Blade Runner - Sean Young

Blade Runner is an iconic film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick [W].

Iconic, because of the complexity of the story, the film noir style filming and the fact that it seems that there is constantly rain pouring down, which creates a unique "dawn of humanity" atmosphere. It is one of those science fiction films that some people love because of its retro style, meaning that CGI was not advanced enough at the time of production to make everything look fancy and all shiny.

Whilst this is certainly true rather than calling this look "retro", I would say its look adds to the credibility of the events and also the slight but important human touch that makes the story matter somehow. This is not always achieved in some more recent productions of the same genre (I felt nothing, anyways).

Anyways, it is time to relate my rant to these gems of retro :) photographs I recently found:



Photos by Sean Young on the set of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982).

I found them in an article in the online magazine HUH, where I also learned that there are special stand-up chairs on film sets, like the one Sean Young leans against in the photograph above, that prevent the clothes from wrinkling! Awesomelifelonglearningaboutoldhollywoodexperience!

Also, if Sean is a Replica indeed, I think she will have feelings ...

Cherry 2000

"In the year 2017, a good woman is hard to find. A Cherry 2000 is even harder." This is the tagline of the robot women, weird outlaws, the zone, foxy renegade woman science fiction film Cherry 2000 from 1987.

It is about a guy who short-fuses his perfect female android. He can rescue her memory chip and now strives to find the same model - a Cherry 2000 - again. In order to achieve this, he hires a renegade, who helps him to retrieve one from an abandoned factory where the only remaining stock of this model is stored. The problem is that this factory happens to be situated in an apocalyptic outlawed zone full of weird, treacherous individuals. After surviving numerous dangerous perils they reach the plant and also find a replacement Cherry 2000 model. This is when the guy finally realises that the renegade he hired is actually a sexy, perfect woman and on top of that made of flesh and blood, which is so much better than nuts and bolts! What a grand story ;-). The film has got only a 4.9 on IMDB, but what do they know ... ;-) ?

And this film was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this brilliantly photoshopped photograph on Flickr:

Photo by Aaron Nace, July 2009.

The great thing about this picture is the depth-of-field (DOF) and the sharpness, crispness and lighting of the model in the foreground. Both has been achieved using photographic skill during shooting, rather than post-processing. This makes the actual edit look really natural and convincing.

The model is great too. She fits just perfectly. And reminds me of yet another great 80ies film Mannequin, which is also from 1987! Must have been the Year of Artificial Females or something like that ...

80ies, Me Thinks!

Photo by Fabe-DSI, September 2009.

Which is - for me - an enjoyable thought that brings back memories (I really should look for 80ies themed photographs and blog them, in order to colour up the world a bit more).

You might ask yourself, why this picture? Beacause, oddly enough, I found it after I had joined the Flickr pool Andy Warhol's Factory, which does contain some interesting pop art pictures! For the record and those of you who have not heard of Andy Warhol: his original name is Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), he was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker and he was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. As usual, Encyclopedia Galactica knows a lot more, in case you are interested!

After immediately thinking "80ies, me thinks!" after seeing this photograph, I was curious what might have lead the photographer to submit it to an Andy Warhol pop-art pool? It is certainly not pop art from the 1960ies. Maybe it could fit in with Hollywood Glamour from the 1980ies, but that feels a bit far fetched... So I clicked on the thumbnail and read the comments and here are some examples of what I found. Allow me to translate some of the comments, as not all of your might be familiar wiesith the technical terms:

"nice bokeh": picked up a fancy word, old chap ;-)?

"beautiful picture!" : captain subtext means: "Handsome girl wearing a bikini!"

"This photo is a Spirit Of Photography" : or rather a Spirit of the Hawk? (I apologise to all of you who will not get the song out of their minds for the rest of the day, the thought did the same to me if that helps.)

"wonderful taste for nice fashion" : if you refer to all clothing as fashion, the term "nice" is spot on!

As you can see, I was not enlightened about the reason of submission to the Warholic pool, but I was so well entertained for 10 minutes (and another 15 minutes writing this post!) that this question does not matter anymore anyways!

It remains to say that if you hear me saying that I don't enjoy looking at ladies in swimwear, you are officially allowed to call me a liar! In that respect, part of my brain thinks this is an awesome shot. Luckily the picture and comments make another (still sufficiently large ;-)) part chuckle ...