"District 9" and "Avatar": The Future (?) of Sci-Fi Film

I am not the only one thinking about this, but I certainly have my own opinions on it. Google "District 9" with "Avatar" and a ton of other things pop up. This blog begins long ago, when James Cameron became a mega-super-director with first "Aliens", then "Terminator", and most fully with "Titanic". I love the man, I think he is genius and I think he represents 'the' director of the 90's, and is certainly an important figure in film history in terms of movie scales and technology, and especially with Sci-Fi films.


So, you can imagine I have been eagerly awaiting his next project since I saw "Titanic" in theaters 3 times. I found out about "Avatar" and was waiting patiently for trailers/photos etc.

Slowly, and over many months, I slowly became aware of a little film called "District 9". I heard Peter Jackson was producing, a good sign, and I knew it was doing some crazy guerrilla marketing, like a bus stop sign that said 'For Humans Only' and had a creepy looking alien on it near my work, and so was aware of it before I had even seen a trailer.

And then came Comic-Con. Both films exploded there. One panel featured both James Cameron and Peter Jackson (for "District 9"), and it seemed that here were two films about to explode onto the sci-fi world. Cameron was quoted as saying "Avatar" would 'fuck your eyeballs' it would be so 'game changing' for the film industry. I got REALLY excited for "Avatar". Cameron announced an 'avatar day' where footage of the movie would be screened for free across the country if you got a ticket, coinciding with the FIRST trailer for "Avatar" being released.

Well friends, first the website to get tickets for 'Avatar day' crashed moments after opening. Then the trailer was released and it looked like indescribable crap. My disappointment, frustration and anger at Cameron is so great that I will leave description of the trailer up to you to watch the trailer and others to criticize:

www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/
http://img.denihilation.com/delgovatar.html
http://blog.spout.com/2009/08/20/10-movies-avatar-unfortunately-resembles/
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/42188 (exactly how I felt).

I pretty much lost all hope in film for a few moments (well, I also had just gotten my wisdom teeth out, that might have played a part). But don't despair, because then I saw "District 9".

"District 9" was an amazing sci-fi film that is going to be around for a long time. It was well plotted, had GREAT special effects, kept a somewhat upbeat tone, had deep current political undertones that established it very firmly in a time and place, and was just awesome. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie like this that was so tight, strong, and left you thinking about it FOR DAYS!

So, back to the title of my post. James Cameron, and I'm sure the studios behind him, sincerely hoped that "Avatar" would be the next wave in the future of sci fi film. "Terminator" and "Aliens" certainly made me think so, and "Titanic" changed things in its own way. But it won't be. We don't need special effects. We don't need environmental mumbo-jumbo stories that 'say something'. We don't need an epic.

Sci fi needs "District 9". It cost $30 million, a small budget for an FX heavy film, but it delivered SO MUCH more than what "Avatar" looks like it will with its $245 million budget (See this article http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/the-campaign-for-change-and-district-9-is-my-candidate) Money can make a film pretty ("Titanic"), but can't fix it if the story is broke. People were attracted to the STORY of "District 9", and didn't care about the money or who was in it. So why is Cameron giving us the money/technology angle ( especially since that angle seems to be pure BS) when he should focus on the STORY. The trailer revealed nothing about the characters or plot whatsoever. The best sci-fi films of this decade are not going to be Michael Bay epics with no plot, they are going to be ones that get to the things we are worried/scared/confused about in this age. The game changing "Alien" was not awesome because it looked cool, its because it was f-ing scary and got at something that hadn't been expressed before!

"District 9" did exactly what it should have to become a classic. It was topical, it knew its market, it got people excited for a film, and it was something new. No one wants to see a bloated, video game rip off of a film during a depression when a movie ticket costs as much as a meal. So "District 9", I look forward to hearing about you for a long time to come, and I am prepared for the mental breakdown of James Cameron when "Avatar" crumbles in december.

Summer 2009

After a prolonged summer absence, I have decided to return to the blogosphere. I really truly enjoyed writing about movies all last semester, and I think it was good for me. We'll see how this goes, but hopefully I will continue blogging for a while.

This kind of gap in the blogging requires at least a brief overview of the films of the summer. Here are the highs and lows of the movie theater events of Summer 2009.

Highs:
- UP: What a positively delightful, hilarious, heartfelt film. I haven't seen it again (and i truly believe that real love of a film can only happen after a second viewing), but right now I'll say its my favorite Pixar film. The story wasn't as momentous as "Wall-E", but the characters were just so darn cute, and the dogs were utter genius, and the look of the film was beautiful. Loved it.
- The Hangover: I laughed the whole time. It was clever, it set things up way in advance and only came back to them once you had forgotten them, and was a really well plotted comedy romp. I've unfortunately already seen an ad for a rip-off ("I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell"), but thats what genius breeds. Also, my uncle is on the soundtrack!
- Inglorious Basterds: Best Tarantino ever. Amazing costumes ( I call an Oscar nod for that). Good story. The past year has seen a lot of Nazi movies ("Defiance", "Valkyrie", "Boy in Striped Pajamas" etc.), but this one trumps them for feeling real darn good. And, surprisingly, not as gory/violent as most Tarantino films.
- District 9: This deserves its own post, really, so I'll only say that this should be seen by everyone. It is an instant Sci-Fi classic and is hopefully the beginning of a new sci-fi renaissance.

Lows:
-Transformers 2: While the first one was glorious popcorn fun with the right amount of sarcasm and ridiculousness, this one took itself seriously and forgot about the spirit of the first. A very muddled plot (I was even confused while watching it), too much ill-clothed Megan Fox, and some seriously awkwardly racist robots made this a terrible terrible blockbuster. Such is the nature of Michael Bay though. For every "Armageddon", there is a "Pearl Harbor"
- Bruno: Yes, "Borat" was crude, rude and offensive, but it was funny, and so I enjoyed it. This was crude, rude, offensive and featured an astounding amount of penises, but Sacha Baron Cohen really lost it. I can't say what wasn't right, but i rarely laughed, and I have no desire to quote any part of this film. Who knows if he's lost his American audience but Cohen may want to stay in Britain for a while.
- Julie and Julia: Meryl Streep was adorable, no doubt, but this film fell down. It was a souffle that deflated before served. The Julie story was just barely saved from moral depravity by Amy Adams' adorableness and I practically recognized the Paris streets from the Universal Studios backlot tour. I was expecting a biography of Julia Child but instead got pithy and adorable moments and quotes from her life that added up to a coffee table book, and not a deeper understanding.

Wolverine

Hooray, the summer movie season has officially begun! This Hugh Jackman being muscular movie was a great start for the season. It was ridiculous at times, it had lots of unnecessary special effects, and it had very silly romantic story lines, but it was pretty fun. It was a popcorn movie, with some geek added into the mix, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Here's the apparently french version of the poster, I like it more than the other one:

No need to explain the plot, its just the back story on Wolverine from the X-Men stories. There are a lot of other mutants introduced, and you also get to meet a young William Stryker, the villain from the second Xmen movie. A lot of the story was between Wolverine and his creepy brother (Liev Schreiber) who has the same powers as him. The ending was kind of silly, too many green screens and special effects, but tied up all the loose ends etc.

Dominic Monaghan (from Lord of the Rings and Lost) was great in his maybe 3 tiny scenes, as a mutant who can control all things electric with his mind. He spends part of his life as a circus freak, and the creepy sideshow trailer he lives in was great looking- it was filled with hundreds of electric toys that he would turn on when he walked in to keep him company, and the roof was filled with hundreds of light bulbs that he didn't have to plug in. It was a fantastic image. Alas, poor Ryan Reynolds was sadly underused as well, but I heard a rumor that he might get a spin off (and friends told me his character was woefully different from the comic books). It was a decent enough movie, I think its likely the franchise will keep on going for a while.

Oh yeah, Hugh Jackman was great. But wasn't that a given?

Michael Collins

In preparation for my trip to England/Scotland/Dublin in 3 weeks (!!!Counting down the days!!!), I watched this Neil Jordan directed bio-pic about Michael Collins, the man who near single handedly got England to recognize the need to give Ireland their independence, helped negotiate the treaty and set up the first free democracy in Ireland. Liam Neeson in the lead was fantastic as Collins.

It was, however, a bit of a bloated film. There was just too much politics to put in, and the first half an hour was so full of names/places/Irish lingo that I felt exhausted and confounded. It got much better in the next two hours, and I wasn't confused at all by the end, but I think Jordan bit off more than he could chew. The love story with Julia Roberts seemed to be there out of necessity to have some romance, and though she surprisingly looked very nice in the 1920's fashion (it hid her giant man shoulders quite well), it was pretty blah, no real sparks between them.

As I'm sure the relationships with figures like the president of the de facto country (played by Alan Rickman, who I will watch anything for) and people inside the British govt were really complex and confusing, they were boiled down to simple movie relationships here. It's a shame, I think it made complex important events into black and white (Collins being the good side clearly). It was enjoyable, but it was a bloated epic. A nice, pretty Irish countryside bloated epic, with charismatic Liam Neeson, but still, it wasn't great. It's a big job to portray the single greatest hero of a country when it was recent enough to still be remembered (well, by REALLY old people), I think a narrower view of one aspect of his life would have served better.

Movies about Nazis

What movie do you show high school students to teach them about Nazi's? I was posed this question recently, and it really made me rack my brain. So, I present to you my list of best films about Nazi's:

1) Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark/Last Crusade: Two of my all time favorite movies. More importantly, it shows that Nazi's are so crazy they are willing to use hundreds of troops to find either the Ark of the Covenant or the cup of Christ. Fictitious, but it gives you a sense of their character.

2) The Great Dictator: This Charlie Chaplin movie came out in 1940, and was written during Hitler's rise to power. What better way to learn about Hitler than to see how people AT THE TIME decided to satirize him. It's light hearted, but as anyone who has seen "City Lights" knows, Chaplin can be dead serious when it counts.

3) Schindler's List: Ok, we're getting serious now. While this is a harrowing film, and its f-ing scary, it is also a Spielberg film, and that means it has a very strong heart in it. You will leave feeling uplifted and that the darkest night of the world has passed.

4) Sophies Choice: This shows the ugly, soul destroying part of the Holocaust framed by a post-WW2 story, making it easier to swallow. Both Kevin Kline and Meryl Streep are phenomenal, though I felt like the revelation of what the 'choice' was was anti-climactic, I had guessed it long before and thought the film made it obvious.

5) Downfall: A scary scary movie about the last days of Hitlers regime. Certain scenes definitely haunted me, but I think it was an important portrayal of the absolute madness of him and his followers. Not for the weak of heart.

6) The Good German: A great homage to, well mostly to "Casablanca", about postwar Berlin during the Potsdam negotiations. George Clooney and Cate Blanchett nail their roles, and the film is really about how miserable it was to be in Germany during and after the war. Great film.

7) Good: I haven't seen this yet! But, its about a professor in Germany who must grapple with his beliefs vs. saving his life by joining the Nazi party. Viggo Mortensen and the incomparable Jason Isaacs as a Jewish Professor he is friends with.

8) Life is Beautiful: Get ready to cry. Father-son story with a Chaplin-esque humor in it alongside the grim realities of war.

I made this list about Nazi's not WWII in general, because then I have a whole other list of great films ("Saving Private Ryan" and "Empire of the Sun" at the top!)

Let the Right One In

The plot of this film is very simple, and not because it's difficult to explain but because very little happens: A young boy in a drab suburb of Oslo, Sweden is bothered by bullies. He meets a mysterious young girl who turns out to be a vampire. The girl has to kill people to drink their blood. They become friends, but she is a vampire so its a little strange.

A few people die (actually, it is rather bloody), and there are lots of disturbing close ups of the girls white white face with blood on it, but mostly it is about the young boy, Oskar, who is confused and lost and whose face is relatively emotionless but seems to hide a lot of pain. I had read rave reviews about this film, and though I liked it and appreciated it as a worthy addition to the field of vampire film, I don't think I'd want to watch it again. It was very slow, very creepy at times (and I'm not sure if I think it was for the right reasons or at the right times), and just unlikable.

The part that bothered me the most was the unreality of their lives. I feel like this is hard to explain because 'unreality' can mean so many things. I don't mean it was too fantasy like (like a Terry Gilliam film, which doesn't even pretend to be realistic), or that it was 'hyper real' (like say "There Will Be Blood", "The Puffy Chair" or Herzog's stuff at times, where a film wants to siphon off excess parts of life to focus very intensely on something specific). This film was unreal because I didn't understand anyone's motivations or didn't believe them, and I'm pretty sure I was supposed to. I have no idea why Oskar was so upset, it seems like they left a lot of things confusing. One scene at his dad's house was just weird- his dad's friend comes over, interrupt a board game and they sit around and talk w/ Oskar. They didn't abandon Oskar, they were engaging him, but it seemed like the film was trying to say there was something horribly wrong with this or there was something they weren't telling us.

I realize some of this feeling might have come from the fact that it is a Swedish film and I know nothing about life in a Swedish suburb. Yeah, ok, but I never feel confused watching a Bergman film. Their lives just felt weird.

Hey, but maybe that's what they were going for. Maybe they wanted me to feel slightly uncomfortable with the reality in the film. If so, they succeeded. I don't want to blast the film, because it was well made, beautifully filmed, and had a satisfying ending. But I can't help but feel a little lost and unable to connect with anything that happened in it.

17 Again

I will not pretend that this is an original movie. This expertly crafted vehicle for Zac Efron combines "Back to the Future" and "Freaky Friday" in a way that is 1) Less creepy than having your mom fall in love with you like the former and 2) Have a less complicated story because only one person is switching as in the latter (well maybe that's a stretch...).

Gentlemen, I don't recommend this movie for you. This 90 minute soon-to-be-classic was 90 minutes of Zac Efron playing basketball, charming the camera, and wearing a wide variety of amazing outfits. Perhaps Michelle Trachtenberg (who has been in movie high school for at least 10 years) was put in as his daughter in good faith for the poor boyfriends that got dragged to this movie, but I think not. No, this was just an amazing Zac Efron being amazing movie, and I loved it. I am no High School Musical fan (heard that soundtrack on repeat too much at work), but I love Zac Efron.

Alright, enough said about him. Other parts of the movie? Well, Matthew Perry as old Zac Efron looks pretty old. Like it looks like he aged 20 years since Friends ended. Even at the end when he's all happy and turned back into his normal self, he looked horrible. I hope you get a better agent soon. There was a very funny side story with the main character's best friend who is a massive nerd who falls in love with the school principal (the amazing Melora Hardin who played Jan on the "The Office"), and it provided a couple funny geeky jokes. But seriously, this movie is about Zac Efron. Don't get confused about that. It's shameless at times, but I'm OK with that. Go out and enjoy.