Ever wonder what would happen if a bunch of very non-human-looking alien refugees showed up on Earth? Wonder no longer, because I’m pretty sure this movie predicts that very accurately. You know, aside from the particularly weird stuff that happens to the main character, because I’m not sure those exact details would ever happen, but the general outline is probably just about perfect. When a strange, huge spaceship over Johannesburg, South Africa, is opened to reveal a bunch of half-starved, stranded aliens, humanity swings into action to welcome them — except of course no one wants aliens actually living next door to them, and the nice little “holding area” where they first start moving the aliens quickly becomes the worst kind of slum.
To be fair, these aliens aren’t exactly pleasant company. Many of them are apparently not particularly bright — they seem to have some sort of hive mind, according to one of the sociologist-types they interview, and can’t think so well without their leaders, who are nowhere to be found — and most of them seem to have nasty tempers. Though it’s hard to tell if they’re normally like that, or if they’re just annoyed at being stuck in tiny little shacks, given human names they can’t pronounce, and having no way to get back home, which would make anyone testy, I’m sure. They also seem to get high on cat food, which must have made that a booming industry.
Anyway, the film is done in the pseudo-documentary, let’s-jiggle-the-camera-around-a-lot style that’s so popular these days. It fits the subject well, but it’s still dizzying. To start with especially, it really is a documentary — it’s only later that we get any real main characters. Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley, who’s apparently making his acting debut here, at least as far as being a major character) starts out as more a sort of narrator. He’s middle management for a company called MNU (Multinational United) — a typical, geeky-looking pencil-pusher, whose own mother calls him “not very bright, but a good son,” and who’s getting ahead thanks to marrying the boss’ daughter, Tania (Vanessa Haywood, also debuting on the big screen). He seems genuinely crazy about her, though, and in spite of the fact that she’s gorgeous and filthy rich, the feeling is mutual.
The gimmick to start us out is that Wikus is being interviewed by the documentary filmmakers about how MNU is handling the problem of transporting the aliens (the humans have at last gotten their way, and the “prawns”, as they’re called — shrimp to those of you who speak American English — are being moved a hundred miles from Johannesburg), and the film doesn’t really have a plot as such until about halfway through.

This means you!

But that’s good. The rapid-fire documentary style pulls you in to start. Wikus is trying painfully hard to do a good job, very aware of the cameras and his father-in-law, and he views the whole thing as a sort of game much of the time as he goes from shack to shack, asking the aliens to “put their scrawl” on the official eviction notices. Thousands and thousands of official eviction notices, and every alien ticked off at being pestered by the humans, and all of them faster and stronger than humans, which is why the troop of heavily-armed mercenaries is along. (Ever notice how that always seems to happen? Just once someone should find an alien race that’s weaker and less intelligent than humans.) Anyway, Wikus talks about it being “Christmas” every time they find a cache of illegal weapons, and he describes the burning of a nest of alien eggs with way too much excitement.
Then everything goes terribly, bizarrely wrong for him, and I won’t say exactly how because some of you might hate me for spoiling that surprise. I mean, it isn’t a shocker, and I know the spoiler’s out there, but I won’t put it here and risk ruining things for any of my twelve loyal readers. Suffice to say a few gross things happen, and he goes from comfortable, boring, middle-class guy to highly wanted fugitive in the space of a few hours. Talk about a bad day. It’s about that point that the plot kicks in, and instead of narrating, Wikus is the star. I can’t exactly call him a hero, though, at least to start.
So here we have a good story, good acting, good directing (as far as I could tell around the wobbly cameras), and an all around good movie, for a refreshing change. I made myself watch The Collector when that came out, and couldn’t even bring myself to write about it. (Actually, I can sum up all you need to know here in just five words: by the writer of Saw.) But with District 9, the movie industry is trying to make up for that debacle.
Four and a quarter idols. It was definitely too icky in parts for my taste, but it wasn’t gore for the sake of gore, like in some OTHER movie I might have mentioned in the previous paragraph. Even if you don’t like sci-fi, give this one a try. These aliens are a lot more human than you might think.

Often the things I post are unrelated, except having been written at a similar time. These pieces are so unrelated, I’m having a hard time thinking that I made all of them… much less made them all within days of each other.
Padanaya Blokov – Slightly humorous electro-folk. I listen to this one over and over – so sayeth the play count in iTunes. For some reason, it doesn’t get old to me. Consider it for a video game background.
Symbiosis – Gorgeous Steinway grand piano played at unreasonably soft levels, progressing to a relationship with a pure electronic percussion instrument.
Petulant March – There is a preset sound in Logic by the name of “Kronky Organ”. What would one do with a Kronky Organ? Well… this sort of thing.
Unpromised – Beautiful and austere. Solo boy vocalist and harp with slight percussion, joined by a bass flute.
Lamentation – for solo harp. Impromptu.

Disco Lounge
Kool Kats
Cheers, all.

Five (5) new pieces in Native American style. I got some new headphones, and some great monitors – these mixes should be excellent.
See them all!
Night of the Owl, Thunderhead, Birch Run, Black Bird, Firesong.

It’s enemies plural because there are several of them — and you may even have heard of Pretty Boy Floyd, for instance, though you have to look fast to see him in this movie — but it’s really all about Public Enemy #1, of course, Mr. John Dillinger himself. You can tell he’s the important one, not to mention the charismatic one, because they got Johnny Depp to play him. (And let me just add here how incredibly relieved I am that they didn’t let Leonardo DiCaprio play him. He has such a hard time looking mean.) He doesn’t really look like Dillinger, but he does pretty well with the attitude, which is sort of becoming his standard attitude. But hey, stick with what works.
This is based on a book called Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, but no one really cares about that, clearly, because as expected it ends up being more of a general outline. Most of the things that happen in the movie did happen, but some happened in a different order or in a different place, and lots of them have a slightly different spin on them. It’s Hollywood! We have to jazz it up for the ticket buyers!
Movie plot: Charming outlaw John Dillinger leads a daring escape from the very beginning of his second jail term, embarks on a life of crime, part two, and wins over the public with his polite ways (he offers his coat to a chilly hostage), care not to shoot anyone who isn’t already shooting at him, and crooked little smile. He meets a pretty girl named Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), falls in love, robs more banks, falls in with a bad crowd — a worse crowd, I mean — and finally proves that Crime Doesn’t Pay.
Real story: Dillinger gets rescued by his friends at the beginning of his second jail term and actually does win over the public (see above), but not his wife, who divorced him while he was still in prison the first time around. But he still meets a pretty girl and falls in love, but her name is Evelyn Sparks, born Frechette, who sometimes used the alias Billie — Mrs. Evelyn Sparks, to be precise, but neither of them lets that little detail get in the way, as the unfortunate Mr. Sparks was in prison anyway. She apparently liked bad boys. And he was bad — John apparently also still had a favorite brothel, and later a favorite lady of the evening, but he was still very upset whenever he and Billie/Evelyn couldn’t be together.


Twins! Okay, maybe not, but the attitudes match.
That all had to be tidied away for this, of course, but honestly, films like this just about have to ignore stuff like that. It was almost two and a half hours as it was. There was a good crowd, though — parts of it were filmed not very far from where I live, which makes sense, since John did spend most of his life and criminal career in the upper midwest. Little Bohemia Lodge, for instance, where Dillinger and “Baby Face” Nelson had a massive shootout with federal agents, is in northern Wisconsin. You can still go up there and find cartridges and see bullet holes and some luggage the gangsters left behind, because the owners of Little Bohemia know a good tourist-attracting scheme when they see one. Anyway, lots of people who live around here were extras for some of the street scenes. The two bank robberies that actually took place in in Racine, WI, and Sioux Falls, SD, were filmed in Oshkosh, WI, which isn’t terribly far from where I’m sitting right now. Several people in the audience could be overheard pointing out buildings they recognized.
Now, because I write these, I always try to avoid other people’s reviews. I don’t want to be influenced one way or the other, though I suppose I just end up looking silly if I disagree with absolutely everybody. So I usually don’t read reviews after I write mine, either. Anyway, the point is, this time I’m borrowing the overheard assessment of the other two people who stayed behind to watch the credits with me: Not great.
That translates to three idols. Not a sad score by any means, but a lot less than I was hoping to give. Like a lot of biopics, it was a little too long, and a little too twitchy sometimes, which will happen when you have to cut out large chunks of your subject’s life to avoid making a four-hour movie, but is still kind of a shame, and kind of annoying. Because they all worked hard on this. They used Little Bohemia, and the movie theatre where Dillinger was shot, and everything looked wonderful. But in the end, there wasn’t really a character who I could sympathize with. Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as determined FBI agent Melvin Purvis both act up a storm, but the agent is too distant and the character not developed as much as I would have liked, and Dillinger was, well, Dillinger. He may have been a gentlemanly crook, but he was still a crook, so there’s only so much you can do with him.