Revisitation: BLADE RUNNER

Thematic tangent this Christmas break of rewatching (me) / watching for the first time (K) the pillars of late 20th century sci-fi (she had never seen the original STAR WARS trilogy and I still can't bring myself to ruin her enjoyment of the world with the prequels):

BLADE RUNNER, for K's first time ever and for my first time, seen not as a possible future but as an alternate past, one not so different from the one we've unleashed on ourselves – though still a literal possibility, just postponed few years/decades: where advertising and the promise of a better life lies; where fires burn and smoke rises and the perpetual night is accompanied by a perpetual downpour; where technology promised to make our lives easier and freer has become an existential threat to freedom of mind... Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

Hadn't seen it in years, think the last time was at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA roundabout the release of the Final Cut, mid-late naughties. Most prominent memory: the rush for the bathrooms following the end credits, the endless rain of LA 2019 proving too much for the collective bladders of a packed house gazing at the screen in rapt attention.

Not sure what tonight's film will be. Might change it up completely and go with IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE to assuage the present lack of WKW in my life.

(RIP Syd Mead / RIP Rutger Hauer, “tears in the rain.”)

Listening: SOLASTALGIA, by Rafael Anton Irisarri; ALONE AT THE VANGUARD, by Fred Hersch.