades, and its even had its own 9/11, that was more like watching a movie than a movie, is there anyone in their right mind want to live in New York any longer?

but 2009 is shoreing up to be the biggest Si-Fi year in years so here is a breakdown.

Outlander..If Vikings and invading Aliens are your genre of choice then this is for you..me I’ll wait for the DVD or Cable. late January Release

The Watchmen..another comic book based style from UK Alan Moores 1986 series is directed by Zack Snyder of 300 fame, which I liked immensely, it was a very clever redition of the comicbook that worked well on the screen, unlike Sin City which was very violent and some how very off putting to watch but was still clever in its ideas, Watchmen in its favour has a big fan base and is expected to score well on this alone..and is highly anticipated, in early release 3rd March 2009.

X-Men Origins : Wolverine is produced by Hugh Jackman, Made by Hugh Jackman and is while it is also starred by Hugh Jackman it is directed by South African Gavin Wood, X-Men has been a successful franchise, and Wolverine was the most popular character to come out of the hype, the problem the film has is the genre, it  has been milked to death over the last ten years, how many times can you watch maurding beasts until you get bored by it all, Jackman is good and back on familar territory, but I feel it could be the swansong of the X-Men Franchise. May 1st Release

Star Trek.. here we go again, another re-engineering of the formula, well it worked for the Batman so why not for Trekkies, JJ Abrahms has kept this prequel so tight, you needed a transporter to get onto the set, it was to released before Christmas 2008, but put back again to the start of the American Summer season, if that is a good omen or not then still all are here Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty et. all, but now just out of Kindy Starfleet Academy, it fits somewhere in the Star Trek timelime before the 60s original series and after the Enterprise Telly Show, but who cares anymore, nothing relates and can’t to the cardboard sets and acting of the Wagon Train in space, If JJ can resist the temptation to go over the top in action sequences it could be interesting, but I would have rather had a new concept than to keep flogging an old one, it will live or die on that opening weekend. if it fails it will be the Enterprise’s last voyage of it’s very long 5 year mission. May 5th Release.

Angels and Demons..It has a Si-Fi base so it can go in here, Dan Brown’s Prequel to The Da Vinci Code, has something going for it, if you haven’t read the book, I had read the last film’s book and was bored by the film as I knew not only what was coming up next, but the words also, The Da Vinci Code failed because everyone knew the story off by heart, the hype was everywhere this was a cash-in that failed, I haven’t read A&D so I don’t know the story, it might help..a little.  May 15 Release

Terminator Salvation..This is James Cameron’s comeback year and this is first off the rank, he is not directing here as that is being done by Joseph “McG” McGinty Nichol, but the Terminator Franchise is one of the strongest ones out there, and Salvation is all war and John Conner, And Cameron’s hand has to be here somewhere, it made him a star director and I don’t think James would allow it to sink to lowest of Alien v Predator proportions, It will be the smash of the summer season or the flunker, early signs are excellent, and a strong cast of ex-Batman Christian Bale, Aussie Sam Worthington, and yes even a type 101 (Schwarzenegger) monster is back, but Arnie is to busy running a failing state to be in the uniform, but his spirit will live on in computer rendering form, “Ill Be Back”…well he is. May 22nd Release

(This was last film of the great Stan Winston before his sad passing on June 15, 2008)

Transformers 2 : Revenge of the Fallen..I wasn’t very taken with the first film, it was let down by a very badly cliched  screenplay which was a shame, because the characters are excellent, and the kids love them, but here I have to lower my standards, it is a kids film, but please, even here the kids rolled their eyes at some of the corny lines that came across the screen, Typical Micheal Bay throws everything at the screen, and in parts it was fun to watch, sequels can work, I hope this one is smarter Mr Bay, for the kids sake…and mine. May 26 Release

2012..”The world is devastated by a cataclysm in the year 2012, leaving survivors to struggle for their lives”, heard it before, Yep, Mr B Grade is back, Roland Emmerich today is what Roger Corman was in the sixtes, he turns out fodder, film after film of raging monsters to invading aliens, and a million of one ways to kill  human kind, the latest is just that another throw of the end of the world Juggernaut of blowing up cities and frightening us to post-apocalyptic death, Yawn….with his appalling 10,000bc Roland is living on borrowed time, problem is he can now and then pull a rabbit out of the hat like The Day after Tomorrow, that was at least plausible and effective, but how long can Emmerich keep finding these catastrophes to keep him in business, if 2012 fails then he will be shown the door, we are all sick of the world falling apart around us, now its time for Emmerich’s world to fall apart too. July 12 Release

District 9..Peter Jackson is creating a viral advertising network to promote a very guarded film, Neill Blomkam is an South African director whom has been taken under Jackson’s wing, The project was to be Halo3, but it was shelved to make D9 instead, so the rumors abound is D9…D9 or a cover for Halo3, its all very silly but after Cloverleaf anything is possible in promoting entertainment, it also could be a training ground for Mr Blomkam to see how he preforms at the box office before putting out a tentpole event film…we wait with baited breath…you can check out the website at www.d-9.com…August 14 Release

Pandorum..Paul W. S. Anderson’s track record of Resident Evil, Death Race says it all, but Christian Alvart is directing and the premise is two crewmen who awaken aboard their spacecraft unaware of their mission or identities and then make a discovery that threatens the survival of mankind or womankind, which is an excellent premise for a good SiFi Film, whether it will be delivered we don’t know, but it is a little hope in a big universe. Sept 1st Release

Surrogates..Comicbook series and Bruce Willis playing a cop means don’t hope for the best, the premise is people in the future live out their lives by using Surrogates including Brucie, in this case he is trying to solve a murder and has to move into a real person form to finish close the case, heard it before, seen it before, yes to both, again you know the route this film will take and it will be another good SiFi idea hollywoodised and thrown away. Sept 25 Release

Planet 51.. an Animation from Sony that finds he has landed in Area 51 and finds himself surrounded by Green Aliens who think they are in the 1950′s America, daft, yes… Nov 17 Release

Avatar..James Cameron..his first film since Titanic, its been years in the making and new age 3d, a big ask and still 12 months away at this point, the hype, the build up, A futuristic war movie with an environmental conscience, but Cameron is one hell of an filmmaker, and he has vision, if anyone can pull it off it is him, Australian Sam Worthington in the earlier released Terminator Salvation gets the top bill here, and Sigourney Weaver is also making an appearance, but it will be the special effects that will be the star of the show and in as said 3d, two sequels are planned so it could become the new franchise of the next ten years, the story has been around in form since 1996, then called Project 880, but was shelved, mainly because the technology wasn’t there to create the vision of photo-realistic computer-generated characters by using motion capture animation technology, now it is and it is being created with Principal live action photography just wrapping up in New Zealand, so the wait continues, and the hype, it will have to deliver a lot, but I have a feeling 2009 will be James Cameron’s year, when he again will be “King of the World. Dec 15 Release

Out of this list there will be bummers and also rans, but for SiFi it should be one of the better years, there will be surprises, what I call the “Little Miss Sunshine”, comes out of nowhere types, I hope they will appear and surprise us all, but for my money Terminator Salvation is the one to put the money on in the Summer and Avatar in the winter, both have Mr Cameron’s breath over them, and if anything changes I will update this blog to keep it current and tally how well we do…..

Roll on 2009……

Australia…a throwback to another era..

Australia : Review

Baz Lurmann’s epic is costing somewhat close to $130 million to bring to the screen, an average amount for a tent pole attraction in Hollywood these days, but to a small populated country like Australia it could be close to $500 million per man/woman or child, so they have had expectations of this, is the big one..the one..bigger than Ben Hur, well bigger than anything coming before and after and into the the next millennium..in an Australian’s terms its like “I put the whole lot of the dosh on the dog at the TAB”…

I do have a problem with the financial arrangements of the crossover to tourism which i covered in newbluetravel recently, but films of this scale are hard to finance and Mr Lurmann after not getting another grandiose statement of Alexandra The Great off the ground (Baz never ever thinks small scale), he turned to the next best bigger thing of his country of birth…a movie about Australia!…brilliant, but to get the dosh..er money he had to sell it to Hollywood, which means he said loudly arms open wide…”It’ll be like bigger than Gone with the Wind..better than the Sundowners…romantic like..Out of Africa, Thunderous like Dances with Wolves, mightier than Pearl Harbour or TORA, TORA, bloody… TORA…..It’ll be bloody Awesome……yeah!”, The Americans wide-eyed cried and thought of the billions Titanic made for Paramount Pictures and gave Baz his cheque.

but then the reality dawned on the optimistic director…they would want, Gone with the Wind, The Sundowners, Out of Africa, Dances with…and bloody Tora, bloody Tora….christ!..

but the money was more important as it got the picture made, but here is the basis of the problem with the final product, Baz tried to keep everyone happy, Hollywood, Australian Tourism, his own artistic vision..and failed…not totally, but his final finished film is compromised by its creation to please too many parties.

The second problem is that Baz is a brilliant visual director, but is a hopeless actors director, his characters always seem to be larger than life caricatures almost one dimensional, theatrical, Strictly Ballroom, Romeo+Juliet, and the empty soulless but lavish Moulin Rouge! all suffer in various ways from his approach to presenting his characters, but in most cases like the characters in Strictly Ballroom they were over theatrical in their own real environment anyway and the others were so theatrically based that Baz was able to disguise his fallibility in his ability to create multi-dimensional in depth characterisations plus the fact that his leading lady couldn’t find a bucket in the middle of an empty room.

I will come to Miss Kidman/Cruise/Urban soon, but first to the other main actors in various roles, Hugh Jackman is an excellent performer, even when Baz channels Clint Eastwood spaghetti western style camera work in his face, he gets through this, …just…with his fishing tackle intact, Russell Crowe was first choice but after the first script workshop realised that his career and football team came first and bowed out..but I think Russ would have got through it..intact, but the difference would have been that Russ would have told Baz the script and all that is “pure crap” and would made him make a better film, instead he sadly walked.

So the rest of the cast were reduced to cobblers, real average Aussies in various one dimensional “goodonyermateandohcrikeybloodyhellisn’tsheagreatlookinsheila” monologues that even dinky-di in the wool Australians can’t understand or even relate to, Jack Thompson, Eyes bulging, stampeded to death but live’s just enough to give his last words matinee idol style, nasty Bryan Brown’s cattle baron does his bit, poor David Wenham is reduced to silent era picture masquerades and sheer eye twirling, long lingering death scenes, ha, ha hahhhh….this is David Wenham, the best of the best in Australia, nothing he does is bad, until now..and worse of all is that all of America and all the world is going to see this, and laugh at him..”gad help me mate”..these are excellent actors directed by an director with one of those horn speakers they used in Keystone Cop movies…bloody hell..what were they thinking, and almost every other white fella and madame actors fell into the same cardboard stock role.

Brandon Walters as the drover’s assistant Nullah and narrator is the star mainly because he doesn’t understand actors method acting and workshops, instead he just sublimely did what he thought was best and did it great and very real and totally stole the show, David Gulpilil as uncle King George, hasn’t worked since well.. Walkabout, and was in the same boat, he just stood there looking very grand and told be a very good elder Australian statesman for his race, and because of this the first settlers of this great brown land were the soul of the film..David Ngoombujarra as Magarri, was good too, being a aboriginal in this production was always a major bonus not a sin.

Which brings us to “Our Nic”..beloved by Australians, held to their bosom in sheer adulteration of mass appeal of the Paris Hilton Generation, Kidman has never been able to exactly get the acting thing, even though they have even thrown an “Oscar” at her for wearing a false nose, She is a sublime model of the perfect profile, more Marilyn Monroe than Elizabeth Taylor, but here she is well…more in the “tried really hard” basket in the film than the totally “absolutely awful and what is she doing now” basket, In fact most of the damage was listening to Baz and his interpretation of what an Englishwoman is than what an Englishwoman should be, so she did it that way and almost sunk the ship, the first eight minutes are the worst sort of  jokey, poorly directed moments since Bob Hope and Bing Crosby broke up, and her manner and stupid glasses was almost “i’m out of this seat and this cinema right now, before this shit gets any worse” and try for a refund at the box office criteria.
But to her credit she holds it together, drops the vowels a notch and  once she is on her horse and droving her cattle to Darwin it starts to work, she looks a natural in the saddle, and pushes on bravely to the end of the story of saving her Outback Station “Faraway Downs” from the clutches of dastardly bad buggers like Messrs Brown’s Lesley ‘King’ Carney and Wenham’s ex ranch hand Neil Fletcher, while the local police are rounding up half-caste Aboriginal children of the now famous “Stolen Generation”, Kidman’s “Lady Ashley”, also is drawn to the a hunk of a man “Drover”, Hugh Jackman who delivers her first to Faraway Downs and then helps her with the cattle to Darwin, and saving her Station from going down the big proverbial with a big check from Army Captain Dutton (Ben Mendelsohn).

Lady Ashley is also rather taken with “Nullah”, who’s mother is drowned in the water tank on the property, Nullah’s Grandfather the distant Aboriginal elder, “King George, whom Ashley thinks killed her husband, but was in fact done over by Fletcher, on returning from Darwin, happy families abound for two years with Drover, doing a lot of droving, and Sweet Ashley doing a bit of housekeeping until Nullah feels its time for him to do the traditional Aboriginal rights of passage of a walkabout, the little fella hasn’t walkedabout very far before he is part of the stolen generation and is shipped off to a lonely island off the top of Darwin, with Lady Ashley in pursuit and full Ripley (Alien) protection mode just when the Japanese drop in and bomb the shit out of the Northern Territory, this finds Drover is on his trusty steed coming to the rescue as well and it all ends with a little bit of somewhere over the rainbow….with Neil Fletcher getting his just deserts, and Drover, Lady Ashley rushing at each other in warm wet passionate embrace..its all very 40′s hollywood, cowboy saves the girl, rousing music, live all very happy sort of dreamy nostagia.

Australia should fail completely in every area with its poor script, acting, direction and old fashioned film making dribble, but it doesn’t, you want it to make money, to just survive, because to a point it is good entertainment, but where Mr Lurmann made his biggest mistake was not doing it right, letting his actors act, getting the story deeper, getting the audience more involved with his characters, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There will be blood, is the basis of what should have been Australia’s, Australia, it is deeply tragic, a flowing story of greed and oil, it is a record of America in the last years of the 1800′s, the adventure, dreams, pain, it shows the country for what it is, which is ambitious, daring, greedy and no holds barred commerce, for America was built on such foundations, and the film will be watched and reveriered for years and provide a window to an important part of American History, entertainment can still be interwound around a fabric of a great story, but Baz don’t overdo it, or glitz it…or ruin it.

Go see Australia, see the magnificent landscapes, the horsemanship, Even Nicole Kidman who is not the worse thing in it, in fact she and Jackson saves it with a sweet boy who shows us his culture through his eyes, but what if say another director like George Miller ( Mad Max, Lorenzo’s Oil, Happy feet) had done it with the same money, or even a foreign director, we wanted Out of Africa and we got instead Gone with the Wind goes to the slapup movies, Baz kept everyone happy including Hollywood but failed at making a good film ready for the making…..so it rises or it fails it on the certain basic criteria that you still have to get right, Film making will always be like when it is down to that dog in the race, it either wins or it loses..but if you still have to have a clear mission and script, even with an enormas amount of money or no virtually money at all, you still do the story right and let your actors do what they are being paid for.. act, you then will have a good if better or even chance of getting your money (dosh) back and your dog will come in first or at least third…..really old fashioned Film making will never survive today, you have to be fresh and new even if you set it in the 1940′s, Titanic proved that and made zillions…and that could the mantra for more films in the future and not just for Australia………

oh oh 007….back again!…..

First I must state that I have read in the correct order they where published and in one two week intensive period every James Bond novel written by Ian Fleming, read his excellent 800 plus page biography, wrote a script on Mr Fleming, and generally analysed the 007 phenomenon over the last two years, read my first 007 book in 1969, watched every 007 franchise outing and why am I stating all of this, because there is so much trivia and comment that I have state upfront my credential’s, not to boast or that I am a fan, but that I know something about the character and Mr Fleming’s mindset of his creation…

James Bond is probably the most famous person who has never lived, and in the new shortly to be released Quantum of Solace, he is going to live a lot longer yet with another episode coming along soon in another few years..at this point I haven’t seen the film, but will add my comment to the end of this piece when I have, but it doesn’t matter, its entertainment, fun…007 fun.

Casino Royale was a very good package, except for the silly heart attack scene, it was mostly on the money, would have Mr Fleming approved, yes to a point, he would always be defensive of his creation, Sean Connery was not his ideal, and he stated so, but Mr Connery made the agent his own and a icon was born, thrusting Mr Fleming into the megaheights of celebrity prestige stature he always craved, and in that created a new genre of the blurring of the character and reality, Mr Connery found this superstardom quickly overwhelming in its rapid manic and even scary devotion of attention to basically someone who doesn’t officially exist, today Star Trek fans (I like ST) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer followers live in this surreal anti life, Paris Hilton and her friends have took this to a whole new level of facebook friends and the intimacy of celebrity and reality, but back in the 60′s it could be a bizarre world of people knowing more about you than you do yourself….so Sean quit…..and started another even bigger debate?..

The best Bond..

Personally “On her Majesty’s Secret Service“  is my Favorite Bond Film, mainly on the fact that I was fourteen and was totally trancefixed in love with the smashingly lovely Diana Rigg, but it was still a good film, excellent action sequences, great locations, great visuals, and it kept closely to the novel, it showed Bond could be bigger than the actor, Sean was then given a bigger paypacket to comeback and do Diamonds are forever, which started the downward drift, I loved the novel, set in Upper New York State Horse Racing country it followed the mob trail of smuggling illegal Diamonds from Africa into the United States, This EON Film started the heightened stuntwork and comedy entertainment style route that would be the forte of Messrs. old hand Roger Moore and poser Pierce Brosman, as in a moment of sheer career lunacy Lazenby turned down DAF, thinking he was not replaceable and that the casting agents soon would line up at his exaggerated ego door, suddenly found he was soon out on the street, which is sadly an interesting one, had he done say a few more Bonds he could have made the part into his own, he wasn’t great, but he got better quickly, a good actor could do this, Connery did, but an ex-model couldn’t so he became a sidestep in the Bond story,

Moore was sadly no James Bond, I liked him as “The Saint” it suited his cool then youthful style, but mostly later he was so wooden the action had to be done around him and not him moving around anywhere, but he was now too old and as far removed from the character than anything Fleming could possibly imagine, and so was… “calling Mr Brosman” a walking advert for Johnny Walker’s best, “here are your marks and the camera is that way sir”, he was “Mr shaken and not stirred”,  Just a glimmer of hope was the start of Die Another Day, when Mr Irish was captured and tortured in an North Korean Holiday Camp, but once it was over and he was standing on the Tube Station platform the shop dummy was back and it was all downhill again, and from there to a stupid invisible Aston on snow? and bland dumbstruck token actress Halle Berry and it went even more worse too…I didn’t care anymore and neither did anyone else, but don’t get me wrong these two action dummys raked in the millions of millions of cinema goers cash, so they liked something, acting couldn’t have one of them, and in time  their deficiencies will show more than the moment.
Mr Dalton was a brave man, and he tried very hard to get back to the heart of the character, but something was missing, it was maybe just the wrong timing, in the mid-eighties the escapism style of Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop2 was at its height, and when the switch back to the Brosman cartoonie style 6 years later (Legal difficulties abounded), it just carried on from where Mr Moore left off, But Dalton did give it a fair go, but his brooding style missed the point, Bond was never a brooder, he was machine, a killing machine, souless, cold, his women were to be loved and left, closer to the character Neil McCauley (Robert DeNiro) in Mr Mann’s 1995 excellent Heat than a Noel Coward smooth ad-lib operator…which bring us to finally..Mr Craig.

It was a glimmer of hope when I first saw the first scenes of Casino Royale, all action, no computers, yes the rendering is in there, but its subtle, blood fists, pain, cool, smooth, thanks to the Bourne franchise, the edgy, harder, steely action hero could now make money, but more to the point was the re-rendering of the character, Craig got to the inside of Fleming’s Bond, the best Bond, I don’t know only time will answer that, and If Ian Fleming had saw the film he would have no doubt seen his creation up there on the screen, it is still entertainment, fair game to that, but the brutality of the torture scene was straight out of the book, and the novel had to lengthened and padded out as it was really only about a card game, a Fleming addiction, but it was done well, in the spirit as they say of the piece, the point is it deserved its success, against all odds, against all the naysayers that poo-poohed Mr Craig, There was a triumph in the figures and success, the reason was simple, they knew they had the soul of James Bond back up on the screen, and the people wanting the Mr Brosman creature back had missed the point, if you read the novels, you would understand, if you cared enough you would know why, it felt right, If Casino Royale had failed it would have closed the door on the greatest franchise in movie history, that was the risk, and it showed and the success was sweet, but I was never in doubt, I didn’t care if it flopped into the Atlantic if Mr Craig’s shorts split, it was a revelation to see Fleming’s cold operator back on the screen, doing what he did best, saving Britain, The Queen and the world from bad buggers like Richard Branson, yes he is in there, if you look, evil bugger, planning his next over the top advertising stunt, even the eccentric mind of Ian Fleming couldn’t have come up with a megalomaniac monster worse than Richard, he wants to totally overbrand the world and with a virgin……007 welcome back…

For the record..

Sean Connery was the first and the Icon.

Daniel Craig is the closest to the original Ian Fleming character….debate closed.

The rest were payed very very well for their services to Her Majesty’s Government (Secret Service Division)

Quantum of Solace : Review

Bond is back with a bang, and don’t you know it, but the failure today is to make films like an editor, make it, then take out the really boring stuff and leave the best and mostly action sequences in, at 1hr 46min this the shortest Bond ever, and it feels like there is another 16min is left on a computer hard drive somewhere (Film Editing (cutting) is so yesterday), cuts to the chase are so quick that Bond is even halve way through the chase at the opening credits, Its supposed to make it all exciting and “oh wow”, but it fails basic storytelling, the poor baddy Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), is not even given a slap with a gloved backhand before Bond is crashing around again, through tunnels, through a crowded Siena horseracing square, over rooftops, crashing through a devoted fresco restorers glass ceiling, on and on, cut to cut, bits here, bits there, and that is the film, cut to the chase..

Daniel Craig is a good Bond but we need more backstory guys please, you can’t have hell without quiet, and that is what was missing 16min of backstory, Bond back at home in his London flat pondering his pain, May his housekeeper fussing him, yes its boring but its Bond, Fleming Bond, more fill, more information of the villain than a few clever computer graphics, Films need to build, exposing information bit by bit, not throw everything at the screen and see what sticks, The Bond Girls were both great and Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton) was underused and oiled off before we knew it, here was a great character dumped well before her time, Her tripup on the stairs of the fundraiser event was funny and then she was gone..Olga Kurylenko is Camille Montes, the Ukrainen actor was cool and a great companion to Bond, feisty and bold like all females want to be portrayed today, smoldering and fighting within..she snarls at the big villain Dominic Greene played by french actor Mathieu Amalric, who is also stepping up the smarmy from Steven Spielburg’s Munich, he could have been better if his bodyguard had been more of a brute or cruel, Anatole Taubman plays Elvis, boringly, so he acts normal, so Greene looks normal, but with the look in his eyes he could have been evil, but you have to show evil, just shooting someone, or waving them off to a death is not creative, you have to kill your good people with evil, cut them up with benchsaws, or hang them out for vultures or lava…pencils up the nose, anything to get people to boo you, hate is better, even the oiled Fields was a trip down memory lane to Goldfinger’s handiwork, but today it has to environmental, so its Oil and not Gold, and that gets us to Mr Greene’s dastardly plan, cut off Bolivia’s water supply.

Small problem with that is Bolivian citizens have had no water supply for decades, and none is coming their way either so they don’t know the difference if Mr World Domination turns off the tap, they are staving to death anyway so they are not going to boo him either..so all that is left is Bond’s personal vendetta to get the bugger who broke his heart, which is done in the last four and a half minutes of left running time before the credits come up…humm.

Like all good films made today for fidgeting audiences..producers and directors are afraid to fill, so much is very good about QoS and I like the title, Craig is a solid brutal actor, brilliant Judi Dence as M, great locations, and the action is very good, the titles clever and very Bondy, the music very ipody, but there is always something just missing that makes these films quickly slip from your mind, QoS could have been great, everything is there, Casino Royale was good but the middle one has to be better stronger and QoS is sadly not that film, for me I would pull Mr Craig back into Pinewood and shoot some fill for the DVD release and fix it’s problems, a better start, better interagation with Mr White, fill in London, more Miss Fields, more quiet time with Camille, Elvis being bad, evil, more in the desert…then put more back into the action sequences to show more action and fill, fill, fill..not cut, cut,cut..and you have an excellent sequel.

Bond will be back..will Mr Greene?..the point is they said he died out in the desert with a drop of Castrol in him, but wouldn’t a disfigured and revengful monster be what we all need to get back on track…Mr Fleming would love that!

Savage, Brutal, Facing the Future Hollywood Style….

If any area that will be impacted more than any other industry by the mess on a certain street in NYC, It will be the Film Industry, Airlines will go broke or fly, Car Manufacturers will get huge handouts to build more cars and oversized trucks that nobody wants to drive, but the “movie business” is mostly built around cash, loans, deals, amalgamations, points, shares, money under the bed, tax offsets, and any other form of cross promotion or throw away money it can get it’s grubby hands on, plus the fact that Hollywood doesn’t live on planet earth when it comes to rationality, In a normal business certain codes can be administered, but Hollywood is what it is, and that is really a business about smoke and mirrors.

The last few years have hidden the true reality of the film business, cheap grosser comedies and slasher films still make a killing, the big blocko summer blockbuster is going well… blockbuster, even if nobody really notices that it is the same film over and over, and the studios just change the star names around and throw in another SFX car chase or gun battle, mostly with Wil Smith in the lead or his new competitor Shia Le Boeuf doing exactly the same thing, The exceptions this year was Ironman, well made and entertaining and that sheer performance of Heath Ledger’s “Joker”, in The Dark Knight, covered the fact that fewer Blocko’s really made an impact compared to 07, Hulk was good, but nobody watched it, Indiana Jones was well ancient and old fashioned, Hancock was, well…see above, and Wall-e was cute but still a silent movie for no particular audience, and on it went, but underlining the fact less product was actually made and the reliance on comic characters is now reaching saturation point, but Ironman and the The Dark Knight’s overwhelming profits, and Meryl Streep’s singing made it feel like it was a really good exceptional summer season and everything is well hunky dory…  except.

Money, most films now financed or made are through to the screen for 09-10, but what of the next wave?, The writers strike hurt, greed hurts too, and Hollywood is not short of that, 3d is the latest gimmick, but it is just that at the moment a fun thing for awhile, so the money is going to dry up, even Hollywood will have to tighten its fat belt, it has been an uneasy feeling of a ride for the last five years, you know its not right, but you ignore it and it will go away, but it didn’t, you know something is distinctly wrong with Hollywood but the numbers disprove this feeling, any good movie should not lose money today, what with the Box Office, Cable, TV, Macdonalds, Inflight Movies, iPhone, iTunes, Hotel inhouse, Video Stores, Kmart, Internet Streaming and even dodgy Chinese copies means you can or should turn a profit, on anything, if even when Wil Farrell or Adam Sandler can turn a dollar out of baloney, something serious must be going back into the bank on Hollywood Boulevard.

But the real thread this year has been the sheer loss making of the Hollywood Star, most are reduced to stupid cameos, poor scripts, computer animation and voiceovers, can Tom Cruise now realistically put his hand out and ask for forty million dollars, ditto Nicole Kidman for twenty million not the best actress since Jessica Rabbit, who married a rabbit named Rodger, two stars can and will make mincemeat of a larger slice of your budget of seventy million dollars so with the ten million you have left over you then have to actually make the film, so shortcuts have to happen, like say a script, or scriptwriter..or the almost anything to get the damn thing made, which will then go straight to DVD anyway.

The winner as usual is the star, for six weeks work they also get free food, free flights (First class of course), best hotel, chauffeur limo, private jet, hangers on, personal assistants, and they will complain about doing anything, including the promotion interviews, as it makes them tired..poor dears, Cannes, even if you don’t have a film in selection, Venice, Berlin, and Sundance, its very important to keep in touch with the real film makers………….

Why?…..yes Why?……..now that Wall Street has gone Wall-e, can you sit there and sign that check, can you, even if you wanted too you can’t, not a chance in buggery, budgets soon will be forty million not ninety, two hundred million will be maybe a hundred million, even less.

reality…   even in good old Hollywood will be the next huge change and revolution, the days of anything is over, for the stars its the pavement, even if it is just to look or cry on to their star outside a certain Chinese Theater and think back fondly of the Golden Years of Hollywood the.. 1990′s.

The strange thing is it will be exciting, yes there will be an initial bloodbath, but like a Phoenix, Hollywood will quickly rise again, it always does, we need the supply, the ever constant fix of an exciting film or entertainment and gossipy controversy of its industry, like the sixties it will evolve, change, breed new megalomaniacs, and illusionists, we have to keep that show on the road, more smoke and mirrors, and like the airlines, you have to get bums on the seats…..Viva la Revolution!

The Next Revolution : Its still just film Jim, But not as we know it

It would have been the death of cinema,…television, people wouldn’t flock to the theatres anymore because they could watch it now on the small screen at home, the medium was finished dead, gone, over and out,
it has finally happened but forty years later than the original premise, and it was by its own hand and not the new technology of television, VHS tapes or ipods, or the threat of video steaming that killed the great star, they did it too themselves, destroying the product and the services that created the dreams on the silver screen.
In the greed for product they forgot the product they were selling, Film, if you want to see the latest titles of forthcoming productions, the cinema is now not the place to go to, it is next door at the video games shop, all the titles and future titles are lined up on shelves there, ecowarrior 2078, “hey Brad baby, this is the new you”, what other tosh left over comes straight from either the script doctors 3 act play, (you will never see Star Wars the same way again), or the best bits of the same genre, its taking the best bits of what worked in other products all mish-mashed together, then the pitch at its finest, “I can see the fight scene from Indi, Jones 3, with the heilcopter raid from Apocalypse Now and the bit from Rio Grande standoff, in this great….”, they worked because of their original context, taken out and digitalised, they look dumb and…well out of context with the story, and if its not enough then repeat it, over and over like 6 six times (Cut in half Mr Jackson’s King Kong could have been a great movie).
I’m not here to rant, but to point out the reasons a dream is slowly fading. If there is a film to be seen, and there are a few in late November – December, hoping for a punt in the new year awards circuit to make back on their investments, then its straight back on the phone to Adam Sandler to set up the next shit vehicle or six to be made this year.
Mega stars are now only products, the mega hyped Will Smith will start to believe he can act soon, but his own child Jaden out acted him in The pursuit of Happyiness to confirm he hasn’t quite got it right just yet, but may be there will be soon a new villain for Mr Ian Fleming’s, James Bond to stop, the over hyped I can rule the world megomanic actor is now here, courtesy of Mr Tom Cruise, Mrs ex (Miss Kidman/Urban) or Will Smith, with no other planets left to dominate, or our lives to intrude into, while all of the same time killing their own dream, they sit on their throne wondering which country to invade next with their plastic smiles and biceps, At least Mr Schwarzenegger settled for California.
Daft product placement means instead of it being part of the backdrop, it is now the backdrop, and kills the idea, and the actors are just salesmen/women making sure you don’t miss the point of who is really paying their wages now, its not about you the enthusiast that has come to see something great and see ideas and vision in one giant spectacle, no marketing comes before scripts or a good story, the directors are now just making huge adverts, not cinematic history
Demographics, say 90% of an audience is between 9 years old and 21 years old who watch their films so they are tailoring the the product to the demographic, point is nobody over 21 wants to go to watch films made to that demographic, so the reality is the same 90% are the only ones going to the multiplexes!, so they believe their own tosh, however make a film for all demographics like say Titanic, and well then like records can be broken, profits that can make men cry and hug each other are created, but then they all got scared of their investment exposure and rang Adam Sandler again.
The product stinks, you go to a mulitplex, have to wait while a nine year old serves extra huge drinks, popcorn and makes coffee badly, while you are missing the start of the film just waiting to buy a ticket, the seats stink and are broken, the titles are blurry and you come out thinking that was three hours of shit, Used to go at least 2 times a week, now it was maybe two months since you last went through the same experience, if any other business was run this way it would have died years ago.
The questions now are to yourself, have I grown up, is it now I am more aware of what i am watching or want value for my money, they made shit films in the 70′s, but we watched them (they made good films too), have I lost touch, all thoughts are valid until you see talent back up there on the screen, good directors who make 6 films to make one that is worth watching, The Departed, Mr Scorsese’s stolen script from Hong Kong, was everyone chewing up the screen, made you forget about time for a few hours and lived in this murderous world, and that Mr DiCaprio was a revelation in that having a great visual profile is not all you need to be good on screen, entertainment, five star plus, and Mr Tarantino’s fourth film(and fifith?) Kill Bill Vol 1, Means I am not a film snob, way over top, violent, stupid, idiotic, funny, ridiculous in every way, it had me punching the air in exhilaration on how film can be extreme in presentation and entertainment, this cinematic experience has been diminished by repeated viewings, but that feeling of the first encounter has never left me, and still I will go back in hope to feel the same feeling again. hoping that someone with  new ideas and an original story can be translated to me in their new visual and audio magic.
I don’t want the cinema experience to die, but it has to lift its game, that is everyone, Hollywood, Multiplexes, producers, The good and talented actors and directors are already voting with their feet, If you want a good drama today, Television, films old enemy is the place to go, Deadwood, The final series of The West Wing, are examples of great acting and product,  Brilliantly made, here actors can get roles to meet their talent, choosing to show their abilities and craft and not be ashamed to say I did it on the small screen, because that small screen is now a big one.

Home theatre is already propping up Hollywood, people will watch tosh, but will gradually move to something substantial if it is produced and created in the new Hollywood, leaving the crap on the shelves to die, Digital Film, will make such investments cheaper to make and distribute, new heroes will be created and stars will shine again in Beverly Hills, We will miss the the roar of the Imperial Starcruiser coming from below the front row of seats, but we will be able to play it over and over again to our delight, and hear Darth Vader say “Take him away!” in Norwegian, the detail is impressive (see my coming BladeRunner Blog), and the sound is… if the neighbours are away, very impressive, convergence of Television and Film will have to happen and its coming to a screen near you, or a boxed set, forget Internet for the moment as the requirements of HighDefinition will not come that way, demographics will mean every age group will be their target audience and the Tweenies and Teenagers can demolish what’s left of the Multiplexes, Its sad but the exhibitors have only themselves to blame, they should have stood up to Hollywood and lifted their game by cleaned up their premises, made it quick to buy a ticket, thrown out the thugs, pick better product and train decent staff, I hope all is not lost as the big screen experience is still the one to have, The 2007/08 USA writers strike proves where their income will be coming from in the future, and the rewards are great, just hope it brings back the talent and artists to the screen and not the money people and media management agencies, make future product that is clever and entertaining not prepackaged to sell a donkeyburger at a fast food outlet, and that the acting is not as wooden as the games they are made from.
Lets hope for a new future, tell a good story, entertain and we can then sit back and dream again.

Beam me up now Scotty.

BladeRunner : The Final Cut 2007 – Is it finally a masterpiece of art?

There is at this count seven versions of BladeRunner the 1982 Si-Fi Film, that was one of the disaster deals and flop of 1982, it was up against a cute alien that needed to phone home and various other simplistic cartoon but profitable  entertainment, That it had been the worse shoot since Apocalypse Now and resulting in near suicide, blowout and  with over-cost (overruns) for its producers, director (Ridley Scott), main actor (Harrison Ford) and motley crew.
Panned remorselessly by critics it should have died in a whimper of a death, it did at the time and the only people finally making any money from it then was the lawyers in the writs that followed the blame.

The mistake was as is the same today, the Studios wanted instant gratification so if the the film doesn’t make it on a big opening weekend it is considered a flop and its dropped, thrown away, a loss and as a film BladeRunner had everything else against it too, it was dark moody, wet, a montage of a story and in sheer fear a tagged on ending that came right out of The Wizard of Oz.
But strangely it was created at the right time, as with a few other films thrown on the scrapheap by mistake (The Blues Brothers was another gem) it was saved by new technology, this was Video Tape and its player the VCR
so slowly grubby little hands picked the film from the shelves and watched it, then watched it again, and again, and with every pass they found here was a different kind of experience, the subliminal emersion, to be able to dissolve into another world, fade into the future, A single pass at the cinema had mean’t that you couldn’t grasp the whole context, Ridley’s complex layered world had to be peeled back skin by skin at a time, another dimension was the whole story was constructed like a riddle, desperate investors (Bond Completion) meddled with it so parts of the film were missing, other scenes added for no reason and with no connection to the plot, but still the film defied logic, people were pulling it apart frame by laserdisk frame, trying to find the answers, trying to somehow put the puzzle back together, In the end it was what it was a muddle.

In 1992 Ridley Scott  finally had access to put it back into some sort of cohesion, The Directors Cut took out the voice over, the silly ending and put in the famous unicorn sequence?, yes a horse running through a mystical forest was supposed to make it all make some kind of sense and it was soon then released onto another new medium DVD disks, but somehow it still wasn’t quite right, quality was poor, sound and video conspired against it and watching it on a standard screen television was a bit of a chore, it was smudgy, dull and boring, I usually turned it off at the same point as Daryl Hannah backflipped around Sebastian and went to bed.

Still its fortunes rose, the more it gets towards its future date of 2019 the more it seems contemporary, the fusion of the ideas and vision are slowly getting lost in it being swallowed by its surroundings, standing on a balcony 40 floors above Wan Chai in Hong Kong surrounded by high dark buildings saturated with typhoon mist and drizzle, I looked down on a reality of flashing kaleidoscope of police and council management vehicles just like the scene of Deckard in the movie, walk Mong Kok any rainy night and Ridley could have saved millions of dollars today in not building sets for Deckard to move around within and his vision in full view, but now the chicken and the egg question is to asked, are we creating BladeRunner by its look or was it simply a vision of the future, there is no doubt it has been the most copied visual design in every area, from marketing, film to neon advertising, and considering the fusion of the internet and the silicon chip that the film’s intergrated look of technology and not the over projection of future ideas visually that makes it feel so familiar, so to achieve today’s look of contemporary design you then have go back only to one place and with its design elements now over 25 years old it was an amazing prediction in its projection of a realty of a future life,  so If the film was released today would it be seen as contemporary? , if it is then that is even more a remarkable achievement, but I hope by the time we reach its projected 2019 world; it will be a bit of a brighter place to live.

But the breadth of the blurring of BladeRunner is it’s way it defies its own medium, film like said is shown then passes straight into history, tagged usually as an 80′s film or neo-noir genre, the hardest thing for Science Fiction to be is not dated, even 2001 Kubrick’s masterpiece feels its age in parts, critics now give BladeRunner its 5 stars instead of 2, but it is more than that as previously mentioned it is already part of our life, it already surrounds us, we are now living through it and not just watching it, the visuals are now more art than just a backlot, and in others ways it now lives up to its original promise as a story.

Before his death in fact only weeks before, Phillip K Dick the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the original story the film was based on, watched a collection of images from Douglas Trumbull’s visual effects department, Said “I recognised it immediately! It was my own interior world, they have caught it perfectly.”, so like everything else before it BladeRunner finally had to finally come home.so from Dick’s novel,  Hampton Fancher’s first screenplay, David Peoples numerous rewrites, and Ridley Scott’s determination and four hour first edit, It was back to the notes and editing room.

BladeRunner : The Final Cut was released late 2007, the 25th anniversary of the original first showing will finally maybe just that – The Final Cut, and Ridley Scott goes on record to say so, as for the story it needs to be, however this film has defied logic before so anything again is possible, but again it is the technology that changes the boundries and changes the context, even when watching it again on the large cinema screen still can make it not work correctly, film is projected, blacks are still bright, but watch The Final Cut on a excellent large Plasma screen in dim lighting and you can now see the change of the feel and the emotion of the piece, blacks are black, very black and reflections are sharp and defined, parts once lost to VHS blur reappear in all their glory, thousands of sharp straight lines of neon and layers of images, still the film anywhere and it looks like a perfect photographers dream, your head spins around looking at all the detail, and I haven’t even seen the HD version yet, You get pulled deep into this world now like never before, the story also flows, I won’t say what has been added or taken out, I don’t care and someone else out there will no doubt spend two weeks of their simple life going frame by frame to find what has again been changed, but it does work, sit back and watch and you feel its right, the flashbacks are in context, you go on Deckard’s detective journey with him, his relationship with Racheal, Batty’s power and theatrical desire to live and die, the threads of the main and side story coming together, all the little nitty shitty cost cutting, we have run out of time and money foibles have completely vanished,  Its not the most brilliant movie ever ever made, but it must be considered a masterpiece of it genre, and its place secure in the history of its medium, I think now even Mr Harrison Ford forgives Mr Scott for all the shit he went through, even though Mr Scott was correct in saying he didn’t need to baby sit his star because Harrison was one the best actors at his craft at that time, and the performance and behind the scenes out-takes proves that point, and understands that away from the almost cartoonie Hans Solo and Indiana Jones here was one of the best actors of a generation.
Has Ridley Scott ever scaled the heights of BladeRunner since, Gladiator was another artistic peak but Kingdom of Heaven fell short, as casting a weak Orlando Bloom was a mistake, But their is as with BladeRunner a new (again) four hour DVD version (not seen as yet) But I hear it fixes a lot of the original problems (sound familiar!), so again this new media of changes after the work is completed, changes everything.
So nothing from now on is finished, every film can keep evolving and changed even old adverts of companies now dead could be changed, enhanced again and again just like this film that already has defied everything to survive, so yet even another new BladeRunner version might come, maybe in 2019, and in a another new visual media, I can’t wait.

Postscript:
To answer the question most asked, is Deckard a Replicant?, well Mr Scott says so, and a very quick scene now inserted in the film implies he is, however my question is, If Batty had a four year lifespan and Rachael is the lastest model, then where does that put Deckard?, he is definitly older than Batty and as you know Captain Bryant says “I need the old BladeRunner again!”, so the question comes back again, In this version almost all attempts are made in making Deckard a Replicant as with the famous Unicorn sequence that states are his memories, so will Rachael soon be alone again soon when his shorter lifespan ends, as Gaff says “It’s too bad she won’t live; but then again, who does?”, maybe Gaff just got the wrong replicant?.