District 9 delivers actions, attempts social commentary

Twenty eight years ago a massive alien space craft (remember the mother ship from Independence Day?) appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. Instead of sending down a envoy or attacking, it merely hangs there, motionless in the sky several thousand meters up. After three months mankind eventually sends a recon team up to the ship. They discover that it is silent and inoperable and that the aliens aboard, who seem to have evolved from crustaceans, are extremely sick, malnourished and on the verge of death. They appear directionless, as if they are but the worker class and all their leaders are gone, presumably killed by some disease, the same disease that has left the remaining aliens in such a sickly state. The aliens, pejoratively called “Prawns” for their resemblance to the delicious crayfish, are ferried down to the Earth’s surface and detained in District 9, an area of Johannesburg that soon becomes their ghetto. D-9 quickly accrues all the vices of any slum, including drug trade, prostitution, illegal weapons dealing and every other black market activity you could imagine. Fast forward to the present day, where Multi-National United (MNU) is contracted to relocate the alien slum to a new camp hundreds of kilometers away from the city. Bumbling middle-level bureaucrat Wickus Van De Merwe is charged with heading the ambitious operation– his father-in-law/boss dismisses the charge of nepotism– and leads his team into D-9 to notify it’s residents of their impending eviction, backed by battle-hardened paramilitary soldiers MNU contracted as the muscles of the mass move. Bumbling Wickus, while searching for contraband in one alien’s shack, stumbles upon a canister of liquid that he accidentally exposes himself to, making him ill and taking the story from it’s expected path.

The beginning of the film is presented as a documentary. We see various employees of MNU as well as people on the street react to the alien’s arrival and to Wickus’ actions that by the end of the movie we learn lead to an unexpected upheaval in the status quo. Traditional Hollywood film techniques are employed, interspersed occasionally with the aforementioned documentary interviews and security footage.

This film is co-writer/director Neill Blomkamp’s first feature– he’s only done commercials and music videos before, and it shows. Though the film attempts to explore dramatic themes such as apartheid, prejudice, mob mentality and political economy, it meanders too much to give the viewer a good picture of how they relate to the action-driven plot. A more experienced director could have done a better job incorporating the serious social commentary into the sci-fi frame. But producer Peter Jackson owed Blomkamp for the aborted Halo movie they intended to make together, and since Blomkamp is from South Africa his perspective on racism helps articulate that theme. Had this film been made by a Hollywood director it would most assuredly have lost all social commentary in favor of an all-out shoot-em-up with space battles and one-liners. More context for the aliens would have been nice, but again I think Blomkamp could not have handled more than what he did without making the movie a labor to watch. As it is, it has plenty of action, spectacular effects (all the aliens are computer-generated), a vague-but-pointed social commentary and a guarantee of a sequel. In all, a good movie to end the summer smash season on.

Tigers Love Pepper. They Hate Cinnamon.

Every summer at least one comedy enters into pop culture so quickly and completely that everyone, even your nitty-gritty grandma, quotes it. Everyone does at least one Borat impersonation saying “Very nice. How much?” or Ricky Bobby saying “Shake and Bake”. Everyone knows one liners from The Forty Year Old Virgin and any Seth Rogan/ Judd Apatow flick. Unless Sasha Baron Cohen’s Bruno trumps it, The Hangover is the comedy to quote this season.

Writing partners– does that sound gay?– Co-writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore penned five films before this feature, the first in 2001. By comparison, since 2001 Judd Apatow has written ninety five screenplays, seven Broadway musicals and narrated two children’s books. In some cases quality counts over quantity.

One key ingredient to a quotable comedy is the correct cast. Justin Bartha plays Doug the groom-to-be. I try not to hold having been in Gigli against Bartha. Ed Helms is Doug’s friend Stu, a dentist who plans to get engaged to his girlfriend after three years.. Why is it that former Daily Show correspondents always get nerd roles? Bradley Cooper takes the handsome, wise cracking leading man torch from Bea Arthur’s cold dead hands. Heather Graham, in typically type casting, plays a stripper, this time without rollerskates. For a zany sidekick, who better than off kilter comedian Zack Galafianakis. He’ll be the most quoted because he gets all the outrageous lines.

The bro’s take Doug to Vegas for his bachelor party. It starts off as usual, binge drinking and naked ladies. But in a ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’ twist they wake up the next morning with no memory of the night before. Doug is missing, there’s a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in the closet. They begin to follow a trail of elaborate clues to find their missing friend and figure out what happened the night before. I can relate– I’m such an alcoholic that I have to check my bank account the next day to discover how much I spent at the bar, but I never woke to a tiger in my house. A cougar, once, yes, but no tigers.

Someone should call the cops on Mike Tyson, because he stole every scene he was in. There is nothing more precious than listening to that girly-voiced psychopath sing “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. Other notable cameos include Daily Show correspondent Rob Riggle as a cop and Ken Jeong (King Argotron in 2008’s ‘Role Models’) as a Chinese mafia boss, not to be confused with the Chopstick Mafia.

Jeffrey Tambor has the first good one-liner of the film, as Father-In-Law to be Sid Garner: Remember what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Except for herpes. That shit'll come back with you.

Another good one is Zack Galafianakis as Alan. Stu is talking about giving his grandmother’s wedding band to a stripper:
Stu: She’s wearing my grandmother’s Holocaust ring.
Alan: I didn’t know they gave out rings at the Holocaust.

Strippers, mobsters, tigers, babies, an homage to Rain Man– this bachelor party has everything fun about Vegas. It’s a great start to a funny summer. You’ll be quoting it til ‘Bruno’ and ‘Year One’ come out. Rated R, 96 minutes.

Fire, Ice or Malaria?

John F. Kennedy’s poet laureate Robert Frost wrote:
Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.

I don't know if Frost was speaking figuratively. I never met the guy. Maybe he was just really into fire and ice. It is a well known fact that poets laureate are often pyromaniacs. As for the ice obsession, maybe he meant " ice" as in meth. It's an even better known fact that most poets laureate are junkies. I know for a fact that Maya Angelou used to be heavy into narcotics, but her Wikipedia entry doesn't mention which ones she liked. My money is on heroine. And probably Chips Ahoy. But let's say for the sake of argument that Frost was not chasing the dragon when he wrote this poem. If he was prophesying, then maybe he was predicting how humans would inevitably destroying our home planet.

It all started with Prometheus. In Greek mythology, he is the God who gave man fire. Ever since that fateful moment, we have been doing our damnedest to burn everything we can get our greasy little opposable thumbs around. Some random caveman in some ancient ice age must have seen a lightning strike cause a forest fire and think, "Ooga ooga! Fire good! Me like fire." Shortly thereafter, proto-man harnessed mother nature's most primitive force and created the very first carbon footprint. Sure, that caveman's footprint may have been more troll like than yours or mine, or most likely mine, but it was from that point that humans started adding harmful carbon back into our atmosphere at increasingly alarming rates. It is the nature of our society to burn things. We use fire to bake our bread, heat our homes, and fuel our Fords. Even if we aren't completely aware of it, burning fossil fuels accounts for the vast majority of our energy use worldwide.

So, like Billy Joel said, 'we didn't start the fire -it was always burning since the world’s been turning.’ Is our environment too fubar to fix? I don't know. I'm no psychic. But I do watch movies. If they are any prediction of how our time on earth will end, then mankind is officially boned.

So how will it end? I’m taking bets! Global warming is melting the icecaps. So will we end up like Kevin Costner in Waterworld? Will our world, too, be a featureless sphere with a handful of human outposts floating in an unlimited ocean? I'm not a strong swimmer, and I'm super pasty, so I'm not super keen on that idea. No one wants to see my sun-burned waterlogged corpse floating up to the side of his dinghy.

Or maybe ice is the way we’ll go out. According to my scientist friends (Bill Nye the Science Guy is on my speed dial, right after Stephen Hawking) after the ice caps do melt (and they will, I assure you) we’ll be in for another ice age. Sure, it’s going to get hotter before it gets cooler. Much hotter. Hot enough to, well, melt polar ice caps. When all the cool, fresh water from those glaciers and icebergs joins with the salty, warm waters of the Gulf Stream all currents will weaken and eventually subside. Currents, other than being sea turtle interstates, drive the mixing of hot and cold water across the planet and warm most of North America and Europe. It’s the warm water that currents bring to places like England and New York that prevents those places from being snowbound year round.

With no currents, the oceans will stagnate. Just like when you don’t rinse out your dog’s water dish and you leave it outside for a week, microorganisms will multiply and spread infectious diseases. Mosquitos will travel in packs of billions and pick cows clean in under five minutes. They’ll be more lethal than those shadow beasts in Pitch Black. You know you all saw that and loved Vin Diesel! But as far as disaster movie parallels, it would be more like Outbreak, but on a global scale. Think of Dawn of the Dead, but instead of zombies, masses of lepers, swaying crowds of malaria and bubonic plague infested refugees coughing all over you every time you leave your house.

Then, just when you think things can’t get worse, you realize that it is now getting colder. The ice age has begun. Everything freezes, but c’est la vie. This is a back-and-forth process that has been cycling for millions of years. Yes, we did hasten it this time. All those fossil fuels were good while they lasted. Now we’re in The Day After Tomorrow. The world is a flash-frozen T.V. dinner, except instead of peas, french fries and fried chicken, it’s small bands of humans clinging desperately to the shear edge of life in an infinite frozen tundra. So yeah, exactly like a T.V. dinner.

I abstain from betting on how humanity will go in the end– fire, ice, malaria… I know it will all end, and that’s enough. Ignorance is bliss. I’m just going to stock up on thermal underwear. And OFF!™. And sunblock–just in case.