Category: {film}

Film

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.

The Disasters of War

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7 ¶ And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Revelations 6

There are horror films, there are films about the horror of war, and then there is Elem Klimov’s Come and See (Idi i Smotri). Klimov made the film in 1985 from a screenplay by Ales Adamovich based on that writer’s experiences as a young Russian partisan fighting the Nazis during the Second World War. This biographical quality may be what gives the film its incredible immediacy and authority (Klimov also suffered as a child during the war) even though its power is obviously a product of Klimov’s skills as a director.

Continue reading “The Disasters of War”

Pestival

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Mark Pilkington is organising this insect arts festival. Looks great, I’ll have to try and get down to see it. Nice that Phase IV, Saul Bass‘s strange and rather fascinating feature film, is one of the highlights.

27 May – 4 June 2006
London Wetland Centre

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” E.O Wilson

The First International Arts Pestival is dedicated to raising awareness of the integral role insects play in the global ecosystem and in all animal societies. Many of those insects are increasingly endangered through human action.

Through appreciation of “insects in art and the art of being an insect”, the Pestival aims to create positive PR for this 400-million-year-old, highly evolved taxon that has had thousands of years of bad press.

We are building up a fantastic programme of talks, demonstrations, workshops, art installations, films, music and performance, fusing art and science to reach out to a broad, interested audience of homo sapien adults and children.

Bridget Nicholls & Mark Pilkington

On behalf of the International Arts Pestival
Patron: Zac Goldsmith

Download the Pestival Programme as a PDF (455k)

Download the Press Pack (3.7MB zip)