But lots of slow movies have their merits. Even if I’m not entertained from moment to moment, I still appreciate the overall emotional impact of a film. Vertigo is a great example – it’s slow, it’s otherworldly, and it leaves you in a certain state of mind once it’s finished. Blade Runner has those kinds of qualities.

Ah, Dragon*&@#!Con. So many valuable tidbits of dork. I’m glad you were our ambassador this year.

At Dragon*Con, I saw Edward James Olmos (and James Hong) talk about Blade Runner. Olmos (who, incidently, was wearing a “Adama in 2008″ t-shirt) said that he made up the whole origami unicorn thing. He was just in the background for the scene and wanted to busy himself somehow. So he made the unicorn, which is a fairly large piece of evidence in the film that Deckard is a replicant. I thought that was interesting.

It’s refreshing, in retrospect particularly, to have a science fiction movie that’s about so much more than just the look of everything A movie that is also full of ideas – in this case, what is the nature of humanity? For all its visual bells and whistles, and Blade Runner has them in spades, it’s wonderful to see a movie of this type that has ideas, not just about blowing up bad guys or saving the day, etc.

It’s also interesting to see Harrison Ford playing such a dysfunctional and somewhat unlikable character, a real departure, especially considering the last two movies he had done before this were Empire and Raiders. Deckard is a far cry from Han and Indy in every way. I wish he’d do something dark like this again.