SEPTEMBER 1993 Prologue ------------------- On-Disk Programs Alcatraz WHQ BBS Entertainment (DIR) Charts (DIR) Personals (DIR) Miscellaneous (DIR) ------------------- Epilogue ------------------- EXIT TO DOS REALLY WANNA EXIT? No Yes CHARTS! Chart Policy ------------------- Musicians Music Modules ------------------- MAIN MENU PERSONAL COLOUMNS Advertising Policy ------------------- MAIN MENU BLADE RUNNER Introduction ++ Replicants Def. What Is so-and-so Voice-Overs/Ending Different Versions Memorable Quotes Unicorn/Chess Game Problems Trivia/Popularity More Q's and A's Deckard=Replicant? End Notes ------------------ ENTERTAINMENT MENU MISCELLANEOUS Coming ATZ releases Copyright Notice Addresses Credits ------------------- MAIN MENU ENTERTAINMENT Blade Runner (DIR) ------------------- Jurassic Park 1 Jurassic Park 2 Jurassic Park Game The Party III The Party III 1893 ------------------- MAIN MENU Movies to come in 1993 by IT / Cryptoburners Credits On-Disk Programs by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz Alcatraz WHQ BBS --- +4777695151 (77695151) Movie Review: 'Unforgiven' by Diceman Gathering '93 info Crusaders - Deadline - Exile Scene News Movie Review: 'Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me' by Micro-Pal / Alcatraz BUSTS: The History by Micro-Pal / Alcatraz BUSTS: Current Action by Micro-Pal / Alcatraz BUSTS: An Analysis by Micro-Pal / Alcatraz Movie Review: 'A Few Good Men' by Diceman Movie Review: 'Home Alone 2 - Alone in New York' by Micro-Pal / Alcatraz Epilogue by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz Prologue by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz ATZ Releases to come by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz Addresses (C) ALCATRAZ 1993 BUSTS: Business Software Alliance's view by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz BUSTS: The Future by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz The Amiga 1200 is here ! by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz Greetings ! by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz Frequently Asked Questions About BLADE RUNNER Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - REPLICANTS Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - DEFINITIONS Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - VOICE-OVERS/ENDING Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - DIFFERENT VERSIONS Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - MEMORABLE QUOTES Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - UNICORN & CHESS GAME SIGNIFICANCE Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - PROBLEMS Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - TRIVIA & POPULARITY Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - MORE Q's AND A's Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - IS DECKARD A REPLICANT? Compiled by: Murray Chapman BLADE RUNNER (FAQ) - END NOTES Written by: Murray Chapman Chart Policy by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz Voted Best Musicians September 1993 Voted Best Music Modules September 1993 Advertising Policy Jurassic Park Review (1) by James Berardinelli Jurassic Park Review (2) by Mark R. Leeper Jurassic Park Game Facts by Micro-Pal/Alcatraz The Party III Invitation The Party III - Year 1893 by Wreko/Balance ðJURASSIC PARK­ ð THE GAME! ­ For 160 billion years, the dinosaurs ruled on planet earth. Then mankind took over. For the first time, they meet. In ºJurassic Park­. On October 1st, the famous software house ºOcan­ will release their new game - based on and developed during the creation of this year's movie nuber one: ºJurassic Park­. ºOcean­ has already made several games based on movies, so one might say they have some kind of experience. However, this game will ºnot­ follow the plot of the film. In the game, you are the ºdinosaur expert­ Grant (played by Sam Neill in the movie), and your ºtask­ is to fix the sabotaged security network in the park. This is not a ºtypical­ shoot'em up game, and you will, amongst other things, have to bring John Hammonds grandchild into security, as well as help an ill stegosaurus which is blocking the escape route. You ºwill­ recognize the movie in the game, but not in the same way as you have in other "based-on-movie" -games. In some parts of the game you view the player in the ºthird­ person perspective, and in other parts in the ºfirst­ person perspective - in other words: What you see is the same as what your player sees. Since the game isn't released yet, I'm unable to give you a full review, but I wanted to pass these facts (or rumors?) on to you. The game will undoubtly become a box office hit - just like the movie. ºOcean­ plan to release the game on a wide range of computers and formats, and for the ºAmiga­ users, I reckon the A1200, and perhaps the CD32, versions will be most interesting. So stay tuned! ©Micro-Pal / Alcatraz­ ðJURASSIC PARK­ A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper ºCapsule review: As few films in the past have ever managed­ ºto do, Steven Spielberg has tapped into the mother lode of­ ºhuman dreams and sense of wonder. Michael Crichton's story­ ºmay be "Westworld" with dinosaurs, but for once the­ ºbiotechnology and the special effects are phenomenal.­ ºRating: high +3.­ When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon, I got this funny feeling in my back and in the back of my neck. This was where a dream that I'd had became a reality. The feeling was one of "Oh boy! Here we go!" and one of real anticipation. In Michael Crichton's novel JURASSIC PARK, a little girl drew a very detailed picture of the animal that had bitten her. And the expert looked at the picture and identified it as a known type of lizard. But several of the details were wrong in her picture and that type of lizard was not known to bite people. But the case was closed. And then someone else looks at the picture and says, "Whose kid drew the dinosaur?" And even though it was just a story, I got that same "Oh boy! Here we go!" So I was hoping that sequence would make it to the film. It didn't. Instead, paleontologist Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill), not knowing what the Jurassic Park concept is all about, suddenly sees an incredibly majestic sight that is undoubtedly something he had dreamed of his entire life and he is so overcome with joy and excitement and wonder that he has to look away. And I was feeling just about the same thing the character was. "Oh boy! Here we go!" Who hasn't dreamed about getting the dinosaurs back? Now you can indulge that fantasy for two hours and people are going to flock to do it. Michael Crichton's story itself is really a variant on WESTWORLD. A theme park is created with genuine dinosaurs, resurrected thanks to the magic of DNA cloning from blood found in mosquitoes who sucked on dinosaurs and then were preserved in amber. Two paleontologists, a mathematician, and a lawyer come to certify that the park is real and safe. Of course it turns out that the park is very, very real but just a bit lacking in the safe category. Neill's Grant epitomizes the stereotype of the soft scientist who does not get along with machines, even seatbelts. Laura Dern plays Ellie Sattler, a second paleontologist who lives and works with Grant, every bit his equal. Like Grant she is at first enchanted by the island where live dinosaurs live, but soon discovers that live dinosaurs have their downside also. Jeff Goldblum has many of the best lines as an obnoxious but witty chaos mathematician. He uses her acerbic wit to point out just what can go wrong with the implementation of billionaire entrepreneur John Hammond's (Richard Attenborough's) plan for the park. Attenborough finds a human side to Hammond that is not apparent in the book. Instead of a vicious maniac for success, he is more enthusiastic but likable. Other familiar faces include Bob Peck (who has done some excellent work in the past, including the BBC's EDGE OF DARKNESS), Martin Ferrero, and Wayne Knight. As enjoyable as Crichton's story is, there is much that cannot be fully appreciated without actually seeing it. No description can come close to the visual impact of this film. It has been suggested that JURASSIC PARK ranks with STAR WARS and KING KONG (1933) as a giant leap in representing images on the screen. However, there is actually little here that is really a breakthrough in technology, though virtually every effect that has ever been used to show dinosaurs on the screen was resurrected and perhaps refined. There are hand puppets, dinosaur suits, stop-motion, and computer graphics, seamlessly and flawlessly integrated. It took about four decades, but somebody has finally surpassed Ray Harryhausen at showing dinosaurs on the screen. It no longer is easy to tell that this effect is stop-motion and that one was a computer image, and the dinosaurs look as if they were in the scene with the people, not rear projections. Clearly inspired both by the work of Ray Harryhausen and by a recent revolution in scientific dinosaur art and paleontology, these dinosaurs show a lot of anatomy, including the wrinkles, the breathing, the bone structure, and often tremendous scale. They do not drag their tails on the ground and even the heaviest sauropods will rear up on their hind legs to reach the tops of trees. The one major aspect of modern dinosaur art technical speculation that was left behind is choice of color. The fossil record, of course, is silent on the color of dinosaurs and some artists these days suggest that it is likely that dinosaurs were brightly colored, but JURASSIC PARK's dinosaurs are dully colored. Still, the film does give a real air of authenticity. When the credits say no animals were hurt in the filming, one wonders, "How did they film that scene without killing that velociraptor?" It is a tribute to the special effects that in some of the horror scenes I was genuinely tense. A really good film will make me tense, though I have not been actually frightened by a film since I was nine years old. (And just as an aside, I treasure those moments when I was young and actually frightened by film. I did even then, especially being terrified by WAR OF THE WORLDS before I was three years old. I am very thankful that nobody "protected" ME from them.) But along with the horror are also the moments of joy and wonder. I am pleased that the John Williams score concentrates on the wonder, not the horror of having the dinosaurs return. It would be nice if that wonder might push some younger viewers into fields such as paleontology that pay off in sense of wonder and fulfillment of curiosity, even if they are not as financially rewarding. It helps that JURASSIC PARK is reasonably scientifically accurate. Most skepticism seems to center around a belief that dinosaur DNA would deteriorate in amber over the tens and hundreds of millions of years. You could not really clone DNA that old. But even that is open to conjecture. What does seem odd is that at one point early in the script one of the scientists surprisingly fins a supposedly extinct leaf from something other than a tree. I do not think that's its presence is explained by the premise of cloning. The script does include reasonable debates as to whether this particular scientific wonder is really what the world needs. Because it is a disaster story, of course the anti-science side has the upper hand, though not all the anti-science articles are convincing. The theme voiced by the mathematician that life WILL find a way to survive at first is a warning that the dinosaurs will not be contained, but eventually applies to the people as well. The script was co-authored by Crichton, and David Koepp with more than a little humor borrowed from such diverse sources as Buster Keaton and Gary Larson, as well as a few jokes of their own. In total, this is one of the most enjoyable adventure films in years. I rate it a high +3 on the -4 to +4 scale, but then I am biased toward science fiction. Mark R. Leeper att!mtgzfs3!leeper leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com ðJURASSIC PARK­ ºA film review by James Berardinelli­ ºCopyright 1993 James Berardinelli­ Rating..........: ©8.7 out of 10 (A-, 3 out of 4)­ Date Released...: ©6/11/93­ Running Length..: ©2:06­ Rated......: ©PG-13 (Violence)­ Starring...: ©Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough,­ ©Laura Dern, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards­ Director...: ©Stephen Spielberg­ Producers..: ©Kathleen Kennedy and Gerald R. Molen­ Screenplay.: ©Michael Crichton and David Koepp based on the­ ©book by Michael Crichton­ Music......: ©John Williams­ Released by: ©Universal Pictures­ º On a small island off the coast of Costa Rica exists a­ ºmost unusual animal preserve by the name of Jurassic Park.­ ºOperated by dinosaur lover John Hammond (Richard­ ºAttenborough), Jurassic Park is the first of its kind. Its­ ºpopulation of creatures includes brachiosaurs, dilophosaurs,­ ºtricerotops, velociraptors, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex, each of­ ºwhich has been cloned using the latest technology that takes­ ºDNA from dinosaur-biting prehistoric insects preserved in­ ºamber, and uses that DNA for the re- creation. When the­ ºconsortium funding Jurassic Park become concerned that all­ ºis not as it should be, Hammond is forced to call in three­ ºexperts: paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), his­ ºpartner, paleo-botanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and­ ºthe brilliant-but-cynical mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm­ º(Jeff Goldblum). When the trio arrives at Jurassic Park,­ ºthey are astonished by what it represents. It doesn't take­ ºlong, however, for astonishment to turn to horror.­ First of all, for anyone who's wondering, given the current state of technology, the situation postulated in JURASSIC PARK cannot happen. Not only do the necessary cloning techniques not exist, but the likelihood of retrieving dinosaur DNA from an amber-encased prehistoric mosquito is extremely small. While insect specimens have been unearthed, for there to be dinosaur DNA, circumstances demand that the mosquito had bitten a dinosaur shortly before its fatal imprisonment, and the chance of that is slim, at best. Nevertheless, the enjoyment of any movie is hardly predicated by a factual premise. The apparent realism of some of Crichton's pseudo-science imbues JURASSIC PARK with a grounding that is acceptable in our high-tech world. After all, to weave a dinosaur fable in this day and age, science -- not fantasy -- must be the driving force. The science may not be real, but it must sound good enough to allow a suspension of disbelief. In that, this film (and the book that spawned it) succeeds. Of course, the special effects help immensely. They are so good, in fact, and the dinosaurs look so real, that I half expected to see "dinosaur trainer" during the closing credits. Instead, however, honor should be heaped upon the creators of JURASSIC PARK's primary screen presences (all apologies to the actors). Stan Winston, definitely not a stranger to this sort of film (his recent credits include ALIENS and TERMINATOR 2), is credited with the live-action creatures. Dennis Muren gets his due for the full motion monsters. Phil Tippett is the "dinosaur supervisor", and Michael Lantieri presides over the creature effects. All-in-all, the wizards at ILM have done an outstanding job, giving us by far the most impressive and believable monster movie of all time. Nothing compares. Would that the story is the equal of its execution. To begin with, Crichton's book, while filled with fascinating ideas and entertaining moments, hardly holds together as a top-of-the-line adventure story. The ending is especially problematic, resulting in a forty-page denouement that drags slowly to an anticlimactic conclusion. As a result, a script based closely on the book is bound to suffer from some of the same problems. Despite numerous small changes and omissions, the movie JURASSIC PARK is very much faithful to its printed inspiration. Perhaps Michael Crichton's involvement in the screenplay has something to do with this. The biggest weakness of the novel is characterization, and the same flaw is fully evident in the screen adaptation. There are a few exceptions. The scenes between Alan and Ellie at the beginning are well-done, with the affection between them evident from the start (a change from the book, where the two were never a couple). This is as much a tribute to the acting of Sam Neill and Laura Dern as to the writing. Also noteworthy is a scene where Ellie confronts Hammond, who's eating a dish of ice cream in the midst of the crisis. Here, we get a sense of what's going on inside the old man's head. In the book, he's a mixed-up fanatic, but in the film, he's made into a sympathetic, albeit eccentric, figure. Interestingly, some transposition has gone on between Hammond's two grandchildren. Tim (Joseph Mazzello) is still the dinosaur-lover, but the screen's version of the boy is younger than his sister Alexis (Ariana Richards). The flip-flop in age creates a difference in their relationship and they come across as closer and less-adversarial on screen. Also, here it's Alexis, not Tim, who's the computer whiz. The plot is little more than a cleverly jumbled-together batch of formulas. As I mentioned before, JURASSIC PARK is, reduced to its most basic level, a monster movie. Thrown in for good measure is the human interest story -- the growing relationship between self-confessed child-hater Grant and his two youthful charges -- but this part of the film worked least successfully for me. Also, there isn't an effective ending. Too much is left dangling, demanding that the lion's share of the resolution be confined to the imagination, but at least the movie avoids the book's plodding conclusion. Nevertheless, I doubt that there are many who will go to JURASSIC PARK for its characters or story. Rightly so, crowds will flock to the theaters screening this movie so they can ooh and aah, jump in their seats, and root for the overmatched humans against the big, bad dinosaurs. When it comes to adventure, JURASSIC PARK is a roller - coaster ride. With thrills and action in the tradition of, but not up to the level of, ALIENS and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (another Spielberg picture), this is an exciting and energetic film with a number of shocks but few letdowns. Even those familiar with the written work can't help being drawn in to the pulse- pounding exhilaration of the chase as the Tyrannosaurus menaces two powerless electric cars and the trapped humans inside. In the end, JURASSIC PARK succeeds because it's good entertainment -- a fun night at the movies. Unlike something of the ilk of CLIFFHANGER, which also boasts a lot of action, there's some intelligence behind this picture. JURASSIC PARK isn't great art, nor is it classic cinema, but at least we don't feel like the producers and director are more interested in getting as much firepower and death on-screen as they can without giving a thought as to whether anyone in the audience has a brain. Not having seen all of the summer's offerings (THE LAST ACTION HERO is still a week away), I can't say how JURASSIC PARK will rate overall, but I will admit that, in my opinion, this is the first big-budget film in a long time to live up to its pre-release reputation. Sure, the movie isn't perfect, but it delivers -- perhaps more than delivers -- what the average viewer will expect from it. Summer has long been known as the season for action/adventure films, and JURASSIC PARK falls firmly into that category. Because of the nature and scope of this movie, I would encourage anyone with more than a passing interest to catch JURASSIC PARK in a movie theater. It will lose a lot on the smaller TV screen. Without the grandeur of a stereophonic sound system and sizeable picture, much of this film's impact will dwindle away. The dinosaurs will still look real, but there will undoubtedly be some who, upon viewing JURASSIC PARK on video, will wonder what all the fuss is about. To this praise, let me add a final word of caution. While the violence in this film is not particularly graphic, it is apparent. People aren't shown getting gored or ripped apart, but the movie makes it perfectly clear what is happening. Parents considering taking young children (under around 10 years of age) to JURASSIC PARK might be advised to see the film first. There are certainly a number of scary and potentially-disturbing moments which, while they add to the spice for older viewers, may be inappropriate for younger ones. - James Berardinelli (blake7@cc.bellcore.com) S i l e n t s L e m o n . S p a c e b a l l s .-------------------------. | | | T H E P A R T Y | | | | 1 9 9 3 | | | `-------------------------' You Can't Beat The Feeling! WHERE AND WHEN? The Party 1993 will be held in Scandinavia's largest conference centre. The centre is called Messecenter Herning and it is of course placed in Herning in the middle of Denmark. The Party will be held from Monday 27 December at 10:00 CET to Wednesday 29 December at 15:00 CET. FACILITIES: - Room for at least 3000 people, including tables, chairs and aircondition. - A quiet, separate hall for sleeping. But you are free to sleep where you want to. - Enormous free parking area. Bring your tent or caravan. - If you are going by train or bus, you will arrive at Herning Station. Here the public bus no. 4c and a nonstop party bus will be driving to the party place. The ride takes 12 min. and costs app. 10 DKK. At the station there will be 2 organizers to help you getting to the party place. - Enough electricity for everyone, with a professional electrician 24 hours a day to avoid problems. - All info about what's going on (competitions, surprises, winners etc.) will be published on a large bulletin board in the entrance area, on the big screen and on The Party Channel. - 600 x 400 cm high quality screen for competitions and other events. - Extremely powerful HI-FI equipment to guarantee perfect sound quality. - Two real cafeterias will be open all day. At night only one of them will be open. A kiosk and a hot-dog stand will also be open most of the day. The prices will be low. - This year everyone who bring a TV-set and an antenna will be able to watch The Party Channel. The Party Channel is an information and entertainment channel with movies, live broadcast of the competitions, all the latest info, news, results etc. - A Laserdisc room with chairs for 500 people, a big screen and dolby pro logic surround sound, showing new laserdiscs 24 hours a day! - The toilet and shower facilities are good. This year we have more than 25 free showers. - Professional cleaning company to ensure that you will be able to walk around in the hall. - The Party 1993 T-Shirts and disks will be sold at the Information. - Female organizers! EVENTS: - 24 hours entertainment. - Many strange and crazy surprise competitions. - If you have made a video, a harddisk-based demo or another amazing thing, bring it with you and we will gladly show it at the big screen. Just hand in the production at the Information. SURPRISE: - Brand new Kyd/Balle Video Production! COMPETITIONS: - The main Amiga competitions and prizes: Demo Compo Gfx Compo Music Compo Intro Compo AGA-Demo Compo ---------- --------- ----------- ----------- -------------- 1. $3000 1. $500 1. $500 1. $500 1. $500 2. $1500 2. $300 2. $300 2. $250 2. $300 3. $750 3. $200 3. $200 3. $100 3. $100 4. $500 4. $100 4. $100 5. $250 5. $50 5. $50 RULES: - Overall Demo/Gfx/Music/Intro/AGA rules: - All contributions must be delivered at the Information before the dead-line. - If you want to take part in a competition you must be present at the party. - Demo Competition: - A group can contribute with as many demos as they want to but only 1 from each coder. - Max. demo lenght: 20 min. - The demo must be able to run on a standard Amiga 500 (1.3) with 1MB memory. - Gfx Competition: - Each artist is allowed to contribute with 1 picture. - The picture must be loadable from a standard Deluxe Paint IV (not AGA). - Music Competition: - Each musician is allowed to contribute with 1 tune. - We will play a maximum of 5 minutes per module. - Your tune must be delivered as an executeable file or with the music-program required. - Intro Competition: - Max. intro length: 40KB. - The intro must be able to run on a standard 1MB Amiga 500. - AGA Demo Competition: - Max. demo length: 20 min. - The demo must be able to run on a standard Amiga 1200. ENTRANCE PRICE: - Due to the extra events, facilities, competitions, prices etc. the entrance fee will be 150 DKK. PLEASE NOTE: - We will not accept anybody selling food, disks etc. without our written permission. - Alcohol is not allowed at the party place. - People who cannot behave will be thrown outside until they can, real troublemakers will ofcourse be handed over to the police located close to the party place. - We will not accept any racist signs or acting, spraycans or firework. - People who cause any damages will ofcourse have to pay for it. - We take no responsibility for illegal swapping, software, video etc. - A special diskmag will be released primo november with detailed information about the party and how to get there. ADDRESSES: Party place: Organizers/Registration: The Party-phone: ------------ ------------------------ ---------------- Messecenter Herning The Party 1993 For info and registration Vardevej 1 Postbox 755 (+45) 98 15 17 31 7400 Herning 9100 Aalborg Denmark Denmark Modem-registration: Net-registration: ------------------- ----------------- Mainline BBS Internet: sauber90@kom.auc.dk Silents DKHQ Amixnet : Dux@DK0001 (+45) 98 15 30 62 (NOTE: This phonenumber will change by 1/9) TO REGISTER: Fill in this slip and send it to one af the addresses above: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, we are coming to The Party 1993 Name/handle: Group: Country: Number of persons coming: Number of computers: Amigas.: C-64's.: PC's...: Do you want to reserve tables? Yes/No ------------------------------------------------------------------- For further information about The Party 1993 you can call The Party-Phone or read The Party Mag released in early November! THE PARTY III - YEAR 1893 .. ============================ This textfile was written after I read the text-invitation to The Party III, held by Silents, Lemon, and Spaceballs at the 27-29 Dec. 1993. The only thing I really think SUXX are the prizes, $3000 for the old boring A500 demos, and only $500 for the AGA demo competition ??? Hey wake up, we're living in 1993 and NOT in 1893. I don't think the organisers of this party knows how many freaks at the Amigascene has got an A1200 or A4000, but who wants to release anything with that low prizes at the competitions ?? I really thought that The Party III should be the party which broke the limits and took the step into the FUTURE, by giving high prizes for the AGA demos, but I got REALLY dissapointed when I read the invitation.. I really know a lot of groups which had plans for releasing their first BIG AGA demo at this party, and so did we (Balance), but I HIGHLY doubt that any of these demos will be released, of course they will be released but NOT at this party.. There has been some rumours going on since quite a time ago, that there would be good prizes at The Party III for AGA demos, and people really believed in these rumours, since the 'The Party' series has been the greatest parties ever held, and why should the third in the series not be just as great!!? I must say that you (the organisers) really let quite a lot of people down, by these lousy prizes... My opinion would be to take $1000 from the normal demo competition and use for the AGA competition, so that there would be $2000 for the normal demos, and $1500 for the AGA competition.. Otherwise I'm afraid that there only will be released very small and boring demos in the AGA competition .. Another BAD thing is the GFX competition, NO AGA pictures, WHAT ??? Do you know how many graphicians who has bought an A1200 or A4000 because of their new limits with the AGA chipset ?? If I was a graphician I would be really down by not be able to compete with my AGA pictures, and since the coders don't want to release their demos either, they will not be able to get their graphics used for anything at this party .. I'd really like to get some response from this text, to hear what other people thinks of this ... Write a message to me at one of these boards, or write directly to me at this address .. Wreko / Balance Amagerbrogade 263a ST.TV 2300 Copenhagen S Denmark Phone: +45 31-519525 ð ADVERTISING POLICY­ Advertisements in Peanuts are limited to one per person, unless we are paid to include more than the one, free advert. The advert must not exceed the 80x13 format (width=80, height=13). Of course - you may make your advert smaller. Furthermore, advertisements must not encourage piracy or any kind of illegal actions. Your ad must be mailed no later than the 20th if you want to include it in the following issue. If you live outside Europe, please send your ad (and votes!) a few days ahead of the above date. Mail your advertisement - and votes - to this address: TEO/Alcatraz Vassosvn. 14 N-8481 BLEIK NORWAY BLADE RUNNER Frequently Asked Questions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Compiled by Murray Chapman (muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au), from sources too numerous to mention. Thank-you one and all. Please send your contributions/corrections/donations/suggestions to muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au. Articles posted to the net are not 100% guaranteed to be seen by me. Please read the notes at the end of this file before mailing me. INTRODUCTION ------------ The movie "Blade Runner" is one of the internet's most talked about movies. In an attempt to stop the same questions being asked and answered every few months or so, I present the Blade Runner FAQ. This list will be posted monthly to: alt.cult-movies, rec.arts.movies, alt.cyberpunk, and rec.arts.sf.movies. The list will appear in news.answers and rec.answers as soon as I can sort out a few problems. The followup field is set to alt.cult-movies, because it is the most relevant newsgroup for Blade Runner discussions. The list is available for anonymous FTP as: ftp.u.washington.edu:/public/alt.cyberpunk/FAQS/BladeRunner.FAQ nic.funet.fi:pub/culture/tv+film/BladeRunner Suggestions welcome for all areas, especially those marked with []s. This FAQ contains spoilers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS -------- 1. What is Blade Runner? 2. What book is it based on? 3. Is the sound track available? 4. What are replicants? 5. Who/what is ? 6. I don't like the voice-overs/ending. 7. What different versions of Blade Runner are there? 8. Memorable Quotes 9. What is the significance of the unicorn? 10. What is the significance of the chess game? 11. Problems in Blade Runner 12. Trivia / What makes Blade Runner popular/special? 13. More questions/answers 14. Is Deckard a replicant? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. WHAT IS BLADE RUNNER? Blade Runner (BR) is a science-fiction film starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Daryl Hannah. Although it was a box-office failure, it has become perhaps the definitive cult movie, and is one of the few films which remain faithful to the ideals of 20th century science fiction literature. Blade Runner was directed by Ridley Scott, and features music by Vangelis. Plot Synopsis ------------- Preamble from movie: Early in the 21st Century, THE TYRELL CORPORATION advanced Robot evolution into the NEXUS phase -- a being virtually identical to a human -- known as replicants. The NEXUS 6 Replicants were superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them. Replicants were used Off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets. After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 combat team in an Off-world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth -- under penalty of death. Special police squads -- BLADE RUNNER UNITS -- had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicants. This was not called execution. It was called retirement. LOS ANGELES NOVEMBER, 2019 A number of replicants have made it to Earth, and ex-Blade Runner Deckard (Harrison Ford) is convinced to track them down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. WHAT BOOK IS IT BASED ON? Blade Runner is LOOSELY based on a Philip K. Dick novella, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (DADoES). Dick also wrote the story that _Total Recall_ was based on, "We Can Remember It For You, Wholesale". A recurring theme in Dick's work is the question of personal and human identity. A question explored more in DADoES and _Total Recall_ than in Blade Runner is "what is reality?" At the most, one can say that the movie borrowed a concept and some characters from the book. You are most likely to find DADoES in a second-hand bookstore. It has been re-released as: "Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)." The title comes from Alan E. Nourse, who wrote a story called "The Bladerunner". William S. Burroughs took the book and wrote "Bladerunner (A Movie)" in 1979. Rights to the title only ("in perpetuity throughout the universe") were sold to Ridley Scott. Similarities between Nourse's "The Bladerunner" and Scott's BR are in name only. Nourse's title refers to people who deliver medical instruments to outlaw doctors who can't obtain them legally. [Source: Locus, September 1992 (p. 76)] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. IS THE SOUND TRACK AVAILABLE? The original movie soundtrack has never been officially released, although the credits claim it is available on Polydor records. There is an album called the "Blade Runner Soundtrack" (WEA 1982), but it is NOT the music from the movie, rather it is an orchestral arrangement. Vangelis released an album called "Themes", which contains: "End Titles" "Love Theme" "Memories of Green" (originally from Vangelis' "See You Later") There are recurring but unsubstatiated rumors that a few LPs of the real soundtrack were sold in Europe. Scott used the orchestrated version of "Memories of Green" in his film _Someone to Watch Over Me_ The Japanese vocals associated with the Blimp are from: "Japan: Traditional Vocal and Instrumental Music, Shakuhachi, Biwa, Koto, Shamisen" [compact disc] - performed by Ensemble Nipponia - 1976, Electra Asylum Nonesuch Records/Warner Communications Inc. The lyrics are part of a Japanese epic about the tragic and utter destruction of one clan by another. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ð CHART POLICY!­ All diskmags have some kind of chart. Although Peanuts isn't a pure diskmag, the idea about a few charts shouldn't be ruled out. Chart entrys often tend to stay at the same spot for ages, so we've decided to have only charts that will change a bit as the time passes, and this time it is narrowed down to two charts: ºMusicians­ and ºMusic Modules­. µThe rules are very easy:¡ You can vote for up to 5 musicians and 5 modules. You write the one you think is "best" at the top, and then the rest... You can ºnot­ vote for yourself or any member of your group. You ºcan­ vote for Alcatraz members, but you don't have to :-) The first place will be assigned 35 floats, the second will get 30 floats and so on... if you'd like to assign a lot of floats to the same musician, just enter the same name on several lines... A vote-sheet could look something like this: MUSICIANS: 1. UNCLE TOM (35) 2. AXEL (30) 3. DR. AWESOME (20) 4. WALKMAN (10) 5. BRUNO ( 5) Total floats: (100) MODULES: 1. Summer In Gambia (Lizardking) (35) 2. Klisje Paa Klisje (Walkman) (30) 3. Tranze 7 (Dr. Awesome) (20) 4. Vanja (Brainbug) (10) 5. In The Kitchen (4-Mat) ( 5) Total floats: (100) There will be a new layout on the charts next time, with points, percentage etc. information. The charts have, this time, been compiled with the votes from very few people; only five people have contributed with their votes. Peanuts will be released on a regular basis from now on, and the votes for the next issue must be sent µno later¡ than the 20th each month for Europeans, 2-3 days earlier for non-Europeans. All votes receieved after the 24th will ºnot­ be accounted for until the next issue! For those of you who decide to mail your votes: 1. Write your votes on a piece of paper (or equivalent) and mail it to the address below. Remember to include your handle, name and address! (Do ºnot­ send votes on disk!) 2. If you want a disk with the next issue of Peanuts in return, please enclose º3 disks­ in the letter; one for us to send back to you, and two for us to keep as payment for postage and work. Note that the disks has to be ºerror-free­, else you will not get any disks in return. You can also vote online on the ºAlcatraz WHQ BBS­, just enter the Peanuts area in the message base. There will be information in the Peanuts area entry text on how to vote. If you don't know it already, the number is +©4777695151­... ---------- Each month, we will make a draw among the voters, and the winner will get a ºpresent­ in the mail :-)) So just keep 'em votes coming! Mail your votes (either only the sheet, or the sheet and 3 disks for the diskback service) to the following address: TEO/Alcatraz Vassosvn. 14 N-8481 BLEIK NORWAY PS..... Please state º"Peanuts Votes"­ on the envelope! PS2.... Send your votes to TEO (this address) and ºNOT­ to Micro-Pal :-) (I don't like to count... ed.) ðVOTED BEST MUSICIANS­ Audiomonster Nuke Brainbug Heatbeat Lizardking 4-Mat Dr. Awesome Fleshbrain Walkman Bruno Axel Uncle Tom ð VOTED BEST MODULES ­ Klisjé Paa Klisjé (Walkman) In The Kitchen (4-Mat) Vanja (Brainbug) Lizardking's Theme (Lizardking) Summer In Gambia (Lizardking) Tranze 7 (Dr. Awesome) Jammin' For Nothing (Heatbeat) Bodweizer/McDisk4 (Brainbug) Macabra (Dr. Awesome) Technolife (Codex) 70's (Audiomonster) Now What ??? (Dr. Awesome) 4. WHAT ARE REPLICANTS? The following definitions appear in the BR script, the Marvel Comics adaptation of the film, but not the movie itself: _android_ (an'droid) adj. Possessing human features -n. A synthetic man created from biological materials. Also called humanoid. (Late Greek androeides, manlike: ANDR(O) - OID.) THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1976) _android_ (an'droid) n, Gk. humanoid automation. more at robot./ 1. early version utilized for work too boring, dangerous or unpleasant for humans. 2. second generation bio-engineered. Electronic relay units and positronic brains. Used in space to explore inhospitable environments. 3. third generation synthogenetic. REPLICANT, constructed of skin/flesh culture. Selected enogenic transfer conversion. Capable of self perpetuating thought. Paraphysical abilities. Developed for emigration program. WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY New International (2012) Replicants are manufactured organisms designed to carry out work too boring, dangerous, or distasteful for humans. The new "NEXUS 6" replicants are nearly indistinguishable from humans. (An early draft of the script contained an autopsy scene, in which the surgeons were unaware that the body they were examining was a replicant, until two hours into the procedure.) Replicants differ from humans in one important factor: they are lacking in empathy. In BR, replicants' eyes glow, however Ridley Scott has stressed that this is merely a cinematic technique, and the glow can't be seen by the characters in the story, only by the audience. A test, called the "Voight-Kampff Test" (VK) is administered to determine if the subject is a human by trying to elicit an empathetic response. NEXUS 6 (and possibly all other) replicants are manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation, although there is evidence that third party manufacturers are utilized. (Chew's Eye World). Replicants can endure greater pain than humans, and are generally physically superior. NEXUS 6 replicants have a in-built fail-safe mechanism, namely a four year lifespan. It was noticed that replicants had eccentricities because they were emotionally immature. Rachael was a NEXUS 6 replicant with experimental memory implants, designed to provide a cushion for her emotions. Consequently, she was unaware that she was a replicant. 5. WHO/WHAT IS ? "BLADE RUNNER" GLOSSARY (from the 1982 Presskit) ------------------------------------------------ BLADE RUNNER -- The nickname given to those police detectives who are specially trained in the use of the Voight-Kampff machine and whose specific function is to track down and eliminate any replicants that manage to escape into human society and attempt to pass as real human beings. The official name of the Blade Runner division is Rep- Detect. REPLICANT -- A genetically engineered creature composed entirely of organic substance. Animal replicants (animoids) were developed first for use as pets and beasts of burden after most real animals became extinct. Later, humanoid replicants were created for military purposes and for the exploration and colonization of space. The Tyrell Corp. recently introduced the Nexus 6, the supreme replicant - - much stronger and faster than, and virtually indistinguishable from, real human beings. Earth law forbids replicants on the planet, except in the huge industrial complex where they are created. The law does not consider replicants human and therefore accords them no rights nor protection. ESPER -- A high-density computer with a very powerful three- dimensional resolution capacity and a cryogenic cooling system. The police cars and Deckard's apartment contain small models which can be channeled into the large one at police headquarters. This big apparatus is a well-worn, retro-fitted part of the furniture. Among many functions, the Esper can analyze and enlarge photos, enabling investigators to search a room without being there. VOIGHT-KAMPFF MACHINE -- A very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body. The bellows were designed for the latter function and give the machine the menacing air of a sinister insect. The V-K is used primarily by blade runners to determine if a suspect is truly human by measuring the degree of his empathic response through carefully worded questions and statements. SPINNER -- The generic term for all flying cars in use around the year 2020. Only specially authorized people and police are licensed to operate these remarkable vehicles, which are capable of street driving, vertical lift-off, hovering and high-speed cruising. The Spinner is powered by three engines -- conventional internal combustion, jet and anti-gravity. Behind the Scenes ----------------- RIDLEY SCOTT: Director. A veteran television commercial maker, Scott consistently makes quality movies. His feature-film credits include: The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner, Someone to Watch Over Me, Legend, Black Rain, Thelma and Louise, 1492. Ridley's brother Tony is also a director, and his film credits include Top Gun, The Last Boy Scout, and Days of Thunder. MICHAEL DEELEY: Producer. Acadamy Award winner for producing "The Deer Hunter" SYD MEAD: Visual Futurist: Syd Mead suggested using the term "visual futurist" for his credit in the Blade Runner movie. (As he is not a union/guild member, he could not use credits such as "creative designer".) He has been co-sponsoring an International Student Design Competition with Sony since 1989. Some of his works are: California Pavilion, Seville Expo (1992) Future Terminal, for Japan Railways East (1990) Club Car, for Japan Railways East (1990) Dr. Jeekans [This is futuristic cafe/video arcade in Tokyo.] (1990) Office for the Future, for Okamura Furniture Co, Japan (1989) Club House (Tokyo Bayside Project) (1989) Tron Computer (1988) San Rio Theatre (1987) Office of the Future, for GE (1985) LAWRENCE G. PAULL: Production Designer. Holds degrees in Architecture and City Planning, his feature-film credits include: Blue Collar, Which Was Is Up?, and The Star Spangled Girl". DAVID SNYDER: Art director. VANGELIS (Evangelos Papathanassiou): Greek Composer. He has written numerous movie scores, perhaps the most famous being for "Chariots of Fire". Also wrote some of the music for the TV series "Cosmos". Prio to writing movie scores, Vangelis was the keyboard player of the band "Aphrodite's Child". Vangelis wrote the score for Scott's 1992 film: _1492_. [I lost the discography that someone sent me... can you send it again, please?] HAMPTON FANCHER, DAVID PEOPLES: Screenplay writers. Peoples wrote Clint Eastwood's _Unforgiven_ JORDAN CRONENWETH: Cinematographer. (Altered States, Stop Making Sense) DOUGLAS TRUMBULL: Special Effects (2001: A Space Odyssey, Brainstory (also directed)) On Screen --------- DECKARD (Harrison Ford): (Ex) Blade Runner. DR ELDON TYRELL (Joe Turkel): Owner/Chairman of the Tyrell Corp, manufacturers of replicants. Extremely intelligent, designed the NEXUS 6 brain RACHAEL (Sean Young): Prototype NEXUS 6 replicant. Works for Tyrell. ROY BATTY (Rutger Hauer): Leader of the renegade replicants. INCEPT DATE: 8 Jan, 2016 FUNCTION: Combat, Colonization Defense Prog PHYS: A MENT: A PRIS (Daryl Hannah): Replicant, (Bryant: "Yer standard pleasure model") INCEPT DATE: 14 Feb, 2016 FUNCTION: Military/leisure PHYS: A MENT: B ZHORA (Joanna Cassidy): Replicant. INCEPT DATE: 12 June, 2016 FUNCTION: Retrained (9 Feb, 2018) Polit. Homicide PHYS: A MENT: B LEON KOWALSKI (Brion James): Replicant. INCEPT DATE: 10 April, 2017 FUNC: Combat/loader (Nuc. Fus.) PHYS: A MENT: C J F SEBASTIAN (William Sanderson): Genetic designer for the Tyrell Corporation. Still on Earth because of a premature geriactricism (Methuselah's Syndrome). Has defeated Tyrell once in chess. M BRYANT (M Emmett Walsh): Inspector of the Police force, Deckard's former boss GAFF (Edward James Olmos): A member of the Police Force. Makes origami. HOLDEN (Morgan Paull): Blade Runner, shot by Leon. 6. I DON'T LIKE THE VOICE-OVERS/ENDING. Ridley Scott made BR in a style called "film noir". Film noir is the "hardboiled detective" style of story-telling, perhaps the most famous example is the Humphrey Bogart movie "The Maltese Falcon" (directed by John Huston). A characteristic of film noir is the voice-overs by the detective, explaining what he is thinking/doing at the time. Having said that, it is interesting to note that Ridley Scott originally made BR *without* the voice-overs, but due to it's poor reception when sneak previewed, the studio insisted that the voice-overs be added. Ridley Scott has said in an interview on American television that in film noir, voice-overs sometimes work, and sometimes don't, and they didn't work in BR. "(A)n extensive voice-over was added to help people relate to Harrison Ford's character and make following the plot easier. (A)fter a draft by novelist- screenwriter Darryl Ponicsan was discarded, a TV veteran named Roland Kibbee got the job. As finally written, the voice-over met with universal scorn from the filmmakers, mostly for what Scott characterized as its 'Irving the Explainer' quality.... It sounded so tinny and ersatz that, in a curious bit of film folklore, many members of the team believe to this day that Harrison Ford, consciously or not, did an uninspired reading of it in the hopes it wouldn't be used. And when co-writers Fancher and Peoples, now friends, saw it together, they were so afraid the other had written it that they refrained from any negative comments until months later." [Source: Locus, September 1992] The ending of the film was also changed by the studio. Scott wanted to end the film with Deckard and Rachael getting into the elevator, but the studio decided that the film needed a happier, less ambiguous ending. The aerial landscape photography used in the theatrical release was outtakes from Stanley Kubrik's _The Shining_. In 1992, Ridley Scott released a "Director's Cut" of Blade Runner (BRDC), which eliminates the voice-overs and the happy ending. This version is discussed in more detail below. 7. WHAT DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF BLADE RUNNER ARE THERE? - US sneak preview, (1982, very limited release in 1991) - US theatrical release (1982) - European/LD cut (more violence) - Director's Cut (BRDC) (1992) Ridley Scott re-released the sneak preview at select movie festivals in 1991. There were rumours that THIS version was the director's cut, but that did not appear until 1992. Hampton Fancher did eight drafts of the screenplay. These drafts concluded with Deckard taking Rachael out of the city, letting her see nature for the first time, and then, because she has only a few days to live, shooting her in the snow. David Peoples was brought in to polish the script, and Ridley Scott asked him to make the plot include more clues. Peoples worked on the humanity of Deckard's adversaries, and in fact his daughter mentioned the biological term "replicate", which led to "replicant". [Source: Los Angeles Times Magazine, September 13, 1992 (p. 20).] Theatrical vs Sneak preview: ---------------------------- - voiceovers added - voiceover after Roy's death lengthened - removed eulogy and appreciation for replicants - added philosophical musings LD vs Theatrical: ----------------- - added footage - Batty sticks his thumbs in Tyrell's eyes, which bleed copiously. - Pris lifts Deckard up by his nostrils when she beats him up. - Deckard shoots Pris an extra time. - More of Pris kicking and screaming when she is shot by Deckard. - More of Roy putting the nail through his hand, in particular the hand with the nail popping through and then flexing. - Total added footage is about 15 seconds. BRDC vs Theatrical: ------------------- - Dubbed footage - Bryant tells Deckard that there are "five skin jobs walking the street", not six. - Added footage - Added dialog from blimp to cover missing voice-over while Deckard waits for a seat at the noodle bar. - Unicorn scene when Deckard plays piano and falls asleep (about 12 seconds) - Removed footage - No happy ending, movie ends with closing elevator door - no extra violence. Soundtrack completely redone digitally for BRDC and is more prominent. LASERDISCS: ----------- In the NTSC markets (M/NTSC 3.58 525/60: US and Japan), there have been up to four versions of Blade Runner continuously available on laserdisc for the last several years. They are all the 118 minute European or home-video edition. Ignoring the Japanese edition(s), we have: * Criterion Collection CC1120L, $90, CAV, 2.2:1 letterboxed, 4 sides, digital stereo, CX/analog stereo, 3M pressing, extensive still-frame supplements. * Criterion Collection CC1169L, $50, CLV, 2.2:1 letterboxed, 2 sides, digital stereo, CX/analog stereo, Pioneer pressing, (no supplements). * Embassy (Nelson Ent.) 13806, $35, CLV, 1.3:1 panned&scanned, 2 sides, CX/analog stereo, Pioneer pressing, (no digital sound, no supplements) The Embassy LD is also available as an identical VHS release, and both are inferior to the Criterion discs. All video tapes as of 1 January 1993 are the Not Rated version with the extra violence that was removed from the 117 minute American theatrical release. The Criterion and Japanese laserdiscs correspond to this version of the film. All other laserdiscs (Embassy & Nelson), regardless of what the jacket claims, are identical to the American theatrical release. PUBLICATIONS: ------------- SCRIPTS: Script City 8033 Sunset Blvd. PO Box 1500 Hollywood, CA 90046 U.S.A. US Phone: 213-871-0707 (inquiries) 1-800-676-2522 (orders only) - Blade Runner script early draft--7/24/80. $24.95 plus $4.50 for First Class shipping. - Blade Runner script early draft--12/22/80. $24.95 plus $4.50 for First Class shipping. - Blade Runner final script--5/10/81. $17.00 plus $4.50 for First Class shipping. Note that date on the cover is 23 February 1981 but it contains numerous changes dated as late as 16 June 1981. This is considered the final shooting script. - Blade Runner Storyboards. $16.95 plus $4.50 for First Class shipping. Note this is only the storyboards for the first half of the film, the set is not complete. If you order three or all four items, the total postage is $10.50. Cinema City P.O. Box 1012 Muskegon, MI 49443 US Phone: 616-722-7760 Blade Runner script ($55.00 + postage) The Blade Runner Sketchbook - early monochrome production drawings, conceptual sketches of items to be found in LA in 2019. - Parking meters - Stop light trees - Door keys - Magazine racks - Blade Runner pistol - VK machine - sketches of Tyrell's "coffin", a cryogenic unit holding his body in suspended animation until future technology can revitalize him. His casket looked similar to cryo units onboard Discovery in Stanley Kubrik's _2001: A Space Odyssey_ - A Virtual Reality mask. Worn over your face, a person used software disks to enjoy various moods of pleasure. Supposedly erotic stuff. - A stage where the dancers performed. (Like a small amphitheater) - out of print, a collector's item. Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's _Blade Runner_ and Philip K. Dick's _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ Judith B. Kerman, editor, 1991, 291 pages Bowling Green State University Press, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403 - detailed, scene-by-scene analysis. "The Blade Cuts", Starburst (UK) no. 51, November 1982. Phil Edwards. 8. MEMORABLE QUOTES. RACHAEL: "Is this testing whether I'm a replicant, or a lesbian, Mr Deckard?" DECKARD: "I've had people walk out on me before, but not when I was being so charming." CHEW: "I design your eyes" ROY BATTY: "Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!" "It's not an easy thing to meet your maker." "I want more life, father!" (some versions sound like: "I want more life, fucker!") "I've done . . . questionable things . . . but nothing that the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for." "Six, seven! Go to hell or go to heaven!" "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attacks ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." TYRELL: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long... ...and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy." LEON: "My mother... let me tell you about my mother!" "Nothing's worse than having an itch you can never scratch!" "Wake up! Time to die!" SEBASTIAN: "I MAKE friends." GAFF: "It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?" 9. WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE UNICORN? When Deckard leaves his apartment with Rachael at the end of the film, she knocks over an origami unicorn, probably left there by Gaff. The voiceover speculates that the unicorn was simply a message to Deckard to say "I know you've got Rachael, but I'll let her live." The unicorn is the last of a series of origami figures that Gaff uses to taunt Deckard. In Bryant's office when Deckard insists he's retired, Gaff folds a chicken: "You're afraid to do it". Later he makes a man with an erection: "You've got the hots for her". And finally, the unicorn: "You're dreaming, you can run away with her, but she won't live" (he says basically the same thing to Deckard on the rooftop). A unicorn has long been the symbol of virginity and purity (being white), which ties in with Rachel's status. Legend states that only a VIRGIN could capture a unicorn. Unicorns are extinct, and Gaff may think the same of Rachael, as she definitely has a limited lifespan. A unicorn was used in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" to symbolize that the girl was "different to other horses". The horn on this unicorn represented her physical handicap, which prevented her from meeting people. When she finally did meet a man, they danced and knocked over the unicorn, breaking its horn off. "It's just like all the other horses now.", she said, which symbolizes that she has overcome her shyness/lost her virginity. The unicorn may symbolize one of the following: - Rachael is (and always will be) a replicant among humans, and will be different, like a unicorn among horses, because of her termination date. (In the tacked-on ending, Deckard says that she doesn't have a termination date) - Rachael leaving and knocking over the unicorn symbolizes her escape from the Tyrell corporation, which only looked at her as a replicant. Deckard fell in love with her as a human, and by doing so, she became human. BRDC includes a scene not in the original release. It is a dream sequence, showing Deckard's dream of a white unicorn. Given this, one can argue that Gaff left the unicorn outside Deckard's apartment because he knew that Deckard dreamt of a unicorn. If Gaff knew what Deckard was dreaming, then we can assume that Deckard was a replicant himself, and Gaff knew he would be dreaming of a unicorn. Quoted without permission from Starburst: ----------------------------------------- Scott: ...did you see the version with the unicorn? McKenzie: No... S: I think the idea of the unicorn was a terrific idea... M: The obvious inference is that Deckard is a replicant himself. S: Sure. To me it's entirely logical, particularly when you are doing a film noire, you may as well go right through with that theme, and the central character could in fact be what he is chasing... M: Did you actually shoot the sequence in the glade with the unicorn? S: Absolutely. It was cut into the picture, and I think it worked wonderfully. Deckard was sitting, playing the piano rather badly because he was drunk, and there's a moment where he gets absorbed and goes off a little at a tangent and we went into the shot of the unicorn plunging out of the forest. It's not subliminal, but it's a brief shot. Cut back to Deckard and there's absolutely no reaction to that, and he just carries on with the scene. That's where the whole idea of the character of Gaff with his origami figures -- the chicken and the little stick-figure man, so the origami figure of the unicorn tells you that Gaff has been there. One of the layers of the film has been talking about private thoughts and memories, so how would Gaff have known that a private thought of Deckard was of a unicorn? That's why Deckard shook his head like that [referring to Deckard nodding his head after picking up the paper unicorn]." Scott goes on to talk about how he decided to make the photograph of the little girl with her mother come alive for a second, then later in the interview we have: M: Are you disappointed that the references to Deckard being a replicant are no longer there? S: The innuendo is still there. Ther French get it immediately! I think it's interesting that he could be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHESS GAME? Sebastian's chess pieces are birds (he makes animals), Tyrell's are people (he makes "people"). The chess game between Tyrell and Sebastian uses the conclusion of a game played between Anderssen and Kieseritzky, in London in 1851. This is one of the most famous and brilliant games ever played, and is universally known as "The Immortal Game". The concept of immortality has obvious associations in the ensuing confrontation between Tyrell and Batty. The Immortal Game, in algebraic notation, is as follows: Anderssen - Kieseritzky London 1851 1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Bc4 Qh4+ 4 Kf1 b5 5 Bxb5 Nf6 6 Nf3 Qh6 7 d3 Nh5 8 Nh4 Qg5 9 Nf5 c6 10 Rg1 cxb5 11 g4 Nf6 12 h4 Qg6 13 h5 Qg5 14 Qf3 Ng8 15 Bxf4 Qf6 16 Nc3 Bc5 17 Nd5 Qxb2 18 Bd6 Qxa1+ 19 Ke2 Bxg1 20 e5 Na6 21 Nxg7+ Kd8 22 Qf6+ Nxf6 23 Be7 Checkmate. Note that the chess boards in the film are not arranged as they would be if they were following the Immortal Game, and that Sebastian's board does not match Tyrell's. 11. PROBLEMS IN BLADE RUNNER Plot ---- Why would the Tyrell building have ceiling fans in it? Why did Holden need to VK Leon, if the police already knew what he looked like? How did Leon smuggle his gun into room where Holden VK'd him? And how did he escape from the building, given that the whole incident was on videotape, and occurred high up in the Tyrell building? Bryant first tells Deckard that there were six replicants, three male, three female. Obviously, Roy and Leon are two of the males, and Pris and Zhora are two of the females. Bryant also says that "one of them got fried trying to get into the Tyrell building", but doesn't specify the sex. That leaves one replicant, either male or female. It has been hypothesized that Deckard was the sixth replicant, but there is ample evidence that this is not the case: Some versions of the script include "Mary" as the sixth replicant, which means that the one that got fried was male, and Deckard can't be the sixth replicant. Why is it so difficult to tell a replicant from a human, when replicants can put their hands in boiling/freezing liquids without damage? Surely a tissue sample would suffice? How did Rachael get away with killing Leon in public, when she was wanted dead by the police? The police arrived pretty soon after Deckard killed Zhora, so why didn't they swoop when Rachael killed Leon? How did word of Rachael's escape get out so quickly, and how could Tyrell tell that she had gone for good? Remember that Deckard called Rachael at home while he was still at the nightclub. It could not have been more than a couple hours before he gave chase to Zhora. (How long could she "take the pleasure from the serpent"?) Was that enough time for Rachael to run away, be gone long enough for Tyrell to call the police about a missing replicant, and have them tell Bryant to put Deckard onto it? How did Roy get into Tyrell's office so easily? Did Tyrell trust Sebastian enough to give him the option of bringing anyone/anything up in the lift? Supposedly an earlier version of the script had the Tyrell we see as a replicant, and Roy picking up on this because of the lift letting him in. (Supposedly the lift was programmed to accept only people that it knew... meaning that it couldn't detect Roy. This, however leads to a problem in that the lift would be a better replicant identifier than the VK test.) In that version the real Tyrell was dead in a "cryocrypt", for sketches of which see "The Blade Runner Sketchbook". Supposedly (after Roy kills Sebastian) he finds the crypt and kills Tyrell; this would also allude to "UBIK". Tyrell tells Roy that "We made you to the best of our abilities", even though they deliberately gave him a four year lifespan. Why are real animals so expensive if there are lots of birds living in Sebastian's building? Technical --------- Norwegian subtites translate "Sushi... my ex-wife used to call me that... cold fish" into "Sushi, my wife, used to call me a cold fish." In the very first shot of Batty, we see his hand clenching up. If you look carefully as he turns his hand just before the shot changes, you can see the nail sticking through the back of his hand. He doesn't actually insert that nail until later in the film (The nail is easily spotted on the Criterion CAV laserdisc). [Lots of people having problems spotting this... ] Also, in the same scene, though Roy is supposedly alone (in a phone booth) you see someone's hand on his shoulder. This is actually a later scene with Tyrell, shown in mirror image. During the VK test, Leon says "My mother... let me tell you about my mother", but when Deckard runs over this on his way to his apartments, Leon's voice says "I'll tell you about my mother!". The snake tattoo on Zhora only appears after the Esper machine has stopped zooming, and when it produces a hard copy, Zhora's face is at a different angle to that on the screen. The serial number that the Cambodian woman gives Deckard is not the same as the one in the electron microscope image. When Deckard goes to Ben Hassan's (the snake dealer), their lip movements do not match the dialog. This scene remains the same in BRDC, which means that Ridley Scott intended it to be there. [Opinions, anonye?] When Zhora goes crashing through those plate-glass windows, the stunt double looks nothinike the actress, and her wounds disappear and appear several times. The sounds of the bullets hitting her doesn't correspond to when she is visibly hit. When Leon throws Deckard into the car window, the window was already broken. Not necessarily a goof, but could be. In all versions of the film, events occur in this sequence: Deckard kills Zhora, and then buys a bottle of Tsing Tao. Gaff grabs him, and takes him to Bryant. Deckard then chases Rachael, but gets beaten up by Leon. When the film included Mary, the story ran as follows: Deckard killed Zhora, and then saw Rachael. He chased Rachael, only to be beaten up by Leon. After Rachael killed Leon, Bryant THEN bought his bottle of Tsing Tao, and met with Bryant, who told him that there were "four to go" (Roy, Pris, Mary, and Rachael). When they cut Mary from the film, they had a problem: Bryant should say that there were "three to go" (Roy, Pris, and Rachael). Instead of reshooting this scene, they moved it (and the scene of Deckard buying Tsing Tao, because Gaff walks up to him and says "Bryant") to before Leon's death, so that the "four to go" would be Roy, Pris, LEON (not Mary), and Rachael. They nearly got away with this, but are now a few problems: 1) When Deckard is talking to Bryant, he shows wounds from his fight with Leon, although he hasn't had the fight yet. 2) Since he now buys his bottle before he fights Leon, it should be there while he's chasing Rachael and fighting Leon (it's not). The bottle mysteriously reappears when he gets back to his flat. 3) Bryant's dialog as he steps out of the spinner is dubbed. This error is also evident when Bryant tells Deckard at the beginning: "I've got four skin jobs walking the streets", and then proceeds to tell him that SIX replicants came to earth, and ONE had been fried (leaving five, not four). The song Rachael plays on the piano does not match the music she is looking at. When Pris steps out of Sebastian's elevator, her hair is dry, but when she is in the apartment proper, it's wet again. The cuckoo clock in Sebastian's apartment strikes six twice. Support cables are visible whenever you see a closeup of a spinner floating above a city street. The cable is really visible when Gaff takes-off with Deckard in the beginning of the movie. There is a close-up left profile shot (front of spinner on left side of the screen) of a spinner rising through the rain, and the line is very visible. Later when a cop floats down to Deckard sitting in his car and asks his business, you can see the cable if you look closely. Sebastian's and Tyrell's chess boards don't match. "Ethyl methyl sulphate as an alkylating agent" is chemical nonsense. In the Deckard/Batty confrontation, after Deckard has been given his gun back and stalks off, you can see (in letterboxed/widescreen versions) the shadow of the cameraman and camera on the wall. When Deckard has attempted to jump the chasm between the buildings, he begins to fall, and Roy grabs his wrist. There is no nail through Roy's hand. A split second later, as Roy hauls him up, the nail has returned. Batty's incept date of January 2016 means that he should have lived to January 2020, however he dies in November 2019. 12. TRIVIA / WHAT MAKES BLADE RUNNER POPULAR/SPECIAL? Trivia ------ The following characters smoke cigarettes: Holden, Bryant, Rachael, Pris, lady on video screen. Deckard kills only women. Pris' incept date is St Valentine's Day. Some people claim that Holden's eyes glow after explaining to Leon that the questions were written down for him. Gaff's origami taunts Deckard: when Deckard tries to leave Bryant's office without taking the job, Gaff makes a chicken. Gaff makes a man with a huge erection to tease Deckard about either being attracted to Rachael, or getting so involved/excited by the job (when he didn't want it in the first place). Gaff might have felt that Deckard searching Leon's room was just "jacking off". The origami evolves: Chicken --> Man --> Unicorn (replicant?) Eye symbolism is rampant: - The eye in the opening shots - Replicants' eyes glow - Tyrell has huge glasses to make his eyes bigger - glasses like Tyrell's were used in DADoES for fallout protection - Eyes are used in the VK test - Chew's Eye World - "Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!" - Batty plays with the glass-encased eyes in Sebastian's apartment - Batty sticks his thumbs in Tyrell's eyes - "I've SEEN things you people wouldn't believe" [more?] The Japanese woman taking pills on the giant screen might be a homage to Philip K Dick's book "UBIK". Rachael's picture comes to life momentarily. Rachael's hairstyle: as a replicant, it is perfect, rigid, machine like, and cold. As a human, it's soft, curly, and messed up. The term "Blade Runner" suggests running along a thin edge (blade) one side being human, the other replicant; it's a fine line between being human and a replicant. Blade Runner won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1983 (beating out E.T.). In a poll of members of the 1992 World Science Fiction Convention, Blade Runner was named as the third most favorite SF film of all time (behind Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey). From: BLADE RUNNER Production Notes (from the 1982 Presskit) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Actors Rutger Hauer, Brion James and James Hong worked for two days amid icicles at U.S. Growers Cold Storage, Inc. The "Blade Runner" company also filmed at two of L.A.'s most beautiful architectural landmarks. The front of the Ennis Brown house in the Los Feliz area was designed in 1924 by Frank Lloyd Wright in a Mayan block motif. The building, the most monumental of Wright's western experimental work, is seen in the film as the entrance to Harrison Ford's apartment building, a huge condominium complex, hundreds of stories high. The Bradbury Building, built in 1893 and recently threatened with architectural corruption by municipal safety modifications, was preserved on film by "Blade Runner." In one scene, Ford traces Hauer to the ornate edifice for the final showdown. In another, industrial designer J. F. Sebastian (William J. Sanderson) discovers street waif Pris (Daryl Hannah) and takes her into his apartment. [...] Other locations included the downtown Pan Am Building, where Deckard and Gaff search Leon's hotel room for clues. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sebastian's apartment is full of bastardised creatures, part man, part machine, and part animal. There is a stuffed unicorn on Sebastian's work table (screen right, as the mice scurry over scattered paraphernalia while Sebastian sleeps). Each character is associated with an animal: Leon = Turtle Roy = Dove Zhora = Snake Rachael = Spider Tyrell = Owl Sebastian = Bear Pris = Raccoon Deckard = Sushi (raw fish) When Gaff picks up Deckard, the launch sequence on the computer is exactly the same as in Scott's _Alien_, when the Nostromo seperates from the Mother ship. When Deckard enters his apartment at the end, the background hum is the same distinctive hum as in parts of _Alien_. Notice that both _Alien_ and BR have "artificial persons", and there is ambiguity as to who is/was a real human. _Alien_ and BR are perfectly compatible, the only problem being that Ash should have been a replicant, as opposed to a robot. RELIGIOUS/PHILOSOPHICAL PARALLELS: ---------------------------------- The replicants are fallen angels (fell from the heavens/outer space), with Roy as Lucifer. Tyrell lives in a gian pyramid (like a Pharaoh), which looks like a cathedral inside, whereas Sebastian lives in an abandoned apartment with a "toilet bowl plunger" on his head. Tyrell creates. He builds his creations imperfect. Once of his creations resents the inbuilt imperfection (since the creator had no reason apart from fear to inhibit his creations), and returns to the creator to undo him. Tyrell's huge bed, pedestaled and canopied, is modeled after the bed of Pope John Paul II. Roy: "Fiery the angels fell, Deep thunder roll'd around their shores, Burning with the fires of Orc." This is a paraphrase of William Blake's _America: A Prophesy_, predicting the rise of America: "Fiery the angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc." Roy deliberately misquotes, indicating he thinks America is in the decline. When Roy finally confronts Tyrell, he calls him his "maker," and "the god of biomechanics." In the light of the parallels this film draws between the plight of the replicants and that of all human being -- four years against fourscore -- this scene has strange reverberations. If Roy can condemn his creator for determining his life span at four years, why can we not condemn our Creator (if we choose to believe in one) for placing us under a death sentence at birth. Can we sit in judgment of God? In so far as he creates artificial life and is killed by it, Tyrell is another Dr. Frankenstein; but there the similarity ends. He is punished not for breaking God's law, but for wronging his creations. And Roy -- robot, child, monster, demigod -- is not an obscenity to be returned to oblivion as soon as Roy puts a nail through his palm. When Batty dies, he is released from torment as he releases the dove. Only shot of blue sky. (The laserdisc notes say that they couldn't get the dove to fly off into the rain.) 13. MORE QUESTIONS/ANSWERS Q: Whose eye is it at the start of the movie? A: The storyboard says that it is Holden's Q: What does the voice from the blimp say? A: "A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure. New climate, recreational facilities.....absolutely free. Use your new fried as a personal body servant or a tireless field hand--the custom tailored genetically engineered humanoid replicant designed especially for your needs. So come on America, let's put our team up there...." Q: Why can't Tyrell afford a real owl? A: The screenplay was written as: Deckard: "It's artificial?" Rachael: "Of course not." I believe this is how it was shot. If you watch Rachael's lips when she is saying this, it looks like an overdub. Hard to see except in a theater. Tyrell may want to keep a replicant owl in his penthouse, the same as most companies have showpiece models in their offices. Note further that in DADoES, the "Tyrell corporation" lied to Deckard (that is, told him it was real) as an attempted bribe. Q: Who is the guy lying down in the photo Deckard uses in his image processor? A: Roy? Q: Why are both of the people sleeping in the picture? [and is this significant?] Q: How did Gaff get Deckard's gun? Was he following them? A: Deckard sits on the roof for a long time. Gaff probably followed Deckard's groundcar, or checked out the radio reports of Sebastian's death, walked around to piece together what happened, then found Deckard's gun. Q: Which companies have their logos appearing in BR? A: Coca-Cola, Atari, Bell, TDK [others?] Q: What is this "Blade Runner Curse"? A: Someone once noticed that a large proportion of the companies whose logos appeared in BR had financial difficulties after the film was released. The most notable of these was Bell, which was split into AT&T and others. [more info, anyone?] 14. IS DECKARD A REPLICANT? This question causes the most debate among BR fans. The different versions of BR support this notion to differing degrees. One might argue that in the theatrical release (1982), Deckard is not a replicant, but in BRDC, he is not. There is no definitive answer: Ridley Scott himself has stated that, although he deliberately made the ending ambiguous, he also intentionally introduced enough evidence to support the notion, and (as far as he is concerned), Deckard is a replicant. [Starburst] The "for" case -------------- - Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford have stated that Deckard was meant to be a replicant: Noise-free post from October 1992 Details (Discussions on Blade Runner); reprinted without permission: FORD: "Blade Runner was not one of my favorite films. I tangled with Ridley. The biggest problem was that at the end, he wanted the audience to find out that Deckard was a replicant. I fought that because I felt the audience needed somebody to cheer for." - Gaff knew that Deckard dreamt of a unicorn, therefore Gaff knew what dreams that Deckard had been implanted with. (BRDC only) - Replicants have a penchant for photographs, because it gives them a tie to their non-existent past. Deckard's flat is packed with photos, and none of them are recent or in color. - Only a replicant could survive the beatings that Deckard takes, and then pull itself up onto the roof with two fingers. - Deckard's eyes glow (blue-gray) when he tells Rachael that he wouldn't go after her, "but someone would". This is hard to spot: Deckard is standing behind Rachael, and he's out of focus. - Deckard's character is much like Holden's. - If you listen closely in the audio dissolve during Rachael's VK test, you can hear Deckard say "orange body, green legs". How did he know that this was significant to Rachael? - Gaff tells him "You've done a man's job!" - Gaff seems to follow Deckard everywhere - he is at the scene of all the Replicant retirings almost immediately. Gaff is always with Deckard when the chief is around. This suggests that Gaff is the real BR, and that Deckard is only a tool Gaff uses to do the dirty work. The "against" case ------------------ - A major point of the film was to show Deckard (The Common Man) the value of life. "What's it like to live in fear?" If all the main characters become replicants, the contrast between humans and replicants is lost. - Rachael was the one with an implanted unicorn dream, Deckard dreamt of the unicorn (BRDC) as both he and Gaff viewed Rachael's implants. - Rachael had memories to give her emotions a cushion. Leon had photos. If Deckard was a replicant with memory implants, then he doesn't need the photos. - Why send a replicant to kill other replicants? What was Deckard doing on Earth, if replicants are outlawed there? Why did the police trust him? - Replicants don't feel pain unless they are dying, but Deckard shows signs of being in pain. NOTES This file has been primarily compiled from my own viewings of Blade Runner, debates on the net, and private email messages. The contributors are too numerous to mention, and likewise this task would never have been completed had I replied to everyone that sent me mail. Special thanks to: Peter Merel (pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU) Geoff Wright (gmw4432@bcstec.ca.boeing.com) William M. Kolb Michael Kaufman (kaufman@delta.eecs.nwu.edu) Steve Griffiths (etlsngs@etlxd20.ericsson.se) Juhana Kouhia (kouhia@nic.funet.fi) Please don't be offended if you don't get a reply, or if I don't include your views in the FAQ. If your opinions don't make it into the FAQ, it's for one of the following reasons: 1) I didn't get your mail. 2) The explanation/rebuttal is already in the file. If particular questions keep being brought up, I'll try to clarify the relevant areas of the FAQ. 3) The point is irrelevant or insignificant. A lot of the feedback I've received is of the type: "This wasn't denied in the film, so it must be true." Sorry, this file is too big already for speculations. 4) It is generally accepted that (you are wrong | it is unclear). Remember, other people have different views. I'm specifically referring to the "Deckard is a replicant" question. Half of you tell me that he is a replicant, and half tell me that he isn't. *I* am in the best position to decide what is the consensus of opinion. I have tried to provide a balanced and objective viewpoint. At present, I have no plans to form a mailing list, however this may change, depending on how many people are interested. My policy stands like this at the moment: If you don't have access to net news, I'll mail it to you. If you still don't get it, that means the mail has bounced, and you should try again, possibly with a different return address. This FAQ has generated enormous interest. I get approximately 10 to 15 mail messages a day about it. ðTHE AMIGA 1200 IS HERE­ Short after the introduction of the Amiga 4000, Commodore introduces the A1200. This computer takes CBM a great step closer to the mainstream of desktop computing. With its low price and the surprisingly gaudy array of standard features, there is no doubt that the A1200 will make a good replacement for the older Amiga 500. At the very beginning of the Amiha era, Commodore released the A1000 back in 1985 with a Motorola 68000 CPU. Then came the A2000, A500 and A600 - all with the same processor. With the release of the A1200, CBM indicates that the days of the 68000 CPU are over. The A1200's 14Mhz 68020 system incorporates Commodore's nGA (Advanced Graphic Architecture) chip set. The base machine comes with 2MB of Chip RAM, one 880Kb floppy drive, and a PCMCIA slot. This is the same interface as on the A600 and CDTV, and it appears it is becoming standard on all but high-end Amiga computers. The operating system is the same as the one introduced with the A4000, namely AmigaDOS. In the A1200 there is an expansion slot similar to the one in the A500, which supports a 150-pin local bus-expansion adaptor that can be used to add more RAM, a coprocessor, a CPU accelerator, or even a SCSI interface. An additional 8MB of RAM can be added, bringing the total to 10MB. Hard disk is a must with any computer, and the A1200 comes with an internal IDE hard-disk interface. There is room for an optional 2.5-inch IDE hard drive in the machine. I would have preferred a SCSI interface, because this is superior to the IDE interface - and would have given the users access to the numerous SCSI devices. Unlike the A600, the A1200 comes complete with a numeric keypad on the keyboard. The new Amiga is of course also equipped with all the standard Amiga ports for mouse, joystick, external floppies, serial, parallell, and video (RGBA, VGA, SVGA, composite). But the main attraction in the A1200 is the use of the second-generation Amiga chip set. The AGA chips are the heart and soul of the new line of Amiga computers. The new chips support a palette with true 24-bit color capability, meaning it can make use of more than 16 million colors! In terms of actual display, the number of colors that can be displayed at one time now ranges from 2 to a mere 256.000. Using up to 8 bitplanes, screens of up to 256 colors are available in normal display modes; in the new HAM8 mode, these same 8 bitplanes can create 256.000-color displays that rival the true 24-bit displays! The range of screen sizes that are possible with AGA also far exceeds that of earlier Amiga chips. In addition to the old sizes (320*200 to 640*400), you can now create screens of 800*600, 640*960, 1280*400, or 1312*512, all of which can use up to the full 8 bitplanes of color! ð A FEW GOOD MEN­ Director: Rob Reiner. Running time: 138 mins. Actors: Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Jack Nicholson, Kevin Bacon Kiefer Sutherland For some reason I can't figure out, this film has become a huge success. To me, the only entertaining and positive aspects of this film are Kevin Bacon and Jack Nicholson, and even he isn't up to his regular standards. And why does every bleedin' Hollywood director have to make a courtroom drama?? The plot is simple (of course). Lieutenant and part-time lawyer Daniel Kaffee (Cruise) and JoAnne Galloway (Moore) investigate the murder of a young marine at a U.S. naval base in Cuba. Gradually, it becomes clear that this matter goes all the way to the top, involving Colonel Jessep (Nicholson). The two legal eagles then attempt to wrap it up in a grand Court House finale. The major problem with A Few Good Men, as with nearly all American films, is that it is just too... yes, American!! I won't go into detail, just sum it up by stating that many passages simply are pathetic. There is an overflow cliches, and the "my-daddy-was-much-better-than-me-at-this-and-it-is- about-time-I-step-out-of-his-shadow" syndrom is definately used up in American cinema. The story just isn't good enough, and the average performances by the two leads doesn't make it any better. Demi Moore isn't that bad, but Tom Cruise isn't convincing at all. I have also seen Jack Nicholson better than this, although he is once again making the best out of his role. Kevin Bacon is the surprise in the line-up, outplaying his more famous co-stars. He deserves an Oscar nomination, but probably won't get any. In conclusion, I must say that if you are thinking about watching A Few Good Men, think it over, and spend your money a little wiser. Thise of you who are fans of Rob Reiner; rent The Princess Bride on video instead! Story : 4 out of 10 Acting : 5 Music : 5 Directing : 3 Overall : 4 ð ALONE AGAIN!­ Director: Chris Columbus Running Time: approx. 122 mins. Actors: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern. It happens again! The chicago family once again forget one of the kids back home when they go on holiday. Only this time, the kid is lost in New York. After checking in on a plane to Florida, the kid (whose name I don't remember) got on a plane to NEW YORK! Of course the rest of the family doesn't discover this until they see the hot beaches of Miami. The boy (still in N.Y.) manages to rent a hotel suite - using his father's VISA card. Truly amazing. And then he meets the same bad guys as in "Home Alone" - who are planning to rob a toy store. Our kid is of course superior this time as well, and by keeping track on the bad guys throughout the movie, he manages to get them into the huge house of his aunt and uncle. Luckily, the owners of the house are on holiday (in Barbados or somewhere else), and the kid can play around with the crooks like he did in "Home Alone". In addition to this, he meets with a poor, old lady. During a 15 minute long session, the lady and the kid sit down and talk about all the problems of life. This is the most boring part of the movie, and the sentimental bullshit never seems to end. But it does. And in the end, the kid not only scares the thieves off the crime scene, he also catches them and hands them over to the police. By now, the whole family has cancelled the Florida holiday, and they are all in N.Y., where they meet with their little hero in a tear-jerked scene. This is one of those total brain dead movies which many people go to see simply because they have nothing else to do. But - if you feel a sudden need to spend US$ 5 on a movie then I urge you not to spend them on this movie! Why not send the money to me and sit home and watch episode #792 of Santa Barbara in stead? It'll give you far more pleasure than Home Alone 2, I promise! Story : 1 out of 10 Acting : 2 Music : 5 Directing : 2 Overall : 2 ð THE HIDDEN (!) ARTICLE­ ©Yep - you found it! BOO! Seriously, I just wanted to in-­ ©clude some greets here.... Hello dudes - here are some­ ©greetings from Micro-Pal to­ 911 Airforce Alis Big Brother Bob Brainbug Bros Bustman Cevin Key Christoph Glang Control Delusion Disney Ducky Gizmo G0blin Greg Green Beret Hacky Head Hornet Ice! Inzane Ironcode IT Jabbawocky Jason JBM Kaoz&Raven Lazerbrain Lector Liberator Lizardking Lord Voice Mr. Thompson Necronom Neptun Notch11 Orbit Ozone Ozzy PGCS Playboy Raj-Ban Rastan Rebel Rincewind Shockbyte Stanley Stryper Tactel Teo The Animal The Biker The Professor Tony Valium Vishnu Warrior Will Scarlett Zig Zag ð THE GATHERING '93 ­ ð THE GATHERING '93 ­ ð SCENE NEWS ­ Here follows the latest gossip in the scene. I got a brand new idea this time: To sort the news by the group name - in alphabetical order! So here we go: ºALCATRAZ­ Will also release at least 2 music compilations in the spring of 1993 containing music by Lizardking, Brainbug and Greg. Surprise, surprise: McDisk #6 is delayed. Control will not quit the scene as stated in the Eurochart. The news in the EC was pure bullshit. Style/Legend joined and became the mail WHQ. He then left, then rejoined and then he finally left because he wanted to make a demo together with Blacky. PGCS is still the WHQ - and will always be. ºANARCHY­ Will use the same articles as in McDisk #6 for their Stolen Data #12-13 issue. This has been made possible through a cooperation between some of the article writers in the scene. ºCRYPTOBURNERS­ Will make a comeback during the winter/spring of 1993. Has already released the ProTracker v3.0, and a lot of new releases are due soon. Releases to come at The Gathering '93: ProTracker v3.1 ?????? Has got a new WHQ BBS: "Home Alone" N1 +47-(0)70-40297 N2 +47-(0)70-40305 ºCRYSTAL (MELON DEZIGN)­ Seen and Paleface will try to make even cooler productions in the future. PMC should watch out and not write bullshit about Melon Dezign in R.A.W. - because if not, the entire editor crew at R.A.W. will be bombed. ºDEADLINE SF­ Is in war with the German ATZ leader-duo Head and Control. They think that both Head and Control are some assholes and they will see to that some really bad rumours shock the scene soon. In the end, they promised to go down to Germany and rape Control's girlfriend. ºINDEPENDENT­ Is a new group with a lot of members from all over Europe. There will be a lot of independent productions this year. Diceman is a new member in Norway. ºPURE METAL CODERS­ Will probably release R.A.W. 5 2/3 at The Gathering 1993. There will at least be a preview of this issue available at The Gathering. Alpha and Omega 3 will be on 7 disks. ºSPACEBALLS­ Has entered a cooperation with Skid Row. Their next demo will perhaps be ready for The Gathering '93 - and this time the demo has a brand new trackloader system. It will also be runable on the following configurations: A500 OS1.3 and OS2.0 A1000 OS1.3 (Phoenix only.) A1500 OS1.3 A2000 OS1.3 and OS2.0 and with any 030 accelerator. A2500/020 OS1.3 only A3000 - the plain machine w/o HD A600-1200-4000 will not be supported this time either, but according to Skid Row members there will be released a patch later on. ºSTATIC BYTES­ Will soon release a demo called "Nu ska' vi se om vi finner nogle karameller i skuffen." ºTHE SILENTS­ Kyd-Balle will hold a concert at Wembley Stadium on October 1993. There will be great laser shows, and maybe a guest performance by Jean Michel Jarre. ðBUSTS - THE FUTURE­ Give me back my broken night my secret room, my secret life it's lonely here, There's no one left to torture Give me absolute control over every living soul And lie beside me, baby, that's an order! Give me crack and anal sex Take the only tree that's left and stuff it up the hole in your culture Give me back the Berlin wall give me Stalin and St. Paul I've seen the future, brother: it is murder. You don't know me from the wind you never will, you never did I'm the little jew who wrote the bible I've seen nations rise and fall I've heard their stories, heard them all but love's the only engine of survival Your servant here, he has been told to say it clear, to say it cold: It's over, it ain't going any further And now the wheels of heaven stop you feel the devil's riding crop Get ready for the future: it is murder. Leonard Cohen, 1992 ------------------------- This text by Leonard Cohen can be interpreted in many ways. But in general, he is not looking at the future in a very positive way. And I regret to say that I agree with the guy. The situation for Amiga phreaks will be the same as for the rest of the people in our society. Crisis after crisis are passing by, and when it comes to BBSes there will be more and more busts, I think. WHY? Because the BBS-scene is more turning into illegal operations such as Calling- and Credit Card fraud, and in the end, the net will close around them. The worst thing about this is that there are many innocent people who pay their phone bills and calls lots of PD Systems around the globe, and these PD systems may also be suspected for illegal operations! Because the present situation is that the police have no or very little knowledge of the Amiga scene, and they tend to think that it is an illegal scene all over. Somebody should tell them about all the demos, music disks, slideshows, friendship, legal partys etc... Today, more and more Amiga phreaks are considered to be criminals because they once played Kick Off 2 (pirate copy)! The software companies are almost hysteric, and they are not sure about how they shall react towards - or attack - the pirate "industry". Let's hope that they attack only the real pirates and leaves us phreaks alone! ð µCOMING RELEASES FROM ALCATRAZ¡­ Alcatraz hasn't released much lately. This is due to the fact that many members are working for different software companies, and therefore busy doing work for the commercial market. Peanuts (or McDisk) has not been released on a regular basis, like we promised last year, and we are sorry for this. There was simply no time left... we have receieved letters from people who want us to come back, all I can say is: Don't worry, we will. But it may take some time, so please be patient! However, we are trying to create a huge product in 1994 called TEAMWORK. You might say that this will be the "follow-up" to ODYSSEY, but it will not have direct parallells to the Odyssey story. It will feature work from a number of Alcatraz members, and also AGA parts. TEAMWORK will be the greatest scene production ever made on Amiga - just wait and see. A TEAMWORK INTRO will be released later this year. Alcatraz - Together for Teamwork'94! Disney is now the Alcatraz WHQ PO Box 49 Write for "almost anything" A-8650 KINDBERG AUSTRIA For Peanuts votes, diskback TEO/Alcatraz service, and articles (!), Vassosvn. 14 please write to TEO. N-8481 BLEIK NORWAY Note that I (Micro-Pal) do not have any spare time to answer letters, so please send your fan letters to Disney or TEO. For anything concerning Peanuts, you should call the Alcatraz WHQ if you have a modem, if you don't - write to TEO! NOW! ...and remember: Send only "legal" stuff to the ATZ members! ð µ-COPYRIGHT NOTICE-¡­ Peanuts - or any other Alcatraz production - may ºnot­ be sold by ºanyone­, no matter how low or practically non-existing the profit is. This release is entirely produced by Alcatraz members, and can be copied freely as long as no money is involved. If you have paid money in order to get this or any other Alcatraz release, then somebody is ºcheating­ on you! Please send the addresses of people or companies who sell Peanuts, McDisk or any other Alcatraz production to: PO Box 49 A-8650 KINDBERG AUSTRIA ð µTHE CREDITS FOR THIS RELEASE¡­ Concept, Editing ............. ©MICRO-PAL/Alcatraz ­(Norway) Coding, Design, Fonts .......... ©DISNEY/Alcatraz ­(Austria) Acoustics: "Vanja" ............ ©BRAINBUG/Alcatraz ­(Norway) Dancer-Pic, Logo ............. ©ILUVATAR/Alcatraz ­(Austria) Moral Support ................. ©BOB/Banana Dezign ­(Norway) ©DISNEY/Alcatraz ­(Austria) ©TEO/Alcatraz ­(Norway) Articles written by: ©MICRO-PAL/Alcatraz ­(Norway) ©WREKO/Balance ­(Denmark) ©MURRAY CHAPMAN/Ind. ­(Australia) ©JAMES BERARDINELLI/Ind. ­(Italy) ð- NEW MOVIES TO COME -­ 123456789012345678901234567890123456789--987654321098765432109876543210987654321 ð BUSTS - The History­ It all started several years back, when the first Bulletin Board Systems popped up. Most of them had Public Domain stuff only on them, but some boards got new, commercial, software very, very fast. And throughout the years, the number of boards increased rapidly. Worldwide, we are now talking about a 5-digit number of BBSes!!! BUT: A vast majority of these are Public Domain boards - let's not forget that! Earlier, people were mostly swapping programs via mail. And this mailswapping is still going on. This friendship-swapping has been concidered legal for a long time, but now the software companies - and a partnership of these - try to put pressure on different governments in order to have them change the laws. In the end it just might result in that all copying to friends will be forbidden. (Perhaps even backup copying will be forbidden one day - who knows ?!?) Piracy was - and is, according to the software companies, a huge industry. Companies such as Ocean, System 3, Sierra etc. claim to have lost billions of US dollars due to the pirate "industry". That just might be the case - if the companies assume they would have earned money on every pirate copy ever made if piracy had never existed. Some years ago, the first pirate BBSes were busted. But the increasing number of new boards has been so great compared to the number of closed BBSes, that one couldn't really talk about "many busts". Now, however, the matter has changed a bit. The investigators are getting quite active in the scene, and by infiltrating the it - as independent traders or even members of wellknown groups - they have an utopia: To stop piracy once and for all! ð BUSTS - Current Action­ It's six o'clock in the morning. The dorbell rings. "Who the fuck are at the door at this time of the day?" you ask, and want to continue sleeping. But there it is again - the doorbell. It isn't a dream after all. You get up, put on a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. Shit - it has a couple of Heinz spots on it... damnit - is there never a clean t-shirt when you need it the most !!! "RiiiiiiiiiNG !!!!" .... gee hold on for a God darned minute! You rush out into the hall and towards the front door. As you open it, you discover that there are two guys standing outside. One of them shows you a little ID card and starts talking: "We are from the police, and we have a search warrant for this house." Thoughts are tumbling inside your head.... "Police"... "Search warrant"... What the heck is this ?!? - - - - - - - Now, this has been reality for quite a number of Amiga phreaks the latest months. Especially sysops, but also some so called "modem traders" have been tracked down and interrogated by the police. The raids done by the police in Belgium, Finland, Germany, Holland, Norway and Sweden include more than 50 Bulletin Board Systems. The organization Business Software Alliance - or BSA - is the software companies' main investigator. This organization has modem traders and people in the Amiga scene, who are trying to infiltrate the modem scene as well as cracking groups. And they must be doing pretty well since so many boards are closed down. Or are they? There has been few convictions in these cases. The phreaks often get their equipment back - togheter with an excuse from the police because they have no case at all. Lack of computer knowledge as well as lack of evidence causes them to close the cases, without "solving" them in a proper way - from BSA's point of view. BSA is now awaiting a trial in Sweden. The trial is currently running, and everybody are excited about what the outcome will be. The authorities are trying to get a sysop convicted, and if he is found guilty, BSA promises to attack about 100 BBSes in Sweden. ð BUSTS - An Analysis­ The software companies finally had to take action. They couldn't accept the steady increase of piracy any longer. ðEPILOGUE­ Next issue of Peanuts will be released on October 1st, 1993. We'll have more info on The Party III - and the 'ol 500 demo vs. the AGA demo fight, as well as information about other exciting events. We'll also start a 'mini-series' about all the busts and illegal activities in the scene. This is going to be quite revealing, so stay tuned! Last words..... make sure to send your votes in time, better put them in the mailbox today :-) ðPROLOGUE­ ºI know you maybe thought ­Peanutsº was dead, but this release­ ºproves the opposit. After a long, dull and lazy period,­ ºwe decided to get back to you. The past months have been­ ºquite relaxing, and due to the "I-am-tired-of-the-scene"­ ºsyndrome, Alcatraz hasn't released anything for a long time.­ However, we are back now, and ºPeanuts­ will be released on a regular basis; released every month on the 1st. There are no changes in the controls; use the arrow keys to scroll! µCREDITS:¡ Editor .................... Micro-Pal / Alcatraz Code ......................... Disney / Alcatraz Acoustics: "Vanja" ......... Brainbug / Alcatraz Graphics ................... Iluvatar / Alcatraz Additional Graphics .......... Disney / Alcatraz Moral Support .............. Bob / Banana Dezign Disney / Alcatraz Teo / Alcatraz Articles by ......: Micro-Pal / Alcatraz Wreko / Balance Murray Chapman / Ind. James Berardinelli / Ind. We started off back in early 1992 as a ©"Pack-Mag"­, concen- trating on the on-disk files (demos/intros) and not the con- tents of the Magazine itself. Well, we intend to change that priority a bit and make ºPeanuts­ more like a ©"Mag-Pack"­.. (?) Thus meaning we'll have more articles and kind of turn a bit more into a Mini-diskmag. We'll try to have a few ºinteresting­ articles, and not be- come a "two-disks-full-of-crap" diskmag. We hope to get some support from you - ºthe readers!­ - because it's for you we're making this little magazine. In the µJoyride¡ directory you can read the >funny< stuff and some hot gossip on the scene. Please send all the news you might have, because this directory is here to stay! (Huh.... who on earth knows what's next in Peanuts :-)) (eh... . the Joyride directory will open next month, when we have received some news...) A new area in ºPeanuts­ is the charts section. We felt charts is something that a lot of people like, and if you have any suggestions on how to improve the charts, please don't hesi- tate to give us some feedback! A lot of you people out there are also waiting for more ºAlcatraz­ releases, I know. Don't despair! An all-new huge production is on the sketchboard!!! Read all about it in the miscellaneous directory. Enjoy the September 1993 issue of Peanuts -- we're back here to stay now. ©Micro-Pal / Alcatraz­ PS! If you like Peanuts, buy it :-) ...no, but if you like it, please concider giving a donation - an article! We can't survuve without ºyour­ help, so if you'd like us to grow and get better, ºplease support us­! On-Disk this time are some utilities that might come in handy, as well as some scene-related stuff. There is no selector present, just boot up your favourite Amiga WorkBench and access the files from there. I favour this way of giving you the files, so that you can put them onto your HD, favourite utility disk/directory etc. by your- self. If you do decide to use the files included, please concider giving the creators a little donation (read the doc files that are accompanied with the utils for more info). I took the liberty of packing the source files into lha archieves, as I reckon most coders do have access to the archiever in question. Here follows a brief description of the files included: Dir: Description: ------------------------------------------------------------ PSM Public Screen Manager, Get control of your screens. Read the readme file in the directory for more information. StickIt Utility that helps you to get rid of all those Post-It notes lying around... This will keep track on everything your Post-It notes did be- fore, only in a much more structured way. SysInfo Version 3.22 of the classic SysInfo utility. It's a bit old, I know, but I included it after all since I think that all Amiga users out there ought to have it; try it. TitleClock Small utility to put a clock in your public screen's upper right corner. Very small, takes almost no CPU time at all, so I thought: "What the heck" :-) TM TrashMaster v1.6 - the ultimate WB file trasher. You know, there has been times you were working in your WB, and you wanted a file deleted, and not just moved into the "Trashcan" directory. Well, this is the solution. Lots of features - check it out! Intros Some intros - amongst them the first official partyinvitation intro from Silents, Lemon. and Spaceballs. Lean back and enjoy! ---------------------------------------------------[EOF]---- ð ALCATRAZ WHQ BBS ­ Running on CNET 3.X, more than 50 file areas (and many free downloads!), more than 50 msg areas, Internatioal NetMail, McDisk, Peanuts and Teamwork'94 areas, online games and other entertainment doors, online vote support, chatable sysop, both Amiga and PC areas, large picture area, CALL!!! ð +47-7769-5151 ­ ð UNFORGIVEN ­ Director: Clint Eastwood. Running time: approx. 125 mins. Actors: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, Morgan Freeman. This western might be one of the very last films for the actor Clint Eastwood. He desires to, and probably will, dedicate himself fully to his other self - the director Clint Eastwood. This would obviously be a tragic loss to all his faithful fans. In Unforgiven, he both directs and stars as an old gunman, William Munny. He has been retired for years, having been reformed by his now deceased wife. One day he gets a visit from a punk who wants Munny´s help in catching a couple of cowboys who have mutilated a whore. Munny hesitantly accepts, because he needs the money offered. He is joined by his pal Ned (Freeman) as they go hunting the cowboys. I won´t reveal any more of the plot, just mention that there is an immense bloodbath towards the end of the film, emphasizing the quite violent tone throughout. Clint portrays himself as an anti-hero, and huge Clint fans might be disappointed by watching their idol not being able to hit a can from a five meter range (!), and repeatedly falling off a horse trying to get on it. The theme of the film is that violence solves no problems, and Clint has decided to explicitly show this by maintaining a high level of violence throughout the movie. However, I don´t think he fully succeeds in bringing about this theme, and therefore Unforgiven can´t be regarded (at least not by me) as a brilliant film. It is very good, however. It has a good and realistic story, and first and foremost: brilliant actors. Clint Eastwood has never been better, Gene Hackman is outstanding as sheriff Little Bill, and Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris are solid as always. My personal prediction: Hackman gets an Oscar for Best Supporting Role. Story : 7 out of 10 Acting : 9 Music : 5 Directing : 6 Overall : 7 ðTWIN PEAKS­ ðFIRE WALK WITH ME­ - a David Lynch film - Director: David Lynch Running time: approx. 135 mins. Actors: Kyle McLaclan, David Bowie, David Lynch. Everything is blue. The background is somewhat getting clearer. It is blue and white. Zooming out. It's a TV set which has not yet been turned off - even if the transmission has ended. All of a sudden a man throws an axe straight into the set. That's exactly how the movie takes off. This film tells us the story prior to what happened in the TV series of Twin Peaks. We get to see Laura Palmer - and taste a bit of her wild life. She is a drug addict who has hallusinations all the time. Why? Twin Peaks is assumingly more weird than ever. Or is it? The David Lynch films have their own category: "David Lynch films". This one is of course no exception. You have to be a true fan in order to enjoy this film fully. The little community of Twin Peaks is a very mysterious place. Every person, every family PeAnUtS ---