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Dangerous Days - The Documentary (*spoilers*thanks*opinions)

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photek

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Post Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:56 am

hey deleted, i would recommend you check out "Wizards" - it is still a pioneer in animated fantasy despite being 30 years old. long before pixar ...
until last year, i was coveting my ancient worn out VHS copy and couldn't believe it when i saw it on the shelf last year on DVD for $9.99.
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Post Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:50 am

deleted wrote:I admit, I've never heard of Ralph Bakshi, but now, I'm interested. When did he work on this BR stuff?


See, I didn't know about the BR project, which as you can see from the de Lauzirika quote from the chat transcript, didn't bear fruit. However, Bakshi has been a singular presence in animation ever since the late 1950s.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000835/

He is best known for his very adult animated features. Fritz The Cat was a faithful adaptation of R. Crumb's sex and drugs-laced underground "comix," and earned the film an X-rating in its initial release. He followed up Fritz with Heavy Traffic (a semi-autobiography), Coonskin, American Pop, Fire and Ice, and eventually Cool World. He also did Wizards, a movie that the entire family can enjoy, and the first film adaptation of Lord of the Rings, which covered the trilogy from the beginning to the Battle of Helm's Deep.

He also did TV....he got his real start in the business as an animator at Terrytoons doing cartoons for CBS and the Captain Kangaroo show. He also discovered John Kricfalusi, and together they did the groundbreaking "Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures."

Right now Bakshi is working on the cartoon-Noir feature The Last Days of Coney Island as an indie production. With advances in animation technology that works on off-the-shelf Macintosh computers, he and a small crew in New Mexico are working on this movie. It's still listed on IMDB as coming out in 2007, but fat chance of that.

Hope this helps...
Yes, I really live in Los Angeles. Srsly. And yeah, life really does imitate art here. Especially now we've got those video billboards. No spinners yet. But I suppose that's next.
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deleted

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Post Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:31 pm

Ah, ok. Thanks!
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Charles de Lauzirika

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Post Fri Dec 14, 2007 3:37 pm

If I recall correctly, I first heard Bakshi was developing a BR animated series around 1994. I only remember that year because I was talking to someone about it while I was interning at Skywalker Sound and we were watching OJ's white Bronco chase live in one of the THX screening rooms!
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Post Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:01 pm

Hello new to the BZ hope I like. :)

I found the documentary very good the visual effects doc with Douglas Trumbull and crew from EEG nice, I wouldn?t have guessed that (stencils) where used in some of the shots, pure genius.
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msgeek

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Post Sat Dec 15, 2007 12:10 am

Charles de Lauzirika wrote:If I recall correctly, I first heard Bakshi was developing a BR animated series around 1994. I only remember that year because I was talking to someone about it while I was interning at Skywalker Sound and we were watching OJ's white Bronco chase live in one of the THX screening rooms!


I gotta talk to Steve Worth about that. I think he was still at Bakshi at that point, although he might have gone over to Spumco by then.

I really would have loved to see a Bakshi Blade Runner series, although probably the best people to do a series now (and in fact then too) would all be in Japan.
Yes, I really live in Los Angeles. Srsly. And yeah, life really does imitate art here. Especially now we've got those video billboards. No spinners yet. But I suppose that's next.
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Post Sat Dec 15, 2007 6:03 am

Now that I've worked my way through the whole boxset, I've decided to stop lurking, register and add my thanks to Charles for doing such an extraordinary job. This boxset is up there with the Alien and Lord of the Rings boxsets as far as I am concerned which is no mean feat considering the age of the film.

I was a big fan of PKD's writing from the mid-seventies onwards, so I didn't have to be won over when it first came out - I was more worried that the film wouldn't do the source material justice. When it so magnificently did - but then so dismally flopped - I was gutted. The film was clearly a masterpiece (as I recorded in my diary in 1982) and I couldn't understand why no one else realised it, not the public or the critics. PKD had been so neglected, and made so little money during his life, almost becoming a prophet without honour in his own land, I thought that at least here was some popular recognition, even if it would only be posthumous. But it wasn't to be. Not immediately.

When I watch it now, I always watch the whole credits sequence with Vangelis's magnificent music playing as loud as possible. And I always get a rush of emotion when the dedication comes up right at the end, and we see that one of the great films of our time is dedicated to the memory of one of the most underrated writers of our time.

Dangerous Days really does make the other documentaries fairly redundant, but I also enjoyed the other features, especially the ones about PKD and the final phone interviews. I also really enjoyed the feature about the various versions of the film, which I wasn't expecting to, having heard/read most of it before. The footage of the reshoots with Joanna Cassidy and Ford's son were great - the lengths that Charles and his team went to, to get it right, were amazing. But at the same time, they were careful to only change the things that Ridley could have changed back in 82 if he had had more time or money - a textbook example of how to restore a film without crossing over the line into remaking the film. It is a tightrope that they negotiated brilliantly, in my opinion.

And some of the deleted and alternative scenes are astonishing. A standard DVD release would have had some sort of documentary, but I doubt that they would have bothered to sort through all of that unused footage. That's what makes what this boxset so special. And the best joke is saved till last! The last line of the alternative Blade Runner left me gasping and then laughing my head off for about five minutes afterwards.

I knew I had seen a masterpiece when I walked out of the cinema in 1982, and it's twice as much a masterpiece now that we are living in the future that it depicted - and that's not something that you can say about any other science fiction film that I can think of, except maybe 2001, because no matter how good the film, their vision of the future invariably looks ridiculous by the time it arrives.

So to Charles de Lauzirika, a huge thank you. You have done a man's job indeed, sir, and given one of my favourite films the DVD release it always deserved.
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Post Sat Dec 15, 2007 7:58 pm

gutted.. my wife has bought the box set for christmas.. so i have to wait, as does the whole of the BZ community for me to do a review :)
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THX1138

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Post Sun Dec 16, 2007 2:00 am

Charles de Lauzirika wrote:If I recall correctly, I first heard Bakshi was developing a BR animated series around 1994. I only remember that year because I was talking to someone about it while I was interning at Skywalker Sound and we were watching OJ's white Bronco chase live in one of the THX screening rooms!


you jerk, I applied to intern there ;) I wasn't a recent graduate, though, so I couldn't be accepted. I'm jealous.

I have a quick question. What do you edit your documentaries on? Do a lot of people still actually use Avid a lot in your field of work?
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Charles de Lauzirika

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Post Sun Dec 16, 2007 6:55 am

THX1138 wrote:I have a quick question. What do you edit your documentaries on? Do a lot of people still actually use Avid a lot in your field of work?


I can't speak for others, but my editors only occasionally use Avid anymore. Mostly just Final Cut now.
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msgeek

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Post Sun Dec 16, 2007 5:25 pm

Charles de Lauzirika wrote:I can't speak for others, but my editors only occasionally use Avid anymore. Mostly just Final Cut now.


Mac for the win! :mrgreen:
Yes, I really live in Los Angeles. Srsly. And yeah, life really does imitate art here. Especially now we've got those video billboards. No spinners yet. But I suppose that's next.
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THX1138

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Post Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:40 am

Charles de Lauzirika wrote:
THX1138 wrote:I have a quick question. What do you edit your documentaries on? Do a lot of people still actually use Avid a lot in your field of work?


I can't speak for others, but my editors only occasionally use Avid anymore. Mostly just Final Cut now.


That's kind of what I was expecting. Final Cut is awesome. I only discovered it in my graduating year in high school and I wish I would have used it sooner. I was using Adobe premiere and Avid express for learning purposes. Avid is too hardware intensive for what it offers.
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deepysea

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Post Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:40 pm

Re: Dangerous Days - The Documentary

martinland wrote:As this shot hit the screen around here I couldn't believe my eyes, because on the left side of the screen the very same poster (albeit with Italian wording) graces my wall since I put it there to celebrate Blade Runner and your achievement!

The poster shown in one of the featurettes that I immediately wanted was the Polish one!
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msgeek

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Post Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:51 pm

I watched "Dangerous Days" yesterday, and I was totally blown away. It only confirms something I've known about Blade Runner: the most miraculous thing about the movie was that it actually ended up as good as it is. With all the guest appearances by Murphy (as in Murphy's Law) it is absolutely miraculous it ended up perhaps the best movie ever made.

I still have lots of stuff to watch on the 4-disc set, and I just got off the phone with Warner Bros Home Video Direct and they have confirmed my 5-disc set has left the building, presumably on the way to Panorama City, California, gateway to Pacoima and Points East. Probably by the time the briefcase arrives I will have watched through the rest of the material and will be ready to see the Workprint, aka the Nuart edition.

One other thing about the discs that is way cool...the interface. You really do get the feeling you are navigating around the disc in EsperOS. I'd compare it to what was done on ADV's All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku, where you cruised around in a simulation of old-school Mac OS (it looked like 7.5.3, which is appropriate for the disc) to select things on the disc. With the Blade Runner discs, you almost want to speak commands to it instead of use the DVD player remote. Of course, it wouldn't work. That is, unless you were watching on a computer running an operating system that allowed you to give your DVD playing software voice commands. I think that Mac OS X can do it, as can Windows with some supplemental software.

Anyway, bravo, Charles!!!
Yes, I really live in Los Angeles. Srsly. And yeah, life really does imitate art here. Especially now we've got those video billboards. No spinners yet. But I suppose that's next.
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deepysea

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Post Wed Dec 19, 2007 10:03 pm

msgeek wrote:It only confirms something I've known about Blade Runner: the most miraculous thing about the movie was that it actually ended up as good as it is.

After listening to all three commentaries on the FC, I can say now more than ever that the film totally benefitted from the chaos of its production, the overlapping ideas, the serious but unpretentious aspirations, the constantly-evolving development, the on-set spontaneity--it all became an engine of creativity (culminating with Hauer's utterly inspired adlib on the last night of the shoot), a multilayered work (PKD's ideas with Fancher's intimate drama with Scott's expansive vision, and on and on, everyone contributing pieces and shadings); the contradictions became paradoxes, the ambiguity became poetry. One could say it was a "happy accident" (I doubt they could do it again if they even tried, which is why I'd never want to see a sequel attempted) but that negates the central convictions that held it all together. This is what movies are like when they're made by artists and craftsmen rather than committees--I don't think a movie like this could be made in Hollywood today.
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