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Quiet frankly i'm not that interested in the future of cinema (british or otherwise) given the current state of it , i mean just take a look at the list that people are voting for BLADE RUNNER was at the top when i looked a moment ago and while it ain't a bad film (pretty good in fact) it's a bit of an obvious/populist choice innit (ok i included AMELIE in my top 5 but i did TRY to include some other more obscure/older movies too in the hope that maybe we'll get the chance to see one of them on the big screen and if not that at least that maybe someone would look at the list and be intrigued by something and then go and investigate it for themselves)

timeless classic, a wonder to behold. most surely the best film ever. chucked in a mix of any toons, makes my flesh creep. a vision of future. and scanner darkley? well if u aint seen it, maybe bout time u did/

When I was a teenager, my local arts cinema (basically, an unheated room) showed, cheaply, two different films a night - all sorts of stuff, Jarman, Wajda, Renoir, Paradjanov, Ozu, Ed Wood. Manchester's Cornerhouse had three screens! I could skive off school and watch afternoons of East European animation. Meanwhile, BBC2 and the new Channel 4 gave us Bergman and Fassbinder and whole afternoons of silents. I didn't have trendy parents pushing these things on me- I had a book of film stills from a second hand shop and wanted to see where they came from, and, back then, it wasn't too hard. My car mechanic, Sun-reading cousin once enthused about a film he'd just seen about casting a bell, which I realised was Tarkovsky. Where the hell is anyone going to get the chance to stumble across Tarkovsky nowadays? Ironically, Channel 4 inadvertently killed the arts cinemas, but then changed its style completely into the moronic teen-fest we have now. BBC1 and 2 don't show anything: late night slots are filled with crap American TV movies, not L'Atalante. BBC4 and Film4 play very safe and don't seem to venture more than 10 years into the past. Yes, you can get them on DVD, but only if you're an initiate, and well-off (they always seem to be at least £15). I haven't seen a new 'cinematic' British film in years: I can't think of a young British director who can think cinematically - they all seem plodding, pedestrian and dull, making filmed theatre or TV-writ-large. Other countries still produce them - the Coen Bros, Peter Jackson, Tim Burton, Guillermo Del Toro - but it seems we can't anymore, and I think the lack of 'everyday' access to great cinema is in a large part to blame.

The film is a brilliant. It has everything an amazing film score by vangelis, Romance, action, horror, sci-fi etc (a cliche way to desribe the film, but this is what it has). Ridley scotts direction on this film is brilliant and after watching the new final cut 5 disc set extras i learn even more about the film and see it in yet another way. Even though this film has been released as either directors cut final cut etc. it still works and each version is different in its own little way.
The acting is top notch and Rutger Hauers' performance is mezmerising.
I recommend this film to anyone. Friends who i have told about this film who don't like sci-fi films have said the same as myself and been totally sucked into its world.

Thanks
Josh

I definitely think we're going through a new golden age of film. I love the idea that we can now visualise almost anything onscreen and it's heartening to know that many top film makers are looking to 'story' again as a key element.

If there's one thing old films show us, it's that we don't need SFX to tell a good tale. The script is king.

The only sad thing about today's market is the desire of hacks and moneymen to remake so many classic movies. Just think of all of the book adaptions and original screenplays that are possible.

Apparently James Cameron has developed new HD and 3D rotoscoping technology for his next couple of films, Avatar and Battle Angel, and it's meant to look like nothing we've ever seen before, it's meant to be the single most important step forward for the medium of cinema since sound. George Lucas has speculated that beaming films to picture houses across the country will in the long run cut massive amounts out of the cost of transporting film reels and cans etc. So if all this is happening, does that mean tickets will be cheaper, and the Brits will be able to make more films?

I just hope the act of cinemagoing does not change, like so many critics have been saying in the last few months . . . There is nothing like going and sitting in a darkened room full of strangers, and being collectively absorbed into a film, no matter if its a documentary, a comedy, an action film, a musical ~ no matter if the film's really good or really bad, for that matter. We have been doing it for over a hundred years, and we still do. So I hope it will be the same when I am an ancient old man.

The most important thing for the future of cinema is that future audiences and future critics, scholars and historians do not forget the older films.

I am 22, and I look forward to that sense of nostalgia that so many older people have for the cinema ~ that recent Double Bill article in Sight and Sound made me quite jealous that people were "there" when this or that film first came out. I want to be able to say happily when I am older, when the whole approach to film history and theory and studies has no doubt changed, and say "I was there on the first day to see Jurassic Park ~ and it changed my life!" It sounds silly now, but just wait and see people!

the first time I watched this film the scene with the angelic boy singing in the beer garden was scarey as hell in the way it lulled you into a idea and idiology

As for Joel Grey he was just fantastic

I think many people passed this film by as something for the younger generation, which although it does appeal highly to younger people this film should be watched by all.
A fantastic insight into London culture and a beutiful transition from the first film following Noel Clarke's character as he faces the consequences of his previous actions.
Not to be overlooked, brilliant film.

Story seems to be making a comeback after some plotless films over the years. The lack of story helped independent films come to the forefront but blockbusters like Dark Knight now show that good story telling is coming back to the mainstream.

I must watch this film at 3 times a year, and each time I see some detail that I haven't seen before.

The layers of detail that Ridley Scott and his team put in have influenced so many films since, and it's hard to see where sci-fi, thrillers and even written popular fiction would be without it.

(actual name of fishing series I mentioned that no one will buy is "catching the impossible", from same makers as "A Passion for Angling")

The technology for watching them is likely to improve by huge proportions (and hopefully get a hell of alot cheaper)........ the only problem is hoping the industry doesn't do a trend I've started noticing over the years, where it seems the better the technology to entertain gets, the more downhill the new content to watch on it gets.

e.g. Back when people still had Black & White televisions and colour ones were coming in + only had the old grainy analogue signal there were great shows like Monty Python, Dad's Army, Steptoe & Son, Fawlty Towers, Some mothers do 'ave 'em, Whatever happened to the likely lads, Porridge + many others.
Now when more & more people are getting fancy High-Definition enabled LCD or Plasma TV, hooked up to a top-notch Digital Signal to pick up the content all that seems available are pathetic reality shows like BIG BROTHER, etc... with the only exception of something actually good being TOP GEAR (and there would also be "Casting at the Sun", a fishing series made by the same team as "A Passion for Angling", except none of the main channels seem to want to buy).

Also in the future of film, another concern is whether the industry is going to keep up with distribution technologies and not get so paranoid over Pirating like they & the music industry are beginning to these days that people will eventually need a degree in rocket science in order to figure out how to work the gadgets needed to play them on.... already some devices can be like trying to bash your head against a brick wall trying to persuade them to work the way they're mean't to.

On the plus side, hopefully.... like with the Sony PSP & the iPOD gadgets it will easier to watch them wherever you want, not worry about them degrading after you've purchased them (as happened to a few movies on video I bought in the days before I had a functioning DVD player) or jamming inside the machine + it'll be alot cheaper to build up a collection of old favourites to watch whenever you want (an increasing necessity these days, the way Television is going).

I believe cinema will be used as the chemicals of science and the words of philosophy. When society is finished with the deliverence of story and novelty the visuals and power will be used as experiments of abstracts.

Trust in this. We will no longer be making feature length films but putting together shots like chemical compounds while society braves on. It will bring us closer to enlightenment.

I'll meet you guys and girls there.

This is the perfect Saturday afternoon film with some biscuits and a gallon of tea.

The film is just so rich with great scenes. Heaven in Black and White, the camera obscura sequence, the closing of the eye, the stairway to heaven. The small jokes (technicolour, music, banality of cricket), the lack of "enemies" in heaven, everyone is allied - all fantastic.

Roger Livesy is simply brilliant, as is David Niven.

The haunting piano melody all the way through is so simple and so effective.

The fact that it's a cheesy love story and so much better than anything Richard Curtis could write.

I have seen this film so many times it's almost obscene but it is warming and comforting and I'm quite happy to go back and see it again and again.

When it had a re-release in 2000, I saw it at the cinema three times just to see it how the film was intended to be seen big,bold and beautiful.

If everyone watched this film the world would be a better place.

The advances in the quality of digitalisation and availability of bandwidth, with the consequential drop in production and distribution costs, added to the constant appearance of new platforms, means that one cannot predict the future of cinema, which is a wonderful thing.

It should however be safe enough to predict that these improvements should eventually make non-blockbuster material easier to market without necessarily confining it to home viewing, as markets fragment (though we seem to be still rather a long way away at present). As has been mentioned in other comments, the experience of being part of an audience seems to be growing stronger again.

Also, advances in restoration techniques (combined with reduction in costs) should mean more films could be saved, although of course we may still lose several as it is often a race against time. Care will also need to be taken to avoid crossing the line between enhancement and "improvement", but this is surely an insignificant risk when compared to the potential gains. It opens all sorts of tough questions, not least whether everything is worth preserving - we have reached eternity, in a sense: nothing need be lost anymore - but the simple fact that tough questions will need to be asked is more than enough sign that the future looks as exciting as one could hope it to be.

While there's little doubt that as technology like Image Metrics' continues to evolve new groundbreaking techniques to story-telling, production and audience involvement will arise. However, I do not believe that this will change the ENTIRE industry, merely allow us to do more.

I can only hope for more film releases per year at a quality they have been for the past 50-30 years. More to see, newer faces on and off the screen, new stories that challenge even the ideologies we've yet to carry.

XD

The film that me and my friends debated endlessly in the 1980s and 90s.
A comment on humanity, genetics and the future.
I've seen it, and its various incarnations, every few months for over a quarter of a century. It hasn't dated.

I can just imagine the convergence between the cinema quality-sound-attention to detail, and the Wii technology and similar. It gives me hope for the future where I don't feel the same way about television somehow.

Its sophistication in commingling fantasy and reality, its wartime setting, its references to psychoanalysis and the 'special relationship' with the US, the centrality of Shakespeare's work to its fabric, its gentle mockery of traditional views of the hereafter, its breathtaking visuals and witty dialogue and its steadfast belief in individuality and the supremacy of the human spirit, make of it a remarkable summing up of so much that was important and exciting about the first half of the first complete film century.