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Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Paycheck (2003)

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Thumbnails 8/27/2013

R. Crumb Illustrates the Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick; Hugh Laurie's Los Angeles; 15 Things You Absolutely Must Know About Social Media Or Your Face Will Melt Off and Get Eaten by Goats; the portraits of Julia Margaret Cameron; that Cylie Myrus girl rubbed against stuff on the teevee, we heard tell; Breaking Bad "Buried" analyzed in terms of light and shadow; Mercedes kills Hitler.

Far Flungers

"Blade Runner:" Great, but a little dull

Does groundbreaking cinema go hand in hand with movie greatness? That's a question answered by Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982). Like "Metropolis" before it, here's a rare film with sequences that generate a sense of awe. Even though we now live in an age when the creation of extraordinary cities of the future has become routine thanks to digital effects, it's hard to imagine the Canyons of Coruscant (in the "Star Wars" prequels); the futuristic Washington in "Minority Report" or even the forthcoming versions of present day cities (in the new adaptation of "Total Recall") without the influence of "Runner" and none of these examples keep the audience's eyes fixed to the screen like Scott's Los Angeles of 2019. Here's a director whose doesn't just use special-effects to tell a story, he creates visual works of art in every frame of his films.

May contain spoilers

Far Flungers

We know what you'll be doing

Watching Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report" (2002) again through Blu-ray made me muse on how much my life with movies has changed during the last 10 years. When I watched it with my father at one of the big movie theaters in my hometown on one summer day of 2002 July, we were not yet familiar with multiplex theaters, and I watched movies mainly through VHS while infrequently going to theaters. DVD was slowly attracting my attention and I eventually bought a DVD-ROM drive for my computer in 2002 October. And I was not particularly interested in downloading movies from Internet; why do I have to watch movies in my small dorm room when I can enjoy them at big theaters?

May contain spoilers

Roger Ebert

It's sweltering hot out

A new movie is titled "The 500 Days of Summer." That's what it looked like on the last day of school, time reaching forward beyond all imagining. There was a heightened awareness in the room as the second hand crept toward our moment of freedom. We regarded the nuns as a discharged soldier does his superior officer. Here had existed a bond that would never be again. We didn't run screaming out the door. We sauntered. We had time. We were aware of a milestone having passed.

Some kids would go to second homes, or visit relatives, or summer camp. My friends and I would stay at home. We would have nothing planned. The lives of kids were not fast-tracked in those days. We would get together after breakfast and make desultory conversation, evaluate suggestions and maybe play softball, shoot baskets, go down somebody's basement, play cards, go to the Urbana Free Library for Miss Fiske's Summer Reading Club, rassle on the lawn, listen to the Cardinals, play with our dogs, or lay on our stomachs on the grass and read somebody's dad's copy of Confidential magazine. Somebody's mom was probably keeping an eye on us through a screen window.

Movie Answer Man

A walk on the 'Wild' side

Q. I got a chuckle out of the Movie Glossary entry titled "The Walk." This shot, of the characters lined up and walking meaningfully toward the camera, became so hackneyed it was used three times in each and every episode of the reality TV game show "Fear Factor."

Roger Ebert

The Best 10 Movies of 2002

It was a year when more movies opened than during any other year in memory. A year when the big Hollywood studios cast their lot with franchises, formulas, sequels, and movies marketed for narrow demographic groups--focusing so much on "product" instead of original work that they seemed likely to be shut out of the Oscars, as they were essentially shut out of the Golden Globes. A year when independent and foreign films showed extraordinary vitality. A wonderful year, that is, for moviegoers who chose carefully, and a mediocre year for those took their chances at the multiplex.

Interviews

Spielberg & Cruise & the movies

After seeing Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report," my mind was churning with amazement and curiosity. Talking to Spielberg and his star, Tom Cruise, I found myself not an interviewer but simply a moviegoer, talking the way you do when you walk out of a movie that blindsides you with its brilliance.