Kevin's Watch

Looks like an interesting film. A Peter Jackson film that seems to blur the boundaries of several genres. a whole new look at illegal immigration.

Spoiler

District 9 is based on Alive in Joburg (video), a short film directed by Neill Blomkamp, Sharlto Copley, Simon Hansen and Shanon Worley. The title is influenced by the real-life District 6 in Cape Town. Copley also portrayed one of the interviewed policemen. The short film is about aliens landing in South Africa and becoming confined to a specific area and forced to work.
In the movie, aliens made first contact with Earth twenty-eight years prior to the beginning of the film, after which humanity waited for either a hostile attack or for giant advances in technology, though neither came. Instead, the aliens that arrived were refugees, the last survivors of their home world. The creatures were set up in a makeshift home in South Africa's District 9 as the world's nations argued over what to do with them. Patience over the alien situation ran out and control over them was contracted out to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company uninterested in the aliens' welfare. MNU stands to receive tremendous profits if they can make the aliens' advanced weaponry work.
MNU, thus far, has failed in making the alien weaponry work, for activation of the weaponry requires alien DNA. Tension between the aliens and the humans comes to a head when an MNU field operative, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), contracts a mysterious virus that begins changing his DNA. Wikus quickly becomes the most hunted man in the world, as well as the most valuable, for he is the key to unlocking the secrets of alien technology. Van der Merwe becomes ostracized and friendless and comes to hide in District 9.

Im really looking forward to it.
D-9.com/

I've heard some good pre-reviews about this. I'm looking forward to it as well.

I've seen a few trailers and I think ... yep, pretty sure I want to see this!

I'm kind of disappointed, as Jackson and the director of this (Neil Blomkamp) were slated to do the Halo movie (Xbox video game). I think they could've done it justice, but it got held off indefinitely, and finally this movie came to surface. Well, maybe this is a dry run for Halo (which would be much more action-y and blockbuster budgeted). Who knows.

If you guys want to see Blomkamp's directing chops, I think you'd enjoy this short, Alive in Joburg, which is very much the basis for this current film.

Alive in Joburg

(Jackson recently said that the Halo project was scrapped years ago.)

I saw something (an interview with Jackson on AintItCool, specifically) about District 9 that intrigued me. Apparently, they made this film with "only" $30 million. And they were free to do it without Hollywood types forcing them to make a "safe" (bankable) movie. So this movie will be somewhat unconstrained. For example, it's way more violent than people might think. And there's lots of robots.

wayfriend wrote:(Jackson recently said that the Halo project was scrapped years ago.)

Yeah, I read something recently (maybe in Entertainment Weakly) that this project kinda came about due to Halo, but they realized that the Halo project would be just another videogame adaptation, and this was much more creative and enjoyable. We'll see, eh?

Lord Foul wrote: If you guys want to see Blomkamp's directing chops, I think you'd enjoy this short, Alive in Joburg, which is very much the basis for this current film.

What with this and 9 this year, and Quarantine last (as well as a few others I can't remember at the moment), I'm starting to think that indie short films are becoming a popular breeding ground for new Hollywood movies.

Not to mention, they're a great way for new directors to showcase their work.

And yes, this movie looks good

wayfriend wrote: Apparently, they made this film with "only" $30 million. And they were free to do it without Hollywood types forcing them to make a "safe" (bankable) movie. So this movie will be somewhat unconstrained. For example, it's way more violent than people might think. And there's lots of robots.

Good news for me I want this movie to be awesome, and I want it to succeed. This news, along with the 'R' rating gives me hope that this movie will at least be awesome.

Thanks for the link, Foul! I've wanted to see the short...

I've seen the trailers too, and my lover and I are both interested in seeing it, and he's not into SciFi much at all, only on occasion

I'm am so going to see this one.

I can't wait for it...however, I kind of feel that the film isn't going to be quite as good as the preview

Harry Knowles gushes over District 9 here in his non-spoiler review.

...This is EPIC science fiction taking place in a Shanty Town outside Johannesburg, South Africa. This is, to me, the most accomplished, provocative and intelligent science fiction I've seen in this new century. On Twitter I declared that this is the first great science fiction film of the 21st century

... This is what ORIGINAL filmmaking looks like. What happens when you let a first timer have exactly what he needs to make a film that just ****ing blows your mind away.

It looks very similar to Alien Nation. That's a good thing.

Cail wrote:It looks very similar to Alien Nation. That's a good thing.

The tip of the premise does, but, it goes further,

Spoiler

in that we apparently can't get their technology to work for us (Think StarGate Ancient Gene) so we are holding them hostage, not allowing them to leave trying to force them to make it work for us. Also, it seems somewhere along the line there's a half breed or something

Spoilers! My eyes!

Yeah, I've read that stuff in a couple of the synopses.

Wayfriend, are you serious? If you are, I'll edit in spoiler tags.....I thought that stuff was common knowledge.

WTH, I'll spoiler it anyway, but consider that payback for not spoilering the ending of Bulworth (which I haven't seen) in the Tank......

wayfriend wrote:Spoilers! My eyes!

If you're serious, sorry about that, I figured you had seen the trailers on TV, which include all of that, I know nothing of the movie outside of what the trailers show on TV

Cail wrote:It looks very similar to Alien Nation. That's a good thing.

That's what came to mind.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm seeing this Friday or Saturday... and BTW

Spoiler

I think the human-alien hybrid or something like that is actually the reporter who gets sprayed in the face. Either the chemical allows him to understand things from an alien perspective, or he's quarantined with the aliens because people are afraid of what might of happened to him, which would allow him to see the state the aliens are in and make him a sympathizer and fellow conspirator.

Can't believe it's almost here. I think this might be my favorite movie of the year, unless Tarantino's new flick surprises me (which it might, since it's him).