Blade Runner, released in 1982, is one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made and certainly an iconic 80s flick. Shortly after the film was released "The Blade Runner Sketchbook" - which compiled concept art for the film from Syd Mead, Mentor Huebner, Ridley Scott himself and others - was published as a companion piece, though it's print run wasn't remarkable and it disappeared from bookstore shelves pretty quickly.

Now, however, through the miracle of modern technology the entire book is available to view online; for free! Anyone who's a fan of this classic film will want to see this. The reproduction quality is generally excellent and the presentation first rate. If you love 80s films and Blade Runner in particular you owe it to yourself to take a look.

Here are a couple of samples from the online edition with a link after the pics to the full version.



View the entire online edition here.

Jonathan Frakes did a lot of acting before Star Trek came calling. He studied Theater Arts in college, played off Broadway in New York in the 70s and appeared fairly regularly on the tube during the late 70s and 80s in series as diverse as The Waltons, The Dukes of Hazzard and Matlock. But it wasn't until he landed the role of Lt Cmdr William T. Riker on Star Trek The Next Generation that he became a household name.

Though playing in the shadow of the incomperable Patrick Stewart might have intimidated other actors Frakes managed to carve out his own territory in the Star Trek universe. He remains the only TNG actor to also appear in episodes of Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise and he developed a reputation for being a dependable director as well, taking the helm for many of TNGs most popular episodes (including my personal favorite "Cause and Effect").

So what is Will Riker up to these days?

After directing two TNG movies Frakes moved back to tv-land where he's been the host of numerous series, both popular and obscure, dealing with outer space and paranormal themes; most recently hosting History Channel's "That's Impossible". Frakes is married to actress Genie Francis and lives in California with her and their two children aged 17 and 14. He's also popular on the Star Trek convention circuit and, oh yes, he really does play the trombone.

The redoubtable Commander Riker (left) and Jonathan Frakes at a 2009 Star Trek convention (right)

James Cameron was sick. He was lying in his hotel bed in Rome during the filming of Piranha II when he had a fever induced nightmare about a powerful humanoid robot skeleton emerging ominously from the detritus of an enormous explosion. He got up and sketched out what he'd imagined and went back to sleep. Later, after he'd been dropped from Piranha II and was back in California he wrote out the draft of a story based on his fever dream image and "The Terminator" was born. Raw, crisp and with a kinetic energy Cameron would perfect several years later with "Aliens" The Terminator starts with a bang and doesn't let up.

The machine overlords of the year 2029 are tired of fighting the pesky human resistance and come up with a plan to circumvent history. They send a human looking robotic killing machine (a terminator) back through time to kill the mother of the resistance leader; thereby preventing his birth and saving them a huge hassle. Arnold Schwarzenegger's terminator arrives in the Los Angeles of 1984 and quickly gets to work, murdering a couple of SoCal punks for their clothes (if you blink you'll miss a young Bill Paxton in this scene) and discovering via the phone book all the women in LA who share the name of his target: Sarah Conner. Shortly afterward Michael Biehn's Reese arrives via the same time displacement equipment the terminator used. His mission: to prevent the terminator from killing Sarah Conner. Given that, in Reese's own words, the terminator "can't be bargained with... can't be reasoned with... doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear (and) absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!" and is virtually indestructible on top of all that it's fair to say that Reese has his work cut out for him.

The Terminator cuts a swath of destruction across LA in his quest to find and kill his target with Reese and Sarah Conner barely a step ahead of him (Cameron's use of chase scenes as platforms for exposition makes it seem as though the film simply never takes a breath). Sarah's initial reluctance to believe anything Reese is telling her gets blown away when the terminator tracks her down to a police station, drives a car through the front doors (after Ahnuld utters what was to become his signature line; "I'll be back") and proceeds to spray wall to wall death and destruction upon the ineffective cops. After narrowly escaping Reese and Sarah find one night of peace together during which time John is conceived but they're soon tracked down again and the chase resumes. After fleeing back toward the city the terminator chases them down and there's the climactic encounter in a factory.

In my opinion the plot wasn't what made this work so successful as a motion picture, though it is a strong script. So what was? Well, to begin with the film looks cool. Cameron creates a Los Angeles that could be the precursor to the LA in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", but more fundamental to the films success is the blissful lack of post-modern irony. Reese is not an anti-hero, he's an old-fashioned hero ready to give his life for the greater good. Schwarznegger's terminator has absolutely no redeeming value or sympathy-evoking root causes for his behavior. He wasn't a good kid who's gone bad. He's death on two feet. He is the void. His job is to kill you, period. In a world increasingly overrun by moral relativity Cameron's simple good vs evil paradigm was refreshing and easy for average movie goers to get their head around. There were no inconvenient pangs of guilt clanging around in the subconscious mitigating your enjoyment of seeing the villian get his comeuppance.

Casting Schwarznegger against type was also a stroke of genius. Ahnuld's agent was against him taking the role, concerned it would ruin his public image, but Cameron knew better. He knew that Schwarznegger's steely tuetonic presence was perfect for the terminator and he was right. Given virtually no lines to screw up Ahnuld was able to make the role his own and his career took off like a rocket after this film. Michael Beihn, Lance Henricksen, Earl Boen and Paul Winfield deliver strong supporting performances with the only weak link in the entire production chain being the in over her head Linda Hamilton. The woman simply can't act. There isn't a moment in the entire film that I believe she is Sarah Conner. When compared to Sigourney Weaver's iconic performance in Cameron's 1986 masterpiece "Aliens" Hamilton's performance here is, frankly, embarrassing (as was her work in T2). That said, the special effects were also first rate for their day and stand as a testament to how well, even at this early point in his career, Cameron understood the craft of film making.

Put all those elements together: compelling concept, easy to understand good vs bad moral structure, career making performances, strong script, deft direction and good special effects and you have a movie worth spending a couple of hours with. The Terminator was not in and of itself a game changer, but it certainly helped push contemporary cinema of the time toward the 21st century.

The Terminator 1984 - trailer

Blade Runner is a grown up film of the highest order. Bold, thoughtful and visionary are just a few of the adjectives that come to mind when I think of Ridley Scott's masterpiece. Every viewing of Blade Runner seems to reveal something new and unexpected to me. Even the parts I know down to the last detail still have the ability to wow. Done without any cgi it is a marvel of old-school filmmaking that created an entirely new genre of film: sci-fi noir.

Ridley Scott's vision of Los Angeles as 21st century dystopia has influenced the look of innumerable movies of the decades since from James Cameron's "Terminator" to Tim Burton's "Batman", to "The Crow" to "The Matrix" and many others and remains the high water mark of Scott's long career. "Alien" was brilliant sci-fi and brilliant horror, but with Blade Runner Scott ventured into the deeper waters of the soul and produced a movie that has only grown more relevant as the years have passed. No one wants to think the future is going to be worse than the present but who can deny that Blade Runner's vision of a world gone horribly wrong isn't starting to look more than a little prescient? Overpopulated urban megacities? Check. Environmental degradation? Check. The rise of Asia as a cultural force in the West? Check. Increasingly powerful multinational corporate heads isolated from interaction with and responsibility toward the populations they exploit? Check. Technology that has in many ways surpassed our ability to understand it? Check. And it's that last point that is the heart and soul of the narrative here.

What is life if not a soup of feelings flavored with memories?
With that in mind: what happens if you give robots feelings and false memories as a way to control them? And what happens if they become emotionally attached to those memories, wake up one day and decide they don't want to die? Who's to say who lives and who dies? Who's to say who's alive and who's not?

These are heavy philosophical issues and Scott doesn't do us the disservice of trying to answer them himself. Instead he presents them to us in the form of a filmic meditation and leaves us to decide. It's been a long time since I first saw this film and I'm still thinking it over.

Ridley Scott's film, like the original Philip K. Dick novel (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) is, at it's core, a cautionary tale. Until we've worked out some of the complex philosophical, legal, societal and mostly moral questions that are arising as our knowledge and accompanying technological prowess take us into undefined territory we should be careful: we might wind up face to face with ourselves one day with a gun in our hand.

Notes: The original studio cut is a waste of time with it's dreadful and distracting voiceover and it's clumsily manufactured 'happy ending'. If you want to see the film the way Scott intended either see the 1992 Directors Cut or the recently released "Final Cut" with it's remastered sound and digitally placed new footage that corrects a few of the original's notable gaffs.

Speaking of sound: the score by Vangelis is nothing less than sublime. The composer paints a parallel story full of wonder, pain, joy, dread and resignation that is never intrusive and absolutely indispensible.

Blade Runner - "The Final Cut" Trailer

With JJ Abrams (and Steven Spielberg's) homage to Spielberg's films of the late 70s and early 80s "Super 8" about to his theaters it seemed like a good time to say a few words about the phenomenon that was ET The Extra-Terrestrial.

To me ET represents the high water mark for Spielberg when it comes to his 'give them wonder and they will come' credo. They certainly did. ET was a box office phenomenon as well as a marketing phenomenon. Among its many records are: most non-consecutive weeks at #1 (16 weeks), consecutive weekends in the top 5 (27 weeks) and consecutive weekends in the top 10 (35 weeks!). It grossed $359 million in its initial domestic run and $435 million overall domestically (after 2 re-releases). That's $1.1 BILLION (domestic) in 2011 dollars (take THAT Avatar)! It stayed the #1 movie of all-time for 11 years until it was displaced in 1993 by another Spielberg beast, Jurrasic Park.

Spielberg's ode to the joys of innocence was a welcome relief from the recession of the early 80s and the relentlessly downbeat height-of-the-Cold-War nightly news. It came and (eventually) went in theaters but stayed in the hearts and minds of those of us who were kids back then (or like my mom, kid's at heart) for many years to come.

Trailer for the 20th anniversary edition:

Hard to know what to say about Brazil, Terry Gilliam's homage to George Orwell, except that I never seem to get enough of it. Though it seems "futuristic" Gilliam intended it to be contemporary. He called it "1984 for the year 1984" and it doesn't take long to figure out what he means. From the almost casual acceptance of random bombings to the loss of personal liberty there isn't much in this black comedy that was unfamiliar to audiences then or now. It's not important what city the story is based in just as it's not important exactly what the date is (for the record it's 'Somewhere in the 20th century, 8:49 p.m. Wednesday'). What is important is Gilliam's razor sharp critique of a world gone mad: where fathers take a break from torturing suspected "terrorists" to play with the kids and bureaucrats get offended when a widow won't accept a check in lieu of her missing husband, who was abducted and murdered by the police due to a paperwork mixup. Jonathan Pryce's Sam Lowry, whom the film revolves around, doesn't seem to get it. Nor does he really care to. He just wants to be left alone with his fantasies and that's the problem. Citizens, Gilliam seems to be saying, have turned to fantasy to escape the increasingly brutal reality of modern life to such a degree that they've forfeited their share of the societal franchise, essentially leaving barbarians in business suits in charge. God help us all.

The film could also be taken as Gilliam's personal critique of the Hollywood studio system. With the Hollywood execs represented by the faceless bureaucrats and artists like Gilliam represented by the dreamer, Sam Lowry. Such a reading is buttressed by facts of the films making as well as the protracted battle Gilliam engaged in with Universal to get his finished movie released. Universal, believing that Gilliam's original bleak ending would be a turn-off to American audiences, sat on the film. With the stalemate drawing on and no release date in sight Gilliam finally went around the back of the studio and secretly screened the film to critics. As a result - before ever selling a single ticket to the movie going public - the film was declared "Best Picture" of 1985 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Upon learning of this award Universal finally relented and released the film.

The cast is stellar: Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Peter Vaughan and Jim Broadbeant are joined by the aforementioned Jonathan Pryce in the lead role and Robert DeNiro, making one of the few essentially cameo appearances of his career as freelance duct uber-repairman Harry Tuttle.

I recommend avoiding the "love conquers all" studio bs version at all cost. Go with the 142 minute "directors cut" or the 132 minute European theatrical version of the film.

Brazil: Trailer




Reviews of "Brazil"

George Lucas actually developed the idea for Raiders of the Lost Ark before Star Wars. He wound up shelving it though so that he could work on his little outer space adventure instead. When that became a phenomenon Lucas had enormous clout in Hollywood and was able to cut a sweet deal with Paramount for Raiders that gave him something like 40% ownership of the film and a hefty percentage of the profits.

He was also able to get his buddy Steven Spielberg to direct, something that was key to the films ultimate success. Lucas wanted to call his character "Indiana Smith" and it was Spielberg who told him the name didn't work. Lucas then suggested "Jones" and the rest is history. Released in June 1981 it became the highest grossing film of that year and, when adjusted for inflation, is still one of the highest grossing films of all time.

Several actors tried out for the lead role. Spielberg wanted Harrison Ford but George Lucas didn't want Ford's name to become linked too closely with his own. Subsequently, Tom Sellek was offered the role but was unable to take it due to scheduling conflicts with "Magnum P.I.". Jeff Bridges also reportedly turned the role down. With just three weeks to go before shooting was to start Steven Spielberg finally convinced Lucas to give the role to Ford.

It seems crazy now to think of anyone else playing Indiana Jones. Ford seems to have been born for it. It's a tribute to him that he's probably just as well known now for playing Indiana Jones as he is for playing Han Solo.

Watch the original trailer here.