District 9 movie review and poll - best sci-fi ever?

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Last night I saw the incredible sci-fi movie "District 9" at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (and the line for it was out of the door and around the building). Without giving too much away (and that's a matter of opinion) for those who've not seen it, the movie produced by Peter Jackson (of Lord of The Rings and King Kong) and directed by Neil Blomkamp, concerns a giant alien spaceship that has parked itself over Johannesburg, South Africa.

Over the course of the last 28 years - over a generation - over one million aliens, called the derogatory name "Prawns", were placed in an area of the city called "District 9", and that zone became a giant slum.

Some say District 9 is the best science fiction movie of 2009 if not the best one ever made. That question will be the focus of my poll below, but let's focus on the movie more before we get to the survey.

The story concerns what happens to a common human (Wilkus Van De Merwe played by Sharito Copley) who works for a government organization that is directed to evict the aliens and move them to a new location said to be better than District 9 and called- in an obvious set up for a sequel - "District 10".

During the eviction process, Wilkus finds a harmless-looking metal vial that when he turns it sprays a "fluid" into his face that causes him to go through a gradual transformation from human to human / alien. That, and how the World reacts to his change, is the central story of the movie.

The movie has two incredible story archs, the first one is how Wilkus changes from kind but bumbling government worker to awakened activist for the aliens in the process of trying to find a "cure" for his problem. The other is how humans go from being the one's putting up with the weird and threatening habits of the aliens, to the ones who are actually being weird and threatening to the aliens. As we learn more about them in the movie, we find they are just like us: concerned with family and wanting to just go home.

What I love about this movie is it shows front and center man's inhumanity not only to man but to other life forms and throws it right in one's face. I came away with the idea that the United Nations needs to craft an international plan for alien visitor protocol just to make sure we don't allow the violation of alien life forms.

District 9 Best Picture?

Julian Scanton of Vanity Fair thinks District 9 is best picture material, and I have to agree with him, especially now that we will have ten movies to pick from at the 2010 Oscars. But is it the best science fiction movie ever?

That's a tall order of a question as their are so many to chose from. Here's one comprehensive "Top 10" list posted in Popular Mechanics in 2008:

10. 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. Short Circuit
8. Soylent Green
7. Blade Runner
6. The Running Man
5. Destination Moon
4. The Truman Show
3. The Road Warrior
2. Minority Report
1. Gattaca

Cick here for the poll results and to vote: POLL (or vote below)

Megan Fox is right, Michael Bey: "Transformers" is a special effects movie!

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Today it was reported that Megan Fox is in "hot water" for her statements regarding the movie "Transformers." Director / Producer Michael Bey was even quoted as saying Megan "Has a lot of growing up to do." ABC News agreed with Bey and said Fox "put her foot in her mouth again." Well, folks, Megan Fox, one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood in more ways than one, didn't put her foot in her mouth and Michael Bey and ABC News should appologize to Fox for their statements.

Megan Fox

What did she say? In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Fox said this:

Question: What percentage of your (acting) range have people seen so far?
Megan Fox: Seven percent. On the new one, I tried. But unless you're a seasoned veteran, working with Michael Bay is not about an acting experience.

And later...

Question: You're a bigger star now than when you did the first Transformers. Did they beef up your role in the sequel?
Fox: The humans are still secondary to the robots because it's a movie about robots. I feel like the part is adequate. I feel like we do something that's watchable on our end and then ILM makes it phenomenal.

Question: You don't sound convinced that this is the greatest movie on earth.
Fox: It's not trying to be the greatest movie on earth. It's going to be the best action movie of the summer. Hands down, it will win that. But it's not trying to be a Golden Globe-nominated film. It's a badass popcorn summer movie.

Question: You up for a third Transformers?
Fox: Sure. I mean, I can't s--- on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me. But I don't want to blow smoke up people's ass. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting. And once you realize that, it becomes almost fun because you can be in the moment and go, ''All right, I know that when he calls Action! I'm either going to be running or screaming, or both.''

Michael Bey's response was less than diplomatic:

Michael Bey

Well, that’s Megan Fox for you. She says some very ridiculous things because she’s 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do. You roll your eyes when you see statements like that and think, “Okay Megan, you can do whatever you want. I got it.” But I 100% disagree with her. Nick Cage wasn’t a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in “Armageddon.” Shia LaBeouf wasn’t a big movie star before he did “Transformers”—and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from “Bad Boys.” Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in “Transformers.” I like to think that I’ve had some luck in building actors’ careers with my films.

But Megan Fox is correct, moreover, Bey's own comments defend her, as well as the fact that Bey poses not with Fox or the other Transformers stars, but with a robot.

 

The real star of Transformers with Bey

What Fox is saying is what everyone knows: Transformers is a special effects-driven movie. If Bey were to make an actors movie, this would not have been it, and he would have not plucked the unknown Fox for the role. That's essentially what Fox is saying. But what's so bad is Bey's reach for ageism: Fox's being "23-years old" has nothing at all to do with her statements; anyone could have made them of any age and have been totally correct.

Making comments on someone's age is more often than not inappropriate in a society where 40-year old women look like they're in their 20s, 25-year-olds marry 45-year-olds, and rockers are still hard at it in their late 60s, some dating women in their 20s. On top of that, we have 20-year olds establishing companies that reach billions in value.

And to add sauce to the goose, digital media has slammed decades of music and television together, such that today, Michael Jackson's songs of 30 years ago top the Billboard charts in the wake of his death.

Slowly, technology is making age passe, but even with that I must observe that Michael Bey's a bit behind the times. Perhaps he should pay less attention to age and to insulting his stars and more to the substance of his movies.

New Moon | Why Is Twillight / New Moon So Popular?

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Maybe you all can help me with this. Ok? Here goes. Why is the Twillight Saga so popular? The official trailer for the movie "New Moon" is out and it looks interesting this Trekker's just not feeling it. Especially since the one person who appears to be the baddy is a rastafarian black guy who's about to get it by a guy, "Jake" who turns into a wolf in mid run.

What's that you say? I've got to read the book series Twillight? I guess so; there's four of em. Look, I've seen the book all over the place: on the BART Train, at the gym, in the hand of a passer by. Almost always a woman between the age of 20 and 50; mostly white or Asian in the Bay Area - seldom black. Just an observation. I've only once seen a guy reading the book. Just an observation.

I have to admit I became more interested in this because the author of the Twillight Saga, Stephanie Meyer, came up with this four-book marvel of success out of a crazy dream she had in 2003 about a 17-year-old girl and a studly vampire who loves her but wants to kill her and suck her blood. Moreover, Meyer, reportedly expecting a $10,000 book advance just to pay off her minivan, got a $750,000 deal, and the book series has sold 17 million copies worldwide, has made her a new millionaire, and...wow.

That's great. For that alone, I'm proud of Stephanie. Hugely so.

But why the heck is it so popular?

Last year, Gawker's Alex Carnevale explained that Vanity Fair's James Wolcott "pulled out the stops" in trying to pull together all of the pop-culture referrences that seem to have found their way into Twillight:

"Here's the full list of cultural references from Wolcott's piece: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, Vampire Academy, Gossip Girl, The Morganville Vampires, Vampire Kisses, The Vampire Diaries, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Into the Wild, Mary-Louise Parker, Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, Six Feet Under, Harry Potter, Debussy, Rudolf Nureyev, Chris Isaak, Michelangelo, Chopin, Superman, the gays, Sarah Palin, James Dean, David Lynch, Bob Dylan, Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, and Brideshead Revisited. An impressive array, to say the least."

Ok. But that's not necessarily a receipe for success as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So I'm using new media to take the question to you: why is the Twillight Saga so popular? Also, when I look at the Vanity Fair photo here:

All I see is the common picture of white American youth plus one African American and one other person of color out of 12 people. Interesting. It's a photo so common it implies anyone who's not "that" need not be at the party for the most part, except as a token. And therein lies the problem for me, specifically.

Why does the Twillight Saga have to be an almost totally white picture of a fantasy? Because Meyer's Mormon and it's her dream? I'm not comfortable with that notion only because I don't know Meyer and admire what she's done. Since I want to like her, I'm afraid to go that route of thinking.

I'm just being honest. I'm just thinking, which I do too much of perhaps. But I just can't accept what's tossed at me chapter and verse. Sorry.

That feeling of racial isolation is a bit bothersome to me, especially as our society becomes ever more integrated. I don't think for a moment most readers of Twillight think about the story in this way as presented in the book. But the movies -- the movies give a different take because they paint the picture for us.

See? Our ability to create a fantasy and install ourselves within it, skin color and all, is taken away. Then here comes Vanity Fair to cement the deal.

The real wildly popular story of an interracial set of as President Obama would say "folks" has yet to be told. But I have the feeling one can't achieve success by setting out to write that story. I suppose some guy, somewhere, will have a dream about a 20-year old African American boy and a space alien in the form of a hot-for-teacher, 40-year old hardbody Asian woman who wants to kill him and take his bones back to some home planet in Orion's Belt, but is so in love with him she winds up...

You get the idea.

Hmmm....

Star Trek Movie Review With Bill and Lars

 

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Today, I saw Star Trek with my longtime friends Bill Boyd and Lars Frykman at matinee showing at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, thus following through on a plan we formed almost a month ago and I wrote about a few days ago. It was a cool reunion as I'd not seen Lars for just over 30 years and Bill and I get together for lunch maybe twice a year. Regardless of how little you see of each other, there's something about the friends you had when you were a teenager, especially when they last as long as ours has. Star Trek was always a rallying point for us, so today's meetup was a perfect way for the originators of the Bret Harte Star Trek Club to reconnect.

We're all fans of the original series, and consider ourselves experts on it. What we liked about J.J. Abrams version was the attention to detail in referencing certain episodes and music themes.

The scene where Kirk and Spock (Nimoy) enter the outpost on Delta Vega has music that recalls entering the hatchery of the Horta in "The Devil in The Dark" or the discovery of the real "Balok" in "The Corbomite Manuever". And as in the series Captain Pike was alive and bound to a wheel chair before being disfigured in a reactor accident. To kill him would have not been according to Star Trek history.

In fact, that's where we were confused in the loss of Spock's mother. She didn't pass on in the series, so her death here was not understood by us. Also the Enterprise was constructed in Hunter's Point Naval Shipyards in San Francisco, not Riverside, Iowa as in the movie.

The matter of the shipyards leads us to the Enterprise. What a terrific job Industrial Light and Magic did in making the ship look real, especially the daylight scene where Kirk reports for duty. That's the first time we see the giant vessel as if it were really in drydock on Earth. An excellent achievement.

Bill made the observation that because we're from an older generation this movie didn't have enough dialog. I agree but I don't say the movie wasn't well done. Still we're concerned that a society that wants stimulus over substance can be easily duped in a number of ways and this problem is something I will explore more of.

But even with that issue of style, Star Trek was a good, tight, entertaining film. Did it live up to our Trekker seal of approval?

Yes!

Fox News' Roger Friedman's Leaked "Wolverine" Review Gets Him In Trouble With Fox News, News Corp

More at HuffPost: “FoxNews.com entertainment columnist Roger Friedman has drawn the ire of News Corp bosses after writing a review of a leaked version of the upcoming 20th Century Fox blockbuster "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" — and he'll have to answer to Fox News executives in a meeting Monday morning.

Friedman's FoxNews.com column Thursday — since deleted — was a review of "Wolverine" that studio bosses viewed as an implicit endorsement of movie piracy, according to Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke.”

Star Trek Trailer Reveals Hit Star Trek Movie For J.J. Abrams

 Well four days ago I had this music in a dream then in my head I could not figure out how it got there. It was sci-fi like and could either be in a horror movie or a sci-fi flim. Then I saw the second Star Trek trailer, and it was that music.

I kid you not.

The second Star Trek trailer reveals a movie that will be a sure-fire hit. J.J. Abrams, who directed the movie and co-produced it, and his staff aimed for a mix of realism and Star Trek and hit it right on the money.

I do hope we can see William Shatner in it, but I understand why he made this difficult -- he'll be sorry. But I hope he's in it with Leonard Nimoy.


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