And when I woke up this morning it was still true!

I'm thinking of dying my hair a celebratory shade of red. Or blonde. Flaxen McKew perhaps?

We went to the Astor last night to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which is apparently the closest thing we're ever going to see to Ridley Scott's original vision for the film. I haven't seen any version for years, so I didn't notice any great changes, but there did seem to be more flying around in DeLoreans police cars than I remembered.

But that's all beside the point really. This is the film that Sony Australia is using to show off its 4K digital cinema projection system. (Which I calculate to be roughly eleventy billion pixels.) So the Astor's ancient projection suite was, Paul Harris informed us, jam packed with technology especially shipped in for these screenings. A Sony representative said some stuff, which ended with,"Here's an example."

They opened up the curtains to their fullest width, usually only done for the 70mm screenings, the projector began it's thing and light spilled out of the screen area onto the ceiling.

Oh.
My.

I hadn't felt this kind of awe in a cinema since I don't know when. Perhaps the preview of Serenity. Maybe it was the re-release of Star Wars. It doesn't matter. I am all over this projector within five seconds of Lightning McQueen racing around his li'l animated speedway. So shiny. So colourful. So Damn Pretty.

At the end of the brief trailer you could've heard a pin drop in the audience, we were too busy reconnecting our lower jaws to our faces to say anything.

And Blade Runner with this kind of visual? Gorgeous. There are so many details in the sets that I never knew were there before. Vehicles parked on buildings, text on advertisements, costumes on the toys in J.F.'s apartment. If you like this film I highly recommend seeing it this way. There have been some "corrections" to the film that make it flow more smoothly too, a lot of trouble has been gone to to make sure these new green screened effects blend in and if you weren't familiar (really familiar) with the scenes you wouldn't notice them. Which is as it should be.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut is screening at The Astor in Melbourne until Sunday night. Get there super early for front row balcony seats like we did (nerds!).

The NaNo website is currently gasping for breath under a stacks-on of enthusiastic writers, so I thought I'd give you an update on my progress so far.

6,008 / 50,000 (12.0%)

I'm pretty pleased with how it's going. Of course only one paragraph in twenty is any good, but my mantra is "First draft, first draft..." I'm eagerly waiting to find out what the plot will be, but my main character is discovering a most interesting setting, meeting some quite bizarre people and having a very confusing time of it. Much like the author really.

Excelsior, fellow NaNoers!