I’ve seen District 9 twice now.

I actually quite enjoy it as a film on both the switch-your-brain-off action movie and as a social commentary.

For those that haven’t seen it yet, seriously, do go and see it.

It’s a fantastic movie, based of a similar short film called Alive in Joburg, by the same director (Neil Blomkamp – who was offered directorship for the Halo film adaptation). The protagonist, Wikus (played by newcomer Sharlto Copley), is in the role of the hapless-idiot-turned-hero in a way that had me completely suspending my disbelief. I’m hoping Copley makes it to Hollywood, actually… Then again, all white South Africans are bad guys in Hollywood.

There are things that bugged me about it though. The use of African tribal music, which doesn’t really work in a South African apartheid type setting was odd… but hey, white person, what the fuck do I know, right?

The most frustrating thing though was the switch from the mock-documentary format at the beginning of the film to a regular action sequence… and then back to documentary at the end. Seriously, they could have kept it mocukmentary style the whole way through with some clever angle usage and inserting “dramatization” in flashing red letters in the bottom corner of the screen. Not hard really.

But here’s the thing. The metaphor for the extraterrestrials being Black people is just way too obvious. I’m thinking it must be deeper than that, and I think I finally figured it out!

District 9 is actually a metaphor for pubescent male magicians who like to hold onto phallic objects!

The movie seriously could have used a bit less violence, and some more playing sports and waving of wands to solve problems. At least they managed to get the made up language part right.

Let me put this out there right at the start. I’m really not a fan of the Harry Potter series.

I tried to like them. When Pottermania hit years ago, I forced myself to pick up the first book, thinking I might be in for a good read, and was just revolted by a novel that was written in literally the exact same style as you’re told to write in the book How to Write a Best Seller. For a person that had grown up reading H.P. Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett, J.K. Rowling‘s just isn’t that imaginative. If anything, it seemed a rather juvenile fantasy, and I couldn’t get more than halfway through the book before I put it down and went on to other things more productive.

As such, I’ve attempted to avoid the movies where possible too. Mostly a pride thing because I hate enjoying the same story in one form of media but disliking it in another, but also because I’d rather not sit through an entire screening surrounded by fans of Harry Potter. They make otaku seem almost normal. Hence the reason to see the late session on father’s day.

So, with my reasons behind me, I’m not going to bore you with a review of this film. I’m not going to tell you how much I think Rowling sucks as an author, how much I want to fuck Daniel Radcliffe, or how awesome the special effects and the music were. Those things are all a given.

What I am going to talk to you about is some of the things that this movie brought up that I thnk a lot of people massively overlooked… and I’m not talking about the homoerotic connotations of teenage boys playing with shafts of wood all the time. What I found quite interesting, and that no one else seems to have touched on (after a furious 10 minutes searching Google), is the amount of euphemistic gun violence in this particular Harry Potter movie.

That’s right: Gun, as in firearms, and violence, as in what you generally want to do to fans of Harry Potter films.

If you’ve seen the film, you know Snape kills Dumbledore, and if you haven’t I just spoiled it for you, but hey, so does this Tshirt… And I saved you the cost of a theater ticket, book and/or DVD.

The point is that Snape kills Dumbledore by basically shooting him in the chest, where upon he falls to his death.
Earlier in the piece, Harry discovers a spell (also by Snape… He’s basically responsible for everything really) that is “for enemies”… which Harry decides to use on Draco (pictured above, spooning him… Long slash fiction story) after a drawn out shooting fight in a bathroom, leaving an effect much like getting someone in the chest with both barrels of a 12 gauge.
Prior, Harry and the Weasley girl are taking pot shots at their attackers in a wheat field.
Characters point wands at each other threateningly.Larger wands (canes) are seized at the gate of Hogwarts, by security, upon entry because they may be a weapon.

Dumbledore even tells Harry to draw his wand, in a fashion akin to cops telling each other to pull their pieces, when they enter a suspiciously destroyed house and fearing danger…

The point is, the wands are guns. It’s as clear as “muggles” is a anti-semitic reference… (actually, it probably isn’t, but I’m throwing that reference out there for a friend who is probably now pissing himself with laughter, because we all know that the Potter series are actually a Zionist plot… like everything else in life).

It leaves me thinking two thoughts that may be conflicting, but may be complimentary, so follow me here.

Take the kids wands away, and give them guns instead.

This way, Hogwarts basically becomes like every other school in Britain for a start. But that’s not the only benefit! You’re also going to see a reduction in the number of attacks by evil wizards because whilst they may be able to travel as clouds of black-ink-in-water, or destroy bridges, it seems that the world of magic still doesn’t have much protection against cold steel and high velocity lead. Could it be that Hogwarts would actually be better protected by solid force of small arms and minor explosives? I’m thinking Quidditch players would probably make decent precision bombers here.

Of course, a downside is that students and teachers keep trying to bump each other off. It’s kind of like Rival Schools, but less Japanese and magical. Hey! The main character also has a scar on the right side of his forehead and a shit hairstyle so they must be totally the same… Or maybe I’m thinking of Battle Royale. The point is it’ll get bloody, quickly. After all it’s always so hard to tell what’s going to happen when you give hormonal teenagers that are cooped up in a confined area high caliber weapons, but whatever it is, you do know it’ll be entertaining to watch.

The point is, with more guns in schools, all those kids would be much safer from Helena Bonham Carter… because she is one creepy bitch, as we all learnt from Sweeney Todd.

Do you ever sit back and decide to rewatch movies form your child hood, remembering how fucking awesome they were? You think about all these scenes that totally kicked arse, and these special effects that were amazing. And then you watch it, and it sucks more balls than a 12 year old girl from Frankston/Redfern/Fortitude Valley/anywhere in Darwin?

Movies like The Never Ending Story II are the perfect example of what I’m talking about here, by the way. It’s kind of like your first goth club explerience. You have all these great memories of it, but if you went back there today you’d realise how lame it actually was, and how there are only eight new songs in rotation since then.

There are also those movies that are actually still just as awesome now as they were then. They usually involve puppets and tight pants, like The Labyrinth, or Dark Crystal (amazingly available in the one double set).

But there’s a strange class of movie out there. Movies that you thought sucked at the time, but were actually quite good, and have only appreciated with age, like a fine wine that is at first repugnant.

One such movie is Stay Tuned.

This movie never left much of an impression on me until I rewatched it last night and alsmot threw up from laughing at the terrible terrible play on words done with TV shows I was never particularly fond of. Shows such as Murder She Likes or My Three Sons of Bitches. The sort of TV I could really get into if only it actually existed outside of Robot Chicken.

The premise is simple, Roy Knable (who oddly enough was in Three’s Company) watches too much TV. Idle hands being the devil’s plaything, Mephistopheles (played by Jeffrey Jones, because he’s in fucking everything that came out in the early 90s) offers him a “large” screen TV (40″ @ 720p, which is basically standard now) in stereo, with 666 channels to chose from. He just has to literally live through all of those channels for 24 hours to reclaim his soul is all.

The acting is actually really good (except for the children, it’s always the children) as the entire cast is pretty much A-grade. Hell, there’s even a caemo by rap superstar group Salt’n'Peppa (does anyone remember them now?).

What’s really worth noting is how the film managed to be valid social commentary at the time. This is something that few comedy movies actually managed to achieve in the 90s. I’m aware that few manage to do it now either, particularly those in the parody genre, but let’s get real for a moment: the 90s were not exactly a time that Hollywood was doing much social reflection.

I bring this film up for a specific reason though. All of our childhood favourite films are getting amazingly raped and remade… yet this one, which would EASILY retranslate with just bigger & better tech and modern TV shows, has not been… And I wonder why.

Is it because the parody genre is being done to death by the slew of “Not Another …” movies? Admittedly they’re tkaing the piss out of a few TV shows, but the jokes rarely last longer than 20 seconds, and they’re not an actual part of the story line. The movies seem to be a bunch of disjointed Saturday Night Live sketches that have been thrown in together around the storyline of one of the parodies, as they fit… not in an actually cohesive manner. Then again, the same could be said of this film, even though the parodies are the plot line, directly.

Sure, the updates would be a little tricky to figure out in some instances. The game show segments would have to be replaced with “reality” shows… Maybe “Surreality” shows. Chuck Jones’ gorgeously animated cartoon parody, in which the Knables turn into mice that have to fight off a robot cat, couldn’t be translated directly into modern day. You’d have to do an anime or something… And that would be totally different. You’d have Roy as a ninja asking himself whether this was a cute, fluffy Pokèmon spin-off, or a hardcore violence and tentacle rape anime… I’m hoping the latter.

With that said, if the remake were to remain valid social commentary, perhaps the parody nature would have to drop a little away from the slapstick of the original, and move towards substantially blacker humour, considering the depths that some modern TV shows do go to. “Reality” tv game shows where people win cosmetic surgery, or the entire Jackass / Tom Green genre of pain and humiliation for the audience’s pleasure, go a fair way to show how much further society’s truly nasty inner-core has become exposed over the last 15 years since the film was made.

And there is always the penultimate example of depravity, narcissism, social detachement & short attention spans: You Tube. (I was really tempted to say College Humor, but on average, their stuff is actually pretty good).

Either way, it’s a good movie, and it’s actually funnier now that I’m old enough to appreciate most of the jokes in it.

Ever wondered who has to clean up the mess when some schmuck blows his brains out?

Turns out it’s pretty much the same person that cleans your house if you’re rich enough to afford a maid service.

Perhaps iot was because I was already in a bad mood thanks to Chadstone giving me the run around due to construction works, but I found this flcik to be profoundly saddening, with an ending that felt tacked on to simply make you not become the next job on the list of the main characters.

Allow me to explain.

Rose (Amy Adams) is in love with the same guy she was going out with in highschool, still seeing him in fact, even though he’s currently expecting another kid with his actual wife. He’s a cop, she’s a cleaner, I’mexpecting Penelope Cruz to strut in any moment… She doesn’t. Phew! Let’s move on. She’s struggling to raise her son who is gifted, and misbehaves to the point where he has been expelled. The struggle is because she’s actually a controlling bitch who thinks she has to take care of everyone even if they don’t need or wnat her to. Her sister Norah (Emily Blunt), who’s never moved out of their father’s (Alan Arkin) home since their own mother committed suicide, is a complete fuck up goth chick who can’t even hold down a job at a burger joint and is (presumably) in her late 20s at least. Their father is a shyster, consistently going from one hair brained get rich quick scheme to another… usually in the sale of dodgy food products.

All of them are deeply unhappy, unable to form relationships of any kind of meaning, and generally massively dysfunctional.

So the two sisters decide to go into business cleaning up homicide scenes!! Wooooh!

Whilst I can see that being a realistic business decision (someone’s gotta do it, and the money is good), the sheer stupidity of both the characters, both from the outset when they decide to clean a murder scene without even wearing gloves, to the complete and utter ineptitude at which they handle interactions with those around them, is mind boggling.

No wonder she’s still getting being used for sex by the highschool QB, when a perfectly nice guy who basically does her every favour she asks rots away in the back of his shop.

The story is actually somewhat formulaic and predictable. What is refreshing is the twist given to it, but it doesn’t cover up the glaring issues.

Videographically speaking, this movie is refreshing. They don’t bother with filters to alter the mood. They don’t insert scenes where they’re not needed. The vast majority of the the film is set in American suburbia, shot on location in a way that gives you the impression of just a place that could be absolutely anywhere. For a brief moment, I actually thought they’d shot in Adelaide.

The acting all around is actually quite good. I was believing that the actors were their characters for a good portion. It’s what saves this movie from being a tired, semi-arthouse that no one but Jay Sherman would bother to watch.

All up, it’s worth seeing if you have the hankering to see a movie, but can’t stand the idea of seeing a “block buster” because you’re a pretentious wanker, or simply hate Michael Bay.

« Older Posts — Newer Posts »