Maximalism

I saw Blade Runner 2049 last night.

You haven't seen it yet, so I'm not going to spoil it for you.

Even to tell you whether I liked it or not. Just don't go to Letterboxd if you follow me there, because you'll see my star rating.

I did want to use today's blog slot to post a funny Blade Runner 2049-related picture, though ... or should I say, Blade Runner Twenty Fourty Nine.

Please note not only the odd decision to spell out the year, but also the careless decision to misspell "forty."

Cinema Kino is one of my favorite places to see a movie, only a few blocks from my work and staffed by nice people. But I have to rib them publicly just a bit for this strange choice as well as this inexcusable gaffe. (It's also not where I happened to see the movie -- this was taken at lunch yesterday.)

It's a real case of maximalism, a particular contradiction when you consider that much of what makes the original Blade Runner captivating is its keen sense of minimalism. (Whether the sequel follows suit, I won't tell you, but I will say that it's hard to be truly minimalist in a movie that runs two hours and forty-three -- or should I say fourty-three -- minutes.)

When I posted this on Facebook, a friend joked that they had lost the box that contains the numbers. Something like this may in fact be the case. This is Australia, after all, where up until recently I'd see numerous instances where an event was posted somewhere, but the time it started was not posted. That type of thing. They're just a bit more laid back over here, and can't be shamed if something appears to have been sort of half-assed. Half of the ass is sometimes all they have to give, and I love them for it.

I did think it was possible simply because this is an arthouse cinema, and generally does not play as many sequels, not that most sequels even have numbers in them these days.

Still, I'd have gone with just "Blade Runner" rather than spelling out the whole title ... and then also misspelling it.