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Nick Lee

‘This Movie Gets Worse Every Screening’: The Brutal Studio Notes That Almost Killed Blade Runner

blade runner studio notes

There’s something inherently hilarious—and borderline tragic—about reading early studio notes for Blade Runner. You can feel the tension dripping off the page, a cocktail of confusion, frustration, and outright disdain for a movie they couldn’t wrap their heads around.

“This movie gets worse every screening,” one executive lamented, as though Blade Runner was some sort of recurring fever dream that kept getting more incomprehensible every time they revisited it. If it weren’t so funny, it’d be heartbreaking.

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Fascinating Photos Collected From History

South Vietnamese troops, joined by US advisers, rest after a tense night of waiting in an ambush position for a Vietcong attack that did not come, January 1965.

vietnam

The men sat in the hush of the jungle, their breaths shallow and measured, like animals knowing the predator watches from the dark. The South Vietnamese soldiers held their rifles loosely, the weight of their readiness sagging now in the absence of need.

A haze of cigarette smoke coiled upward into the humid blackness, dissipating among the branches like the hope of a clean fight. The Americans sat apart, their bulkier forms hunched against the damp earth, muttering low in a language alien to the trees and the men they trained. The jungle itself seemed to conspire in stillness, the chatter of birds and the clamor of insects held tight in the throat of night.

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She Played Kelly on Charlie’s Angels. See Jaclyn Smith Now at 79

Jaclyn Smith - Charlies Angels

Jaclyn Smith. For anyone who grew up in the ‘70s, her name conjures the image of Kelly Garrett, the cool and composed angel who fought crime in perfect feathered hair. For younger generations, she might just be “the lady who helped your mom find affordable chic at Kmart.” Either way, Jaclyn Smith has lived about five lives since Charlie’s Angels first hit TV screens in 1976.

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Why 2001: A Space Odyssey Is Both the Most Boring and Brilliant Sci-Fi Film Ever Made

Keir Dullea 2001 Space Odyssey

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who consider Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey the apex of cinematic genius, and those who think it’s an unbearably slow collection of random images that could’ve been wrapped up in about 35 minutes. And the weird part? Both groups are right.

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“Citizen Kane” Is the Greatest Movie Ever Made—So Why Did I Fall Asleep?

First of all, you’re not alone. Falling asleep during Citizen Kane is practically a rite of passage for people who claim to “love film” but only got into it after Tarantino started name-dropping obscure spaghetti westerns. It’s the movie you’re supposed to appreciate, not necessarily enjoy. Which raises the obvious question: if it’s so great, why does it feel like homework?

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A Few Photos To Help You Scratch That Nostalgic Itch

In the computer lab of every 90s elementary school, there was one piece of software that transcended time, transcended geography, and probably taught us more about life than any other piece of clunky early ‘edutainment’ software: The Oregon Trail.

You’d click through that gray-blue screen, choose your character’s occupation (banker, carpenter, or farmer—everyone knew being a banker was cheating), and suddenly, you were no longer a kid in some fluorescent-lit classroom.

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