OTHER SCIENCE FICTION SERIES

District 9 :.: Who's seen it?

POSTED BY: CLJOHNSTON108
UPDATED: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 15:44
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Sunday, August 16, 2009 8:02 AM

CLJOHNSTON108


Still waiting for my friend to go with me, but I'm really eager to see it!

For all of you who are unaware, here's the 6-minute short Neill Blomkamp did 4 years ago...



http://www.d-9.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9

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Sunday, August 16, 2009 8:34 AM

GRIZWALD


We saw it opening night, which we NEVER do, but it was our 24th anniversary so we celebrated. It was great. I'm still digesting. There was so much in that movie! I will need to see it several more times before I feel like I have a handle on most of it. It's going on the must-buy-on-DVD list.


Oh, and --

Select to view spoiler:


Doesn't the lander look/act a little like a Firefly? ZOIC was involved, after all.


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Sunday, August 16, 2009 8:46 AM

CLJOHNSTON108


Hey! Happy Anniversary!

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Sunday, August 16, 2009 8:52 AM

GRIZWALD


Thank you.

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Sunday, August 16, 2009 9:38 AM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.


There's another thread about this around here somewhere.

I've seen it twice already but I'm still working on my review. It's tough trying not to spoil stuff.



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Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:26 AM

OUT2THEBLACK


Quote:

Originally posted by ecgordon:
There's another thread about this around here somewhere.

I've seen it twice already but I'm still working on my review. It's tough trying not to spoil stuff.





Here's the otherish thread , which now contains E-C's review :

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=2&t=39546

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Tuesday, August 18, 2009 8:24 AM

DEADLOCKVICTIM


even though there was some of the usual crash and burn imagery, this film connected on a deeper level - actually providing a plot worth thinking about - i liked it.

eagerly awaiting the eventual sequel in what? three years??

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Tuesday, August 18, 2009 11:02 PM

MANGOLO


LOL! Probably 3 years, but I heard the green lighted the sequel for production. I do hope the work on the dialog writing and the pacing- besides that? Fantastic first film.



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Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:14 PM

HKCAVALIER


Just got back from seeing it. I was very impressed--solves the problems of a half dozen films I can think of. The documentary structure was brilliant. It was emotionally exhausting, like watching the last 5 years of news on Iraq in 2 hours and for the first time. Very, very smart.

I see folks talking about "obvious" flaws and plot holes, but I really don't see it. All the science that "didn't work" was alien tech, so how can you judge? It certainly had its own logic and its own internal consistency. But in a lot of ways the sci-fi was just a disguise for a film that manages to touch on most of the geopolitical evils of our day. I loved how the despicable Blackwater stand-in was presented as a quasi-humanitarian organization with uniforms reminiscent of UN Peace Keepers. Or how the aliens' love for catfood recalls the morbid news stories of the elderly poor eating pet food that were so popular back in the 80's.

One last thing (I'm curious if anyone else here noticed): I was particularly impressed with how the movie was edited to de-escalate the audience's adrenaline high at every turn. Just when you're gearing up for one of those "Yeah, get'm!" or a "You can do it, c'mon!" type moments of suspense or sentimentality, the movie shifts perspective, or the apparent plot is obliterated by circumstances and you're left just trying to make sense of it all. There's no time to really be rooting for anyone or vicariously getting off on the carnage. It's just too immediate, too raw. The main character, I think, manages to make it through the entire movie never once doing anything the least bit admirable and yet you can't help caring for him. Very mature, very purposeful film. Not what I expected. Bravo.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 3:04 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!



Planning to go to the 1st showing this morning, 11:45am. That is, if I don't get bothered by work.





The T.Rex they call JANE!


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Sunday, August 23, 2009 3:09 AM

DEWRASTLER


Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:

I see folks talking about "obvious" flaws and plot holes, but I really don't see it. All the science that "didn't work" was alien tech, so how can you judge? It certainly had its own logic and its own internal consistency. But in a lot of ways the sci-fi was just a disguise for a film that manages to touch on most of the geopolitical evils of our day. I loved how the despicable Blackwater stand-in was presented as a quasi-humanitarian organization with uniforms reminiscent of UN Peace Keepers. Or how the aliens' love for catfood recalls the morbid news stories of the elderly poor eating pet food that were so popular back in the 80's.



I agree with you. I didn't really think the science of this film was all that important and really didn't find myself focusing on it during the movie. With the cat food, when

Select to view spoiler:


Wikus was lost in District 9 and had to find food, he ate cat food. To me this meant that the general population misunderstood the Prawns. The Prawns didn't love cat food like everyone thought. That was the only food they good get.



One thing I'm surprised no one has really talked about was

Select to view spoiler:


the abortion scene.

I was completely shocked at this. I was appalled and ashamed at the ease in which my fellows humans did this.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 5:06 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...


*** Possible spoilers ***

I thought overall it was ok.

Acting/casting was excellent, Sharlto Copley deserves a lot of the credit for any positive reveiws - he was in almost every frame it seemed - if you didn't like his performance chances are you didn't like the movie.

I can do without any of the morality lessons thank you - I see that every day and I get it already. I want my scifi escapist and not to be a rehash of what's wrong with contemporary earth. Seriously, what's the point? Did Star Trek morality lessons ever change anyone's mind?

The Nigerian thugs were a bit cliched.

The documentary style feels over used and contrived. It actually felt comical (as in funny bad) at first.

The idea of knocking on a million+ doors to serve eviction notices...

The matching of cg lighting to live scene lighting was very impressive to my eye. The mothership above the city as well as the prawns interacting with humans - all well done.

I liked it, I'm glad I saw it, and I'm looking forward to future projects by this director Neill Blomkamp, but I surprised by the level of acclaim it seems to be getting. I wonder if it would be different if Jackson wasn't attached to it.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 8:08 AM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.


If you've gotten this far into the thread, you should be expecting spoilers by now. If you aren't expecting them, consider yourself warned of them in this post. If you haven't seen the film, you may want to skip this.





Yes, the lander reminded me a lot of a Firefly, around the engines

Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:
All the science that "didn't work" was alien tech, so how can you judge?


Alien tech it might be, but there are certain laws of physics to be considered. I mean, I enjoyed the movie well enough, but I spent a good portion of it wondering how the ship could just hover there if it was broken. "Oh, the ship doesn't function, they can't fly back home or indeed anywhere, but despite not being capable of moving or opening for lack of some sort of transport pod, this huge ship is perfectly capable of hovering in the air over District Nine, impervious to gravity for twenty some-odd years." I'm sorry if that sounds a bit scornful, but it took me out of the movie a lot, even moreso when I found out that the whole problem was that the lander transport pod thing was missing. That's it? Really? Talk about poor design. Alien tech or no, I thought that didn't work very well on a science level. And all of that aside from the fairly main plot point that rocket fuel could somehow change the genetic structure of a human being. Rocket fuel. Rocket fuel not being injected, but with a bit splattered on the skin and quickly mopped up. This can turn a human into an alien. Successfully. Really? You think that science 'works,' because it's 'alien technology?' Alien technology, alien rocket fuel, which has presumably never encountered humans before, but can perfectly alter their genetic structure? I found that very hard to swallow. I know it's all secondary to the actual content and obvious commentary of the film, but no, the science didn't work. There's only so far my suspension of disbelief can get on simply, 'alien.'

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 9:26 AM

HKCAVALIER


HERE BE MAJOR SPOILERS! YE'VE BEEN WARNED!

Yikes, PhoenixRose. Wull, at the risk of bringing your considerable ire down upon me as well as the movie, I think you're kinda not using your imagination here, and refusing to accept some pretty basic conventions of alien technology. You can't expect Einsteinian physics from alien spacecraft, considering what we've been given to understand about "UFO's" over the years. Their ships would obviously have a relationship to gravity that we cannot fathom. There have been uncounted sci-fi books that tried to account for the gravity thing--why is it so hard to imagine that an alien spacecraft "at rest" would remain somehow "outside" the effects of gravity when you have no idea how it could do such a thing in the first place?

Furthermore, it seemed to me that the aliens they found onboard were assumed to be some kind of uneducated labor force. Perhaps the thing was just "in neutral" or "park" and no one knew where the gear shift nob was and the aliens weren't telling. Seems to me that if all alien tech was "dead" in any but alien hands, the humans would never have figured out anything about any of it and would be stuck making assumptions.

And jeez, obviously the black liquid was not just "rocket fuel." It had properties that went far beyond fueling spacecraft. Why should that be so out of bounds? I don't think it was rocket fuel, anyway. Yes, the child called it "fuel," but that was a translation of his alien click language. We sometimes call electricity "juice" but that doesn't mean it comes from a fruit.

I thought it was far more special than that--obviously it was. The humans in the movie understand that only aliens can manipulated alien tech, so they presume that it has "something to do with alien DNA" and get busy with the biological experiments. They never had any success with that line of thinking did they? Maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe this liquid makes anything it touches more like the aliens--maybe it is a biological agent that functions according to some sort of psychic magnetism that brings the physical structure of whatever it touches more into harmony with the alien consciousness. Yeah, sure, this is woowoo stuff, but nothing more woowoo than Robert Heinlein might dream up.

The principle that such a substance might reveal is that our minds, our identities, in part at least, determine our physical natures. We are humans and look and function as humans because we think we are humans at the most basic level--our identities are fixed at the core of our being and that's what determines our morphology. So this alien liquid, which is possibly "alive" or "conscious" or "sentient" in some way, connects with the core of Wikus' identity and starts to make him more alien. And his body begins to show this profound shift in his identity. Interestingly the most profound change happens in his hand and arm where he was wounded. It's as if the template that his body was using to heal his arm had been altered and he was "healing" into an alien form.

It's nothing too earth-shattering, it's just Kantian--the idea that consciousness precedes essence, "proven" in the movie by the alien "technology." The more advanced alien technology in the movie was shown to be thought activated--the command module, the mech--and it seems reasonable to me that the liquid may be a conduit. Its effect on the alien technology was to make it more like an extension of the alien's mind/body, so to speak; it's effect on the human body was to make the human an extension of the alien's mind/body as well. Kinda puts a whole new spin on "identity politics," don'it?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009 9:26 AM

MANGOLO


Like I wrote, this is a great first film. You gotta remember this guy has NEVER directed a feature film before. Peter Jackson had directed 7 films before LOtR.

Does it deserve all the critical acclaim? IMHO, not really, but in the context of what most of the sci-fi that is being handed out these days who can blame them for being a little excited? Compare it to GI Joe that cost 5 times as much?

Your thoughts?

BTW You won't see me pull any punches on Avatar though. $300 million and more than 20 films under his belt. It had better live up to the hype.



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Sunday, August 23, 2009 11:51 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!



Saw the movie. Liked it. There were some obvious ( to me ) plot holes, but over all, a fun, action packed summer thriller.

I still liked MOON, more, however. I felt that story worked better, over all.

The camera work wasn't in the least bit a problem for me, and I wish Cloverfield had incorporated some of that style. Having 1st hand video shots for 100% of the movie, for 2 hrs on the big screen, is a bit much. The various cut aways from close to wide area shots made viewing much more appealing.

My 2 cents.



The T.Rex they call JANE!


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Sunday, August 30, 2009 1:52 PM

PCCH7


it´s fantastic, that´s all I can say.. It makes Michael Bay look like a total idiot

"Summer Glau can simply walk into Mordor.."

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Sunday, August 30, 2009 3:33 PM

DEWRASTLER


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:


The camera work wasn't in the least bit a problem for me, and I wish Cloverfield had incorporated some of that style. Having 1st hand video shots for 100% of the movie, for 2 hrs on the big screen, is a bit much.




Quarantine did the whole handheld camera technique for the whole movie and I thought it worked very well for that movie. It was done much better than Cloverfield and actually made sense for the movie.

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Sunday, August 30, 2009 8:30 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by Mangolo:
Like I wrote, this is a great first film. You gotta remember this guy has NEVER directed a feature film before. Peter Jackson had directed 7 films before LOtR.

Does it deserve all the critical acclaim? IMHO, not really, but in the context of what most of the sci-fi that is being handed out these days who can blame them for being a little excited? Compare it to GI Joe that cost 5 times as much?

Your thoughts?

BTW You won't see me pull any punches on Avatar though. $300 million and more than 20 films under his belt. It had better live up to the hype.



Other than Star Trek and Transformers, can you name 5 better films this summer?

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Sunday, August 30, 2009 8:59 PM

MANGOLO


In order:

In the Loop
Moon
The Hurt Locker
Star Trek
Food, Inc.
Up
District 9

Transformers would be at the bottom of my list next to GI Joe



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Wednesday, September 9, 2009 1:12 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


seemed to be a lot going on in the movie, one clear example would be the aliens re introducing the allegory of apartheid

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Wednesday, September 9, 2009 11:03 AM

STORYMARK


Quote:

Originally posted by Mangolo:
In order:

In the Loop
Moon
The Hurt Locker
Star Trek
Food, Inc.
Up
District 9

Transformers would be at the bottom of my list next to GI Joe




Decent list, even if I haven't gotten to see Moon, yet.

I can't think of a single film I've seen all year that wasn't far, far better than Transformers 2. God that movie sucked.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010 12:16 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


this movie and its clever writing made Avatar seem very average

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010 7:34 AM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!




Quote:

Originally posted by PhoenixRose:

Alien tech it might be, but there are certain laws of physics to be considered. I mean, I enjoyed the movie well enough, but I spent a good portion of it wondering how the ship could just hover there if it was broken. "Oh, the ship doesn't function, they can't fly back home or indeed anywhere, but despite not being capable of moving or opening for lack of some sort of transport pod, this huge ship is perfectly capable of hovering in the air over District Nine, impervious to gravity for twenty some-odd years."




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Quote:

I'm sorry if that sounds a bit scornful, but it took me out of the movie a lot, even moreso when I found out that the whole problem was that the lander transport pod thing was missing. That's it? Really? Talk about poor design. Alien tech or no, I thought that didn't work very well on a science level.


Roger that. Not even a FF could do that on one pod. ShakyCam can't fix that.

Quote:

And all of that aside from the fairly main plot point that rocket fuel could somehow change the genetic structure of a human being. Rocket fuel. Rocket fuel not being injected, but with a bit splattered on the skin and quickly mopped up. This can turn a human into an alien. Successfully. Really? You think that science 'works,' because it's 'alien technology?' Alien technology, alien rocket fuel, which has presumably never encountered humans before, but can perfectly alter their genetic structure? I found that very hard to swallow. I know it's all secondary to the actual content and obvious commentary of the film, but no, the science didn't work. There's only so far my suspension of disbelief can get on simply, 'alien.'


Typical "dead zombie bites human, human immediately turns into dead zombie science".

Joss made millions on that suspension of disbelief.

Humans are the only animals that are foolish. Machines shall soon rule the Earth. Or cats.

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010 8:40 AM

STORYMARK


Quote:

Originally posted by JaynezTown:
this movie and its clever writing made Avatar seem very average



Funny you should say that since there was very little writing. All the dialog was improved by the actors. And the plot is a pretty heavy lift from Alien Nation - which BTW James Cameron did the final (uncredited) draft of.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010 9:02 AM

CYBERSNARK


Anybody check out the DVD commentary/extras?

Turns out Blomkamp did think through the worldbuilding on the aliens; after losing the ruling caste, the hive-mind started adapting and trying to reclaim what it lost --Christopher Johnson just happened to be the winner of whatever genetic lottery decides such things, which is why he was so much smarter than the rest. The implication being that a similar thing was happening to Wikus; his brain was becoming more and more alien as he mutated. We're not supposed to know if Prawn-Wikus is actually "Wikus" or just another directionless drone.

I'm curious for the sequel, if Christopher'll still be a leader of if he'll take a demotion back to worker drone.

And I don't think the lander was itself integral; I think Christopher programmed a bypass/interface into the lander (since he didn't have access to the ship itself, but did have access to the lander).

To put it in context, I'm sure someone like Kaylee could jerry-rig a system that'd let you fly Serenity from one of the shuttles, if you found yourself completely locked out of the cockpit (and assuming the rest of the ship was empty but functional --as the alien transport clearly was).

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010 3:44 PM

CHRISISALL


Avatar was a high-tech Pocahontas; you can't compare it to District 9 as original SF, except that the message & politics were equally heavy-handed.


The laughing Chrisisall

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