District 9 – *** (CoCo Version)

CoCo said not to be cynical, but it’s kind of hard for me. I’m working on it though. I’m also trying not to be jaded. It’s hard to do CoCo.

I keep starting a bunch of drafts for posts but wind up deleting them because I come off as c&j. (I also come across as a dick, but that’s okay, everyone knows I’m a dick).

But when I look around the blogosphere, it seems that cynicism is in no short supply.

I’ll give you a mellow example of my own take in how I can easily be led down the dark path of snark.

I finally got around to watching District 9. It passed my 3DMT™ because I thought it was entertaining even the story wasn’t that original and a bit ham-fisted in shoving stuff down our throats.

It almost didn’t pass because my first reaction was to rip the movie apart. I think I wanted to tear it down because I had read some articles about how the movie was made, or rather, how it became to be a full feature. And I was a bit jaded about it being nominated for an Oscar.

Supposedly it was a spec film for the director to show off some ideas to Peter Jackson for a Halo movie. Those plans were scratched, but they realized that for just a bit more budget they could put out a full movie with the material they had- or by adding just a bit more.

But here’s the thing-

1) I’m not sure if that info is even true, but it’s what I remembered and

2) two movie blog posts that ‘reported’ that trivia seemed to lead you to infer that it was a lesser quality film because of that history- if the posts hadn’t been written that way, how would I have reacted?

I skipped out seeing District 9 in the cineplex because of that inference. Looking back I realize now I would have had a good time. It was on my to-do list for the holidays (along w/ Avatar, which I still haven’t seen)

I would have had a good time, but I would still rip on the film – in a good-natured way though. (Seriously- why was Christopher the only alien who was smart? Why did his kid have big old sad dog eyes? To make him more available emotionally?)

But go rent the film, it’s pretty good. It’s not Oscar worthy at all, but it’s still fun.

Liked District 9 but want to watch something else? Go rent the original Alien Nation with James Caan and Mandy Patinkin (not the TV show).

While you’re doing that, I’m going to try to read fewer movie blogs.

-Oh, and re: item 2 above–

And does it matter? It’s kind of cool that a dude had a project about to be shelved but had it get a second life. Hey, at least he’s creating content.