Tag: film

Thoughts on the new Blade Runner 2049 trailer

Well, here it is!

Some initial thoughts:

  • There’s many echoes visually of the first Blade Runner. In this trailer, there is the close up of the eye and the fight that goes crashing through the wall. Then there’s the cars,  the cityscape and even the clothing that K (Ryan Gosling) wears resembles the first film.  (Also  the woman with K is wearing a transparent yellow raincoat similar to Zhora in the first Blade Runner. She seems to be a replicant.)
  • Other echoes are the scene where K is walking with someone past suspended bodies. It looks like Deckard entering the Tyrell Corporation in the first film.
  • Speaking of that scene, the suspended body that resembles Dave Bautista has a label of Nexus 08 prototype 01! So clearly the replicants have gotten better. The question is: how much better, and in which ways?
  • There seems to be a number of locations for the film besides Los Angeles. The one Bautista’s character is in looks like Russia. (Also, there is a date on the tree that is tied up: is it the incept date of the tree? Or some other significant date?)
  • Speaking of locations, where is Deckard living? It looks deserted, which makes me think it is on Earth. Also, there are Korean symbols on the building he is in.
  • The sequencing of that scene where K meets Deckard is interesting. It looks like K mets Deckard, who tries to escape to his car, which get blown up. In other scenes he is fleeing with his dog when K bursts through a wall and saves him. After which it seems like K asks him questions.
  • That K can burst through a marble wall makes me think he is a replicant.(Well that, and a number of other things)
  • There are two scenes with insects: there are slugs at Bautista’s place and a fly at Deckard’s that lands on K’s hand. Are they real, or replicants too? The fly could be a drone that would tell Deckard someone is coming.
  • There is a walled off city at the beginning of the clip. I wonder if that is breached somehow. It makes me think that that is what happens later when the water is flooding.

Lots to think about and get excited about too! Looking forward to more trailers soon! In the meantime, what follows is a collection of the previous trailers. Enjoy!

P.S. Oh, I missed this featurette before. Need to add it, too!

For Fans of Blade Runner and Typography

This article will surprise you if you are fan of Blade Runner: Blade Runner | Typeset In The Future. It speaks to a level of detail in the film that I hadn’t appreciated. Not just the typography, but a number of other aspects, too. I was surprised, since I had seen the film dozens of times and read countless articles on it.

Highly recommended for fans of type and especially fans of the film.

A good review of Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle. And a good critique of what works based on the Philip K. Dick get wrong.

That review,here, is worth reading for anyone watching or interesting in watching the Amazon Prime series.

Anyone interested in works based on the novels of Dick should focus on this key quote (I added the emphasis):

Pop culture has exalted many of Dick’s wilder stories and novels. Since the release of Blade Runner (1982, based on the short novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and Total Recall (1990, based on the story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”), his pet motifs of false realities and artificial identities have captivated filmmakers. …Along the way to becoming popcorn entertainments, Dick’s motifs have shed a lot of their existential baggage. Today, the revelation that capsizes everything a movie character once believed about himself and his world is just another mind-blowing plot twist. No sooner have we gasped Whoa! than the film has moved on to the next chase scene, martial-arts display, or explosion. Nobody sits around questioning their own reality or humanity the way Dick’s protagonists do. Those questions, however, were the whole point of Dick’s fiction

That’s a great critique of even the better works based on Dick, like Blade Runner. Whenever you see or plan to see a film or TV series based on one of his works, it’s better if you can read the novel first. Doing so will add much more complexity and richness to whatever you are about to see.

The modern history of comic based Hollywood movies is here

The modern history of comic based Hollywood movies is here (via VOX) and it’s great. It starts with this:

Though they both center on a certain caped crusader, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) and Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever (1995) couldn’t be more different. One is regarded as a cinematic treasure; the other is viewed as beautiful, colorful garbage

It goes on to review how films centred on superheroes have been progressing since Tim Burton’s Batman in the beginning of the 1980s and reviews films all the way to 2015. There’s been significant change in the genre in that 35 years, as you might expect. And it looks like it is about to undergo another change.

Like alot of genre films, it’s can be easy to dismiss genre films like this as something outside the mainstream of cinema and not worth discussing. My own view is that comic book films are films first and foremost, and when good directors like Nolan and Burton direct them, you end up with really good films. This has always been true for genre films, not just super hero movies.

For fans of such films, or film in general, it’s well worth a read and a consideration.

How to look better for your webcam

Sure, you can get a better webcam. But if you spend any time on web conference calls, it pays to read this, too: Strobist: How to Improve Your Cheapo Webcam’s Picture Quality. For example, following the article, the image that the webcam produces goes from the bluish one on the right to the better looking one on the right.

Well worth reading.