"They don’t advertise for killers in the newspaper. That was my profession. Ex-cop. Ex-blade runner. Ex-killer." That’s Harrison Ford, voice-overing in hardboiled noir style, in the studio version of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi thriller. You won’t hear the narration in Scott’s director’s cut version, but you can see the unicorn dream sequence, and so, let the debate rage on. Warner Bros.’ theatrical release version? Director Scott’s final cut release? Or how about a workprint version, first screened to test audiences three months before Blade Runner's June, 1982 release?

Well, Warner Home Video has just come out with its Blade Runner 30^th Anniversary Blu-Ray extravaganza, in a 4-disc combo pack ($64.99) and 3-disc Blu-ray Book ($34.99) editions. Sure there have been anniversary and collector editions before (including the 2007 “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” – how do you think those ultimate collectors feel now?), but this one has more bells and whistles, Easter eggs, bonus content and production info than ever before -- not to mention the movie itself, in its “final cut” iteration and the 1992 director’s cut, the domestic and international studio versions and the aforementioned workprint.

Think local, act global, or think global, and act local – either way, Philadelphia Film Fest 21 has a rich program of homegrown movies on its slate.  Some have been made here, while others were shot elsewhere by folks who hail from these here parts. Among the titles in the “Greater Filmadelphia” section of the fest: Alaskaland, a coming-of-age story from Philly filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu; The Atomic States of America, local documentarians Don Argott and Sheena Joyce’s nuclear power expose; Detonator, a Philly-shot drama about a family man haunted by his punk past; From the Shadowa, an parental abduction documentary by area filmmakers Matt Antell and David Hearn; Future Weather, with Lili Taylor, Amy Madigan  and Perla Haney-Jardine, from Philadelphia writer/director Jenny Deller; La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus, Mark Kendal’s doc about an old, auctioned Philadelphia school bus’ second life transporting the citizens of Quetzal City, Guatemala, and This Time Tomorrow, an apocalyptic love story set in Philadelphia, from director Shane Bissett.

Also locally connected: A Place at the Table, a haunting documentary about urban hunger executive-produced by Jeffrey Lurie and Christina Weiss Lurie, and featuring among its subjects Barbie Izquierdo, a determined single mother from Philadelphia.  

For schedule and ticket info, go to: http://filmadelphia.org/festival, or call: 267-908-4733

Mitt Romney may have had “binders full of women,” as he declared at the presidential debate Tuesday night, but that’s nothing compared to what Elle magazine has going. Its November issue, out next week, features the aptly named Elle Fanning on the cover of its annual Women in Hollywood special. This year’s roundup of empowered and accomplished actresses are, in addition to Fanning, Cate Blanchett, Shirley MacLaine, Sarah Jessica Parker, Susan Sarandon, Octavia Spencer, Uma Thurman, Emma Watson and Kristen Wiig.

Here’s Fanning, star of Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, on coming of age in showbiz surroundings (her older sister is Dakota Fanning): “I can’t really remember my life without movies… [Growing up in Hollywood] is no different really. I make movies the same way other kids play tennis or go to piano lessons. I’m trying to get better at what I want to do, just like other kids are trying to get better at what they want to do.”

 And here’s Spencer, Oscar winner for The Help, on dealing with the pressures of her profession: “Early on I had to stand up to a producer – I won’t say who, but he is famous, famous. He dressed me down in a crowded office. I told him right there in front of a hundred people, `You don’t know me well enough to use that tone…’ And then I ran to the bathroom and cried like a baby. But he never addressed me that way again. And he is known as a yeller.”

“I had only heard good things about the French, even though I’d never met a human or animal from that distant European country,” writes the author of a just-out celebrity autobiography. “To start with, it was said that they loved their dogs so much that they frequently carried them around in their handbags and took them into fashionable restaurants to feed them foie gras (fancy chopped liver).”

Yes, you are reading from Uggie: My Story, the memoir of a Jack Russell terrier that just happened to star in last year’s five-time Academy Award-winning hit, The Artist. Although the black-and-white silent film’s star, Jean Dujardin, stole Oscar glory (Dujardin nabbed best actor, The Artist nabbed best picture), Uggie stole just about every scene he was in with his human counterparts, most of whom hailed from France.

So, no surprise, the canine got a book deal. As “barked to”  Wendy Holden, Uggie: My Story (Gallery Books, $15) is just in stores now, right there alongside  J.K. Rowling’s no-Harry-here novel and Fifty Shades of Gray, and although it’s kind of a joke, it’s also kind of not: the four-legged scribe details his training and casting travails, the challenges facing director Michel Hazanavicius as he tries to recreate the forgotten world of black-and-white silent cinema, and the responsibility Uggie felt in following such dynamic doggie stars as Rin Tin Tin and Lassie. And he has to kiss Reese Witherspoon on the lips at the White House correspondents dinner, too.

One of the longest running and most illuminating series of film studies books hails from the British Film Institute: its “Film Classics” paperbacks offer critical and historical appraisals of many of filmdom’s finest endeavors. And to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series, BFI and Palgrave Macmillan have released a dozen of the books, each focusing on a single, and singular film, with newly designed cover art, and, in several cases, new material.

Among the reissues: Laura Mulvey’s take on Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Salman Rushdie on The Wizard of Oz and Charles Barr on Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

New to the series, and released with the twelve 20th anniversary titles: Eric Smoodin on the Disney classic Snow White, Christopher Wagstaff on Bertolucci’s The Conformist, and V.F. Perkins’ survey of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game.

Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris, and the Chestnut Hill Film Group will always have the Chestnut Hill branch of the Free Library – in their memories, that is.

Beginning next Tuesday, Oct. 9, the long-running repertory film program changes venues, moving a few blocks down the far side of the hill into new digs at the Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Ave. The 39th season kicks off with a free screening of Casablanca, a little ditty about a hard-bitten ex-pat café owner, his old Scandinavian flame, and a world war. The CHFG’s Ralph Hirshorn promises to show trailers and shorts that ran with Casablanca when it premiered in November, 1942. Yes, that makes this the 70^th anniversary of the Michael Curtiz-directed classic, one of the most beloved movies of all time. See Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claud Raines et al walk through backlot Morocco, cuss those nasty Nazis, and pull close to hear Dooley Wilson croak “As Time Goes By” again.

The free screenings are weekly on Tuesday evenings – doors open at 6:30 p.m., films start at 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted – October through March. Upcoming in the next few weeks:

The 21^st Philadelphia Film Festival, running Oct. 18 to 28 in seven theaters around town, with opening and closing galas at the Annenberg on the Penn campus, is locked in, and the complete list of films and schedule of events is there for the having, at: http://filmadelphia.org/festival

The fest opens Thursday night, the 18^th, with Silver Linings Playbook, the Philly-centric Bradley Cooper/Jennifer Lawrence mood-swinger, and closes on Saturday the 27th with Flight, the Denzel Washington thriller that marks director Robert Zemeckis’ return to old fashioned live-action moviemaking (no more of this motion capture business, please!).

In between are close to 100 features and a dozen or so shorts, including five centerpiece screenings. They are: Cloud Atlas, the across-the-universe Tom Hanks/Halle Berry metaphysical sci-fier; Hyde Park on Hudson, with Bill Murray as FDR; Not Fade Away, David (The Sopranos) Chase’s 1960s three-kids-start-a-rock-band thing; Stand Up Guys, a crime comedy starring Alan Arkin, Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, and Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut.  

Lee Daniels, the industriously edgy Philadelphia filmmaker who won a best director Oscar nomination for his 2009 drama, Precious, and whose sex-and-violence laden The Paperboy, with Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, comes out in a few weeks, is in New Orleans right now making The Butler.

Inspired by the true story of Cecil Gaines, an African-American who tended to eight Presidents in the White House over a span of more than 30 years, The Butler stars Forest Whitaker in the title role. He is joined by big and busy cast: Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey, John Cusack and David Oyelowo (both in The Paperboy), Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Minka Kelly (as Jackie Kennedy), Lenny Kravitz, Melissa Leo,  Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber (as LBJ) and Robin Williams among 'em. Told from Gaines’ unique personal perspective, Daniels’ film tracks the sweeping changes of decades of American history, including the birth of the civil rights movement and the social upheavals of the Vietnam era.  

"What moves me most about this man is his quiet nature, grace and unmatched perspective that comes from being in one place -- a very powerful one -- during what was arguably the period in American history that saw the most change," Daniels told Variety. The Weinstein Company will release The Butler next year.  

Great poster for the monthly latte art competition known as Philly TNT: A play on the iconic Saul Bass-designed key art for Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 psychothriller, Vertigo, the poster depicts the silhouette of the figure of a barista, aswirl in a latte rosetta. The original one-sheet Vertigo art, of course, had a similarly-attired dude spinning in a spirally vortex.

The TNT (Thursday night throwdown), throwing down the evening of Sept. 27, at the just relocated Elixir Coffee (207 S. Sydenham Street), is open to professional and home baristas alike. Here (below) is a publicity photo from Vertigo of Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak angsting suspensefully over a cup of coffee. Or maybe it's a latte?