Blade Runner 2049 : It's No Game

It's over a week since I saw BLADE RUNNER 2049 a second time and I'm still thinking about it a lot. The dam has just burst. Prepare for random thoughts.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 is not only better than the original, by having characters you actually care about, it makes the plot of the original movie 20% better by giving that slightly abusive Deckard and Rachel relationship some consequence.

Apparently BLADE RUNNER 2049 has been a box office flop. I'm neither shocked or disappointed by this because it means I'm not going to hear theories on it from some empty headed trendy who only went to see it for Ryan Gosling.

Gosling is brilliant, better than Ford in both movies (and Ford is pretty good in this one). Gosling seems to be playing a ghost version of his doomed character from DRIVE and his work with  Ana de Armas as Joi makes for a level of hearbreak we never get anywhere near in the cold, sometimes brutal original movie.

Officer K/Joe and Joi are just about the best screen couple I've seen all year. It's horrifying when Joi is destroyed and absolutely devastating when 'Joe' finds (or is reminded) that Joi is essentially a very smart App, and the important bond he has established with this 'woman' actually meant absolutely nothing beyond his own mind.
It was a nightmarishly relatable moment.

According to Slash Film podcast review, the hero of Kafka's The Trial is 'Joseph K', who thinks he is the center of a huge conspiracy, only to find is a minor functionary. Gosling's Officer K/Joe is an instant classic movie character, tragic on several levels. The narrative's flirtation with the plot twist from ANGEL HEART is all the more tragic and pathetic when it is revealed to be a cruel tease.

Wow that was a lot of spoilers wasn't it!
Tough. You should have paid to see the movie instead of waiting to see such a breathtaking cinematic experience on your shit television.

The debate used to be
IS DECKARD A REPLICANT?
It's now
CAN DECKARD'S MANGY DOG TALK?

This movie is worth seeing more than once. After the three way love scene, between K, Joi and Marriett you hear Mackenzie Davis (also great as a kind of Pris 2.0) say to Joi
"There is not as much to you as you think" .
The first time you hear it this is needlessly cruel.
The second time, when you know what Joi is, this is cruel, accurate and heartbreaking all round.

Apparently this and other scenes are getting flak for their portrayal of women. I'm not going to defend this movie from feminists because most feminists I know have a brain and won't be offended by this movie. Like the similarly devastating and disturbing HER, there is nothing in this movie that makes me think
"wow losing my emotions to an App controlled by a immortal, omnipotent, all powerful faceless corporate is a great alternative to some sweet but dozy bird I might find on Tinder".

Denis Villeneuve has instantly become, like David Fincher and Christopher Nolan, someone whose entire back catalogue now needs to be watched. I wasn't knocked out by ARRIVAL (or INTERSTELLAR for that matter) but SICARIO is a classic. I hope he's not bitten off more than he can chew with D U N E.

Another great scene, another great actress, Sylvia Hoeks as Luv, who isn't really a powerless male fantasy figure

Standing in for Bowie (see below), Jared Leto is actually great as Wallace, 2049's frustrated Tyrell. The Slash Film podcast  summed up Wallace perfectly;
"He's the CEO of Samsung coming on stage decades after Steve Jobs (Tyrell) has left and taken all his secrets with him".

As we know Denis Villeneuve is a D U N E fanatic did he cast Jared Leto because he wants Jared Leto as Leto?

I have had issues with the BLADE RUNNER since it was the crushing disappointment of 1982 but the more I see it on better quality medium the better it gets. The first time I saw the BLADE RUNNER FINAL CUT at my friend Rob's house in dazzling HD I had a genuine Philip K. Dick moment when I thought the characters in the Philip K. Dick movie looked more real than we did in the reality that was watching it.

DANGEROUS DAYS BLADE RUNNER DOC 1 The brutal love scene in original movie was more originally more tender according to Sean Young but it was cut to look like abuse. If they were "made to be together" as Sean Young says in one cut scene, this makes Tyrell even more of a cruel god.

The more I watch the original the more intriguing Edward James Olmos's character Gaff becomes as he is obviously some form of handler for Deckard, whatever he is.

For all my re-evaluation and late appreciation of BLADE RUNNER, if you want something genuinely Philip K. Dick from the 1980s, that also screams 1980s in all it's vulgar glory, Paul (STARSHIP TROOPERS) Verhoeven's TOTAL RECALL seems a little forgotten today.

C4's ELECTRIC DREAMS, a Philip K. Dick anthology show from the channel which originally brought you BLACK MIRROR. is worth a watch. A little patchy, the most mind bending thing I've seen it in so far is Benedict Wong's spot on Mancunian accent in the episode"Impossible Planet"
Benedict Wong is also in one of the BLADE RUNNER 2049 short films  (BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "2036: Nexus Dawn") so you know he's a Philip K. Dick fan.
EDIT: Benedict Wong has a spot on Mancunian accent because Benedict Wong was born in Eccles, Greater Manchester :-)

One of the other shorts, BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "Black Out 2022", should be a full length movie and I would guess will be one before long.

DANGEROUS DAYS BLADE RUNNER DOC 2 While doing painstaking model work to ensure that every microscopic light source in the cityscape for the opening of the orginal movie looks real,
Douglas Trumble's exhausted Special Effects crew gets a trip to director Ridley Scott's breathtaking actual sets. They are gobsmacked to find beautiful interiors like Tyrell's office with light dancing around like Midsummer Nights Dream from no realistic sources whatsover.
Later, graffiti on piece of  tiny modelwork is shown to say "RIDLEY IS GOD"

We speculated in the 80s that the ultimate cyperpunk accessory would be cybernetic eyes what would show you the world as if shot by the Scott Brothers. (You could have a dropdown that could switch between Tony and Ridley).

Anyway.. back to BLADE RUNNER 2049

When listened to on headphones. soundtrack to BLADE RUNNER 2049 by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch, just like the astonishing Vangelis soundtrack for the original, will put you right back in the movie, even when you are actually just queuing up for a flu jab at Boots.

Jóhann Jóhannsson was the original choice for the BLADE RUNNER 2049 soundtrack before Denis Villeneuve decided quite late on to go with Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch. (If we we got is a last minute rush job it is all the more impressive). Jóhann Jóhannsson is a brilliant modern composer  which means eventually we will get a probably excellent variant soundtrack for this movie before long.

The soundtrack for the BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "Black Out 2022" short, by Flying Lotus is also good and should be expanded to album length. (While we wait for the live action movie of these events).

Bowie was the original choice to to be Wallace because Denis Villeneuve and Ridley Scott considered him to be hugely influential on Blade Runner and cyberpunk aesthetic.
As I've mentioned elsewhere cyberpunk was coined as a term AFTER Blade Runner to describe the look and concept. So what Bowie music inspired Blade Runner?
Diamond Dogs? - no, too 1970s, too glam
Outside? - no, a response, a reflection back from the 1990s

You'd need something from the big technological/style bang of the 1980s as it sloughed off the 1970s, something like this.

This is the sound of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and eventually literary cyberpunk being born screaming into life


**UPDATE** Now I come to think of it Bowie's 'Heroes' and 'Low' are much more influential on both actual movie soundtracks.


One final note.
When Denis Villeneuve needed a location to show a defunct dying Las Vegas he chose a Stock Exchange (in Budapest). I wonder how ironic and prophetic that will seem when we finally get to see BLADE RUNNER 2075?

The Prisoner in Los Angeles, Joss Whedon's Dollhouse reassessed

<ok - i'm in a pub, The Hemingford Arms, drinking because my central heating has broken down and even though it is the first day of spring it it is still -0 outside. I'm going through notes on my phone and found this from some time ago. Allusions to The Prisoner do seem a bit of stretch from this distance but maybe if I watched it again.. >

I'm an enormous fan of Buffy and bought about four copies of the Firefly boxed set for friends and family. It was fantastic to see Joss Whedon get all the credit deserves for writing and directing the Avengers. So ..here is a surprise ... Whedon's forgotten tv series, Dollhouse, written off as a creepy perv fest at the time of broadcast , is arguably the best thing he's ever done. I've just finished watching S1.  Plot is a very dark take on Charlie's Angels and Joe 90 but much better than that sounds.. Imagine Charlie's Angels where Charlie is actually Dr Tyrell from Blade Runner.

Dolls, human hosts reprogrammed with other personalities by a shadowy organisation, are used to prolong the lives of the dead, to house the personalities of recalcitrant employees, to act as nannies that fully believe they are the mothers of children, and to reenact the lives of serial killers. Eliza Dushku, Faith, from Buffy, is the main character, Echo, a drug addled terrorist given a chance to wipe her record clean by donating her body to the Doll House for a set term.

It is probably some great allegory of actors and acting (and contracting?)  to be taken here but much like that tv classic the Prisoner it is a prism through which a lot can be seen.  Human identity and individualism is a central theme in The Prisoner and this is the best tv exploration of that theme I've seen since.

Like JW's other classic neglected show, Firefly, this is a tough hill to climb initially. It has typically awful opening titles, for a JW show, like a lurid trailer for a paedophile adventure show and  the first two or three episodes are a quite predictable modern take on Charlie's Angels.

It has 8 main characters only two of which are actually likeable. Two in particular , DeWitt and Topher, become more sympathetic but remain essentially hate-able (and eventually doomed). It's Dark. Like most Whedon world the forces of law and order are totally compromised and rarely interfere in the goings on. There is no Scooby Gang or Firefly crew. The Actives are confessed criminals turned into abused innocents. The childlike love affair  between Sierra and Victor is treated with almost detached cruelty. 

The motives of the FBI agent investigating the Doll House are questionable. He knowingly had sex with one of the Actives as a Doll, and appears throughout to be fixated on Echo. And perhaps Doll House lost a lot in its setting. Los Angeles as "the city of Devils" was mined out as a concept in Whedon's Buffy spin-off Angel. Dollhouse deserved a different canvas. It has a cold blooded cruelty worthy of David Cronenberg , it was probably filmed in Canada, why not set it in Montreal?

Like Firefly has one big set and makes the most of it and Whedons trusted rep company are joined by some of the acting talent from Battlestar Galactica. Eliza Dushku is just about good enough to carry off a role that should have made her a real star. It's an actors dream, playing multiple personalities and roles every episode. She is Exec producer on Dollhouse at a time when Whedon was still distrusted in the industry after the network murder of Firefly, so we have to give her credit for keeping the show on at all.

I'll be honest though, I still miss Faith.

<I watched series 2 eventually, very good but typically with JW a tragically rushed ending.. >


Sent from my iPhone

Finally cottoned onto Blade Runner...

I was a massive, MASSIVE Blade Runner fan.. in 1981.

When the film came out in 1982 it nearly ruined it for me.

I'd seen all the stills, been taken in by all the hype (this happens a lot) and read the classic novel on which it is based.

Seeing Blade Runner the film was THE disappointment of 1982. I hated the voice over and the way the hero gets his arse kicked all over the place. Hated the love scene, with one of the most beautiful women in the world at the time being knocked around and brutalised. I hated the end.

It was epic disappointment, like seeing both Matrix sequels at once. Like Highlander 2 without the cleansing feeling of justifiable vengeful anger. Like the second series of Space 1999 without the cushion of youthful innocence.

When rumours of the unicorn and the new ending to Blade Runner appeared in the 90s I didn't believe it. I thought the unicon was footage from Scott's LEGEND crow barred into the plot to make it more interesting in the same way that the outtakes from THE SHINING are used in the original happy ending.

(That SHINING/BLADE RUNNER story is quite amusing. Ridley Scott sees the preview audiences just don't understand the original version and decides on the voice over and happy ending himself. He sends some poor woman photographer up to Canada in a helicopter to shoot footage of mountains for two weeks and when they process the film it just appears full of mist. Scott happens to know Kubrick and knows that mad Stanley probably shot ten films worth of footage of mountains for the opening of THE SHINING. He contacts Kubrick who is childishly excited.. Kubrick has seen the incomprehensible Blade Runner work print and loves it!)

My re-acquaintance with Blade Runnere started when I stumbled across the new 3 disc Vangelis soundtrack first. It is an incredible set of music that like the film just increases in complexity the more you investigate. To be complete soundtrack of all versions it would not just include all the Vangelis music (when even now has not all been released) but the really quite good temporary music featured in the Workprint version of the  filmand the crazy orchestral version we had to put upwith for years from the New American Orchestra. The soundtrack seems to expand as more is brought into the light, just like the film.

So I found myself listening to the Vangelis in the car at night and thought I'd give the film another chance. I got myself the Blade Runner "Collectors Box" set for xmas.

To cut a long story short, (and the making of Blade Runner documentary : 'Dangerous Days' is longer than the film) I'm now completely sold on the mind bending Deckard is a replicant ending.. not so much for the pretentious unicorn stuff but for the other subtle and not so subtle hints now revealed.

Best of which is an unused version of the happy ending I hated in 1982. As Deckard and his pet replicant drive off into the sunset together, all full of madly inappropriate smiles, Sean Young looks at Harrsion Ford and ends the film with "I guess we were made for each other".
And suddenly the 'happy ending' has become the ending of 'Brazil'..

And even having seen it twice in the last week I need to see the film again.. if only for that great scene where Deckard is testing Rachel to see if she is a replicant as Tyrell looks on approvingly. Suddenly Tyrell is having one replicant the other to test both of them, testing his prototype replicant replicant hunter before he sends it out to take on the prodigal son Roy Batty, before Batty can get to him.

So the Deckard is a replicant stuff is a little odd when the interaction with the police is taken into consideration.... but then in Dicks novel Deckard at one point stumbles across an entire police
precinct of replicants pretending to be police...

Great Rachel art was found here

Reality : "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"

Philip K Dick - Reality - Ilfracombe sea front

Thanks to This Is North Devon

Up here in Su's sunny attic room I have the GQ magazine Bond* special to cheer me up in my illness (terrible cold, missed work). Even when  listening to the new Muse album in the background GQ is 90% garbage ....but this one has a really great article on Philip K Dick by music critic Charles Shaar Murray. Very inspirational stuff.

Among the stuff in the article I didn't know:

• PKD was a classical music buff and actually wrote some music
• The schizophrenia in his later life he described to friends as the mind of an early Christian transported into his mind by a time travelling artificial intelligence
• Terry Gilliam said of him "For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplacating realities of the modern world remember: Philip K Dick got there first"
• The K in Phillip K stood for Kindred
• Dick himself described reality as "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"

It is vaguely dreamy here,contemplating the unlikely clear sky blue of reality through Su's velux windows (while overdosing on Lemsip), but when you are ill and on your own the only empty place you want to be in is your own place. After six weeks in London, I'm feeling a bit homesick. It's usually about this time that something happens in the sleepy perpetual twee of Englands Westcountry that makes you wonder what reality you are living in. Sometimes it's Great White Sharks being seen in the Bristol channel, sometimes it's the village you live in popping up in classic psychedelia.

After the incredible live Felix Baumgartner jump at the weekend we now have North Devon's follow up - Damien Hurst's 65 foot bronze statue of a woman with big boobies and her guts hanging out is lifted into place into place in sleepy Ilfracombe harbour. It's being shown live on the BBC as I type this.

What music could be appropriate? Also Sprach Zarathustra? Fanfare For The Common Man? Space Dementia? Drink Up Thy Zider?

Thanks to Belfast Telegraph

The boobie statue is called Verity* apparently and it'll be there for 20 years at least. Full report with my own pics and hopefully some gurning locals when I get back.

Reaction in the London press is not so positive

"Damien Hirst's new statue is a dangerous monstrosity  The giant bronze woman holding up a sword in Devon not only resembles the art of totalitarian dictators, it is helping Hirst destroy British art"

Of course it's hideous and I hope it's dangerous. Those are two words sadly lacking from the endless open air retirement home created West of Bristol. I live nearby (most of the time) and Ilfracombe needs all the attention it can get from people who are still interested in this reality (not the next one). Real Exmoor locals, who are a lot more lively and iconoclastic than you might think, will be loving it and good luck to them.

As for reality, Ilfracombe was the Monaco of the Victorian age, and has been sadly neglected for too long (I've seen more lust for life in Whitby). I expect Verity will at least make Ilfracombes next subjective 20 years move faster than the previous 50. Disbelieve her all you want, but she isn't going away.

*It's just occurred to me that VERITY is the name of the Madonna's character in the Bond film Die Another Day.. so perhaps this is all very strange Bond film hype

Don't delay gratification - William Gibson's Zero History

I've just finished Zero History, the final novel in William Gibson's espionage marketing trilogy. 

I delayed finishing to savour Zero History and I regret it. I should have powered on through, forgotten about the rest of my life and stayed in-mode, with my prose perception tuned to William Gibson's dissonant portrayal of reality and characters. As it was, I got distracted. Lost my edge.
The tight surreal descriptions of surroundings that make for such great poetry-punk in describing Gibson's contemporary 21st century really get frustrating when describing action scenes. When Zero History briefly turns into cyber-SNATCH at the end the need to read every paragraph twice stops being clever and quickly gets irritating.

The re-introduction of great characters from Pattern Recognition is a let down and although the characters from the near impenetrable Spooky Country are much better shown here they are continually undercut by a new boyfriend or new henchman appearing from nowhere to save the day.

As with the other Hubertus Bigend novels, Gibson's need to keep introducing minor characters is a real irritation, especially at the expense of great characters you would rather hear a lot more of. The Molly Millions of Zero History is Heidi Hyde, the drummer for Hollis Henry's defunct band, Curfew, who is consistently funny throughout and makes you wish the novel had been less about fashion espionage and more about eccentric ex-rock band members adjusting to life in normal society.

The more the arcane characters of Blue Ant (the accidental SPECTRE of ad agencies) and Curfew recede into the background and the more convenient romantic foils feature (I did not believe in Gareth or Fiona for a second) the less interesting Zero History became. The director or Blue Ant lets his daughter have a career as a dispatch rider in London? I'm not sure I would have believed in something like that in Neuromancer let alone the supposed reality of contemporary London.

Still, aside from the characters and the action which are problems common to the rest of the Bigend trilogy, Zero History has moments of real dazzling imagination and poetry. Reading most of Zero History was a real pleasure. More and more with Gibson the actual plot and characters are receding into the background behind the poetry of mundane detail. Less and less influenced by Philip K Dick and Ridley Scott, he's becoming more like Brett Easton Ellis and Ballard. 
Cabinet, is virtually a character in itself

I particularly like this, which fits easily with my experience of life:
Milgrim, speaks of Bigend's personal philosophy

He believed that stasis is the real enemy.. Stability is the beginning of the end.. we only walk by continuing to fall forward

It also gives us a fresh look at London from a foriegn perspective. WG is obviously obsessed with the retro-fit in London and Paris, and has never hesitated to tell us the the nationality of every person we meet - still influenced by the multinational Los Angeles bequeathed by Ridely Scott and Sid Meade in Blade Runner.
Gibson created another world out of that, The Sprawl, and the similarly other worldly and deliberately obtuse nature of his prose is hard but rewarding work to adjust to. It is just possible that had I not deplayed my pleasure to savour the book and stayed in mental WG mode to read straight through to the end I might have enjoyed a lot more.

In one chapter he makes more of an Ekranoplan than Sebastain Faulkes does throughout the entire of Devil May Care, which now I think about it was the last thing I finished. Maybe I should stick to Ekranoplan related fiction.
So, despite delay, I was feeling pretty good about actually finishing a book in pretty good time. 400 pages in two weeks. 

Then I hear, back in Parracombe, Peter Goode has finished the new Neil Stephenson ('his 'pattern recognition'), REAMDE, 1040 pages, in two days. "Very good, bit too much gun touting for my personal taste, but very readable, great characters I think and fun plotlines."
MF

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• Portions of this blogpost previously appeared in a drunken rant 24/3/12
• The automating line spacing and formatting in Blogger continue to be a mystery to me. If I formatted documents like this as part of my job I would be taken out and shot.