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 ...

Who Said Mermaids Don't Exist?

I was recently searching for underwater photographs on the web. Admittedly, I was flicking relatively quickly through a set of images on Flickr, when I was flabbergasted by this one:

Photo by mambolou, November 2008

My mind kind of registered the following things within the same fraction of a second when the picture came up:

1. The technical quality of the photo is not as great as, for instance, and airbrush work would be.
2. The technical quality of the photo is not so bad to be one of these rainbow press alien photos.
3. From this angle there is a kind of human like shaped creature peeking out of the water.
4. What is always on stand-by on a man's mind?

Is this a bloody mermaid *slam the back button of the poor laptop as quick as possible* ?!?

Next fraction of the second, the anti-climax of the story: unfortunately, it's not a mermaid.

Third fraction of the second: but it sure looks interesting, what is it?

The answer is given right below the photo by mambolou himself: "It is a Beluga whale. She was peeking above the water's surface as I snapped the shot. Ahhh, the song of the sirens!" This is another great example of how amazing our world is and how things appear totally different from different angles and in different circumstances. When specifically looking for pictures of Beluga whales on the web, I found hundreds but not a single one looked anything close to a human or had the appearance of this great picture.

All those of you who might think, is this guy blind? Please look straight into my eyes and tell me this picture of Stephen does not look similar!

By the way, this is the picture that I recently took of a lovely mermaid ;-):

Photo of Daryl Hannah from the movie Splash.

For those who don't know, Splash is a great movie that was produced when Tom Hanks was still cool.