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Hang ‘em high: The story of John Edward Allen, Ozzy Osbourne’s “personal dwarf”


The gatefold image from ‘Speak of the Devil’ featuring Ozzy and John Edward Allen as Ronnie the Dwarf (also sometimes called Ronnie the Midget). For what it’s worth, this photograph was unapologetically taken of the author’s original U.S. pressing of the album from 1982.
 
While on tour in support of both Diary of a Madman (1981-1982), and his follow-up live album, Speak of the Devil (1982-1983), Ozzy Osbourne‘s live show included actor and dwarf John Edward Allen. You may recall Allen not only participated in the live shows but also appeared on the inside of the infamous gatefold (pictured above) of the Speak of the Devil album, made up to look like a bloody, undead disciple of Ozzy clad in a hooded black robe. My young mind could barely handle the image when I cracked my copy open on Christmas of 1982 (proof my parents are the coolest ever). I even got to see Ozzy “execute” Allen on stage by hanging him as he did nightly, typically when it came time to perform “Goodbye To Romance” from Osbourne’s first solo record, Blizzard of Ozz. During the band’s set, Allen would periodically come out on stage during the banter breaks, bringing his employer drinks and towels while Ozz regaled the crowd with his never-ending demand to let him see their “fucking hands.”

John Edward Allen was born on March 27th, 1950, in Southampton, Hampshire, England. He found work as a tailor in Southhampton but always had his sights set on acting. He would fulfill his dream performing live theater in London first, then heading to New York’s off-Broadway scene—even performing for President Jimmy Carter at the White House in the late 70s. Allen landed parts in several Hollywood films starting in 1978 with his minor role in the super-creepy John Carpenter-penned film The Eyes of Laura Mars. Other roles would follow, including his memorable portrayal of Kaiser in 1982’s Blade Runner. While all this sounds like a pretty charming existence for Allen, he was a pretty troubled guy. Allen, as it turns out, loved to drink, about as much as Ozzy himself liked to drink—which in itself is an alarming claim to make about anyone considering Osbourne’s track record with booze.

Initially, Ozzy was hell-bent on adding a dwarf to his live show and gave Allen the gig giving him the name of Ronnie the Dwarf—a direct swipe at Black Sabbath’s new vocalist Ronnie James Dio. Between Ozzy’s epic use of party favors and Allen’s love of drink, things often ended badly for Allen after the show was over.
 

A lovely portrait of Allen in his dressing room in 1985. Photo by author and photographer Mary Motley Kalergis.
 
On one particular occasion, Ozzy was chatting with a journalist outside the band’s tour bus when a seriously blotto Allen came stumbling by. This pissed off the Prince of Darkness and once Allen was within arms reach, he grabbed him and threw him inside the luggage compartment of the bus, leaning on the door so Allen couldn’t get out. The journo recoiled in shock (which I find hilarious, because OZZY), then stammered at Osbourne telling him his treatment of Allen was uncalled for.  Ozzy allegedly responded by telling the journalist he could do “what he liked with him” because he was “my dwarf.” Following this bizarre proclamation, Allen’s voice arose from the luggage compartment saying:

“He’s right, you know. I’m his dwarf, and he can do what he likes with me…”

During the North American leg of the Diary of a Madman Tour, tragedy struck when guitarist Randy Rhoads (and four other people including the pilot) was killed in a plane crash on March 19th, 1982. This devastating event sent Ozzy into an even more downward spiral. He upped his consumption of liquor and drugs, shaved his head, and constantly threatened to quit the music game forever. Of course, as we all know, the threats never came to fruition and Ozzy would keep going. Allen would continue to be ceremoniously hanged for the duration of the Speak of the Devil Tour. Following the tour, Allen was dismissed by either Osbourne, a member of his crew, or perhaps just moved on—it’s a little murky. Allen would appear in a few more films before his OD suicide in 1999 at the young age of 49. I’ve posted some behind-the-scenes images of Allen on tour with Ozzy, as well as a video of Allen on stage with Ozzy in 1982.

And now, you know...
 

A photo of Allen preparing to be hung on stage during his time touring with Ozzy.
 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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09.12.2018
11:20 am
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That time Divine auditioned for ‘Blade Runner,’ while Grace Jones turned it down
03.13.2018
10:47 am
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In some parallel universe, Oliver Reed replaced Sean Connery as James Bond for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Frank Sinatra was Dirty Harry, John Travolta played Forrest Gump and Emma Watson won the Oscar for her performance in La La Land.

Meanwhile...Grace Jones and Divine co-starred in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

Jones famously ‘fessed up to nixing a lead role in Blade Runner on the advice of her then-boyfriend graphic designer/photographer Jean-Paul Goude, as she explained in her autobiography I’ll Never Write My Memoirs:

Jean-Paul wanted me only to work with him. Especially if I was going to do a film. He wanted me to do a film only with him, before anyone else. I knew he would be adamant that it was a bad move to appear in Blade Runner. I immediately said no, before I had even read the script and before I had even asked him. When he heard about the film, he said what I thought he would say — it would be too commercial, and I would become too Hollywood. I would be a sellout.

 
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I still had the script, though, and the night after I had passed on the part, I was flying to Paris. I decided to read it on the plane. I absolutely loved it. It was set in a universe I visited a lot in my work and play. As soon as I landed I decided I would call them back and reverse my decision. I was too late. Overnight they had cast someone else. I should have made that decision myself, rather than being caught up in Jean-Paul’s rivalry with Ridley Scott in the world of commercials… If I had seen the film Ridley had made a couple of years before, The Duellists, which was fabulous, I wouldn’t have thought for a moment about accepting. I said no without reading the script, which was very stupid of me…

 
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As for Divine, well, he was invited by Ridley Scott to audition for a role in the film as Bernard Jay recalled in his biography/memoir Not Simply Divine:

I was discussing with an important casting agency the possibility of Divine playing a role in an upcoming movie, Blade Runner, to be directed by Ridley Scott, one of Hollywood’s new ‘darlings’ since his success with Alien. Divi was invited to give a private reading for the director at his Hollywood office. We flew to the West Coast—at Divine’s expense—and worked solidly together for many hours on the brief pages of filmscript provided. Divi was terrified. It was the first time he had ever had to audition and, although it had been arranged in privacy and with great courtesy by Ridley Scott’s office, he was a nervous wreck.

He spent the best part of an hour alone with the director. I waited outside and became as nervous as my client. Divi wasn’t offered the role, but told me Ridley Scott had spent most of their time together talking of the John Waters movies and how great a fan of Divine’s he was. He also asked him to read from a completely different filmscript than the one we had prepared from. Divine was immensely flattered to have been approached and humbled by this experience. Once again, I was impressed and proud of the way he had dealt with it—and delighted to note that he was beginning to be taken seriously within in his own industry.

The casting for Blade Runner proved difficult. According to production notes, screenwriter Hampton Fancher envisioned Robert Mitchum as playing the lead role of Rick Deckard and wrote the dialog accordingly. Ridley Scott, meanwhile, was attempting to woo Dustin Hoffman into playing the role. He eventually said no. The role of Deckard was touted to a variety of actors including Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Tommy Lee Jones before Harrison Ford was offered the part. One can only surmise that Grace Jones would have been offered the role of one of the replicants—either Pris (which went to Daryl Hannah) or Zhora (Joanna Cassidy). While Divine may have possibly been considered as a possible choice for the replicant Leon (Brion James) or maybe J. F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) or perhaps more intriguingly the evil mogul Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel).

Grace Jones went on to co-star with Christopher Walken in the James Bond movie A View to a Kill, while Divine eventually got the chance to show his “straight” acting skills on the big screen as the sinister mob boss Hilly Blue in Alan Rudolph’s Trouble in Mind in 1985. I’d trade one of those movies (the Bond) to see what Jones and Divine would have been like in Blade Runner.

Below Divine in the trailer for Trouble in Mind.
 

 
H/T Afterglow.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.13.2018
10:47 am
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‘The Long Tomorrow’ by comix master Moebius, key source for ‘Blade Runner’
12.27.2017
09:35 am
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In 1975 the cartoonist Jean Giraud, a.k.a. Moebius, was in Paris collaborating with Alejandro Jodorowsky on the never-completed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, a project that at various times involved H.R. Giger, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Udo Kier, Gong, and Pink Floyd. Dan O’Bannon, who had previously co-written John Carpenter’s first feature Dark Star and would later write the screenplay for Alien, was summoned to the French capital to work on the Herbert adaptation. Moebius and O’Bannon hit it off and in short order O’Bannon had proposed and also drawn a brief comic (let’s call it a short story) called “The Long Tomorrow” that would later be published with art by Moebius—interestingly, Moebius has stated that O’Bannon’s original art was skilled enough that he (Moebius) wanted to do a side-by-side edition of the story, but he could never get O’Bannon interested in the idea. Here is Giraud’s account, taken from his introduction to the work:
 

I drew “The Long Tomorrow” in 1975, while I worked with Alexandro Jodorowsky on a film adaption of “Dune”. Originally Douglas Trumbull was to do the special effects, but that was not to be, so Jodorowsky hired Dan O’Bannon to replace him. Dan came to Paris. Bearded, dressed in a wild style, the typical Californian post-hippie. His real work would begin at the time of shooting, on the models, on the hardware props. As we were still in the stage of preparations and concepts, there was almost nothing to do and he was bored stiff. To kill time, he drew. Dan is best known as a script writer, but is an excellent cartoonist. If he had wished, he could have been a professional graphic artist. One day, he showed me what he was drawing. It was the story board of “The Long Tomorrow”. A classic police story, but situated in the future. I was enthusiastic. When Europeans try this kind of parody, it is never entirely satisfactory, the French are too French, the Italians are too Italian … so, under my nose was a pastiche that was more original than the originals. A believer in parody, Dan continued that tradition.


 
“The Long Tomorrow” is unmistakably a noir set in the future, much as Blade Runner would prove to be. The protagonist of O’Bannon’s story is one Pete Club, a “confidential nose” who is tasked by a femme fatale named Dolly Vook Von Katterbar to secure a strongbox that is languishing in a public locker in a dangerous part of town. Before long, the case expands to include a shape-shifting Arcturian spy and (of all things) the president’s brain, which Club observes is smaller than expected. 

Ridley Scott has asserted that Moebius and O’Bannon’s little tale had a sizable impact on the development of Blade Runner. In 1982, the same year that Blade Runner was released (and garnered disappointing box office), Ridley Scott mentioned to Harlan Kennedy his high opinion of Moebius and O’Bannon:
 

Yes, Mobius, I think, is marvelous––probably the best comic-strip artist in the world. We had him working a little bit on Alien, and I tried to get him involved in Blade Runner. I’d love to do a complete film with him, but I always catch him on the wrong foot. My concept of Blade Runner linked up to a comic strip I’d seen him do a long time ago; it was called “The Long Tomorrow,” and I think Dan O’Bannon wrote it. His work on that was marvelous, because he created a tangible future. If the future is one you can see and touch, it makes you a little uneasier, because you feel it’s just round the corner.

 
Below we have some selected images from “The Long Tomorrow,” but if you want to read the whole thing (it’s fun!), then you should drop by the website of a certain passionate Star Wars fan from Brazil and read it.
 

 
More after the jump…......
 

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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12.27.2017
09:35 am
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‘Blade Runner’: The Marvel Comics adaptation

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Never trust a critic. Most of them know fuck all.

Strange as it may seem now, Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner received a decidedly mixed bag of notices upon its first release in June 1982. Some newspapers scribes considered Harison Ford wooden; the voice-over cliched; the storyline way too complex; the whole damn thing butt-numbingly slow and just a tad boring. One broadsheet even described the film as “science fiction pornography,” while the LA Times called it “Blade Crawler” because it moved along so slowly.

But some folks knew the film’s real worth—like Marvel Comics.

In September 1982, Marvel issued a “Super Special” comic book adaptation of Blade Runner. This was quickly followed by a two-part reissue of the comic during October and November of that year. This was when those three little words “Stan Lee presents” guaranteed a real good time and Marvel’s version of Blade Runner fulfilled that promise.

The comic was written by Archie Goodwin with artwork from Al Williamson and Carlos Garzon with Dan Green and Ralph Reese. While movies have time to develop story, plot, and character, and create their own atmosphere, comic books get six panels a page to achieve the same. Marvel’s Blade Runner managed the transposition from screen to page quite successfully. The artists picked up on some of the movie’s most iconic imagery while still managing to add their own take on the Philip K. Dick tale. Williamson offered his own (cheesy) definition of the term “Blade Runner” at the very end of the story:

Blade runner. You’re always movin’ on the edge.

What???

You can read the whole comic here. Click on images below for larger size.
 
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More from Rick Deckard , Roy Batty and co., after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.10.2017
11:19 am
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Visual Futurist: Step inside the sci-fi world created by ‘Blade Runner’ visionary Syd Mead
04.26.2017
09:28 am
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A depiction of Los Angeles in 2019 by Syd Mead for ‘Blade Runner.’
 
Artist Syd Mead is probably best known for his work for the 1982 film Blade Runner, though his vast contributions to cinema can be seen in other groundbreaking works such as Aliens (1986), TRON (1982), and 2013’s Elysium which was directed by Neill Blomkamp. Blomkamp had a life-long obsession with Mead and his artwork which was what led him to engage the services of the then 80-year-old artist to design the sets for his futuristic film.

Mead’s background in industrial design is clear and present in his paintings. During the 1970s his artistic services were highly sought-after and widely respected within the companies and industries he spent time working for such as Ford and Phillips Electronics, illustrating catalogs and other types of publications. Mead also worked closely with elite members of the architectural design world including large hotel chains and other high-end establishments. His relentlessly busy schedule led him to move his base of operations to Los Angeles where he quickly found himself working as an artist for the motion picture industry in the late 70s. Though Blade Runner would not be the first Hollywood film that Mead would lend his visionary talent to, it can’t be disputed that his work on the film left an indelible imprint on the minds of filmmakers and cinephiles around the world, who adopted Mead’s grungy vision of what the year 2019 looked like, and other aspects of Blade Runner’s‘s essence in their work, like the hardwired goths from The Matrix, Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall and Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.
 

A sketch of a uniform from ‘TRON’ by Syd Mead.
 
After meeting with director Ridley Scott to discuss the film (which at the time was going by the working title of Dangerous Days) Mead recalls that Scott told him that his intention was to create the framework for a noir film around its science fiction premise. To help drive his point home Scott used Michael Anderson’s 1972 film Logan’s Run as an example of the “slick and clean” presentation of more conventional cinematic sci-fi, opting instead for more of a bad-side-of-town feeling, pulsating in neon lights and depravity. Ridley Scott quite literally gave Syd Mead the job of creating 2019 Los Angeles for Blade Runner using his own conceptual ideas. During the process, Mead incorporated elements and influences from his travels around the world. Some of the vehicles in the film are based on autos from Cuba or the colorful “jitneys” (also known as “Jeepneys”) that serve as public transportation all around the Philippines. Architecturally, the future city of Los Angeles was based on a combination of Chicago and New York, and Mead’s work in Blade Runner continues to not only inspire filmmakers but also architects and a style that the artist referred to as “retro deco,” or “trash chic.”

Though I’ve only really scratched the surface when it comes to Syd Mead, I’m hoping it was more than enough to pique your interest in the impossibly cool artist. If that’s the case there are many publications based on Mead’s life and his long line of accomplishments. Perhaps the most lust-worthy is the forthcoming The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist which is set for release in September. The 256-page book is the largest and most comprehensive take on Mead’s career yet, including some never-before-seen works.

Mead is very much a living legend who deserves every bit of praise his fans give him and more.
 

‘TRON.’
 

Another conceptual work by Mead for ‘TRON.’
 
More Mead after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.26.2017
09:28 am
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Stay dry in today’s dystopian cyberpunk reality with a Blade Runner umbrella
02.03.2017
09:28 am
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As a life-long fan of the 1982 film Blade Runner, I’ve always wanted one of those light-up umbrellas like the street denizens of Ridley Scott’s pre-apocalyptic Los Angeles carry, and now that I actually live in the (for real dystopian cyberpunk) future, such a thing is conveniently available.

I got this thing in the mail yesterday and thought it was cool enough to share with our readers, as I know we’ve got a lot of Blade Runner fans in our audience.
 

 
For an umbrella that costs under $25 and has electronic parts, it’s surprisingly well-constructed. It has three light modes: solid blue, and two different flash modes. It’s the perfect accessory to light your way through the rain and fog as you head down to the noodle shop, keeping your eyes peeled for replicants.
 

 
You can pick one up at Amazon HERE. There are other brands that seem to do the same thing, but this is the one I got and I can vouch for the quality.

It’s just the thing to keep the rain off your tears as you watch the C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
 

Posted by Christopher Bickel
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02.03.2017
09:28 am
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Original storyboards from ‘Blade Runner’
01.30.2017
12:01 pm
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Leon’s reflection in Holden’s eye (Tyrell Corp. interrogation room)

The website Ridleyville is run by an England-based gentleman who is a massive Blade Runner collector. He owns everything that’s featured on his site, including these wonderful storyboards from the film.

According to the owner of Ridleyville:

Work in progress, this is just a few of the FX storyboards I now have. I will not put them all up, but I will certainly add some more over the next few days. I have about a hundred of these as well as some unique documents and some are completely hand-drawn or written originals. I think that these are one of my favourite items.

Wow, around a hundred?!? I’d love to see all of them! If you’d like to view more of his Blade Runner storyboards, visit Ridleyville. It’s worth the look!


 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.30.2017
12:01 pm
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Sean Young’s Polaroids from the set of ‘Blade Runner’
06.13.2016
12:31 pm
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Young with costar Rutger Hauer, who played the replicant Roy Batty
 
Blade Runner was released in the late June of 1982, where it had great difficulty stealing attention from the behemoth E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, which occupied the #1 slot from its premiere on June 11 until early September (!), when the great cinematic classic known as Zapped! finally dislodged it from the top slot.

I was 12 years old when Blade Runner came out. All of my friends and I understood to the bone that Han Solo (for that was Harrison Ford’s primary identity back then) appearing in a dark and fucked-up cyborg cop adventure was about the coolest thing that had ever happened.

Blade Runner was just Sean Young’s third movie (she had been in Stripes already), and it remains the movie she’s probably best known for. Young is still very active in Hollywood, according to IMDb, which also states that she appeared in a recent noteworthy movie, 2015’s striking horror western Bone Tomahawk (I hadn’t noticed—her role is very small).

Young may have been aware of what a coup appearing in Blade Runner was, in that she seems to have spent much of her time snapping photos with her handy Polaroid camera. She appears to have had zero interest in documenting the astonishing practical effects used in the movie—rather, all of the pics are of herself and her coworkers. She uploaded these pics to her website in 2011, but the site is defunct today—you can see the full set of her Polaroids here.
 

 
Much more after the jump…....
 

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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06.13.2016
12:31 pm
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‘Blade Runner’ and ‘A Scanner Darkly’ reconstructed with an autoencoder

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“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,” said the Nexus-6 replicant Roy Batty at the end of the film Blade Runner.

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears ... in ... rain.

It’s a great speech—one written by Rutger Hauer—which suggests this bad boy android or replicant has experienced a state of consciousness beyond its intended programming.

While we can imagine what Batty’s memories look like, we can never see or experience them as the replicant or android saw them. Which is kinda damned obvious—but raises a fascinating question: Would an android, a robot, a machine see things as we see them?

It is now believed that humans use up to 50% of their brain to process vision—which gives you an idea the sheer complexity involved in even attempting to create some machine that could successfully read or visualize its environment. Do machines see? What do they see? How can they construct images from the input they receive?

The human eye can recognize handwritten numbers or words without difficulty. We process information unconsciously. We are damned clever. Our brain is a mega-supercomputer—one that scientists still do not fully understand.

Now imagine trying to create a machine that can do what the human brain does in literally the blink of an eye. Our sight can read emotion. It can intuit meaning. It can scan and understand and know whether something it inputs is dangerous or funny. We can look at a cartoon and know it is funny. Machines can’t do that. Yet.

A neural network is a computer system modeled on the human brain and nervous system. One type of neural network is an autoencoder.

Autoencoders are “simple learning circuits which aim to transform inputs into outputs with the least possible amount of distortion.”

Here’s a robotic arm using deep spatial encoders to “visualize” a simple function.
 

 
Terence Broad is an artist and research student at Computing Department at Goldsmiths University in London. Over the past year, Broad has been working on a project reconstructing films with artificial neural networks. Broad has been

training them to reconstruct individual frames from films, and then getting them to reconstruct every frame in a given film and resequencing it.

The type of neural network used is an autoencoder. An autoencoder is a type of neural net with a very small bottleneck, it encodes a data sample into a much smaller representation (in this case a 200 digit number), then reconstructs the data sample to the best of its ability. The reconstructions are in no way perfect, but the project was more of a creative exploration of both the capacity and limitations of this approach.

The resultant frames are strange watercolor-like images that are identifiable especially when placed side-by-side with the original source material. That they can reproduce such fast flickering information at all is, well, damned impressive.

Among the films Broad has used are two Philip K. Dick adaptations Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly, which is apt considering Dick’s interest in androids and asking the question “What is reality?”
 
Much more after the jump…....
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.26.2016
10:49 am
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Your one-stop shop for ‘Blade Runner’ origami
03.07.2016
01:50 pm
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Anyone who has seen Ridley Scott’s monumental movie Blade Runner probably remembers the character of Gaff, played by Edward James Olmos. Gaff serves as a kind of street-smart chorus in the movie, kind of like the scarcely delineated character who tells private detective J.J. Gittes to “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown” in Roman Polanski’s movie of that name.

Blade Runner being Blade Runner, however, the character of Gaff is highly ethereal and elusive. Throughout the movie he strews his little origami figures everywhere he goes, as an incessant mocking reminder to Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) that he’ll never be one step ahead.

I had forgotten, but it turns out that in the movie Gaff makes three different creatures—an origami unicorn, an origami chicken, and a little man made from a matchstick. I know this because of the website run by a man named Kenneth Thompson, owner of a construction and flooring company in Michigan, that is dedicated to producing and selling actual origami recreations of Gaff’s Unicorn as well as providing tutorials about how to make all three of Gaff’s figures on your own.

Noticing that there was not a place to buy Gaff’s Unicorn on the Internet, Thompson decided that he “was going to have to make it” himself.

Here’s a section of Thompson’s instructions on how to make Gaff’s chicken:
 

 
If you want to buy one of Thompson’s replicas of Gaff’s Unicorns, you can do so from his site. As Thompson describes it, “At the end of the film as Deckard and Rachael are entering the elevator from Deckard’s apartment, Deckard notices another origami figure on the floor of the hall.” This is Gaff’s Unicorn.

You can buy one for $14.99 or, if you’d like a plexiglass case to showcase it, that’ll cost you $32.99.
 
After the jump, Thompson’s video tutorial on how to make your own Gaff’s Unicorn…...

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.07.2016
01:50 pm
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A treasure-trove of behind-the-scenes ‘Blade Runner’ model-shop production photos
03.17.2015
11:12 am
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We can all thank Imgur user minicity for uploading 142 behind-the-scenes images  from the Blade Runner production’s model-shop.

These stunning photographs offer a glimpse into the talent and sweat that went into creating one of the most realistic sci-fi universes ever committed to celluloid. Blade Runner‘s 1982 state of the art special effects were painstakingly executed, in-camera, practical effects, rather than composited in post-production. This photo series gives a fascinating insight into the detail that went into creating that onscreen world.
 

 

 

 

 

 
More images after the jump…
 

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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03.17.2015
11:12 am
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A magazine gave every San Francisco mayoral candidate the replicant test from ‘Blade Runner’
02.25.2015
10:06 am
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There’s nothing more irritating than the evasive non-answers politicians mete out for the press and public. Education, budget, jobs—the words get thrown around a lot (and always in positive terms), but candidates are cagey and it’s nearly impossible to cut through their bullshit. If the voters want to know who these people really are, we have to ask the tough questions. Questions like…

Are you a fucking replicant?!?

Of course, no prospective leader is going to admit they’re an advanced android, which is why we have the highly scientific Voight-Kampff Test, made famous in Blade Runner. Why it’s not administered to everyone running for office, I do not know, but in 2003, The Wave magazine managed to ask every single question to all of the San Francisco mayoral candidates. The results were troubling, to say the least.
 

The Wave: Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can.
It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?

Gavin Newsom: I don’t have anything to put in it. I would thank them and move on.

TW: You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?

GN: I would tell him to… You know what? I wouldn’t know how to respond. How’s that for an answer? Is this a psychological test? I’m worried…

TW: They’re just questions, Gavin. In answer to your query, they’re written down for me. It’s a test, designed to provoke an emotional response.

GN: Oh, I got you.

TW: Shall we continue?

GN: Sure.

TW: You’re watching television. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling on your arm. How would you react?

GN: I would quietly sit and wait for the wasp to move to the next victim.

TW: You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, Gavin, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Gavin. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that, Gavin?

GN: [Immediately] Not a chance. I would never flip the tortoise over in the first place.

TW: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother.

GN: Ethics. Commitment. Sacrifice.

CONCLUSION: Almost too close to call. Almost. Newsom displays a defensiveness when his empathy is questioned. He’s aware that he’s being probed for emotional responses, and even expresses concern about this. However, this concern is alleviated a little too easily by our crafty V-K interviewer. Newsom is definitely a replicant. Probably a Nexus 5.

My fellow Americans, that was the test for Gavin Newsom, who not only won that election, but ran and was elected for a second term in 2007, and now serves as Lieutenant Governor of the state of California. Forget about creeping sharia or David Icke’s lizard people—the replicant threat is real!

Via io9

Posted by Amber Frost
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02.25.2015
10:06 am
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Philip K. Dick on sex between humans and androids
09.10.2014
11:22 am
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In 1981, Philip K. Dick discussed the ideas and themes behind his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in an interview with author Paul M. Sammon. Dick’s novel about a hired assassin (Rick Deckard) paid to eliminate escaped androids formed the basis for Ridley Scott’s classic science-fiction film Blade Runner. The story had its genesis in research for his novel The Man in the High Castle. Dick studied psychological studies on the mentality of the Germans who became Nazis and read how these Germans were often highly intelligent but emotionally “so defective that the word human could not properly be applied” to them.

This led Dick to a philosophical investigation into “the problem of differentiating the authentic human being from the reflex machine I call an android.” 

For me the word ‘android’ is a metaphor for people who are physiologically human but psychologically behaving in a non-human way.

This was a subject Dick discussed in a lecture on “The Android and the Human” in 1972:

...an android means, as I said, to allow oneself to become a means, or to be pounded down, manipulated, made into a means without one’s consent—the results are the same. But you cannot turn a human into an android if that human is going to break laws every chance he gets. Androidization requires obedience. And, most of all, predictability. It is precisely when a given person’s response to any given situation can be predicted with scientific accuracy that the gates are open for the wholesale production of the android life form.

 
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Philip K. Dick.
 
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick developed the idea of “androidization” further when he considered what would happen in a war between humans and androids—would humans become more android-like if they won?

This emotional interplay between humans and androids was also examined in the relationship between Deckard and the android Rachael Rosen, which Dick discussed in “Notes on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (1968):

And this brings up the whole underlying subject: sexual relations between humans and androids. What is it like? What does it mean? Is it, for instance, like going to bed with a real woman? Or is it an awful, nightmarish, bad trip, where what is dead and inert seems alive and warm and capable of the most acute intimacy known to living creatures? Isn’t this, this sexual union between Rick Deckard and Rachael Rosen—isn’t it the summa of falsity and mechanical motions carried out minus any real feeling, as we understand the word? Feeling on each of their parts. Does in fact her mental—and physical—coldness numb the male, the human man, into an echo of it?

...[Deckard’s] relationship, by having intercourse with her, has melded him to—not an individual, human or android—but to a whole type or model, of which theoretically, there could be tens of thousands. To whom, then, has he really given his erotic libido?

...Here, I think, the crucial questions of What is reality? and What is illusion? come up strongly….The more Rick strives to force her to become a woman—or, more accurately, to play the role of a woman—the more he encounters the core of the unlife within her…his attempt to make love to her as a woman for him is defeated by the tireless core of her electronic being.

Dick postulates that the failure of their lovemaking “may be vital in his determination—and success—in destroying the last of these andys.”

In this interview, Dick discusses some of these key questions about what is reality? what is human?
 

 
Thomas M. Disch once said that his friend Philip K. Dick liked to play-up the image of the hard-done-to artist, struggling in the garret, living off ground-up horse meat (which supposedly led Dick to translate his name into “Horselover Fat”—Philip Greek for horse lover, Dick German for fat), but things were never really that bad. However, he agreed America gave short-shrift to speculative science-fiction writers, and was grateful for the adulation and serious critical appraisal both received in Europe.

In 1977, Philip K. Dick was interviewed for French television where he discussed the problems of being a speculative science-fiction writer in America, as well as many of the philosophical ideas behind his works.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.10.2014
11:22 am
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12-hour ambient music pieces from ‘Blade Runner,’ ‘Alien,’ ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Star Wars’
08.13.2014
05:28 pm
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Before the advent of recording media, a piece of music could be quite long without its duration meriting much notice, but when the mechanical limitations of the 7” 45rpm single codified the length of a song at about 3 1/2 minutes, the pop-listening western world really adapted its musical mindset to that standard, to the point where even a massive hit like “Hey Jude” drew anxious notice from radio for being 7 minutes long. And now there’s QuickHitz (“Twice the music, all the time”), a radio format that cuts off every song at the two-minute mark, which, if it catches on in a big way—and face it, have stranger things not caught on?—will surely result in loads of pop singles being produced at under two-minute lengths.

The Residents are prophetic yet again.

But in avant-garde classical and artrock circles, songs that seem crazy long by pop radio standards are a perfectly normal part of the listening experience. After all, what impact would Oneida’s infamous 14-minute, one note song “Sheets of Easter” have had if it were three minutes long? How about Television’s “Marquee Moon?” King Crimson’s “Starless?” Flaming Lips’ 24-hour song7 Skies H3?” And those examples are all well within the rock idiom—I haven’t even broached the New Age, noise, and ambient genres. So many of us have been acculturated to think of long pieces of music as “pretentious” or “indulgent,” products of anti-populist ivory tower navel gazers who are hostile to average listeners. Well you know what? Fuck your shitty attention span.

The Fayetteville, AR composer Cheesy Nirvosa has been making glitchy, drony compositions since the mid-oughts, and under the name “crysknife007,” he’s established a YouTube channel to disseminate conceptual pieces of lengths that could fairly be seen as downright punitive to many listeners. These are often the sorts of things that, in a LaMonte Youngish kinda way, can be more interesting to talk about than actually listen to, especially since many of these works are 12 hours in duration. “12 Hours of Pi Being Dialed on a Rotary Phone.” “Yoda Laughs for 12 Hours.” “PSY Says HANGOVER for 12 Hours.” “6 Tone Car Alarm for 12 Hours.” (I recommend city dwellers skip that last one, it’s waaaaaaaay too much like ordinary life.)

But while a few of these ideas come off as overly winking and even mildly irritating noise-artist stunts, some of them are absolutely lovely—specifically, pieces made from looped ambient sounds culled from science fiction movies. The general thrum of Ridley Scott’s dystopian future Los Angeles filtered through Rick Deckard’s apartment windows in Blade Runner? That absolutely holds up as drone music, as does the TARDIS sound effect from Doctor Who and various spaceship engine sounds from the Alien and Star Wars franchises. I endorse playing more than one of these at once, remixing them yourselves in your browser with the pause and volume controls, whatever. Knock yourself out. Maybe even, I dunno, listen to one of ‘em for 12 hours.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
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08.13.2014
05:28 pm
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Hell yeah: Amazingly detailed ‘Blade Runner’ action figures
08.29.2013
02:24 pm
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Lord have mercy! These incredible 12” Blade Runner action figures are something else, aren’t they? Sculptor Scott Pettersen made these gorgeous pieces. Apparently each one takes take two to three months to make. I believe it, too! Just look at the detail in the clothes alone! My mind is simply blown!

“I work in wax when I sculpt and you can get a lot of detail in wax,” Pettersen says of the figures’ faces. “The finished heads are made out of resin — the kind I use is a clear, translucent color, so I cast it in a light color and then build onto that with different flesh tones. With all of them I use airbrush and there’s a lot of blending, a lot of thin, thin layers — I think on mass-produced figures all the paint is opaque and nothing is done with layers so it’s not as realistic.”

Read more about Pettersen’s Blade Runner action figures at Geek Exchange.
 

 

 

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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08.29.2013
02:24 pm
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