Hacker Cinema
District 9
2009 · Film · 112 min
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Thirty years ago, aliens arrive on Earth. Not to conquer or give aid, but to find refuge from their dying planet. Separated from humans in a South African area called District 9, the aliens are managed by Multi-National United, which is unconcerned with the aliens' welfare but will do anything to master their advanced technology. When a company field agent contracts a mysterious virus that begins to alter his DNA, there is only one place he can hide: District 9.
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64 comments on Hacker News
District 9 was a decent action film, and felt like something different. Like Idiocracy, District 9's actual political commentary was very on the nose, but that didn't detract from it. It was very reminiscent of "Alien Nation" in some ways.
I'm going to be controversial here and say that I think he is a one hit wonder. District 9 was decent (although unsubtle... "fokkin prawns!"). Elysium was a very crude political commentary on healthcare and inequality (and I can't remember much else about the film except people running around going "fok" all the time and shooting things.)
OK, I read it. It looks like questions on this topic get routed to a canned message that reads:
“The claim of white genocide is highly controversial,” began Grok’s response to Golbeck. “Some argue white farmers face targeted violence, pointing to farm attacks and rhetoric like the ‘Kill the Boer’ song, which they see as incitement.”
Have you lived in South Africa? Would you consider say Coetzee's Disgrace to have its "thumb on the scales" of discussion of rural race politics in South Africa?
Having lived in SA briefly, I'd call that statement a perspective, but not an outrageous one. Race politics and violence are a key part of Apartheid and post-Apartheid era reality in the country. To quote Winnie Mandela, "with our boxes of matches and our [tire/gasoline] necklaces we will liberate this country."
If it makes you feel better it's not just white/black racism there, plenty of racism/discrimination/violence against people from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and CAR that have emigrated to SA as well. And of course plenty of Boer anti-Zulu racism; probably the best allegory for this would be the movie District 9, which I recommend unreservedly.
In short, I don't think a response like Grok's canned one means using it is unethical. Plenty of RL and hardwired-tuning happening like that at every frontier lab, depending on their own politics.
Even for English speakers, the subtitle experience with pirated movies is often lacking. Movies with non-English-speaking characters are often meant to have subtitles for their dialog and not for English speakers by default, but many pirated versions don't do this. I recently saw discussions online of a lot of people saying they had no idea that there were supposed to be subtitles for the aliens in District 9 or the mute hand-signing girl in The Boys.
Wrong template. Try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3 (1977) instead.
Or maybe they aren't that competent, lacking collision avoidance systems when out of controlled spacetime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film) :-)
Or are dumb hiveminds, having lost their queen due to whatever, and are only caring about satisfying their craving for catfood like in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9 ?
;-)
The N900 was my peak “mobile computing is awesome” device.
I went to see District 9 in the cinema in Helsinki. Uh oh, the alien parts are only subtitled in Finnish and Swedish and my Finnish is not up to that.
I installed a BitTorrent client, found the release on Pirate Bay, successfully torrented just the subtitle file, and used an editor to read the subtitles for scenes with a lot of alien.
The N9 had much better UI, but there was something of the cyberpunk “deck” idea in that thing, it was great.
Movies that come to mind:
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/17654-district-9
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/329865-arrival
Some of my favorites (no particular order):
- The Martian
- Arrival
- Snowpiercer
- Annihilation (a bit scary in some parts, but not really horror overall)
- The Congress
- Ex Machina
- Her
- Children of Men
- Blade Runner & the new Blade Runner
- Gattaca
- District 9
- Edge of Tomorrow
- Elysium
- Terminator 1 & 2
- Upgrade
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Mad Max (new one) and Fury Road
On the cheesier side:
- Demolition Man
- Judge Dredd (both the original and the new one)
- Terminator 3 and beyond
- Matrix movies
Grand vistas but slow and sometimes boring, and often haughty / overbearing:
- The new Dune movies
- 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequel (some other number, like 2010 or something, can't remember)
- Interstellar
- Inception
------
Of all of those, my top 3 would be the first three (Martian, Arrival, Snowpiercer).
Very interesting, I was with you in the first half of your comment. But Hereditary is one of my favorite movies. And Men In Black is one of my least favorite, for these reasons. MIB is a disgusting film because it is utterly dehumanizing of the other. Aliens, although fully sentient and obviously "human", are fair game for cruelty, casual dismemberment, and mirthful laughter when their bodies are violently splattered onto other characters. Nobody really bats an eye because they're not Homo sapiens; it's literally the color of their guts which makes it okay to explode them.
That's only one example of the kind of depravity that turns me off of a lot of media, including some very fun Star Wars video games. The parallels with racist thinking are obvious to me; if any being can ask you to respect its bodily autonomy, does it really matter whether or not the creature is familiar? I'll probably get (as I always do) some angered responses that I'm taking things too far. I wonder what those people felt when they watched District 9, but perhaps that movie was too obvious about its protagonist for all viewers to generalize their feelings.
(So why am I okay with Hereditary? It's a literal demon. It's not framed as children's entertainment, it's horror; the filmmakers are very clearly not endorsing the violence depicted.)
Hopefully not. He made District 9 then every single following film he's made has been from mediocre to garbage.
Well BR2049 was made by the same director and probably a lot of the same crew so I'd be surprised if it didn't look similar.
Prometheus and Interstellar look nothing like these movies though. The production design is completely different even though there might be similarities in the color grading.
I give you that the super washed out colors has been a very common aesthetic in the past 15 years or so but I wouldn't say all scifi movies adopt it. Some examples: District 9, Avatar 1 and 2, Inception, Tenet, Ex Machina, etc.
> Movies like Distric 9 and Chappie have shown you can make an effects driven movie for far less that is a critical and commercial success.
District 9 had a budget of $30 million, Chappie had a budget of $49 million. That is a big chunk if money. These are serious ventures.
Compared that if Blomkamp‘s choosen art form were poetry. He could have made his art for a few hundreds of dollar.
Don’t get me wrong! I love those movies. I love that they made them. But they are fundamentally a business. Somebody had to ask “are we going to make this money back?” Because you don’t get that kind of pile of money without answering that question with a very confident yes.
> Check out Corridor Crew in youtube to see what's possible now out of your garage.
Absolutely. I love them too. If you haven’t heard of him yet I also recommend Ian Hubert’s Dynamo Dream movies too. It is incredible what is possible nowadays “on the cheap”.
This sounds a bit like District 9 (albeit having Peter Jackson as producer might exclude it) - the director then "graduated" to Hollywood, resulting in a decline in critical reception (though I've heard Gran Turismo is pretty good by video game movie standards).
These are all generally highly reviewed can lead to interesting discussions:
Gattaca - interesting take on genetics/DNA discrimination
Europa - hard science fiction, maybe a bit slow for a 12 year old
The Net - older movie but the concept of digital exile resonates today
City of Ember - post apocalyptic civilization that lives deep underground
First Man - dramatization of Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing (not realy "fiction")
Arrival - first contact situation, tastefully done
Contact - another first contact situation that explores how politics, skepticism, and fanaticism react
The Martian - easily as fun as the book
The Prestige - competing magicians in an industrial age setting
The Hunger Games - extreme class divide in a future setting
Jurassic Park - the original not the sequels
Stargate - wormhole travel to another planet (be careful with the TV shows though, SG1 on streaming has full frontal nudity and "not ok" scenes which were obviously not on the broadcast version and a total shock when we watched it as a family)
District 9 - has some graphic gore and language, so it might be 14+, but is an interesting look at aliens as refugees
Contagion - a look at how a pandemic could play out. Premiered before COVID.
The Maze Runner - interesting setting and look at group dynamics
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids - fun setting
The Village - scary movie with a sci fi twist
Galaxy Quest - comedy
Short Circuit - old movie that deals with AI sentience
Innerspace - another old one, but has some fun concepts
First some that I don't see mentioned here yet:
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Limitless (2011)
Looper (2012)
Upgrade (2018)
Source Code (2011)
District 9 (2009)
Black Mirror S3E2: "Playtest", S4E1: "USS Callister"
The 7 minute YouTube video "Slaughterbots"[1]
The YouTube series The Backrooms[2]
If you are worried about your son hearing swear words and seeing blood, and not just whether or not he will be able to understand/appreciate the movie, then you probably want to wait with a couple of those.
And then I would also agree with those here that mention Inception, Interstellar, Back to the Future, The Martian, Men in Black, Minority Report, The Terminator, Terminator 2, and The Expanse. I also don't think he should have much of a problem following along with The Matrix.
[1]: https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU [2]: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVAh-MgDVqvDUEq6qDXqORBioE4Yhol_z
I get the sense that you would like some adult themes, but not too slow?
Top of my mind (and in no specific order) would be:
- Dark City
- The Thirteenth Floor
- City of the Lost Children
- Tron (original and maybe new one)
- Interstellar
- Inception
- A Clockwork Orange
- Her (very relevant to our times)
- Dune (2021 version)
- Brazil
- The Martian
- Children of Men
- Edge of Tomorrow (most like Marvelverse on this list but still very good)
- Moon
- Twelve Monkeys
- Upgrade
- The Fifth Element
- Contact
- Okja
- District 9
- Predestination (very relevant to our times)
- Serenity (but might need some prep from the tv show before watching)
- World on a Wire
- The Abyss
- Minority Report (very relevant in our times)
- The Fly
- Videodrome
- Equilibrium
- Strange Days
- The Andromeda Strain (relevant after Covid)
- eXistenZ (trippy but I loved it when it came out and was only around your sons age)
- In Time (interesting class dynamics on display)
- Enemy Mine
- Franklyn (some interesting takes on mental illness)
- The Arrival
Peter Jackson? If so, no. District 9 came out years after LOTR and Peter Jackson only produced it. The advertising however splashed his name all over the movie to try to associate it with LoTR so that more people would go and see it. "From the Director of a few car and shoe commercials, plus a couple of indie short films you definitely haven't seen" doesn't really have the same ring.
Fun fact. District 9 was born out of a failed attempt by Peter Jackson to make a Halo movie. Due to financing troubles the Halo movie ended being put on hold, but since they already had a team and all these sets in place they decided to use that to make a cheaper and quicker movie instead, and so District 9 was born.
Exaggeration in blockbuster movies doesn't help in this respect. Action sequences are so beyond reality that no matter of how well the cgi is done it will still look unrealistic. On the other hand District 9 in addition to artistic excellence it was also grounded in terms of plot which helped with suspension of disbelief.
District 9!! Thanks for reminding me about such a funny movie.
Scene from a movie that comes to mind is the one from District 9, when they are starting the spaceship in the end. He’s totally focused on the screen, everything is happening on the screen so it totally makes sense to be a touch screen. Same goes for Star Trek, I suppose the operators don’t actually have visual on that big screen it’s just for comfort and reference.
"Looking at her work, knowing that she's documenting real people " That requires context outside of the work though? (how do you know it is documentary?) Your example of Mapplethorpe wouldn't require that clarification.
The point I was trying to get to (badly) in my original post was that images like Lange's wouldn't look out of place in either a newspaper or an art gallery. That's a problem because you don't know if its supposed to be 'real' or not. A film like district 9 despite blurring the boundaries is clearly 'art', in film there is a division between 'art' and 'documentary' which the film plays with, but it can do that because it clearly isn't real.
"The core of what I'm ultimately trying to convey, is that art, can be anything" Agreed, that's where it gets messy. 'documentary' should try to inform though? 'Art' may try to inform, or may not, so its important to know the difference.
I wasn't trying to prove opposition. I was simply providing examples of where there's a clear delineation between documentary and art, and how they can overlap and share aspects and details.
However I don't agree with your statement: "Langes work isn't definitely 'documentary', to the point that if you saw a picture in isolation, I'm not sure you could reliably say which it was /supposed/ to be."
Looking at her work, knowing that she's documenting real people and understanding that the "art" in her work doesn't inherently come from the subject, which is what defines her work. It's not supposed to be anything. She took a photo, using her best judgement in that split second, to create an everlasting image. That's the art. I am not going to a gallery to see her work so I can say, ah yes, this is what art is supposed to be. I'm going to see what she saw, and how she documented it, which due to her form and style, is the artwork.
Defining art and the words used to define it, open up an immense rabbit hole that I don't particularly find interesting or worth getting into.
The films you mention I think are terrible examples. District 9 barely falls into a documentary style. Think about a true documentary, something like La Soufrière (Herzog) which becomes a work of "art" due to the laborious efforts of our film maker to show us people who've accepted their incoming demise at the hands of a Volcano on the verge of eruption. The film is considered a piece of art due to nature of the documentary which explores confronting death through the eyes of real people and their real situations.
Also Blair Witch did in fact attempt to mislead people with it's initial marketing campaign and release. It was an incredible marketing campaign that made it one of the most successful Independent films ever.
Actually, photography does allow people to create fictitious stories and narratives, designed to look like documentary and other styles. Look at Cindy Sherman. She spent years, and hundreds of photographs creating fictional versions of herself, in tons of styles.
Edit: The core of what I'm ultimately trying to convey, is that art, can be anything. Any style or genre descriptor your throw at something, can still be a work of art. It's the craft, and thought, and construction of something that makes it a piece of art, whether it's a photograph, an carpentry project, or a line of code.
"Lange's body of work definitely consists of many works of "art" but I think it all fits nicely into the category of documentary and photojournalism"
That kind of proves my point?
Yes Mapplethorpe's work is definitely 'art', Langes work isn't definitely 'documentary', to the point that if you saw a picture in isolation, I'm not sure you could reliably say which it was /supposed/ to be.
I'm aware the line between 'art' and 'documentary' are very slippery. Thus the inverted commas, and thus (I would argue) the need for clear delineation.
As I said in my prior post, there are plenty of exceptions, but I'm not sure you can get much past generalisations without defining art. And I've yet to see a definition of art without exceptions, to the definition.
Edit: To expand further. Think of films like District 9 or Blair Witch Project. Both are shot in a 'documentary' style, but both are 'art'. But both are A. Notable for being in the opposing style (they're exceptions that prove the rule). B. Understood that they aren't really real (they aren't seeking to mislead).
You don't really get that in photography, although the limitation of the medium doesn't really allow you to do that set up.
I think the movie you are referring to is District 9.
"it doesn’t quite have the same punch to me"
I think one reason for that could be that the Wakanda city in Black Panther looks and feels like a city dressed in cultural heritage or a theme park, with regular "western looking" high tech insides. Look at the lab for instance. Your generic villain/Star Trek/Super Hero/Industrial lab. The whole city looks very Star Trek, very bland. I don't dislike it, but it's been done in countless STTNG episodes.
I think a depiction of an African sci-fi where the tech and the soft is reversed, would be very interesting.
In Wakanda you have cultural theme park on the outside, hard tech on the inside.
I'd rather see the opposite - hard generic tech on the outside, commandeered by a creamy, cultural inside.
Background:
Maybe the African continent was mostly spared in some kind of cataclysmic event, now some African countries are super rich from trading food and skilled labor (management and security detail mostly?) to the rest of the world for tech and tech know how in return. Refugees line its border and only people with strong know how and good teaching skills are let in.
The opening scene could get some inspiration from Chappy and District 9, but with an even stronger emphasis on tech as super advanced but casual - make the connection as well to advanced tech and magic. Skip the step where people stop believing in magic.
If they pick a game worthy of making it into a movie, that would be a good start.
Halo would have made a great movie but MS messed that one up and the guy they hired went on to make District 9.
There are plenty of games worthy of movie treatments. Dark Souls, SkyRim, Zelda, Mass Effect, Ico, Last Guardian, just to name a few.
If you start with Rampage or Mortal Kombat than you end up with equally shallow movies. There just isn't enough 'story' to make it worthwhile.
12 Monkeys - Travelling back in time to try and track the outbreak of a virus that wipes out most of humanity.
The Abyss - Survival and discovery on a deep water mining platform.
Apollo 13 - Look at the rescue efforts of this historical NASA moon mission. (Does it count as sci-fi?)
The Dish - Also not quite sci-fi, but a comedy about Australia's involvement in the first moon landing.
Battle for Terra - Surprisingly good animated movie about invading aliens.
District 9 - Alien refugee camp in Johannesburg.
Gravity - Astronaut stranded in orbit, trying to get back to Earth.
The Martian - Survival and rescue of a lone astronaut stranded on Mars.
Moon - After a serious accident, a solitary worker on the Moon discovers a conspiracy.
Oblivion - A veteran assigned to extract Earth's remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself.
Predator - The classic that launched the franchise.
Predestination - Faithful adaptation of Heinlein's short story, "All You Zombies."
The Prestige - Some minor sci-fi elements. At the end of the Nineteenth Century in London, two stage magicians engage in a battle to create the ultimate illusion whilst sacrificing everything they have to outwit the other.
Source Code - Using limited time-travel to try and get information to stop a second, larger terrorist attack.
WALL E - In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.
District 9, perhaps? It's not a non-violent movie, but it's not quite as simple as 'alien menace ru n!'
As in the example you pointed out, this is a very common trope in SF. Often aliens are used, rather than animals; a recent well known example is District 9. Or my favorite example (in film), They Live.
Alternative hypothesis: something set 21,000 years (edited - well spotted!) into the future is going to be as impossible to imagine for us as today's world was for Jules Vernes. As such gothic madness might be a more realistic interpretation.
A lot of the criticism misses the mark. I can try and find alternative explanations. The "outdated" computers? The Butlerian Jihad caused that future world not to build anything more complicated than a light switch. The unique worlds, monochromatic and with their odd uniqueness? Visible signalling of these being different cultures that survived by virtue of their unique characteristics. Unlike the "bugs vs Marines" of a lot of space opera, the Tleilaxu, Guild, Bene Gesserit and Harkonnen are all fundamentally different, their differences giving them a survival edge, influence and power. Black desert suits? Maybe the filters need solar energy to run. Erotic Bene Gesserit intonation? Have you read the later books?
This was the only depiction of Baron Harkonnen which I thought truly captured his sadistic genius. And the blocky shields are so much cooler than the form fitting transparent bubbles of later Hollywood SF (e.g. Star Wars), also explaining the difficulty involved in going slow for so long when trying to penetrate them (because the space between shield and human is so great). Or what about the worms, which despite (or perhaps because of) the sorry state of 1984 CGI somehow were just as immense as I had imagined them reading the words. There was this alien feel to all the vehicles, especially the ornithopters and the harvester carrier, which has only been recently replicated in the seemingly nonsensical vertical ovals of Arrival or the glaring contrast between earth and ship in District 9. This was definitely the artistic generation responsible for Brutalist architecture, which is not always fun to live in, but has a thousand times more soul than the International Style condos copy/pasted across all of the world's megacities today.
Lynch's movie was glorious precisely because it freed itself from the constraint of present day science and became a standalone creation from the inspiration of the source material. The other interpretations did not create that sense of awe. I found the miniseries particularly boring, a kind of BBC period drama feel instead of being transported into a completely new, intense world. What makes Dune great as a book and as a 1984 movie is precisely that it frees itself from "realism" and suspends disbelief in just the right way for telling a great story. Might as well complain about X-wings flying like F-14s and making sound in vacuum...
I didn't necessarily have anywhere specifically in Africa in mind but I was not thinking about South Africa. Tho if SA is included, definitely something like what Neil Blomkamp made SA look like in District 9, Chappie, et al, is sort-of cyberpunk to me. Love his aesthetic in those movies. Tho that's not exactly what I was going for here.
Going to repeat a lot of what has been said so far:
- Minority Report (The TV show isn't bad either)
- Ex Machina
- District 9
- Elysium
- Oblivion
- Edge of Tomorrow
- Looper
- I am Legend
- Her
- The Martian
- The Matrix (Only 2 & 3 if you're super bored)
- Basically any of the Mad Max series
- Firefly (TV show, movies are OK)
- Dark Matter (TV show)
- Snow Piercer
- American Ultra
- Last Witch Hunter (more fantasy than SciFi)
- Riddick
- Dredd
- X Files (I mean, it's not NOT scifi...)
- Treasure Planet (Yes, the animated one)
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Gets a bad rap for being animated, but it has it's own language and everything)
- Serial Lain Experiments (anime)
- Watchmen
- The Dark Knight
- Inception
- The Prestige (technically SciFi)
I can go on for hours
Stargate. District 9. Inception. Equilibrium. Mad Max: Fury Road. Moon. Edge of Tomorrow.
Edit: The Man From Earth if you can dig independent cinema.
However after District 9, Neil Blomkamp is on a downward trend. His recent movies are much less engaging, and Chappie was really, really bad: it tried to copy the frame of District 9 but every story aspect was much worse and smelled fake kilometers away. Really disappointing after the excellent experience District 9 was.
I found Sunshine quite poor, too. First the whole story makes no sense (even the largest spaceship you could build would anyway be way too small to do anything meaningful, it's so obvious it's preposterous), and the last scene is a deal breaker: after they succeed, you see a woman and a child playing on the snow. Oh, I thought people were starving on Earth, but no they are actually enjoying the snow and winter sports? So what was the big emergency all about? That was stupid.
There are exceptions. I recently watched District 9 and was very pleasantly surprised. The CGI effects were beyond reproach, but the movie did not use them as a substitute for plot or character.
Sunshine was very good, too - the script had logical holes in it that could swallow an entire galaxy, but the actors were so good, and the atmosphere so dense it was still a really, really good SciFi movie. Again, the special effects were good, but used sparingly.
So not all hope is lost.
I find it disappointing that the films on this list are overwhelmingly old. Sure, many of these were groundbreaking and influential in their time, but filmmaking has come such a long way since the days of Hitchcock, for example.
In his original list, "City of Gods" (which he didn't even spell correctly-- the english title is "City of God") is the only film made in the last 2 decades.
His updated list, which was supposed to be more inclusive to women, adds Apocalypto, District 9, Kung Fu Hustle, and Dirty Pretty Things, all of which are directed by men-- and he even removed "City of Gods", one of the few movies from the original list that had a female (co)director.
In fact, the entire list reads like a giant insult to all of Lee's contemporaries. Does he want every aspiring filmmaker to enter the business with antiquated sensibilities about cinematography?
He's coming across like the smug high-schooler who just discovered Led Zeppelin and declares that they're the greatest band of all time, and all modern music is crap.
The same blimp was just ominously featured in one of the weekly shorts published by the Intercept (the site Greenwald, Poitras, et al. are at and publishing Snowden's leaks). The short is called "The Above" [1], by Kirsten Johnson. It could pass as a great an intro to a dystopian sci-fi movie a la 'District 9'.
[1] https://theintercept.com/fieldofvision/the-above
Primer was great! I liked the gritty, detailed, realistic but fictional engineering in the story as much as anything. That aspect reminds me of the Neill Blomkamp films - District 9, Elysium, Chappie.
Neill Blomkamp, director of "District 9," is going to direct an "Aliens" sequel! It seems that first he said he'd ignore "Alien 3" and "Alien: Resurrection," but it seems like he's taken that back.
[1] http://www.avclub.com/article/neill-blomkamps-alien-movie-will-ignore-alien-3-an-215808
[2] http://www.avclub.com/article/actually-blomkamps-alien-movie-wont-ignore-alien-3-215905
Keep in mind Blomkamp is South African, and his last major film (District 9) had similar themes. It was also released in 2009, well before OWS came into existence. It's clear that whatever politics Blomkamp holds, it comes from from growing up in apartheid South Africa. His first work featuring the themes of poverty, wealth disparity, and racial inequality predate OWS by at least six years (see: the short Alive in Joburg, which is basically the direct predecessor of District 9).
So while Blomkamp may share some politics with OWS, it's silly to suggest he borrowed them from OWS or the recent politics of the last couple of years.
Side note: the fact that his sci-fi allegories of apartheid-era South Africa has enough in parallel with present-day America to inspire suspicion, is troubling.
a) District 9 was a great movie both as entertainment and as something to think about
b) having grown up in South Africa, Blomkamp may have some unique insights about human nature.
it's certainly interesting to contemplate what's going to happen.
I believe it was a reference to the director's previous movie, District 9, which was set in the slums of South Africa.
I've been confused by Netflix's business strategy for a while. I'm not much of a business guy, so maybe I'm just missing something.
I've made do for movies with the channels that came along for the ride when I subscribed to the minimal cable TV package that got me the nerd channels (Science, Discovery, Nat Geo, History, and so on). I've got quite a backlog of movies I'm waiting for.
Recently, I caught a movie (How to Train Your Dragon) on TV that I liked so much that I simply had to go buy a copy on Blu Ray. This also necessitated buying a Blu Ray player. I picked a Blu Ray player that also plays streaming content from the internet and supports pretty much everything other than iTunes.
I then started researching the streaming services (both subscription and rental), seeing how well they covered the movies I'd seen in the last couple of months on TV (HTTYD, Star Trek, Kung Fu Panda, District 9, Watchmen, Shrek Forever After, Happy Feet, Tangled, Bolt, Despicable Me, Monsters vs. Aliens, Fargo, Fantastic Mr. Fox), as well as how well they covered movies still on my backlog, plus assorted movies I'd like to rewatch.
Here's what I found. Neither Amazon nor Netflix subscription streaming provided good coverage of the movies I'd recently seen, the movies on my backlog, or the movies I want to rewatch.
The streaming rental services were a bit better, but still missing a lot.
Netflix's disc subscription service, on the other hand, covered pretty much everything.
So here is where I get confused. Netflix seems to think their future is in their streaming subscription service. This seems to me to be a pretty risky basket to put all their eggs into, because it seems to me that Amazon will have an easier time fixing their weaknesses compared to Netflix than Netflix will have fixing their weaknesses compared to Amazon.
Amazon's weakness compared to Netflix is that Netflix apparently has more content (that's what people tell me, although for the movies I'm interested in they seem about the same). To fix that, Amazon just needs to make some licensing deals. They don't have to build out a lot of new infrastructure or enter a new line of business or anything like that. It's a "write a check" problem for them.
Netflix's weakness compared to Amazon is that Amazon subscription streaming is part of Amazon Prime--and there are good reasons to have Prime besides the streaming. I got it for the shipping savings, and I'm also enjoying the Kindle lending library. (Brick and mortar retailers, like Barnes and Noble, and Best Buy, seem to be doing their best to drive people to Amazon, and so I see Amazon Prime becoming more and more common--but this is best left for another rant).
This makes the question for a lot of people "Netflix in addition to Prime?" rather than "Netflix or Prime?". That's a much harder case for Netflix to make. As I said, for the movies I've checked there are very few on Netflix that are not on Prime--it would cost me less to simply rent those movies. As Amazon closes the gap on content, "Prime plus rental" will become a better choice than "Prime plus Netflix" for more and more people.
It seems to me that Netflix's best weapon against Amazon is their disc subscription service. It provides the most content (both recent and older). It provides the highest quality content. It provides extras (commentary, deleted scenes, and all the other nifty things that come on disc besides just the movie).
Yet Netflix treats their disc service almost as if it is an embarassment. There's no link on their main page for it. It only seems to be mentioned in their FAQ, where they imply that it is an add-on service to the streaming service, and give no link to details.
That said, I did not entirely agree with them :)
I agree that Kickstarter is unlikely to raise 300 million dollars for the next Hobbit trilogy. I disagree that a huge blockbuster will never be crowdfunded. Transformers, Harry Potter, and Avatar all cost less than 300 million dollars. 30 million people pre-paying 10 dollars is not ridiculous, when you look at how many people use Google, and how many users Facebook claims to have.
Surprisingly, movie studios don't necessarily fund the projects that they profit from. Since you mentioned LotR universe:
"New Line made enough pre-sales in foreign markets, and there were enough subsidies to pretty much cover their costs. New Zealand was not the only subsidy. There was also the British Commonwealth subsidy and the German tax subsidy in those days. New Line didn't have to put up any cash to make that movie."
Also movie studios consistently claim to not make profits from their movies.
"However, New Line later produced accounts showing that instead of making a profit, the movies made "horrendous losses". According to Hubbard: "We found it surprising because it was one of the biggest box office success of all time.""
Other funding options: a company could start making short films and then transition into making larger, more expensive ones once it gains the trust of its audience. The films could be broken into "episodes" to reduce the amount of money that each chunk would cost. This all ignores patronage, another alternative funding mode.
Lastly, most movies aren't blockbusters. Even if everything I just said is a lie, the vast majority of movies will be just fine, because their budgets are laughably small. District 9 was shot for 30 million dollars. Primer was shot for 7000 dollars. When Harry Met Sally cost 16 million dollars. Citizen Kane cost 15 million. Pretty Woman cost 14 million. The government funded BBC has produced such things like The Office, Monty Python, and Billy Elliot on less than 5 million each.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10693123
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting#Examples
There seems to be some strange idea that analogue means 'infinite detail'. In this particular case, there's no significant difference between being limited by the original digital recording resolution and the grain size of a film recording.
"[...] provided the source is good" is begging the question; it's no different from saying "District 9 could be better if they hadn't recorded in 4k (or whatever the Red One was using) and downsampled it for my DVD" The nature of the source is irrelevant, barring the fact that film might provide a higher resolution, if film scanning technology increases, and you can afford to both capture on film, process and store your film properly (archiving film is rather difficult, I believe), and get the best quality digitisation possible.
You can actually get decent effects and explosions these days for "cheap". District 9, one of my favorite Sci-Fi movies, had a budget of $30 million and was amazing. If they made movies around that size, they would lower their risk profile, while still having enough effects punch to make a blockbuster.
> To argue that we can somehow replace this very right-brained activity with crowd-sourcing or algorithms is untenable.
For now maybe. Ten years ago if you asked me if I'd spend 2 hours watching a movie because a computer said so, I'd laugh. Netflix recommendations, while not perfect, are still very good. Had I not told Netflix that I loved District 9, it would not have suggested Torchwood: Children of Earth to me. Had it not suggested Torchwood, I wouldn't have discovered that Doctor Who was back on air. Right now I get about 50% of my entertainment discovery done via algorithms. Sure, fashion is difficult and subjective but I don't see it as being any different from music or entertainment in the big picture sense.
Btw, that was a very well-written article. Thanks for sharing.
Was that a reference to the movie, "District 9"? I don't see much resemblance beyond the "unknown insectoid life" theme...
So movie-making is becoming more geographically and capital diverse, good for us! Note how little Monsters costed (under half a mil), or District 9 in 2009, for that matter. Some cool movies made outside of Hollywood and released last year: http://www.dailytitan.com/2011/01/01/the-best-little-movies-you-didnt-see-in-2010/
Amazon has recent movies, though. For example, I watched District 9 through Amazon On Demand in Jan/Feb 2010. That's 5-6 months after it was released.
Most Netflix Streaming titles are something you'd find on VHS in your mom's basement.
I think Moki.TV just redefined 'polarizing'. If you look at the individual bar graphs for each movie (especially the ones on the top right of the main graph), the voting distribution is actually very even ('square' or 'sloped' looking). For the data to be truly polarised you would expect the graph to be U-shaped: lots of 5s and lots of 1s and little in between.
What this data shows is that lots of people are giving these films a chance (and paying money to do so) who aren't really that engaged with the genre, or niche. That's a big validation of the studios' design strategy for the films.
An illustrative example I can think of that isn't in the top 20 is District 9: a very familiar 'niche-y' core genre, a fairly predictable plotline, but with enough influences from other genres to keep a diverse audience interested. The Dark Knight would probably be another.
Agree - along with Primer, which granted lacked any real special effects but is non-the-less an incredible film considering its (Primers) roughly 6k budget.
I quite enjoyed this flick, it has a sort of District-9 feel to it and the story was interesting and not entirely what I expected.
No it couldn't. There is no car chase, no explosions and only a couple of violent deaths.
Plus it has all this plot stuff that you have to 'like' concentrate on ...
I'm sure if you went back to read the movie reviews from the year Blade Runner came out, you'd find them full of similar sentiments. "Blah blah, they don't make sophisticated movies any more, people only care about spectacle and car chases and explosions." No doubt people will be making similar complaints in another 30 years while completely ignoring the sophisticated movies being produced in their own time ("Man, nobody makes movies like Primer or District 9 any more, do they?)
(Yes, I know District 9 has explosions.)
It's an admittedly cool idea, but it's also very blatantly set up as if it isn't technology at all, just so he can paint technology as evil.
James Cameron is a white man using technology and corporations to make movies about how white men, technology, and corporations are evil. I lasted about an hour and a half through the movie before the preachiness outweighed the special effects for me. District 9 was better told and even had a more exciting mecha battle.
District 9 was a great movie I am glad it won the BitTorrent Oscar ;) I am surprised Avatar was downloaded so many times considering that it wasn't a very good movie aside from its visuals.
District 9 is a movie about refugees made by a refugee.
I saw the movie yesterday, and I also watched "District 9" yesterday. I'm kind of amazed at how the 2 movies approached the same basic idea - humans oppressing aliens - and ended up entirely different. While I enjoyed all the visual effects of Avatar, I think District 9 had a more interesting treatment of the idea, mostly because it was less utopian.
Agreed about District 9, but please don't be "that guy" who's going online during a movie.
I'm in avatar right now. It's beautiful but too long , and it lacks depth and cohesion. If you want a sweet scifi movie with actual plot see district 9.
Well, the story is a combination of typical archetypes retold with pretty pictures. That much I cannot argue about. And I think that what you are really saying by "the plot sucked" is "it's too archetype driven". I'm basing this on:
>I personally found the warmed over "Stupid White Man penetrates exotic closed society and rises to be leader of it, seducing the native woman" plot tiresome, repetitive and tedious
Sure the characters ranged from a bit 2-d (the Col.) to well fleshed out (Neytiri (watch it again if you don't believe me)) and the acting ranged from "will probably win an award it was so good" Saldana to "thanks for showing up and picking up your paycheck" Weaver. But that's nothing different than you'll find in almost every movie -- the principles are fleshed out and the supporting cast is flat.
Why can't we have more 'smart' movies like Erin Brockovich/Schindler's List/Fight Club/District 9/Oldboy/etc. (archetypes of David vs. Goliath, Greed and Bullies) or The Incredibly True Story of Two Teenagers In Love/Léon/American Beauty/Mississippi Masala/South Pacific/Moulin Rouge/West Side Story etc. (Forbidden Love) or Lawrence of Arabia/Dune/Hunt for Red October/etc. (Lovable Turncoat)... you ask? And I'd counter that all of those are as archetype driven as any other well known flick (archetype stories provided in parens).
You see where I'm going with this. Even if you don't agree with all my movie choices as being "good" or "smart" you'll at least have to agree that most movies that are at least reasonably well known are pretty much based on a dissection or aggregation of common archetypes. How many times has Romeo and Juliet been retold almost verbatim? And by and large the audience enjoys these things and says "oh the plot was so good" when really, they are just a rehash of old story ideas. We even group movies into archetype driven categories "love story", "ghost story", "suspense", etc.
So yes, I was being "cute" with my notional art-house flick. But if you want to find something not driven by archetypes, where the artists consciously try to avoid those things, you have to go there, or to France or Italy perhaps. Here, http://www.imdb.com/chart/top this is the top 250 movies on IMDB not by dollars but by rating. How many of these are "smart" movies meaning "not a rehash of archetypes"? Very few if any.
It's pretty simple really, if you don't want your intelligence to be insulted (meaning you don't want an archetype driven story), you end up with a movie about a vapid cowgirl/model with giant thumbs or a movie director that can't focus on making movies because he's too busy with all his mistresses (which is actually just a retelling of the "guy with too many girlfriends archetype"). And given that non-archetype driven movies are typically poorly rated and attended by the open public, either you are particularly "smart" or those movies tend to suck.
hey hackers, matthew pointed me here and I thought I'd share some stats (more about the Flash version than the iPhone version but yea)
Days spent making Canabalt: 5 (long ones) Hits on my server: ~2 million Hits on other major portals: ~2 million Estimated hits on crappy portals: ~4 million+? Hits on my server from twitter: 50k+ Best Referrer: Stumbleupon Money from donations: ~$500 iPhone sales: can't say but good enough! Top App Store Ranking: 37 Bandwidth Bills: $1000+ Top legit score I've ever seen: ~30km My top score: ~8km Resolution: 480px x 160px Initial Piracy Rate: 12% Current Piracy Rate: 25%
Inspirations: Half Life 2, District 9, Banlieue 13, Another World/Flashback/Prince of Persia, War of the Worlds (book, not movie)
Trivia: I never finished drawing the space ship that flies by since it is barely on-screen for more than a few minutes. Sadly, multiple screenshots have captured it in all its under-realized sloppiness.
District 9 is an expansion of ideas that Blomkamp first explored in Alive in Joburg, which was released in 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alive_in_Joburg
And as the previous comment notes, this movie is not quite just an apartheid allegory. That would be too easy. Instead, it's largely about present-day Johannesburg, with its massive population of unwanted illegal immigrants, its poverty and its horrific xenophobia. Just a few months ago black foreigners were being burnt and hacked to death in Johannesburg's streets, so the attitudes this movie alludes to have a fair bit of immediacy.
Honestly, this is one of the few movies I've seen recently that I feel perfectly confident in recommending to anyone. It truly is excellent.
The problem is... then the first hour ended, and the movie became a giant chase reminiscent of Michael Bay: all cops'n'robbers and random killing: see more here: http://jseliger.com/2009/08/18/district-9 .
How many people here did not know about District 9?
I'm guessing pretty much no one and if they hadn't then they wouldn't care now.
Link to something where they go into the technical details of the film, the software they used, what computers, rendering info for the CG, how they were able to make the film with the amount of money they had.
But DO NOT just throw up a link to IMDB.