Wednesday, October 4

The Amazing Story of District 9

There has been nothing work (like a horse!), job searching and occasional meeting with buddies (whom are not many at this stage of life as everyone is married and busy with the family or far away). This disgusting recent job of mine is killing me and there's nothing that I can do but resting, eating and some web surfing when I come home, before I hit the sack between, usually, 20:30 and 21:00! There's one more thing that at times, I make myself busy with: Movies.
I and The Chef visited a Value Village store in the city because he wanted to purchase a winter jacket and a pair of winter boots. I don't know why someone who has been working for one of the most stable industries in the country for the past 10 years, making $20 an hour, I assume, would be shopping at such a horrible place but that's the subject of another post. I happened to find a few cheap good movies in there, including District 9. I had heard about it several times and I and The Lady wanted to go and see it but it never happened. Now I have to say that it's an amazing movie and I'm glad that I finally watched it. I wish I had the opportunity to catch it on the big screen.
The important thing about the movie is originality of its story. The movie benefits from a very strong screenplay in a manner that it is unpredictable and to me is the most important feature of a movie. Apparently the movie is based on events which happened once in South Africa during Apartheid era but since I don't know much about that, the originality of the story is preserved for me, automatically. Blomkamp, the director is originally from South Africa but resides in Vancouver. So it makes sense for him to make a movie about his original country although he's Caucasian and we all know that Apartheid regime was a minority Caucasian ruling majority Blacks in the country which now is a chaos! Government of Canada Travel Advisory website considers South Africa a country which requires high degree caution to be exercised there during a trip. 
Blomkamp has considered both a sequel and prequel and I think both of them would be great ideas. The prequel would be the story of how alien are stuck to earth and the sequel obviously about the promise of the main character Prawn (that is what aliens are called in the movie as their outer skin looks like a prawn's) who said he would return in three years to save the mutated human being, the lead role of the movie. It must not be forgotten that the movie has won a Ray Bradbury Award, although by looking at the list of the winners in the past few years I got a little disappointed! 
District 9 is a movie which highly recommended for Si-fi moviegoers and probably others. I would give 4 out of 5 to the movie and will watch it again as I own the DVD now. 
(Photo: A sign next to the border of District 9 which states unity. It clearly addresses Apartheid in South Africa and looks like the movie is filmed in actual slums of a city in that country) 

No comments: