There’s a scene in District 9 when the main character, after enduring a lot of pain and humiliation, has to make the choice of either running into battle guns ablaze or retreat. He chooses the latter knowing full well that his actions are driven by fear and selfishness.
District 9 or “D9” is many things all rolled up into a hard to describe package. Among them it’s a sci-fi adventure with all the elements you’d expect like blaster guns and an enormous spaceship. It’s also an unrelenting social commentary and an action-packed romp that refuses to let down its guard.
The effects and cinematography compliment each other quite well and at times it’s hard to distinguish between the two. That said, they are not of the slick variety that other films convey, but the grimy texture is beautiful and perfect for the portrayal of a enslaved race of aliens living in South African slums.
It’s an unforgiving, ravished and selfish environment, leaving barely any room for survival. It’s a film that is best experienced without digging for holes in the plot (of which they are a few) or making assumptions dealing with the character portrayal or progression.
I enjoyed it because it didn’t reveal too much of itself and yet what it did expose was raw (human and alien) emotion, flaws in the human fabric and a detached feeling of humanity, or at least I felt detached at times.
Even though my kids are aware that their Dad is an artist, it’s not often I get requests from them. That might sound surprising, but I probably don’t sketch as much as I should. Most of my artwork is generated on the computer and they just assume the zeros and bytes do most of the work.
Recently, my three-year-old son Quinn asked me to draw Beast from Beauty and the Beast. He handed me a Crayola Twistable crayon and two sheets of copy paper and stood by my side waiting for the results. He also reminded me that he wanted it delivered pretty quickly, as if he had a pitch meeting to attend or something.
Since then I’ve been doing some sketches of other characters you might recognize, the idea being that these are quick, dirty and recognizable.
The Sketches
Materials: A blue Crayola Twistable, regular copy paper.
I watched Captain EO (not sure what the EO means) with my kids (the toe-head twins) and it occurred to me that I had never showed it to them until now.
Their favorite line was one uttered by The Supreme Leader:
You infect my world with your presence! Turn the others into… trashcans!
Even though Captain EO was a favorite from my childhood, having seen it for the first time in the late 80s/early 90s, it took the passing of Michael Jackson and a flood of nostalgia to convince me to do so. What a shame.
We also watched Moonwalker’s Smooth Criminal sequence, but that wasn’t nearly as cool to them. I tried to explain that when I was a kid (early 80s), Michael Jackson was something special and even after all these years he’s still considered a true talent. What I didn’t go into was all the media hype, speculation, accusations, strange behavior or giggly interviews because none of that mattered to me and someday they can get the scoop on all of that if they really want to.
Michael’s message to the world was simple: be inspired and imaginative, loving, creative and good.
It’s something we all can aspire to be and for that I thank “MJ” for his influence.
George Lucas has created some wonderful movies and is undeniably a visionary filmmaker, story-teller and influence in the film industry. Recently, evidence of this has surfaced in the form of a PDF outlining the “Raiders” story conference.
He’s also responsible for some real stinkers. Movie stink that could quickly foul a room full of underdeveloped daisies and seldom come up in conversation for fear of one being exiled or worse, thrown to a bunch of ravenous movie critics. Now I’m beginning to feel nostalgic for the cartoon, The Critic, but anyways…
Howard the Duck is perhaps the worst movie on George’s resume (yes, fouler than even Clone Wars), failed miserably at the box office and yet it retains a charm all its own. There are even days when the movie strangely hovers around in my thoughts from time to time.
If this were VH1’s Behind the Music, this is the part when the guy would say.. “And now, the story behind the story.”
It all started with some comics
From Wikipedia:
[Howard the Duck] first appeared in Adventure into Fear #19 (Dec. 1973) and several subsequent series have chronicled the misadventures of the ill-tempered, anthropomorphic, “funny animal” trapped on human-dominated Earth. Howard’s adventures are generally social satires, and also often parodies of genre fiction with a meta-fictional awareness of the medium. [Wikipedia]
If you were to pick up a Howard comic during this time you’d notice very little difference between him and Donald Duck. This was intentional on the part of its creators but for obvious reasons wasn’t carried over in the movie.
Quack, Quack!
The movie adaptation, released in 1986, retained some of the traits from the comic in the form of its star, Howard, who was still ill-tempered and anthropomorphic. Instead of doing an animated feature, which would’ve been an ideal presentation, the film was instead live-action and the duck would be part animatronic puppet, part diminutive actor.
It starred a very young Lea Thompson and Tim Robbins. Tim Robbins, up until this point (with Top Gun’s release looming) had been known for bit roles in TV and film. Lea Thompson was (and will probably always be) known as the Marty McFly’s mother Lorraine in Back to the Future.
Together, they were supporting players to their feathered star and despite the sub par script and kooky special effects, managed to give somewhat convincing performances. However, there is something to be said about the human/duck relationship that is, to this day, uncomfortable to watch. I don’t think I was ever fully up to speed on the “birds, ducks and bees.”, but I digress.
Above all us, Howard the Duck, like The Dark Crystal, was a childhood favorite of mine because it was something I enjoyed watching with my family.
It was a fantastic, awful, bewildering and grossly underrated cult classic.