I saw a promo for Children of Men that called it, "Blade Runner for our times."

Dude. Blade Runner tanked. It took twenty years for more than 500 devoted cultists to even see it. You're dooming your own movie at the box office.

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Bev, I'm sure that in many people's uncertain memories, Bladerunner was a huge hit, even if most first saw it on TV or whatever. Because it's become iconic. The same way that the 1939 Wizard of Oz was actually a box-office disappointment, or "In The Still of The Nite" (by the Five Satins) was hardly a top forty song in its first release.

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Please, talk away!

I don't even know what to say. That was something, huh? I was as fascinated by the trouble they had getting the movie into theaters, as by the movie, itself. Christopher Lee's character was so different (in a good way) from what I'd imagined. I called the ending, because the cop didn't sleep with Britt Eklund, and when it doesn't always have to be blood, then it always has to be a virgin sacrifice.

Did you see it, Raq? What did you think?

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save that it's silly they got a body double for Britt Eklund.

Main reason was because she was pregnant at the time and just starting to show. While that would have been appropriate for a movie about fertility rituals, I suspect Britt had some reservations if the filmmakers didn't.

Just saw that for the first time myself about a month back (after having read about it for years). I rather liked it, but too many years of THE EQUALIZER made it hard to buy Edward Woodward as that big a stiff or a patsy. Christopher Lee was awsome; charming yet ruthless, which was kind of a speciality of his (I need to see the longer version sometime because I know he gets a few more scenes).

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I rather liked it, but too many years of THE EQUALIZER made it hard to buy Edward Woodward as that big a stiff or a patsy.

I did think they should have cast someone a bit younger, if we were supposed to accept his virginity.

Is the longer version preserved? I saw snippets of scenes in one of the extras, but I think they lost the negatives for the film, and everything.

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Is the longer version preserved? I saw snippets of scenes in one of the extras, but I think they lost the negatives for the film, and everything.

I think there is a lost version, but there are effectively two versions available. I know I saw the short version because the scene where Lee brings a lad to lose his virginity with Eklund wasn't there (the scene also has a song, sung by Eklund, I think - Gently Johnny - a soliliquy by Lee, and mating snails). One's in the 90 minute range and the other closer to 2 hours.

I did think they should have cast someone a bit younger, if we were supposed to accept his virginity

To be fair, Woodward made an excellent prig, so I could see, given his religious leanings, that his personality would have put off any potential wife, thus the virginity. It's just that due to THE EQUALIZER, I'd have expected him to have backup and a little firepower (facetiously, of course, but first impressions are hard to shake).

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Wow. I saw it so long ago -- like more than fifteen years, I bet -- that I'd forgotten about Woodward being a virgin. Maybe I didn't even get that at the time? Most of my memories of it are of the burning wicker man at the end, and the horror of that.

I think I wanted to watch it because I'd read Thomas Tryon's Harvest Home, which deals with a similiar society, and was way creepy and really well written.

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I've seen it a number of times, the first probably, yeah, 20 years ago. I totally didn't see the ending coming the first time. I just love the rich imagery - the masks and costumes that bracket the movie; the morris dancers and Punch and other aspects of ancient British culture that are still present today; all the stuff out of The Golden Bough.

I like that the policeman was so out of touch with nature that he was a 40-year-old virgin, and yet he was the sympathetic character.

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So, last night we watched the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol on DVD. The print it was pulled from was in pretty terrible condition, or at least the effect elements of the print were. There were points where the Ghost of Christmas past was only visible at all because the edges of the crop around his effect element had darkened, and you were seeing less him moving and more a placeholder for where he was supposed to be. The primary element wasn't in great shape either, but workable enough. I'm glad they found a print and transfered it to DVD when they did, or it might have been lost forever.

Alastair Sim! What a wonderful face! So expressive! So gloomy, bitter and nasty at the beginning and in flashbacks. So wonderfully happy and playful at the end. That entire film rests on Sim's magnificent face and the performance he gives with it, and boy howdy does he deliver like few if any other actors to play Ebeneezer.

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I love the Sim Carol! His face when he says to the housekeeper, "I haven't lost my senses, I've come to them," is wonderful--sad at how far gone he had been to be thought insane when he behaved like a real person, happy to have been brought to his senses, enlightened at what it means to be a real person.

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