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Vincent Paronnaud and
Marjane Satrapi, Persopolis (2007)
Animation based on Satrapi's autobiographical account of growing up in Iran from 1978 to the mid-1994s, with sojourns in Vienna and France. So the story of the deposition of the Shah (and indeed the imposition of his father by the British), the emergence of the Islamic regime, the Iran-Iraq war, the fate of political prisoners and the history of the size of head scarf.
Most of the film is in black and white - 1990s France gets to have colour but not Vienna - which perhaps fits the story of oppression, although I think I would have been inclined to have some colour in 1978. It's also deceptively simple in its animation style. The chronology doesn't quite work - or her mother has forgotten how old her daughter is.
Delightful for the one to one relationships - mother and daughter, grandmother and granddaughter, father and daughter, uncle and niece - and for the (I fera wish-fulfilment) shouting back: why do women have to cover up when men wear tight jeans, and if backsides turn them on, stop looking.
This was a version dubbed into English - Catherine Deneuve as grandmother, Sean Penn as father, Iggy Pop as the uncle - and I hope the DVD lets you watch the French of the original.
Ridley Scott, Blade Runner (1982 - workprint)
I'm not convinced I've got anything left to say about this film. Some bloke tracks down killer robots. Some woman runs through plate glass windows. Some robot kills a chess player. Pigeon flies into sunset.
So this is the exciting version - the one film used in one or two of the previews, accidentally rediscovered when a film festival wanted a 70mm print. At first, yes, very different - 1960s style titles of HARRISON FORD and BLADE RUNNER, longer dictionary definition of replicant, shots of LA without cuts to an eye, and gorier injury of Dave Holden. After that, well I've gotten five years or so on without rewatching the original release or Director's Cat versions so I can't list them, but the breathless commentary by Paul R. Sammon will itemise them for you.
To my mind the changes were mainly aural - no voiceover, obviously, although that's not true, since we get a death of Baty speech which is different from the one used in the original release. But there are a variety of differing musical cues - orchestral stuff not by Vangelis, and at one point Herrmann's score for Psycho (shower scene).
The disc comes with a half hour documentary, All Our Variant Futures, which discusses the process of restoration for the Final Cut in which Scott says the 1990s discovery at the festival was simply a version to which the voiceover was not added (and thus not the Workprint?). Various people talk about the corrections made to the film - removing the obvious stunt double from Zhora's death scene, replacing lip flap using Harrison Ford's son to resync the lip, making the pigeon fly into clouds and so forth. The Director's Cat version is skipped over - as is the five year gap between the mooted corrected version and the so-called Final Cut. Ford is mentioned as being unavailable - even to voice the trailer - which suggests there is a tale there (probably in Future Noir which I read years ago).
I suppose I should watch the Final Cut soon; can't face two versions of the original release and the Director's Cat.
Totals: 52 (Cinema: 19; DVD: 31; TV: 2]
Marjane Satrapi, Persopolis (2007)
Animation based on Satrapi's autobiographical account of growing up in Iran from 1978 to the mid-1994s, with sojourns in Vienna and France. So the story of the deposition of the Shah (and indeed the imposition of his father by the British), the emergence of the Islamic regime, the Iran-Iraq war, the fate of political prisoners and the history of the size of head scarf.
Most of the film is in black and white - 1990s France gets to have colour but not Vienna - which perhaps fits the story of oppression, although I think I would have been inclined to have some colour in 1978. It's also deceptively simple in its animation style. The chronology doesn't quite work - or her mother has forgotten how old her daughter is.
Delightful for the one to one relationships - mother and daughter, grandmother and granddaughter, father and daughter, uncle and niece - and for the (I fera wish-fulfilment) shouting back: why do women have to cover up when men wear tight jeans, and if backsides turn them on, stop looking.
This was a version dubbed into English - Catherine Deneuve as grandmother, Sean Penn as father, Iggy Pop as the uncle - and I hope the DVD lets you watch the French of the original.
Ridley Scott, Blade Runner (1982 - workprint)
I'm not convinced I've got anything left to say about this film. Some bloke tracks down killer robots. Some woman runs through plate glass windows. Some robot kills a chess player. Pigeon flies into sunset.
So this is the exciting version - the one film used in one or two of the previews, accidentally rediscovered when a film festival wanted a 70mm print. At first, yes, very different - 1960s style titles of HARRISON FORD and BLADE RUNNER, longer dictionary definition of replicant, shots of LA without cuts to an eye, and gorier injury of Dave Holden. After that, well I've gotten five years or so on without rewatching the original release or Director's Cat versions so I can't list them, but the breathless commentary by Paul R. Sammon will itemise them for you.
To my mind the changes were mainly aural - no voiceover, obviously, although that's not true, since we get a death of Baty speech which is different from the one used in the original release. But there are a variety of differing musical cues - orchestral stuff not by Vangelis, and at one point Herrmann's score for Psycho (shower scene).
The disc comes with a half hour documentary, All Our Variant Futures, which discusses the process of restoration for the Final Cut in which Scott says the 1990s discovery at the festival was simply a version to which the voiceover was not added (and thus not the Workprint?). Various people talk about the corrections made to the film - removing the obvious stunt double from Zhora's death scene, replacing lip flap using Harrison Ford's son to resync the lip, making the pigeon fly into clouds and so forth. The Director's Cat version is skipped over - as is the five year gap between the mooted corrected version and the so-called Final Cut. Ford is mentioned as being unavailable - even to voice the trailer - which suggests there is a tale there (probably in Future Noir which I read years ago).
I suppose I should watch the Final Cut soon; can't face two versions of the original release and the Director's Cat.
Totals: 52 (Cinema: 19; DVD: 31; TV: 2]
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