Saturday, December 29, 2007
posted 6:06pm
"Blade Runner: The Ultimate Edition"
You know they just don’t make movies like this anymore. Large sets packed with extras,
detailed-and-extensive models instead of computer graphics, art direction filling the
movie, packing it with details that brings the very city to life. Blade Runner now is
in its fifth installment, released in a package that comes with everything a fan could
hope for. For Christmas, Ridley Scott has made available the five-disc ultimate
collector’s edition. Not only releasing all five versions of the movie, The Final Cut,
Director’s Cut, U.S. Theatrical Cut, International Theatrical Cut,
and the Home Video Workprint, but also including Dangerous Days: Making of Blade Runner,
Promotional Featurettes, Trailers, Deleted and Alternate Scenes, and a lot of short vignettes.
This all comes in a small plastic case with an Art Folio, Miniature Unicorn, Spinner Vehicle
Replica, and a Motion Film Clip similar to the visual effects of Pogs.
Ridley Scott says in the introduction to The Final Cut that this is his favorite version of the film. While the audio track of the movie has been cleaned up quite a bit along with the film restoration that has been done, there’s not a whole lot of difference between this cut of the film and the Director’s Cut. My personal favorite is the original U.S. Theatrical Cut. I feel it has a harder edge and I like Harrison’s Voice Over, but I can also appreciate the more cinematic versions of the film like the Director’s Cut or The Final Cut. Also, three versions of the movie, U.S. Theatrical, International Theatrical, and the Director’s Cut, all come on the same disk. So the laser must be jumping around a bit to cut the different versions of the movie together. I didn’t notice the pause, but on some players it might show up.
There are also a lot of short vignettes on the Archive Disk, including a documentary about, and audio interview with, Phillip K. Dick, the writer of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” which is the book the movie was based upon. On top of that, the deleted and alternate scenes included within the Archive not only gives you outtakes which have never been seen before, but a lot more voice over from Harrison Ford that works in some parts and doesn’t in others.
In all, this is an amazing package, and a lot of work went into interviewing all the people associated with the movie in order to create a lot of the extra material. For any Blade Runner fan this package is a must, and I’m ecstatic that I got it for Christmas.
- D
Saturday, December 08, 2007
posted 10:27pm
"This Company Does It Right"
Well ever since Vista came out, some companies have been making money selling you updates
instead of patching their programs. Microsoft is famous for this, selling their update of
Office 2007 for $329.99. Now I'm not against innovation, but Microsoft has been screwing
us for years with 98, 98ME, 2000, and XP in 2001. Most systems last 4 to 6 years, and I
hope Vista stays around as long as XP did.
But I'm not here to cry about Microsoft, I want to talk about a company that has gotten it right. Propellerhead is a company out of Sweden making Reason 3.0, an amazing sequencing program, but like most things on Vista it needs some sort of update in order to run on the operating system. Unlike Microsoft, Propellerhead is giving their updates away for free in the form of a few simple patches. God it feels great not to have to buy Reason 4.0 in order to get it to run under Vista, and I thank the guys at Propellerhead for solving my technical issue without charging me anything for it.
What an excellent company, Propellerhead Rocks! - D