Fourth Row Center

Blade Runner: The Final Cut, with Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah, Joanna Cassidy. (1982) How many versions of Blade Runner are there? Anywhere between five and seven, depending on how you’re counting and who you’re reading. It was released theatrically in 1982, and afterward rumor had it that the studio had taken final cut away from director Ridley Scott and made changes. By the late 1980s there was what was then called a “director’s cut” of the film floating around, now known as the “workprint version,” which I managed to see screened back in college. It was different from the theatrical version. It contained no titles, lacked the Harrison Ford voice over, and it there was no Vangelis soundtrack. Instead, this cut of the film had a mish-mash of sampled music which was presumably added by the director to set the mood and tone of his version of the film. I seem to recall numerous differences in how many of the scenes were cut, but it’s been ...

Rendition (2007) Starring Jake Gyllenhaal , Reese Witherspoon , Meryl Streep , Peter Sarsgaard , J.K. Simmons; directed by Gavin Hood. Witherspoon ’s Egyptian-born husband finds himself a suspect in a terrorist bombing and CIA-head Streep orders him nabbed off a commercial airline flight and shipped off to North Africa for some American-style torture. Gyllenhaal is a first-time CIA interrogation observer who comes to realize that the prisoner is innocent of any wrongdoing and acts to make amends. Witherspoon is passable as the grieving angry wife, but she has little to do. Streep dials in a terrific performance, as expected. But the real support comes from Peter Sarsgaard as a senator’s aid who tries to intervene, and Alan Arkin as the politician Sarsgaard works for. The movie stretches a bit in the middle and manages to circle itself once too often (if you see it you'll know what I mean), and I could tick off another half-dozen faults in 12 words or less. Like Gone Baby Gon...

Gone Baby Gone (2007) Starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris; co-written and directed by Ben Affleck. Ben’s brother proves to be the real actor in the family, and manages a performance with some depth which holds its own against performances by Morgan Freeman as a revered Boston police legend and terrific Ed Harris as a tough Boston cop with questionable ethics. Affleck is private missing persons investigator Patrick Kenzie, affable but tough, with plenty of street contacts from whom he gathers his information. He is hired by a grieving family to assist the police in finding a missing, presumed kidnapped, child, and he and his girlfriend-slash-associate take the case, finding themselves up against more than they bargained for. The film moves forward through the first and for most of the second act with smooth predictability -- the likely suspect is introduced, a tough streetwise cop gets angry, time is running out on the missing little girl. Can she still...

Points deducted for a lazy posting last evening. Several years ago, the Ain't It Cool News web site pointed out a sound effect that was used over in over in movies. It was called the Wilhelm Scream (or just the Wilhelm), so named after the character who first had the scream applied to him. Once you see the video below, you will pick it up everytime you hear it. ABC News has a feature article on the Wilhelm.

The Star Trek 5 Effect (ST5E, for those of you in the know) is where watching parts of a movie is better than the whole film put together. So named because I hated Star Trek V when it came out, but came to like certain set pieces of the film. I have, since starting to rent movies from one of many redbox kiosks, now created what I call the Redbox Effect (RBE, again, for those of you in the know). This is when a bad movie, is not so bad, because you only paid a buck for it, and it is not due back until nine tomorrow night. Evan Almighty was influenced by the RBE, and wasn't as bad as I had thought it was going to be. The film stars Steve Carell as a newly elected congressman from Buffalo, NY. He quickly is courted to be a junior sponsor on a bill by congressman Long, played by John Goodman. We come to find out that perhaps Evan's election was somewhat rigged by Long, but that would give too much of the plot away. Besides, we don't want to see Evan the Congressman, no we wan...