I need a Montage
deckard
Originally uploaded by mdpaustin. I watched the Academy Awards on Sunday, something I do every year along with my annual viewing of The Ten Commandments. Anne Baxter is so beautiful and evil all at once, and her performance stands out against the more wooden Heston and Brynner.
The set for the Awards was the best I've seen, Jon Stewart started out a little rocky but warmed up as the night went on. One noticeable change was the increased number of montages used throughout the show. While some had clear points such as Hollywood Fights Racism and the Role Call of the Dead, the others did not (to me at least) convey what the connection was between the clips. Despite this, one of the early sequences had shots from Blade Runner, quite possibly my favorite film.
I saw Blade Runner in the theater when it originally opened in 1982 with both my parents. We saw it at the theater that was in the parking lot of Wonderland Mall (which was later refurbished and renamed Crossroads Mall). There are three things that I can say about that viewing:
*I was too young to understand the movie and probably shouldn't have seen it at all.
*I most likely fell asleep, which can happen with this movie even to adults not in the right mindset.
*My parents hated, hated, hated the film, but I'm pretty sure we stayed for the whole thing. Either my Mom or Dad said at one point they wanted to stand outside the theater and tell people not to buy tickets.
For my family it became a point of reference, a measuring stick of how bad a movie or television show or some other experience was. If it didn't reach Blade Runner bad, there must have been something redeeming about whatever it was you were watching, reading, etc. Years later I would rent Blade Runner, read about all of the production struggles between the actors, the director and the studio. There are good reasons people hated the original release and there are good reasons the director's cut made for a much better film.
It was nice to see the clip from Blade Runner included in the montage at the Oscars. Sometimes seeing the good in a thing takes awhile, I guess.