perldiver

avivasedai and I went to see District 9 last night. In a word: bleh.

The basic story without spoilers:

This is a pseudo-documentary movie in which a giant startship shows up and hovers over Johannesburg, South Africa for three months doing nothing. Humanity finally gets tired of waiting, cuts their way in, and finds over a million malnourished insectoid aliens. The MNU (Multi National Union or some such) skylifts them down to a "temporary" housing facility, where the aliens live for 20 years; during this time, the housing facility turns into a militarized slum called "District 9". Finally, alien technology does not work for humans because the aliens have designed it to work only for someone of their DNA; therefore, in 20 years, alien technology has no impact whatsoever on humanity.

Our story opens when MNU has decided to evict the aliens ("prawns" as the slur goes) and move them to a new facility farther from the city. Since eviction would normally require 24 hours notice, they send in the first battalion, led by a political appointee, to get every alien to sign a waiver so they can be moved immediately.

Things go explosively downhill from there.


Here are my non-spoiler objections to this movie:

• Dear Mr Jackson: Please look up the word "subtlety" in a dictionary, as the concept clearly escapes you. Thank you. --Dks

• The complete lack of plot. This movie is pretty much "people commit violence, usually with weapons. Some of the people are aliens."

• The complete absence of sympathetic characters. I didn't really care about any of the characters in this movie (well, I wanted to see the bald battalion leader die). But the main characters, human and alien? Didn't give a damn. The chibi-eyed little alien kid was cute, but I didn't care much about him either--besides, his presence felt manipulative.

• The complete lack of plausibility.
  
  
  
  • 20 years, over a million compliant aliens and absolutely zero impact on humanity? Come on. They were stronger than humans, able to leap higher, and could eat just about anything vaguely organic (e.g. rubber), and their weapons and other technology worked for them. In reality they would have been hired as construction workers, biological waste disposal units, grunt troops in mercenary units, and a thousand other things. Bonus: they could have been paid in catfood.
  
  
  • The aliens were all confined to District 9. Aside from hammering home the point about apertheid, why were there signs all over Johannesburg saying "no aliens"?
  
  
  • The entire movie was predicated on the idea "we need to move them because humans are complaining that they are too close, and they commit crimes." Yet, again, I say--the aliens were confined to their camp. When exactly would humans and aliens meet?
  
  
  • Ok, let's assume that the two separate layers of razor-wire topped fence actually did not suffice to keep the aliens in, and so the crime problems were the result of aliens that slipped out of District 9. I have to think that adding more guards to keep them in would be simpler and cheaper than building a new facility and relocating all of them 200 km, where you will still need guards in order to keep them inside the new facility.
  • Um...so, hang on. You needed to give them 24 hours notice before evicting them, but you decided to go in with troops and do it right now instead? Wouldn't it have been easier to just do it the other way? You could have flown over the place in helicopters on Monday, shouting down with bullhorns "We will evict you tomorrow!", and then come back on Tuesday with the troops and armored trucks and done it.
  
  
  • In 20 years, with full access to the technology on their ship and whatever they brought down on the airlift with them, we managed to reverse engineer nothing?

• CUT IT OUT WITH THE GORRAM SHAKICAM ALREADY! When Blair Witch Project did it, it was novel and impressive. Now it's just nauseating. The premise of this movie is that it's a documentary made by real professionals. These people own Steadicams and are not afraid to use them!

The spoileriffic plot version, if you're interested (I wasn't):
( Read more... )

I went to "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" last night.  I went in fully expecting $12 worth of pretty explosions and otherwise completely sucktastic.  I had seen the first movie and it was completely and utterly deplorable--but it was ok, because they made up for it by making it so loud that your brain turned to jelly, so you didn't notice the black-hole level of suck.

I was actually very, very surprised--pleasantly so.

Sure, there were some bits that made utterly no sense.  But, ignoring those, the movie was far more consistent than its predecessor and immensely more so than I had expected.  As to the acting...well, obviously the robots were completely one-dimensional and, in at least a couple were nastily racist.  Both Shia LaBoeuf and Megan Fox did a decent job.  Most of all what it was was funny--sometimes even intentionally.  I was laughing almost all the time.

I think I would even see it again. 

I saw Trek last night and Oh My Holy God words fail me in describing it.

Let me see if I can come up with a metaphor: take a giant, rotting, putrescent, lice-encrusted ball of vomitus, throw it through a planet-sized plot hole and have it land in a hyper-modern silver bowl wrapped in really shiny special effects with lots of lens flare.

And yet, the Internet wants to have its love child. *Every* *single* review I've seen has said "wow, it was awesome. Here is my one tiny quibble but otherwise it's AWESOME!!1!!11!!!!!1!1!!!!" [1]

So, let's go through the issues.  Warning:  FULL AND COMPLETE SPOILERS AHEAD.

( Read the review... )

Never Back Down is the remix of Karate Kid for today's generation, but considerably superior and definitely worth seeing if you enjoy action movies or high school maturation stories.  

First, the plot:  Take the original Karate Kid story, change out Jean Roqua's (Djimon Hounsou) mixed martial arts for Mr Miyagi's (Pat Morita) karate, change the names of the lead characters, set it in Florida instead of CA, and make the final tournament be a no-holds-barred brawl with DJs (but, strangely, umpires?) and you could pretty much write this script yourself.  The "twists" aren't very twisty, and nothing in this movie will surprise you, but it sure feels good:  the boy and the girl end up together, Evil is defeated, Good triumphs, and once the final blow lands, Peace Reigns Forevermore.  [Just make a point of never asking yourself "why is it that all of these kids are taking videos of each other committing assault and battery and then uploading  them to YouTube, but the police never show up?" or "how is it that these kids have fractured ribs on Tuesday and are in school and are fine on Wednesday?"] 

Here's where the difference comes in, and lift this movie from being a simple plagiarism into something really superior to its ancestor:  in this one, the protagonist actually shows some emotional development.

( Detailed commentary )If you've got a Netflix subscription, go watch this.  It's only an hour and a half or so, and it's fun.

Taxes:  My accountant overnighted me the 2008 taxes on Saturday, and I got them today.  Tomorrow they go off to the Revenue Trolls.  Pro:  the numbers aren't as bad as I was afraid they would be.  Con:  That's because I didn't earn as much as expected.  The joyful life of a contractor..

I may have said this before, but the thing I mind most about taxes is not so much the fact that I have to pay the money--although that's no joy.  No, the part I mind is that the duty to keep track of it all is on me.  I shouldn't have to put in multiple hours of unpaid labor figuring out how much I owe them.  And it's "easier" for me, because my taxes are complicated enough (personal / self-employed, and last year Wotan LLC was still in business) that I really need to have a professional do them for me, which takes a lot of the load off but increases the financial cost. 

To my mind, it should be the job of the IRS to do the tax forms and send them out.  I would receive my tax form and then have a choice--I could either pay it as-is, or I could do my own and send it in if I thought that it would make a significant difference.  And yes, I am aware of the concept of "vested interest" and the issues it would raise in this case.


Ong Bak 2:  Surprisingly enough, this was the sequel to Ong Bak, which was Tony Jaa's breakout film.  Both are great martial arts action movies, but they have a very different feel...rather Hollywood vs Bollywood, respectively (though neither film is exactly in either of those camps)..  All the way through OB2, I felt like I was missing references.  I enjoyed it as an action flick, but I suspect Asian audiences would have seen much more than I did.  avivasedai  watched it with me and seemed to enjoy it too.


Gaming:  Tonight was the first night that our new player (A)  joined us.  We got one player's First Novel completely finished, and as soon as A gets his character nailed down we'll be able to fill in everyone else's.  With any luck, we can get all that done by Saturday and actually have some game time, which would be very cool.  It's shaping up to be a good group.


Random thing:  In the middle of the session, I'm sitting on the bed using my laptop, when I notice that it's not drawing power despite being plugged in.  That's odd, I think, and check my power cord.  Hmm, look at that.  The power cord is partially melted; I think that's a bad thing.  I've recognized for a while that I go through a lot of light bulbs in this apartment.  I need to talk to the super and ask if there's anything that can be done, but if the wiring is bad, I'm not sure what the options are.


Carrots:  7
Sticks: 0

Good hard workout today.  All strength stuff:  core work and planks, but didn't do the stairs.  Got the afternoon slump between noon and 1 sometime, so did some light exercise to perk up; it worked reasonably well.

Kevin Smith movies are very, VERY spotty in my experience.  I loved Chasing Amy, but most of his other stuff is, in my not-so-humble opinion, total crap.  Now I'm watching Clerks.  And I think I'm going to need emergency surgery to repair a gut busted through laughter.

The best part of all is that Jay has almost no lines, and almost no screen time.  (Ah, shoot.  He's on screen now.  With a bunch of lines.  GET OFF MY SCREEN YOU STUPID JACKASS.)  The good news is that Silent Bob [Kevin Smith] got a line.  When he talks, it's usually one of the funniest moments in the movie.

And now I know the meaning of that line from Chasing Amy "my best friend <bleeped> a dead guy in that bathroom!"  :> :>