Category: {art}

Art

Blade Runner DVD

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Blade Runner concept painting by the great Syd Mead.

Several reliable news sources are reporting that Blade Runner is to finally receive a decent DVD release.

In September of 2006, Warner Home Video will release a restored and remastered version of the Blade Runner 1992 Director’s Cut for a special four month limited release, in anticipation of a series of exciting and unprecedented releases of the film in theaters and on DVD.

Following a four month run of the remastered Blade Runner DVD, this disc will be placed on moratorium, by WHV. In 2007, Warner will follow with a limited theatrical run of Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which is being touted as Ridley Scott’s definitive version. Subsequently, there will be a multi-disc Special Edition DVD release which will contain three alternate versions of the film: the original U.S. theatrical cut, the expanded international theatrical cut and the 1992 director’s cut. “Ample, groundbreaking bonus features will also be included,” according to the WHV press release.

Blade Runner has been on DVD already in a very shoddy edition that’s now happily deleted, a rush release from the early days of DVD. Most news reports don’t seem to mention that the re-issue of the film was held up by various legal wrangles; the Blade Runner fan site, BRmovie.com, details the whole sorry tale. Here’s hoping Ridley’s masterpiece will be given the same treatment as the excellent (if unfortunately named) Alien Quadrilogy which had great transfers of the films and an insane amount of extras.

Frémiet’s Lizard

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Emmanuel Frémiet (1824–1910) is chiefly known for his rather prosaic sculptures of animals, some of which are still sold in reproduction today. He also produced a notorious piece in 1887 entitled Gorilla Carrying off a Woman, a precursor of King Kong and all the other rampaging apes of later pulp fiction.

His Lizard ceramic (also 1887) is untypical which is a shame, I’d liked to have seen more in this style. It reminds me of the similarly stylised winged lion on the wonderful cover of Wolf City by Amon Düül II.

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