A planned downtown skyscraper is supposed to be advertising-heavy on its bottom 10 floors.  LA Times.  I need to get around to watching one of the versions of the classic film, whose special effects seem to have been utterly low-tech.

I've thought about this for years.

Someday the walls of our homes (and classrooms) will be entirely LCD panels, and you'll be able to download wallpaper, posters, art, etc.

It'll be pretty cool.

You won't have lightbulbs anymore.  They won't be needed.  Your room will either go from completely 100% dark to 100% bright, and somewhere in between.

It'll be fun.

When you throw a neighborhood party, you can make the whole house a western salloon, a castle, whatever.  you can even have movie stars lounging around talking on distant couches.

the possibilities are limitless.

I am outta here.  I'll be back to the NSR in the fall.  Until then, have a nice spring and summer.

Later, dudes.

Tokyo's Ginza district combines elegance and electronic advertising.  I recall a building topped by a wonderful blue ad for Olympus.

Akira Kurosawa's epic samurai version of King Lear (Ran) has a sort of garish, nearly sci-fi look.  Mostly, it's photographed in blazing sunlight with the old warlord's sons and their armies color coded in yellow, red, and Carolina blue.  The film has every imaginable sort of sibling rivalry, revenge (watch out for Lady Kaede), treason, and assorted opportunism.  Loyalty, too.  Lots of blood.  The current Canal+ blu-ray is OK, but doesn't seem as good as it could be.  Sam Peckinpah's "Wild Bunch" looks gorgeous on blu-ray, even if it's sickening in its own special way.   Come to think of it, I wonder whether Peckinpah's machine gun might have given Kurosawa the notion to show what flintlocks can do. 

With "Blade Runner", serious violence worthy of Kurosawa or Peckinpah is there, but presented in a speech by Rutger Hauer, who plays a replicant.  It's much better on film than in writing.