Love Blade Runner? I do. Yet I love it for different reasons as the years go by. At first I dug the action. Then I fell for the is-he-or-isn't-he-a-replicant puzzle. Now I dig the movie's depiction of Los Angeles 2019 that is almost retro but still surprisingly futuristic.
That's why I'm so tickled to have come across this short video by Douglas Trumbull, Blade Runner's visual designer. In it, he describes the clever use of old school miniaturization to produce a vision of a hellish city that still haunts me.
Check it out: I'll bet you had no idea just how complex that opening scene was... Hades Landscape
By the way, I'm teaching a graduate course this spring in which I plan to spend a week exploring some scholarly and critical readings of Blade Runner. I may kvetch about my life now and again, but you'll never hear me complain about this job!
Learn More: Future Cities - my brief summary of A. O. Scott's essay about film directors' efforts to depict dystopian cities of tomorrow as warnings about the world of today.
(Eye image borrowed from Wayne Lorenzo Titus' blog-post, The details: Blade Runner's Postmodern Legacy)
2 comments:
Speaking of Blade Runner...Over the weekend, I saw Fritz Lang's Metropolis (the newly restored version). I believe it may be out on DVD finally. Seeing it really reminds one how much Blade Runner and so many other films/filmmakers were influenced by it.
We didn't hear the original score, however. The Alloy Orchestra wrote their own score and played it live during the film. Truly wonderful!
So, so very cool. I've heard about that restored version of Metropolis, and I hope to see it soon!
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