Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: June 2010
GREAT SF!
The wife and I just caught District 9 on TV, and wow. You have to see this movie.
Ordinarily, I dislike pseudo-documentary films (can’t watch Blair Witch Project, for example, since the camera work nauseates me) but the technique was so well executed, the film sucked me in within the first few minutes. In those few minutes, we learn about the arrival of an alien ship over Johannesburg, the sorry state of the ship’s occupants, and their subsequent ghetto-ization in District 9. Any superficial resemblance to Alien Nation quickly dissipates when we meet the ETs, who are most decidedly not cute humanoids plastered with a little silly putty and face paint. In a brilliant move, the movie’s creators made the aliens chitinous, segmented beasties whom the humans come to call Prawns. They’re hideous garbage-rifling, cat food-devouring creatures with more than a passing resemblance to cockroaches. They’re easy to hate, and the only thing that arouses our sympathies is that the humans in the movie are oh so much uglier.
The movie focuses on Wikus Van De Merwe, son-in-law to the CEO of Multi-National United, the corporation tasked with relocating over one million Prawns to District 10, a concentration camp located 200 km outside of Johannesburg. District 9 is too close to home, and the resident humans are tired of having aliens in their midst. MNU execs decide Wikus (portrayed by the movie’s producer, Sharlton Copley, who is kind of a good-looking Steve Carrell) is just the man to lead the relocation. As he makes the rounds of District 9 evicting Prawn after Prawn, military with guns drawn covering his back, Wikus proves to be an odious ambassador of humankind, lying to the aliens, perpetuating stereotypes, chuckling over the sound alien eggs make when they explode in the fire — “Just like popcorn! Do you hear it?”
Wikus is the hero.
Some historical background courtesy of Wikipedia:
Like Alive in Joburg, the short film on which the feature film is based, the setting of District 9 is inspired by historical events that took place in South Africa during the apartheid era, with the film’s title particularly referencing District Six. District Six, an inner-city residential area in Cape Town, was declared a “whites only” area by the government in 1966, with 60,000 people forcibly removed and relocated to Cape Flats, 25 km (15 mi) away.
District 9 surprised me several times; on many instances, it ran contrary to standard Hollywood tropes, but it didn’t so at every plot turn. It was unpredictably unpredictable. Does the relocation program end in genocide? Are the aliens planning some nasty surprise for their human oppressors? Ooh — they’ve made a getaway in a vehicle — now’s the obligatory chase scene, right? And will there be a happy ending? You gotta watch and see. And so I advise you not to read the IMDB entry or the Wikipedia article, but to view this one cold.
D.
Good heavens, music sucked back then*
I can’t figure out what I like more: the performers’ big hair or the $1.99 Walmart Special lighting effects in the background. Does everyone here remember what music was like in the 70s, or would you prefer to forget?
Thing is, I’m not sure what sucks so royally here. It’s a catchy tune. Maybe I just hate pop.
D.
*My wife, and it seems more than a few women before her, have criticized me for saying things like “Eminem is crap” or “OMFG Ordinary People is worthless.” Seems I should be saying, “Eminem is crap, in my opinion,” and “OMFG Ordinary People is worthless, in my opinion.” So: Good heavens, music sucked back then, in my opinion.
Collectors
I’ve been bottom-feeding on eBay, snapping up modern-date proof coins for a fraction of their book value. It’s a sleazy job but someone has to do it. I don’t know whether a high grade proof quarter from the mid-90s will ever appreciate in value, but if I buy it at 25% book, I’m unlikely to lose money.
It’s a curious thing, what some folks collect. Yesterday, I asked a young disabled patient what he did with his time. He told me that he trades, restores, and customizes Hot Wheels. I described to him the one Hot Wheel I remember from my childhood: something Mod Squad-inspired, a metallic green sports car with a glass (plastic, actually)-topped cabin and an exposed engine on the hood. Instantly he knew which one I was describing, and even named it.
Blew me away. I never would have been able to recover that name, but the moment he said it, I knew he was right. Meet the Beatnik Bandit.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so surprised by his quick recognition. It’s a distinctive car, after all, and 1968 was the first year of issue for Hot Wheels. Not knowing the Beatnik Bandit would be like a coin collector not knowing the Booby Head Coronet Large Cent.
And here I thought I knew what a booby was.
Some people are collectors, some aren’t. I wish I had saved all my various collections because they’d have had considerable value by now. My 1975 Topps Manny Mota card must be worth —
$2.49? And not even a single bidder? Maybe my baseball cards wouldn’t be worth a fortune.
My collection of Orange Crush bottle caps surely must be worth . . . $0.99? And no bidders.
I’ll stick to coins.
D.
Where I grew up
The two homes I lived in as a kid still stand, although one is unrecognizable. The unrecognizable one is our first home, the one which the new owners uglified soon after my dad sold it. In the old days, we had a porch and a Dutch Elm (if I remember correctly) and some nice ferns and various other shrubbery that gave the place curb appeal. The remodeled home looks like a pastel box.
When I’m down in Southern California, assuming I’m in the neighborhood, I’ll drive by one house or the other. It can be depressing driving by that first house — disconcerting is perhaps a better word — because more often than not, I drive right past it. I shouldn’t have to check the street address to know, “This is the home where I pooped and peed a couple thousand diapers.”
Darker than Black
More anime-foo from Karen.
Hmm, not much response to my Skull Man post. . .
After watching Skull Man, I checked Wikipedia for other works by Studio Bones and found Darker Than Black. DO NOT read the Wikipedia entry on this, it will spoil the series for you.
I really loved DTB and went into fangirl mode after the sixth episode. At that point, I was scrambling to buy the DVDs and considering paying for next morning overnight shipping. That’s taking into account that I already knew all the episodes were all available online for free – but not in high resolution. I wanted to see every detail.
DTB is a sci-fi, film noir, espionage action-adventure about a highly skilled, paranormal assassin/spy named Hei, aka the Black Reaper, aka BK-201, aka Li Shun Sheng, aka the cursed contractor. That is a lot of names but it reflects the complex aspects of Hei’s character. At any particular moment, whom are you seeing? The spy? The other-worldly creature? The cold-eyed assassin? The tiny glimmer of a human being?
The basic premise is that a meteor hit Tokyo ten years ago. Investigators were immediately dispatched to the blast site and all but one ended up in pieces, scattered over the area. The stars disappeared, replaced by “false stars,†each representing a contractor, a human transformed into a sociopath with a paranormal ability. Governments, corporations, and mobsters saw their potential and quickly employed them as spies, assassins, bodyguards. Various intelligence agencies, CIA, MI6, FSB, etc., ruthlessly use them to gain technologic and scientific advantages. Basically, it’s a ‘John LeCarre’ world with science fiction elements.
CORRECTION! Karen asked me to add: the meteor crash site is referred to as Hell’s Gate, and it’s locked away behind a giant perimeter wall. You don’t find out about the meteor until episode 11 or 12.
Contractors each have one ability which varies from individual to individual; one may have control over gravity or another may teleport objects, and so forth. There is a price to be paid for the power, however, and the contractor is compelled to perform some meaningless or trivial (or not so trivial) act such as place pebbles in a particular pattern, eat strange foods, drink the blood of children . . . Look, there’s a reason the show is called Darker Than Black. There is a good deal of violence but I didn’t find it too graphic. Jake did, though.
So contractors are sociopaths with OCD, or at least, that’s what their employers prefer to believe. A show about sociopaths would be rather boring and predictable, however, and DTB is anything but. In the first few minutes of the first episode, Hei tortures and murders a rival agent. Did I mention he’s an anti-hero?
Well, after that introduction, the show insidiously begins to make you like Hei. He has a dead-pan sense of humor and he is very intelligent. I do not want to give too much away, but there is a lot more to Hei than just killing people in really cool ways. He is very cool, though.
DTB is an entertaining series with great emphasis on character development. But it is not a perfect show. The producers tend to info-dump and some of the tragic moments just didn’t work for me. The 7th and 8th episodes are essentially filler episodes, but do contain information crucial to the first season’s story arc. Subsequent episodes get back on track and the action sequence in episode 10 is great. The last 5 episodes (eps. 21-25) form the ending, which I really liked. Not surprisingly, Studio Bones doesn’t coddle the audience and you need to pay attention to some degree, but not nearly as much as with Skull Man. The English dub is surprisingly good, but I did prefer the subtitled version. Both versions can be seen on the Funimation website. If you like the first six episodes, you should buy the box set which encompasses the first season, $40 on Amazon, $56 on Barnes & Noble if you prefer to be politically correct.
Please, please buy this. Maybe there will be a season 3. (Season 2 was, well, problematic.)
K.