CB DAZE

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES

"DISTRICT 9"

A stranded spacecraft appears above a city in Africa. All it does it hover. Finally, the government sends people up to the ship to cut their way inside - what they find is truly alien in appearance.

The alien inhabitants of the spacecraft have been starving, and are quickly rescued. They are put in camps to segregate them from humans, and after 20 years, there are 1.2million wasting away in these slums called "District 9". Humans fear them, scientists study them - and the weaponry found within the ship. While it's not explained in the movie, some people have been trained in understanding what they are saying, and evidently, the aliens can understand English. People of earth have dubbed them "Prawns".

With only 30 million dollars to work with, and Peter Jackson as executive producer, Director Neil Blomkamp does what many August movies have done of late - take a movie that was inexpensive to make (by Hollywood standards), and shove it up the ass of the big studios.....I love August.

It all starts with a good story giving birth to a great script. Throw in a bunch of actors that aren't household names (but throw everything they've got into their acting) and you have the formula for a money making picture. I have don't know how many people are even reading this, but if by chance there's an old CBer (now Hollywood mogul) reading - take note of the very first part of this paragraph: "It all starts with a good story..."

Metaphors abound in the movie, and just about any moron will understand what is being said (perhaps not the texting movie moron, but more on that later).

A casual web surfer will look at the photo of the Alien and the photo of the human and know for a fact, without even watching the movie, WHO the monster of the movie is. As my mom was often to say: "Looks aren't everything". This movie has anything and everything a BIG studio would die for, and much-much more, but I fear that had they gotten this film within their gnarled hands, it would have been ruined very easily. This is the sci-fi (ed. - That's right "Si-Fi" not "SyFy", 'Nuff Said) movie of the year in my opinion, and it's always a pleasure to find such an untarnished jewel come out in August and then proceed to kick ass.