Blade Runner

Over the weekend Jenny Jay and I headed a couple blocks down the street to the Roxie, Burlington's answer to the indieplex, to see Blade Runner, on the big screen. I was giddy - Blade Runner is one of those films that i was too young to have seen in the theater, and having watched it years back now on a degenerated VHS, i was now certain i was going to see this film the way it was intended.

I couldn't have been more right - like so many great films that i'll only ever have the chance to see on the small screen, Blade Runner was almost unrecognizable to me on the big screen; the scope, the score the grandeur - that i had been doing the art so wrong for so long by confining it to my tv set - it was enough to make me want to swear off the small screen for good.

The amount of detail that went into this film can finally be grasped when you see it in the theaters, everything, down to the magazines on the racks, the hair pins on the streetwalkers, - it's all there, and real - that the world the characters slog through is created not out of the lastest CG, but from real models, painstakingly detailed - gives the whole distopian future such a gritty truthful weight that no amount of CG outside of Children of Men have been able to tough since the whole business bought stock in Silicon Valley.

And don't get me started on the lighting. Or the music.

Bottom line is - if your a movie fanatic, keep your eyes on the roxy schedule, as judging by the size of the crowd for a mid winter 11:40pm showing we can hopefully expect even more great showings - Here's hoping for a back to back alien/aliens/alien3 triple play. We're lucky to have a spot showing indie films, and even luckier that they'd be willing to take the risk of showing older films, lets get out there and show them it's worth it.