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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

The Comedy Stylings Of The 1 Hr 44 Minute EXCLUSIVE/TOLDJA

Oh, the journalism… the journalism…

(ADD: Since the discussion is moving to the possible Blade Runner “sequel,” here is the press release)

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57 Responses to “The Comedy Stylings Of The 1 Hr 44 Minute EXCLUSIVE/TOLDJA”

  1. JKill says:

    Yeah the way Deadline reports these stories is goofy and over the top but this is kind of one of the biggest movie geek stories in a while, isn’t? I mean maybe it won’t happen but an official return of Scott to this material is something that, like ALIEN, I assumed was just smoke blown with little possiblity of it actually happening.

    But, DP, you really need your own catch phrase…

    I suggest SHAZAM!

  2. anghus says:

    my problem with all this kind of shit is that its all being fed from the studio. No one is uncovering this or learning it. You get an email, you post it. Boring.

    Only because the studios need the veil of an objective third party do we even need these clowns. At this point, it’s like the studios have aligned with certain sites, they leak the news. it’s all so controlled.

    this is one of those ‘who cares’ stories. It’s interesting but why would anyone think a return to Blade Runner is going to be a huge, earth shattering thing? 95% of the world barely remembers the original. It’s a movie known in film circles for being the most maligned and mismanaged property with 18 different versions and cuts. Are they really going to give Ridley Scott a couple of hundred million dollars to do a new Blade Runner?

    This is a project tailor made for film fanatics and online film geeks who have obsessed over the original for decades. Is this really the kind of movie that’s going to generate the half billion dollars it will take to make back the obscene amount of money they’re going to spend on it?

    Wouldn’t it be nice if people just let shit die? Who is sitting behind the desk of a studio and really thinking Ridley Scott returning to Blade Runner is a sound financial decision? Didn’t we learn anything from the Star Wars prequels or Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

    Move on, filmmakers. Find new stories to tell. Stop trying to rewrite the ones you already told.

  3. storymark says:

    “It’s a movie known in film circles for being the most maligned and mismanaged property with 18 different versions and cuts. ”

    Yeah, when those in the film community talk about the film… THAT’S what they focus on.

    “Who is sitting behind the desk of a studio and really thinking Ridley Scott returning to Blade Runner is a sound financial decision? Didn’t we learn anything from the Star Wars prequels or Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?”

    Uh, dude…. whether you liked those movies or not – making them was absolutely a “sound financial decision.”

  4. anghus says:

    that’s true storymark. i should have broken that up into two separate points.

    creatively, returning to old material like the prequels and crystal skull seems boring and the end results have been at best mediocre.

    financially, did Blade Runner ever have the kind of massive success of either of those properties?

  5. JKill says:

    I don’t care at all about the financial ramifications of doing another BLADE RUNNER, and just think Scott returning to that world could be neat. (I’m probably also less down on doings reboots/sequels/prequels than I might normally be because I finally saw the utterly fantastic RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES…)

    But I don’t see how BLADE RUNNER has any less cultural cache than, say, TRON did or many of the other properties that are being revisited now have. BR is basically an eventual must-see for anyone into sci-fi or movies.

  6. storymark says:

    (I’m probably also less down on doings reboots/sequels/prequels than I might normally be because I finally saw the utterly fantastic RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES…)

    Exactly. Well, Ive never really been down on them in the first place – easy enough to ignore them if they suck. But Im curious to see what he comes up with, and don’t feel the need to write it off simply because it’s related to a film he did before.

    This move does make me wonder if there’s a prequel to The Duelists in the pipeline.

  7. yancyskancy says:

    JKill: Yeah, you’d think Nikki was crawling through air ducts and lowering herself into studio offices on wires to get these scoops. TOLDJA!…um, that the guy who sent me an email about this was on the level…

  8. anghus says:

    Tron seems like a very apt comparison.

    Something from the 1980’s beloved by a core group of die hard film fans. So i suppose the answer is “yes”, a Blade Runner redux might be able to generate a half billion worldwide to make it financially viable.

    I realize some people could care less about that aspect of it all, but there are those of us who like to play armchair exec. Has Ridley Scott been a big earner the past decade?

    5/14/10 Robin Hood Uni. $105,269,730
    10/10/08 Body of Lies WB $39,394,666
    11/2/07 American Gangster $130,164,645
    11/10/06 A Good Year Fox $7,459,300
    5/6/05 Kingdom of Heaven $47,398,413
    9/12/03 Matchstick Men WB $36,906,460
    12/28/01 Black Hawk Down $108,638,745

    Sure, an Alien prequel and a Blade Runner re-imagining have to be more interesting than Robin Hood or Body of Lies, but i don’t see a 200 million dollar Blade Runner remake as a safe bet for anybody.

    I know…. we don’t know what the budget will be. But we know the going rate for a large scale futuristic blockbusters usually ends up at 200 million or more.

  9. JKill says:

    Yancy, I’m now envisioning her as Cruise in the first M:I. I bet if “Tilda” would’ve been like that, HBO would’ve picked it up.

    Storymark, I think THE DUELISTS is probably Scott’s most underrated and his first flat-out great masterpiece. It’s so beautiful looking too.

    THE DUELISTS: FERAUD RISES…COMING SOON

    EDITED: Anghus, if we’re playing armchair exec, shouldn’t we take international into account? A few of those did pretty well or even better overseas.

  10. JS Partisan says:

    Good lord, nothing more ridiculous than people still mashing their teeth about the prequels or Crystal Skull. Especially people… ahem… who have admitted to not even being fans of those properties.

    The only reason to even go back to Blade Runner would to make that dystopian version of the future even more dystopian. Hell, I would love for Sir Ridley to even use Harrison Ford again, but just de-age his ass. Let craziness happen with that film.

  11. palmtree says:

    Funny, but I just realized I don’t even think she really knows what “toldja” means or how it’s used.

  12. spassky says:

    Left this on the MCN press release page, thought it should be moved here (updated text in brackets):

    Maybe he can explore the religious dimensions of Dick’s novel a little bit more completely than he did with BR?

    In all reality, he probably thinks of BR as strictly his creative property… i mean he did completely change the look of the environment from the vast emptiness of the book to the dense urbanized japanamerica of the movie.

    has anyone looked at the original storyboards in that textbook ‘directing shot-for-shot’ and just been giddy with the thought of what if [prequel…?]?

    and lastly: does this mean a 3d rerelease of the original? To my own surprise, i think i would be really in to that [3d bump]…

    [talking about BR’s financial viability as a property: it made very little domestically on release, but the dvd sales and the rerelease and television viewership is probably enough to realize that a sequel could conceivably make ALOT more than the original BR on release (especially if this time the studio isn’t forcing any exposition heavy voice over on the viewer)]

    [it’s gonna need one hell of a screenplay though. the ‘alien’ and ‘br’ screenplays are masterful]

  13. spassky says:

    btw— if the live action akira ever gets made, i can see it either completely obviating the financial/creative use of blade runner movie, or giving cyberpunk/technonoir/etc… the kick in the nards it needs to make a big-budget BR sequel fiscally reasonable…

    just sayin

  14. storymark says:

    “Something from the 1980′s beloved by a core group of die hard film fans. So i suppose the answer is “yes”, a Blade Runner redux might be able to generate a half billion worldwide to make it financially viable.”

    I would say Blade Runner is better regarded by a larger group of people…. and is still far, far, far less likely to be a cash cow than Tron.

    JS: I am a Star Wars and Indy fan. I think the prequels are a mixed bag – lots of fun mixed with heaps of staggeringly poor decisions. Indy 4…. uhg.

  15. torpid bunny says:

    This is hilarious because I was literally just thinking, because Blade Runner was on Scy-Fy, that here at least was a movie that absolutely did not call for a sequel and for which a sequel would be well-nigh preposterous.

  16. The Pope says:

    I adore Blade Runner but it would be more than a great pity (a tragedy?) if this project is seen by the focus of a lens. One of the reasons why BR is so good and has lasted so long is that it merely suggested issues without addressing them directly. Okay the mortality was full on, but the other issues; identity, replication, authenticity, environment, genetics, religion, policing, animals, law etc., they were all part of the tapestry. If there is a sequel/prequel, it will all be qualified and declared. Which will undermine the opaque beauty of what he did in ’82.

    (BTW, I really like the way you leave us the option of an edit!)

  17. hcat says:

    I don’t know where you are getting $200 million budget numbers from other than looking at Ridley’s past work, but Alcon is traditionally on the lower end of the budget spectrum. Not that they will try to do it on the cheap, especially since they are still flush with Blind Side money, but I doubt you will see the same the same spendthrift attitude as you see with normal WB or Disney properties. If they can bring this in on a decent budget, they could easily make a few bucks.

    And really anything that potentially keeps Ridley away from that Monopoly movie is good news.

  18. JKill says:

    The other thing from a marketing standpoint though is the cast, which at this point is hypothetical. Say they bring back Ford and then have him hunting down an all-star cast of the robotically enhanced (Crowe! Washington! Jolie!). Who would not see that??

  19. anghus says:

    Jkill, yeah we should include international. TO THE INTERWEB…….

  20. JS Partisan says:

    SM, I know man, and that’s not about you sir. That’s about the guy above me who stated how he felt about the properties, and then slams them anyway :D!

  21. Martin S says:

    This will be the most significant sci-fi/genre film since Kubrick’s 2001. It’s going to be what Cameron keeps thinking he’s making.

    Ridley wants to do this because of his experience working with 3D on Prometheus. He’s in his 70’s, so he doesn’t need to take this on without assurances, like budget and script. This will not be cheap and it’s going to be about whatever Ridley wants. Just looking at the history of Prometheus shows this could have a tangential connection to the first film at most, and it’s more than likely spurred on by an idea from Lindelof. Hell, it could be the galactic war stories Roy Batty tells Decker about.

  22. palmtree says:

    “This will be the most significant sci-fi/genre film since Kubrick’s 2001.”

    Funny, I was thinking more along the lines of Peter Hyams’ 2010, especially with all the talk about the sequel explaining what was wonderfully opaque in the original.

    But to be fair, Ridley Scott directing makes a huge difference.

  23. LexG says:

    Black Rain 2, please, Ridley.

    CONKLIN POWER.

  24. Gustavo says:

    What is so goddamn bad about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull anyway? I don’t get it.

  25. arisp says:

    ^^Everything dude. Come on.

  26. Jeffrey Boam's Doctor says:

    Gustavo. I have no idea either. It’s yet another example of fanboys completely raging against the machine for no good reason. The film is completely in spirit with its predecessors and the only difference is that these arrested developed geeks are decades older and more cynical. If you hate Crystal then you actually hate all of the Indy pics.

  27. Hallick says:

    “If you hate Crystal then you actually hate all of the Indy pics.”

    Nope. Just hate Crystal. Go read somebody else’s heart.

  28. Triple Option says:

    Martin S wrote: This will be the most significant sci-fi/genre film since Kubrick’s 2001. It’s going to be what Cameron keeps thinking he’s making.”

    Haha, I was thinking the same thing! But at this point, how? Wouldn’t it to be Bladerunner worthy (in terms of innovative look), have to be the 3D sans the glasses that everyone’s daydreaming about? I’m sure a decent story based on existing material wouldn’t be impossible but do we have an unexplored science of the future that would be what the notion of a replicant would’ve been to 1982? Obviously, we haven’t made them yet but the notion of such was vastly different at the time, which was nearly 15 years before Dolly the cloned sheep.

    I’d see it but if this never gets off the ground I would be content to only have the original for my lifetime.

    Oh, I don’t know what all was announced so I could already be wrong on this but I’d say…

    Fassbender=Decker

  29. hcat says:

    Each of the Indy’s got progressivly worse. Crystal was just another example of people not stopping while they were ahead because they were leaving some money on the table. You would think after seeing what happened with his Jaws and Jurrasic Park franchises Speilberg wouldn’t have fooled with the one signature series that hadn’t been driven into the ground.

    And my fingers are crossed for Themla and Louise in High School.

  30. LexG says:

    Aside from Connery’s inherent awesomeness, and the handsome pre-Kaminski Vaseline-free shooting style of Last Crusade, I wouldn’t say there’s a WORLD of quality difference between Indy 3 and Crystal Skull.

  31. anghus says:

    Lex, you’re not wrong, there really isn’t.

    However, it’s the overkill of the shooting style and the overkill of the FX and the overkill of the set pieces that makes Last Crusade watchable and Crystal Skull feel overproduced and senseless.

    Js, i know you keep stating how much i hate some properties, but that’s never been the case. I liked Star Wars when i was 8. I saw all of them in their original theatrical runs. I got older, i bought them on dvd, and i found them kind of nostalgically interesting but boring.

    Unlike you, there are people who can like something in one stage of their life and not cling to it like grim death. I look at you the same way im sure you look at me. Someone who holds something so dear even after years and years and years unwilling to budge even a smidge that the things we enjoyed in our youth don’t exactly always hold up well.

    My favorite movies when i was a kid was Tron. I watch it now with a smile full well knowing that it hasn’t aged well.

    If your tastes never evolve, then i don’t know whether to compliment you or pity you. The 8 year old me who loved Tron and the 12 year old me who thought Red Dawn was the greatest movie ever made and the 16 year old who thought Burton’s Batman was a crowning acheivement made way for somebody who still enjoys movies but likes something with a touch more layering, nuance, and subtlety.

    I didn’t always hate Star Wars, i just have no interest in revisiting them again and again and again. This nearly 40 year obsession some people have with them is a little off putting, just like the people who idolize Trek, or Twilight, or any other group over fanatics who turn something simple and fun into something daunting and, personally, boring.

    I’m sure there are some people who would love a Boba Fett film, and those who think revisiting Blade Runner is going to be awesome. I’m not one of them. And it’s not out of blind hatred my friend, it’s out of boredom.

    The well is running dry, my friends. Stay thirsty.

    (brought to you by Dos Equis)

  32. Monco says:

    I will defend the prequels to the death but Kingdom of the Crystal skull sucks.

  33. leahnz says:

    sphincter factor 9.5

    (at first when i thought it was a remake/boot after thinking ‘holy shit’ i wondered if any director had ever remade his own cult classic before – in the same language and all – there must be somebody)

    and r scott would be lucky to get cameron to direct ‘blade runner: toe pick’. scott’s such a grumpy fucker and his output these days so generally turgid and middling and overwrought yet dull and serious and ‘pretty good’ and desperately ‘epic’, i just want to shake it awake and shout ‘just let her rip, ridley!’, argh. having said that you’d have to tie me down to keep me from having a squiz at ‘prometheus’, maybe the geezer will get his second wind, hoping for the best (prepared for the worst) as always

  34. LexG says:

    Carpenter KINDA did it with Escape From LA (ostensible sequel that’s more of a remake/reboot.)

  35. anghus says:

    Strip mining the past. It’s all anyone seems capable of.

    That and getting boners over doing 3D.

    Sad.

  36. JS Partisan says:

    Anghus, you don’t get being a fan. Good for you, but thanks for giving other people shit because of your own short-comings 😀 !

    I also love that your fucking drunk ass assumes that everyone is like you. The sheer hubris of that post, that we all have to move in life as you have, throwing away our past like a small windbreaker, is just so fucking idiotic.

    It’s not grim death, it’s the films of one’s youth. It’s the films from your youth and if you grew up watching The Thin Man films, do you just throw those away? You are bored with everything that geeks love because that’s your fucking problem. Stop acting as if we have the same problems as you for still appreciating Tron. It’s still a special and one of a kind film but Anghus, in his entire fucking glorious wisdom, has decided that anyone who still feels that way is a fucking idiot. GOOD FOR YOU.

  37. LYT says:

    “Carpenter KINDA did it with Escape From LA (ostensible sequel that’s more of a remake/reboot.)”

    Raimi with Evil Dead 2 before even that. It doesn’t even acknowledge its predecessor in-story, as I recall.

  38. anghus says:

    you’re favorite movie of the year is “The Help”. I only say that because you seem so quick to dismiss my criticisms because i can say that Star Wars is wildly overrated. It works both ways junior. You waste so much energy overpraising mediocrity. Trust me when i tell you that a healthy dose of perspective wouldn’t kill you.

    Anyone who says “The Help” and “Green Lantern” are great movies makes me question whether i could have a serious discussion on any topic with you. That’s not a slight, just a comment. I don’t know why you bother responding to anything i have to say. You’ve pretty much written off my perspective as being an overly critical guy and i view you as a perpetual 8 year old who can only seem to muster high praise or hatred.

    I’m not sure you feel the need to address me in every thread as some kind of chronic hater. There are many levels between love and hate. You should try them sometime.

    edit – and i’m hardly bored with everything geeks love. Captain America was my favorite big budget flick of the summer. I loved Rise of the Planet of the Apes, enjoyed Thor and X-Men First Class despite some flaws. I went to Comic Con this year. I’m not the anti-geek, and your attempt to paint me that way is just another example of your general lack of nuance. It’s all or nothing with you kiddo. There are levels.

  39. JKill says:

    LYT, if I’m remembering correctly doesn’t EVIL DEAD II kind of remake the first movie in its first 5-ish minutes and then move on to its insanity? I think Ash is mourning his his recently dead(ite) girlfriend, and then she comes back and the new stuff gets rolling. I want to say, from the commentary, that they didn’t have rights to show the original footage so they just re-did it but I could be wrong…

    The reason I think CS is the weakest Indy is because the story is by far the weakest. With LAST CRUSADE there is a pretty solid father-son thing that’s very appealing coupled with the Holy Grail stuff. CS feels kind of like a mash-up of ideas but it doesn’t congel. I don’t hate it – I always love Ford, really like Shia, and the set peices, as they always are from the master, are well done and have a good energy. It’s just that it doesn’t have anything to really make it stick the way the other 3 do, although maybe that’s impossible because they’re so iconic.

  40. anghus says:

    i was trying to explain Evil Dead 2 and Evil Dead and how they connect. It’s supposed to be a sequel, but you have to buy into the concept that Ash goes back to the same cabin where everybody he knew got brutally killed.

    that’s a leap, but hey, no one ever accused the evil dead films of being smart. I must have watched the original 20 times.

  41. JS Partisan says:

    Anghus, you not getting a movie about Black Folks is pretty god damn hilarious given your job in life. Seriously, it’s a good fucking film but do you want to give me shit for appreciating 13 Assassins or Super 8? Please feel free to be the stupid asshole who thinks hating a movie that some one loves makes you some what superior.

    You also lack the understanding of the nuance that I have to have to deal with people like you. Seriously, it’s not all or nothing, but you are such a know it all jagoff so much of the time, that how can anyone ignore you?

    My god I love films that you have written off, and that makes me a perpetual 8 year old? No, that makes you a perpetual asshole for thinking your absolutely ass backward way of viewing the world is the only fucking one.

    Oh yeah, comic con doesn’t make you a geek. It just makes you a person who went to a con.

  42. Krillian says:

    Lost Ark > Last Crusade >>>>>>>>>>>> Crystal Skull > Temple of Doom

  43. anghus says:

    oh man, you went back to the “you don’t get it” argument. the masterpiece of misunderstanding. if someone doesn’t like something, they obviously didn’t understand the movie. yeesh.

    you wrote:

    “but you are such a know it all jagoff so much of the time, that how can anyone ignore you?”

    the only person on the board who seems to have a perpetual bone to pick with me is you sir. you seem to have a lot of anger and animosity towards me and incapable at a grade school level of letting anything go. you clutch these pre-conceived notions about me and make weird comments about me in regards to race and fandom.

    Having your own personal troll is kind of weird.

  44. spassky says:

    i love temple of doom. part of the reason it is written off is because of last crusade. temple of doom set up the series as episodes within the adventures of indiana jones. last crusade makes it about indy vs. nazis. it makes temple of doom seem useless and tangential and i’ve always had a problem with that. in terms of matinee thrills i would take temple of doom over last crusade any day. yes, kate capshaw almost ruined it but seriously, SHORT ROUND… SHORT ROUND!!!

  45. torpid bunny says:

    It seems like with this kind of movie the line between really good and really bad is quite narrow. Look at the Jurassic Park movies. The working elements in the Indy movies are swashbuckling action, fun villains, entertaining attitude/charisma from Indy, spielbergian wit, minimally compelling relationships and a fun quest. In crystal skull the action was mostly overdone and in very bad Lucas/CGI taste, the ghoulish touches didn’t work to put it mildly, Cate Blanchett’s cartoon russkie dominatrix just never congealed (Walter Donavan was a perfectly understated and imposing villain in Last Crusade), the family drama was totally inert (sorry, Shia is terribly miscast, and the romance between Indy and Karen Allen was totally vanilla), the only spielberg wit I remember was the legitimately funny atom bomb test, and the quest was terribly opaque and underdeveloped while being pretty cliched. Pushing 70 the Indy charisma is not really viable any more. It didn’t help that there was so much horseplay around the laughable crystal skull. I still have no idea what John Hurt was doing in this movie.

  46. JS Partisan says:

    Anghus, this is why you are a tool:

    “The only person on the board who seems to have a perpetual bone to pick with me is you sir. you seem to have a lot of anger and animosity towards me and incapable at a grade school level of letting anything go. you clutch these pre-conceived notions about me and make weird comments about me in regards to race and fandom.”

    So you have stated that you have pre-conceived notions of me as a grade school child, which is just weirdness. Seriously you are a 40 something year old man. Find a better fucking point of reference then insulting someone as if you think they are 8, and that’s why the above makes you a tool. Seriously, you are a troll, and everything you post comes from the prism of a better old troll of a man, that thinks he can foster his bullshit on other people, and they will just take it.

    I just love this place because Joe Leydon is older than many of you, but he perpetually post younger then all of you. Wah, you don’t like Star Wars, GOOD FOR YOU.

  47. For me, the Indiana Jones order is –
    Raiders of the Lost Ark = Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (coin toss) > Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull > Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

    I prefer Crystal Skull due to its genuinely absorbing story. Say what you will about the execution, but the idea of Indiana Jones realizing that he is at the end of his rope and at the end of his career, and then finding a family to fill the void, is pretty powerful stuff. It’s arguably some of the same ideas as Up (a lonely man near the end of his life finds something else worth living for), even if the Pixar film is 1000% times better. Also, it works for me as a powerful metaphor for the three main people involved. It’s basically Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford acknowledging and confronting the end of their artistic relevance, realizing that perhaps their best days as filmmakers are behind them, and how they confront that fact. Does that make it a great movie? Nope, but it makes it a more emotionally potent one than the exciting-but-hollow Temple of Doom.

  48. anghus says:

    i never understood the complete dismissal for Temple of Doom. though its one of those movies where you remember people from the production stating “not everything worked”.

    i still like temple of doom for what it is, and completely agree that Kate Capshaw was painful. But in terms of serialized adventure, it was a lot of fun. I think the problem with all the subsequent Indiana Jones movies was that Raiders worked so well. The story, the action, the characters, it all clicked. So when the next Temple came out and not everything worked, everyone graded it more harshly then it deserved. And Lex is right that Crusade was saved by Connery and that Father/Son relationship. That made it a lot of fun.

    I remember Spielberg talked a lot in interviews about Crusade and Temple of Doom that they were looking for things to match the scope and action of the original. He compared the tank scene in Crusade to the convoy chase in Raiders. To me, its that kind of thought that leads to everything “not clicking”. Even in interviews you hear Spielberg talking about “matching” note for note scenes from previous films. This to me never feels like the most original way to stage a movie.

    In Crusade, the most interesting part of the movie was the Father/Son relationship because it was new territory that hadn’t been covered in previous films.

    Crystal Skull basically pulled a reverse and tried to do the father/son relationship again, territory that had already been covered. I liked Crystal Skull until they got to South America. Nuking the fridge didn’t even bother me. But it didnt feel like any new territory being covered and so you tune out and focus on stuff like Tarzan Shia and weird plot points about alien civilizations that don’t quite add up.

  49. anghus says:

    io. your obsession with me is a little creepy. your assumptions about me are often so false that i feel the need to reply just to clear up the weird opinions you seem to have formed.

    what would be nice is if you would just talk about the movies and the topics of conversation like 99% of the other people do on this board and leave your very strange opinions to yourself.

    stick to the conversation at hand. the rest of us are talking about indiana jones movies. I don’t think anyone else cares about your weird little obsession with “Why i’m a tool.” So unless Dave creates a blog post called “Why Anghus is a Giant Dick”, maybe you can just stop using my name and obsessing over my every post.

    Thanks.

  50. JS Partisan says:

    Anghus, you are everything you think I am and I don’t care about you. I just care when you throw around baseless shit towards anyone who doesn’t have the same shitty view of the world as you. Excuse me for not taking shit from a porch sitting Carolinian, who likes to think because he no longer likes Tron, that those who still do are assholes.

    Seriously people, you can give me all the crap you want but I will never ever tell you that if you like a movie from your childhood and still enjoy it, that you are asshole for doing so. That’s creepy douchebag shit Anghus and if you want to have a discussion about movies, keep your creepy douchebag shit out of it.

    Now if you want to discuss Indy films. Raiders is a nice pulpy 30s adventure romp. While Temple is the dark side of those pulpy 30s adventures. Crusade is a straight up 40s adventure film. Which leads to Crystal Skull being a late 50s sci-fi adventure film. All of them are great for their own reasons. Two of them having Marion Ravenwood in them makes them even better.

  51. torpid bunny says:

    Capshaw is distracting but the problem is rather the pretty grim and lurid story. This movie was darkly violent while having a good amount of pretty genius boyish fun. Which is a weird combination. But the movie stays with me as problematic in its ugly pagan rites and in the indeterminately colonial view of subcontinental poverty (itself formed no doubt in various golden age adventure movies of the colonized global south), in which the exposed jiggling whiteness of Capshaw presents an odd but somehow inevitable juxtaposition. The scene with the buffet of appalling entomological dishes is obviously some kind of auteurist coup amidst a big money movie franchise. While in Last Crusade the script was superior in its delivery of a satisfying family adventure, the weirdness of Doom lingers, next to which the self-derivative small-mindedness of Crystal Skull is pretty embarrassing.

    What always kills me are the stock footage crocodiles of the final confrontation.

  52. anghus says:

    “What always kills me are the stock footage crocodiles of the final confrontation.”

    that is hilarious. like they didn’t have the budget to shoot actual crocodile footage. i do love that bridge scene. When i saw it for the first time i was like “oh shit, that crazy bastard is going to cut down the rope bridge”.

    The first couple of Indy films rock because it really does seem like he the man is outmatched and 5 seconds away from getting his ass handed to him.

  53. David Poland says:

    Uh, JSP/IO… Anghus… could you guys just do this by e-mail? Don’t need it in here.

    Not taking sides. Not even reading all the shit you are throwing at each other. I don’t care. Just stop, please.

    If you get slapped at, be the bigger man and just don’t slap back.

  54. JS Partisan says:

    David, I typed my peace, and if he’s a man of his word up there. Everything should be fine.

  55. cadavra says:

    “I don’t know where you are getting $200 million budget numbers from.”

    Dude, it’s Ridley Scott. If he made the next LOST SKELETON movie, it would cost $200 million.

  56. Mr. F. says:

    I just LOVE the self-professed Blade Runner “fans” opining as to whether or not “Decker” will be in the movie, and who might play him…

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon