Wake Up, Time to Die…..
Good to see this up on Google Video, I’m sure it will be included on the mouth-watering 25th Anniversary Blade Runner Ultimate Super Ultra DVD package that is expected next year.
It remains one of my favourite films of all time because of its ideas, visual spectacle and unique vision which was obviously ground breaking for the early 1980’s. I recall an interview with godlike genius (TM) William Gibson who was finishing off ‘Neuromancer’ when he saw it at a late night screening in Toronto - as he left the cinema he was simultaneously elated and depressed as the film had got the jump on many of the near future themes and dystopian concepts he had conjured up for his classic novel.
Another factor in it’s high ranking on the Minty table of film excellence is that I saw it on bootleg video at the tender age of about 12 back in the pre DVD days when it was rare to be able to watch a film repeatedly and thus absorb it’s numerous layers. I vividly remember bunking off school and getting my fellow partners in crime to watch it round my house (circa 198 
which certainly beat a double maths session. Ah, happy days…..
Whatever happened to Sean Young eh? Anyway, back on subject - Like many other impressionable youths, BR kindled a serious interest in film for me as I avidly devoured all the articles and reviews I could find on it - and of course it ultimately lead me to PKD’s book (a quite different beast) and to many of his other novels and short stories. ‘Methuseleh Syndrome’? ‘Accelerated decrepitude’? - these were intriguing subjects for my puny young mind.
I plan to go to LA next year and an essential activity will be to visit some of the film’s locations such as the Bradbury Building and the 2nd Street Tunnel which keen cineaste’s will also know from other classics such as ‘Heat‘ and ‘Repo Man‘.
Two final points, like another poster on the superb Metafilter am I the only person who occasionally mutters to himself ‘Home again, home again, clickity click - good evening JF’ when they put the key in the door after a particularly stressful day at the office? And who can give me two connections between BR and The Shining - not that difficult (especially as one is in the Kermode documentary) but I always find it a good barometer of an acquaintance’s film knowledge. Jeez, sometimes I can be a annoying twat…..
Dude that BR docu was awsome!
The footage of the mountain roads at the beginning of ‘The Shining’ and at the end of ‘Blade Runner’ are the same.
As for Sean Young I remember her getting shagged in the back of a limo by Kevin Coster in ‘No Way Out’ but not much since then apart from ‘Ace Ventura Pet Detective’.