Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve)

[Morris Schæffer]

How big is the screen and how far are you sitting from the television?

Last fall I was tempted to get a 4K tv but held off because of the distance / resolution thing. Ie, The farther you are the less you notice the higher rez, unless you opt for crazy wall-size screens.

So for me it's like 4K videogames fuck yes but 4k movies meh maybe not so much.

ETA: Should point out I'm still jealous of Scar's setup.

Im sure u know this, but pls bear in mind 4k is more than just higher rez. There is the HDR for instance, highlights between dark and light r more pronounced, resulting in more lifelike and vibrant, yet still entirely authentic colors. Check these shots from the ceo3k bluray and 4k for instance:

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=12...53&i=2&l=0&a=1

Check the picture with Dreyfuss and the other dude wearing yellow safety headgear. Many would argue HDR is really where its at with 4k.

[Dukefrukem]

Scar is it one of those super curved TVs or only slightly curved?

[Scar]

Scar is it one of those super curved TVs or only slightly curved?

I’d say slightly.

[Yxklyx]

I guess I just have to confess that the central themes of these films just aren't terribly compelling to me. ...

I don't know - I think they can be. This screenplay was awful though. A very mediocre film - and that excruciatingly boring long fight sequence at the end.

[StuSmallz]

Before Harrison Ford appears, this is shaping up in my mind as a seminal sci-fi work. I find K's arc so consistently gripping and haunting, and the existential questions around him, although nothing new, are singularly matched by Villeneuve's measured tour through all the otherworldly melancholic, gorgeously grim aesthetics. The sterile oppressiveness of K's workplace and Wallace's headquarter, the LA neighborhood that becomes even more compressive and commodified than the orignal, and the rotted, forgotten margins where his investigation takes place -- these surroundings drift oh so deliberately around our protagonist, giving an intimate sense into his succumbed feeling of being both "more human than human" and less than. Haven't expected Gosling to deliver one of his best performances here, but he's so perfect for the material and this world, an immaculate, unresisting being that nevertheless hides a quivering of wanting something more (per his quasi-disturbing connection with Joi). That quivering intensifies as the investigation reveals that he may be right, be singled out, to want more, and it reaches a fearsome, supremely acted apex in the scene where he discovers the place of his dream, his whole reality now quivering uncertainly along with him.

And then Harrison Ford shows up and, strangely not dissimilar to what happens with The Force Awakens, drags along a baggage of franchise connectivity with him. As in the former case, Ford himself is good, slipping into his old role seamlessly and affectingly, and his material is intriguing. But even more so in this case, the character's material brings a different kind of register and sensibility, not exactly worse but entirely more conventional. So Deckard's story feels like it eats up the place of K's arc instead of meshing with it, and that story even clashes with the portentous pacing previously perfect for K's journey, but now too languished for something more mainstream.

Eh, I quite liked the way that Deckard came into the story in 2049, since I felt that the film actually made his relationship with Rachel more compelling in memory/retrospect, since I've always felt that their romance in the original was one of its weak links, with neither character being particularly compelling on their own (especially not when compared to Batty), a problem that wasn't really improved when they obligatorily "fell in love" later on.

[Peng]

That’s all well and good on the original film, but stopped me from outright loving this sequel when I was feeling it very special.

[Philip J. Fry]