A couple of responses to responses. 1) To David Goldblatt, who wrote: >Actually, I ( David Goldblatt) wrote that posting not Paul Ryersbach, >although your reply deletes my reasons for claiming that in the director's >cut D is a replicant. No matter, we agree on that much. I do not say what >follows to be polite, but I found some of your reasons for saying that the >director's cut is less interesting, persuasive. I do believe that a love >affair between a relplicant and human to be an interesting idea. >Nevertheless, there are other, not necessarily contradictory reasons for >holding that the director's cut is better and more complex. First, >consider the audience from the point of view of reception. The assumption >from the beginning of the film is that D is a human being...so the >discovery, the revelation that he isn't, is a bit of a chill. Second, our >interest in replicants takes nothing away from our interest in ourselves, >which some would say is a bit overdone anyway and the amourous feelings of >human beings on the screen, have hardly been neglected. What we do see in >replicants anyway, is a piece of ourselves, a fragment of our mirror-image. >We see ourselves in nature, in everything anyway. Not to worry. What is >a double emotional edge in BLADE, (and this is an old story) is that we may >have created something that is frighteningly close to us and still a >machine. What does that make us? It is the motivation for Descartes to >HAVE to have claimed that animals are automata. On the other hand, the >nearly indiscernible replicant has fulfilled an equally old longing: that >as a species we are not alone in the universe. That's the ET, Flying >Saucer stuff. Not a single feeling, but a complex and sophisticated web of >behavior, love between human artifacts, let loose and independent of human >beings, "runaways" from them, is a kind of ultimate test of how far a >civilization has gone into the darkness it created. Anyway, I find that >more intriguing than a cop falling for a gorgeous face. =46irst, I apologize for atributing your writing to someone else. Second, I also find some of your reasons persuasive, and I=B4m not trying to be polite myself. It=B4s true that in the film replicants are a mirror image from us, and that image is thrilling or chilling. Also, if D discovers that he is a replicant, this poses the problem of not being who we think we are (I am not I, according to Rimbaud). Anyhow, I don=B4t follow the last part o= f your reasoning. I still find more intriguing a cop falling for a gorgeous face than the problems of artificial intelligence and the nature of civilization. At least in the cinema ("a girl and a gun", as Godard once said). Exaggerating just a bit, a gorgeous face in the cinema *is* the cinema, and I=B4m not sure about the rest. But, perhaps, this is a matter of taste. 2) To Mark Allen, who wrote: >Quintin wrote: >>I don=B4t like director=B4s cuts,in particular this phony one. >What other director's cuts do you not like and why? Brazil? I wrote that I don=B4t like director=B4s cuts, but I meant that I don=B4t li= ke the idea of director=B4s cuts. I would certainly love to see the director=B4= s cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, but not a new version (possibly made to make more money) of almost every film released in history. Regarding Brazil, I don=B4t know who=B4s cut is it, but I wouldn=B4t care to see a new= cut nor the old one again. Would you? Quintin El Amante / Cine Magazine Buenos Aires Argentina ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]