"Stay Awake and Drive"

1. “Destroy Everything You Touch,” Ladytron, Witching Hour
2. “Rolling,” Soul Coughing, Lust in Phaze: The Best of Soul Coughing
3. “The Chimbley Sweep,” The Decemberists, Her Majesty
4. “More Heat Than Light,” The Veils, The Runaway Found
5. “Satin In A Coffin,” Modest Mouse, Good News For People Who Love Bad News
6. “Jerk It Out,” Caesars, 39 Minutes of Bliss [...]
7. “Invincible,” OK Go, Oh No
8. “Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong,” The Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am…
9. “Evil,” Interpol, Evil EP
10. “Cosmopolitan,” Nine Black Alps, Everthing Is
11. “Can’t Get Enough,” Infadels, We Are Not the Infadels
12. “Sandstorm,” Darude, Radical Techno, Vol. 5
13. “I Will Survive,” Cake, Fashion Nugget
14. “Screenwriter’s Blues,” Soul Coughing, Lust in Phase again

Still Blade-Running

Ridley is at it again with Blade Runner. He’s releasing yet another version of the cyberpunk-noir movie that should be reason enough for studios to make a Neuromancer film, but instead they’ll just release Blade Runner again, and yes that’s still the same sentence. This time, Ridley’s going to disprove Harrison Ford once for all, I imagine, by including some damn thing that’ll demonstrate how Deckard’s a replicant and any gray speculation should cease. Whatever. I’ll see the hell out of it, anyway.

That said, what makes me really happy is that this Blade Runner: Final Cut will feature all three versions of the film when it arrives on DVD. Amen, says I. That old retrofitted version of the movie where Deckard does the old-school private-dick voice over? I want that one just as much as I want the “truer” Ridley Scott version. You know what that voice-over version’s got? Jargon. I’m thrilled to hell that it’s not the sole version of Blade Runner I’ll have, but I’m also perfectly happy to watch that old cut again.

It’s the cut that I saw on VHS when it was delivered to our house via mail-order by mistake. I watched it when, I dunno, I was home alone pretending to be sick from school one day or something. It was weird. Grim. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time. The stuff I could make sense of — people ordering Chinese food, detectives wrestling with police chiefs, cops shooting at criminals — was all wrapped up in this strange future without any explanation. Why would people want to live in a future like that? Why would we build that future? How did they manage to get a whole other Los Angeles onto the screen?

As a kid, Blade Runner fell into a category in my head with Aliens: R-rated, super-dark sci-fi that didn’t have toys (at the time) or cartoons or cereal boxes. They didn’t even have “star” in their titles. They were bizarre, frightening, mystifying and magnificent.

Since we apparently can’t make movies like them anymore, (because they can’t be done for a PG-13 audience, I guess?) I’ll settle for Halloween screenings of Alien and re-issues of Blade Runner.

I will not, however, settle for Alien vs. Predator.

Noise: Watching Way of the Gun