MOUTH OF MADNESS is great, the only movie I've seen so far to really capture Lovecraft's vibe.

PRINCE OF DARKNESS feels a little like a Lovecraft short story, too -- though that's damning it with faint praise, as Lovecraft's stories are meandering weirdnesses that don't lend themselves well to movies in themselves. They can form the seeds of inspiration for more developed stuff, though. They should've left THE THING alone and seen what they could make of POD instead.

Although come to think of it, I think the good modern version of POD might be CONSTANTINE.

THEY LIVE is mostly just silly.

So it's essentially circular reasoning, begging the question, and related fallacies. The movie isn't stupid, and anything that appears stupid is therefore not stupid, because if it were stupid the movie would be stupid, and the movie isn't stupid. Using the conclusion he's trying to argue as a premise in the argument itself.

FACEBOOK DOWN?! O NOES!!

HIDE YOUR KIDS HIDE YOUR WIFE THEY BE RAPIN ERRBODY OUT THERE

I don't think we're meant to draw any such line. Blomkamp's experience with apartheid colors the segregational nature of the film's culture, but I don't think he was in any way making -- or asking the audience to make -- a 1:1 correlation between the "prawns" and the actual African victims of apartheid.

I'm sorry, but how is that not exactly what DISTRICT 9 is about? When the aliens arrived, they were evacuated from their ship and immediately sequestered into an internment camp, where they are -- to use your own words -- restricted by law and by society. They were not given education, opportunities to better themselves, or even status as intelligent creatures. Not really, not to most of society. What is there FOR them to do, other than exist, and run around in squalor, and get high now and then?

If DISTRICT 9 is making any direct racial point, it's that racism is a vicious cycle -- if you treat people like animals, they can hardly be expected to do anything but act like animals, which only results in continuing to treat them like animals. Whatever it is we hate about the prawns, the movie seems to be saying, we're the ones who made them this way.

To me, it's not that Christopher Johnson is more acceptable because he's different from the others, in some Magic Negro stereotype way. Christopher Johnson, I think, shows that such things as courage and intelligence exist within the prawns -- fundamental to their species -- but it's been systematically driven out of most of them after decades of mistreatment.

That's true of humans, too -- regardless of race. Those traits exist within our species, but they can be beaten out of all but the strongest of us, regardless of race. The thing is, not all races have had to really endure the kind of hardship that tests the will so cruelly. Spoiler alert: "white" ain't one of them.

Christopher Johnson is the film's way of showing us that the people of Johannesburg are wrong to think of the prawns as hopeless, mindless animals -- and, in turn, that we were wrong for believing it.

...

I've just been struck by a notion. I don't know if it holds up, I'd have to watch it again. We commented, essentially offhand, about how the film switches between documentary and narrative. It strikes me that when the film is a documentary -- i.e. when it is from the perspective of the humans -- that is when the prawns are represented as animalistic, wild, dangerous. But when the film is a narrative, not filtered through human prejudice -- which it almost always is around Christopher Johnson -- the prawns are represented as intelligent, courageous, and essentially human.

There's also a difference in how the humans are portrayed: as the long-suffering, reluctant saviors of the prawns in the documentary footage -- i.e. the way they see themselves -- and as ruthless, dispassionate monsters in the narrative -- i.e. the way they truly are.

If this holds up I wish I'd thought of it before we did the commentary, but it may be that the two "styles" actually represent the cinematic equivalent of an unreliable and a reliable narrator, side by side. Maybe the prawns in general are actually more like Christopher Johnson than the humans realize, but because we're seeing through their eyes at first, we inherit their prejudices.

I might be retconning again (Blomkamp says nothing of the sort in his director's commentary), and this is kind of off to the side of what you're talking about in your post, but that'd be fucking awesome if it lined up.

See, here's the problem. How does "the average white dude" speak? You say that phrase and people might think of your average surfer dude, your average stuffy British guy, or just your average neutral West Coast dialect. The idea of "white dude" is culturally nebulous, because white people in movies, TV, etc. represent a broad range of backgrounds and cultural heritages.

You ask how "the average black dude" speaks, what pops into most peoples' heads is ebonics. Because black people aren't portrayed as being from a broad range of backgrounds and heritages, most times. Black people are portrayed as being from the 'hood. A person isn't racist for having that pop into their heads, but it is a racist stereotype that the culture might consider not enforcing so powerfully.

As to your other point, there is not a long and unfortunate historical association, made by racists, of white people with monkeys. So no, having a monkey-shaped robot talk like a surfer dude is not a racist stereotype.

There is a long and unfortunate historical association, made by racists, of black people with monkeys. So yes, having a monkey-shaped robot speak ebonics is a racist stereotype.

It's not any one aspect of the twins that make them racist stereotypes -- it's that they represent a critical mass of every imaginable negative "black" stereotype in one package.

But it does bother tons of black people who aren't. I think you'll find a lot of black folks out there who loathe the fact that Tyler Perry and other stereotypes represent them in the culture.

And plus, frankly, there's always a double standard in who can say certain things and who can't. And that's not necessarily racial. For example, friends often give each other shit. You and your best friend may happily say things to each other that, if some stranger on the street walked up and said them to you, would earn him a punch in the mouth. That's because you know that there's an underlying affection when you say it, whereas the stranger's motivations may well be malicious.

In a similar way, black people addressing black stereotypes is more likely to come from a place of understanding than white people engaging in black stereotypes. Because whatever any black person says about "black people," it's tempered by the fact that they are necessarily saying it about themselves. Anything a white person says about "black people" need in no way apply to themselves, and therefore the full force of any stinging words remains.

When black people make a movie with black stereotypes, it's fairly safe to assume that the black people know that isn't all there is to black people. When white people make a movie with black stereotypes, it is in no way safe to assume that the white people know that isn't all there is to black people.

I think RLM has value because there's a difference between knowing THAT a film is dull and plodding and confusing, and being able to articulate WHY. It's what we do on DIF, after all.

I think RLM makes a lot of points that fanboys haven't been saying -- I don't remember anyone ever pointing out that TPM had no protagonist before he did. If he was just bitching about Jar Jar the whole time, I'd agree, but I think all three of them have held far more insight than most things I've seen in my time around fanboys.

I classify sci-fi/fantasy as a common genre.

SATOSHI KON WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME

...no but seriously, that's sad to hear. I just watched PAPRIKA at around Xmas time and really liked it, and in the behind the scenes stuff Kon seemed like a really interesting guy.

I have made it a goal to live my entire life without ever seeing that film.

I'll probably fall off the wagon sooner or later, succumbing to curiosity in a moment of weakness, but for now my resolve remains strong.

Blech, TANGLED. Did not care for that one.

I think it was the smirking postmodern attitude that marred it for me -- it was like watching Dreamworks trying to do old-school Disney rather than Disney stretching its arms to embrace a new medium.

The animation work overall was stellar and the animal characters were quite funny -- although Pascal ran out of things to do between midpoint and climax -- but aside from "When Will My Life Begin," the songs fell flat for me ("Mother Knows Best" pales beside "Poor Unfortunate Souls") and the dialogue was almost physically painful at times.

TERMINATOR: SALVATION

Right at the end I brought up cargo cults, stating that I thought they were tribes in Africa after World War II. Cargo cult behavior is actually associated with islander populations in the South Pacific, and were observed prior to WWII but did spike significantly thereafter. Wikipedia.

2012

We gave mad props to ILM for the phenomenal FX work in the film, particularly during the Caldera (Yellowstone Park) Sequence. Many companies -- including Digital Domain, Double Negative, ScanlineVFX, and Hydraulx -- contributed effects work to the film, but ILM was not one of them. The Caldera specifically was done by DNeg, as was the collapse of the Vatican, which as I recall was another moment we specifically praised the VFX. fxguide

I didn't know how else to tell you about this Nigerian prince I know. He's trapped in the UK and powerfully convinced that your penis could stand to be larger.

Calling it now: if there's a sequel, I bet it's called TRON LIVES.