Blade Runner recently won a prize for the best science fiction film ever. I have yet to buy the DVD but hope to. I'm tired of borrowing my brother-in-law's VHS version. I gave it to him for Christmas one year! Why doesn't Scott stick to that genre. He is a genius at it.
Frank
BTW, do you know the famous UCLA film festival screening of "Blade Runner"? You probably do. But here's the story as I heard it from the horse's mouth while studying at the AFI:
In the early '90s, during one of the UCLA sponsored film fests at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, they had a screening of "Blade Runner." And filmmaking history happened that night. You see, the original release of "Blade Runner" was not the director's version. The studio forced Ridley Scott to put in that god-awful voice over and that stupid ambiguous "happy ending." Needless to say, everyone hated it. The voice over was so stupid that Harrison Ford -- in an act of solidarity with the director -- read it completely emotionless and deliberately bad because he thought that when the studio idiots heard it they'd come to their senses and realize it was awful. Well, he overestimated the studio idiots' intelligence. The voice over stayed, and the film as it was originally released was dissavowed by the author of the book and by the director and actors, etc. Well, fast forward to the early '90s and the film fest at the Cinerama Dome. The Film Fest organizers contacted the studio's archive library to borrow a print of "Blade Runner". So the studio librarian goes digging in the archive for the reels of "Blade Runner," finds a bunch of reels that say "Blade Runner," and he sends it over to the folks at the UCLA film fest. And they screen it that night at the Cinerama Dome. About 15 minutes into the film, everyone realizes that this isn't the same movie they remembered seeing in the theaters in 1982. This is actually better. There are more scenes! And better scenes! And there's no annoying voice over! It turns out that the studio librarian accidentally sent them a print of the director's original cut of the film -- the version before the studio hacks started cutting scenes and demanding a voice over. The word was out, and film students went on a jihad to get the studio to release the original cut of the film & distribute it. Ridley Scott was delighted of course. And thus was born what is now known as the "Director's Cut", which allowed studios to make even more money by going through their archives and adding back the scenes that were originally cut from movies and then selling them as part of the new "Director's Cuts".