by Brian Logee
February 12, 2010 in Art, Movies by Brian Logee
Yes now you too can pick up one of those awesome Arc Generator from District 9 
Check out the full write up and specs at /Film.
Read more on District 9 including reviews here.
by Brian Logee
December 12, 2009 in Movies by Brian Logee
Image via Wikipedia
With the success of recent films like the Transformers movies and District 9 (and to a lesser extent, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is the 26th highest grossing film worldwide), it seems like Hollywood is going alien crazy, giving the green light and putting a lot of alien-based stories in development — more than ever before. In a couple years, will aliens be the new vampires? -(via /Film)
Will Aliens be the New Vampires?
No, the rise in interest in alien movies is just part of the Hollywood system. The very same system that will also decide people aren’t interested in Aliens as much as Vampire’s.
Hollywood has a past track record for starting many projects to hedge their bet on what the next big fad will be. Many of these projects get dumped or shelved after the sales numbers come in.
Image via Wikipedia
The sales numbers are not so good for alien movies. Transformers and Indiana Jones are franchises in their own right and won’t be thought of by the studios as alien movies.
There are also a lot of superhero movie projects in the works. Could the superhero movie be the next thing? With such a diverse story and setting potential there is a lot more that could be explored in this area on the big screen.
Vampire movies are still bringing in a lot for the studios. Do you think they will continue doing more of them? I hope not, it pains me to say that but with so many bad ones out there I would like for it to be given a rest.
What would you like to see as the next movie phase?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=11319465-6a08-4704-ae8c-cede7cfd0cea "Will Aliens Be the New Vampires?")
by Brian Logee
October 28, 2009 in Podcasts, Speculative Fiction Today by Brian Logee
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Podcast (speculative-fiction-tody): Play in new window | Download
Hulu and decabling | immortality discussion | Smallville Michael Shanks | FlashForward | Neill Blomkamp’s next Sci-Fi movie | Night’s Knight | Harlan Ellison’s Law Suit | Obama and the Hate Crime’s Bill | Ghosts, Haunting and canceled Halloween | Porcelain Toilet | Seeker Video | The Way of Shadows and Community Comments on Fandom Today.
? (Project: Shadow)Subscribe to Fandom Today 
Subscribe in a reader
 |
Get your shopping at: Amazon.com
, iTunes TV Shows
and iTunes Audiobooks
Netflix lets you rent, watch and return DVDs from home - Try free for 2 weeks
Don't wait. Guarantee your seat before you go and avoid a sold out show. Skip the box office lines and buy movie tickets at Fandango.com.
GameFly delivers the best video games to your door! Start for only $8.95 or Try for free
by Brian Logee
September 23, 2009 in Podcasts, Speculative Fiction Today by Brian Logee
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Podcast (speculative-fiction-tody): Play in new window | Download
Giant Snakes | Giant Man-Eating Bird | Comment on District 9 | Ugly Betty: Season 3, Friday the 13th: The Series, 30 Rock – Season Three, National Geographic: Egyptian Secrets of the Afterlife, Battle for Terra | Star Trek Last Voyage | Spike -Buffy Fan Vid and Community Comments on Speculative Fiction Today.
Subscribe to Speculative fiction Today Subscribe in a reader
|
Get your shopping at: Amazon.com, iTunes TV Shows
and iTunes Audiobooks
Netflix lets you rent, watch and return DVDs from home - Try free for 2 weeks
Don't wait. Guarantee your seat before you go and avoid a sold out show. Skip the box office lines and buy movie tickets at Fandango.com.
GameFly delivers the best video games to your door! Start for only $8.95 or Try for free
by Brian Logee
September 22, 2009 in Culture, Movies by Brian Logee
The ban on District 9 in Nigeria is sad. They are upset claiming that:
…the film clearly denigrated Nigeria’s image by portraying us as if we are cannibals, we are criminals…The name our former president was clearly spelt out as the head of the criminal gang and our ladies shown like prostitutes sleeping with extra-terrestrial beings… -Information Minister Dora Akunyili (via /Film)
I love the phrase don’t sweat the small stuff. To get stuck on the gang being Nigerian is to miss the commentary on the problems of apartheid and the problems that ghettos bring. The focus was not on the Nigerian gang it was on the social commentary. The use of a Nigerian Gang could have been replaced by any other if the setting of District 9 was in another part of the world. Watch the movie, ponder the deeper messages and don’t sweat the small stuff.
The message behind it is what is important.
The choice of having a crime syndicate be Nigerian makes sense within the context of the setting. All storytelling is lies and to make good fiction the storyteller must limit the number of lies in the story. We all know that there are not aliens living in a shanty town in South Africa. The true art is in limiting the false parts of the tale so as not to distract the audience from the message in the story.
If the writers made the crime syndicate American, Russian, Japanese or Colombian then the story would have suffered and the messages behind the story would be more obfuscated. The audience would have wondered why they were in South Africa and how they dealt with the South African crime syndicates without starting an all out turf war.
A crime syndicate is not representative of an entire people. District 9 did not have a group of Nigerian people in the district they made it a Nigerian Crime Syndicate. There is a difference. To say that the movie is attacking the entire people is short sighted.
I would like to think that an audience as a whole would watch the movie and think wow that crime syndicate was bad and not thinking that represented all people of Nigeria. In a way, they have insulted the audience’s intelligence thinking that the audience will mistake a counter culture for the Nigerian culture at large.
District 9 gave the audience a chance to look at the ugly underside of apartheid and demonstrating the problems that ghettos bring. The crime syndicate is Nigerian to make sense within the setting but the portrayal was to highlight the problems of crime and apartheid not to disparage a group of people. Mainly don’t sweat the small stuff and have faith that the audience is smart enough to know that a counter culture group is not representative of a culture at large.
by Brian Logee
August 19, 2009 in Podcasts, Speculative Fiction Today by Brian Logee
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Podcast (speculative-fiction-tody): Play in new window | Download
Entertainment Designer | District 9 | New Underworld Trilogy | Planet Hulk | Dollhouse | V | Charlie Darwin | and Community Comments on Speculative Fiction Today.
Subscribe to Speculative fiction Today Subscribe in a reader
|
Don’t wait. Guarantee your seat before you go and avoid a sold out show. Skip the box office lines and buy movie tickets at Fandango.com.
GameFly delivers the best video games to your door! Start for only $8.95 or Try for free
by Brian Logee
August 18, 2009 in Culture, Movies, Review by Brian Logee
Overall Rating: 10
District 9 is a brilliant, amazing, gritty, graphic, well told sci-fi movie that is not for the lighthearted yet highly recommended. I loved this movie. The best one to be released this year. From writing, directing, acting, and cinematography this movie is good through and through. Best of all on top of entertaining an audience District 9 will make you think and ask what if?
There are so many great social issues covered in District 9 yet they don’t get preachy. At first the people of earth wish well on the visitors being very interested in giving care to, and protections to the aliens but as time passes and the world grows board with the story attentions move else where and aid fades. Then the racism creeps in. They start with focusing on the differences and lack of understanding of cultural preferences and practices.
I like how many different types of racism are represented in this movie. We get to see from the overt violent hate to Wikus who is the subtle unconscious racist who uses hateful names for the aliens. They even show how the racism allows people to think of the group as other and thus allowing people to do anything to them they want from exploitation to testing on them.
Often you have heard me talk about the short comings of torture porn and the use of the grotesque. I thought now is a great time to clear up that I’m not against the graphic and grotesque I just find it sad when a film uses it poorly. District 9 is a brilliant example of the good use of gore. The focus was not on the gore, it was a byproduct of the storyline and it kept the feel of the movie real, setting an appropriate mood. There was not a celebration of the grotesque murder of another once again it was the byproduct of the setting.
This is an owner and is best to watch in the theater.
Story: District 9 is an interesting twist on the visiting alien theme. Aliens arrive on earth on a life boat, homeless and needing our help. We give them a ghetto to live in but tensions grow after decades of intolerance grow between the aliens and their human neighbors. Now it is time to evict the aliens and move them to a more permanent camp far away from any city. watch the trailer below
More on District 9 read District 9 Round Up
Don’t wait. Guarantee your seat before you go and avoid a sold out show. Skip the box office lines and buy movie tickets at Fandango.com.
by Eric
August 18, 2009 in Movies by Eric
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
I am a huge fan of Rachel Maddow, so when Kent Jones decided to review District 9 in his Alien encounters I perked up my ears.
I agree with him. If you haven’t seen District 9 yet, go see it!
by Brian Logee
August 14, 2009 in Movies by Brian Logee
What District 9 is about
Video
Images:
Don’t wait. Guarantee your seat before you go and avoid a sold out show. Skip the box office lines and buy movie tickets at Fandango.com.
by Brian Logee
August 13, 2009 in Movies by Brian Logee
District 9 is an interesting twist on the visiting alien theme. Aliens arrive on earth on a life boat, homeless and needing our help. We give them a ghetto to live in to placate them while we try to learn all of their technology. It’s interesting because our governments which represent us are the villains instead of humans being the victims.
I hope the movie will go into some of the fun social / political issues that are present today in our society. Will it be able to get people to realize that bad behavior by a government that represents a people still implicates the people in their crimes. Will it be able to draw attention to societies desire to put foreigners into a ghetto and the problems that the behavior breeds? Will this movie help those blinded toward their raciest behaviors to notice the warning signs?
I started out uninterested in District 9. The initial promotional material seemed to me to be gimmicky and vapid. Now I can’t wait to watch District 9 because:
District 9 hits theaters Friday August 14th
The Plot / Story: Twenty-eight years after their first contact the alien refugees, now living in District 9, welcome is wearing thin. Their care is handed over to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company uninterested in the aliens’ welfare but very interested in getting their weapon tech to work unfortunately the tech requires alien DNA to work. After an accident that changes Wikus van der Merwe’s DNA the MNU field operative 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. (Wikipedia) (The Official Site)
For me this is a watch in theater. If you haven’t voted yet, head over to Theater or Renter: August 2009 and vote will you watch it in the theaters, rent it or are not interested?
Don’t wait. Guarantee your seat before you go and avoid a sold out show. Skip the box office lines and buy movie tickets at Fandango.com.
To start connecting please log in first. You can also create an account.
